Love

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Dani. I met adrienne early on in college, more than twenty years ago. I felt close to her soon after meeting. We shared a love of writing, of thinking deeply about things. Our work on a labor of love, a campus literary journal called Roots and Culture took us from being acquaintances to close friends. Then we went on a random trip to Prague together, spring break of our senior year, and that sealed the deal. There has been so much in the intervening years that has been important and beautiful, through a lot of cities, partners, family changes, and just life happening. I’m an only child, but at the age of nineteen or twenty, I feel like I acquired adrienne as a sister. Jodie. I first saw Adrienne in Vancouver when she was on a speaking tour for her first book, How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office. A year later we got to know each other at a training for environmental activists and it was there sparks flew (in the hot tub to be exact). I was starved for a justice and equity perspective in the enviro movement and adrienne brought it along with joy and laughter. Over time we became friends and comrades and I eventually moved from Vancouver to Oakland. Dani. Jodie and I moved to Oakland around the same time. The building where adrienne lived was nicknamed Melrose Place and had a patio where there was lots of ongoing hanging out with neighbors and folks in the community. I met Jodie there—she was friends with adrienne and another friend in the building, Jessamyn Sabbag. I got to know more about Jodie, and we began spending time together. Then she recruited me as part of this wild work retreat near Vancouver a few years later in September 2010. amb. I think that was the one where we got mad people of color up in the British Columbia forest and the power went out because of a squall? I had forgotten that. Dani. I got to better understand Jodie’s work and build trust with her as part of that journey, which was complex. Jodie. I remember sending adrienne off on her sabbatical—like getting her to the airport was everything. amb. Oh my god, I remember that! You took me to get a functional, grown-up suitcase.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  Grace wanted an answer and Ryan was skeptical to give one. I was not there to be the tiebreaker. My job, as with all my clients, was to help them come to their own conclusions. After all, while I’m there to support my clients in swimming in their waters, I’m not meant to be the lifeguard who can save their, or any, relationship. Ultimately, it’s each couple who must want it for themselves. It wasn’t that they hadn’t been trying to figure things out before they got to me. They were facing some major hurdles where it was getting impossible for them to find a middle path. With some instances, no matter the couple, there’s not much compromising. What are some examples of these nonnegotiables? For starters: babies. You can’t have half of one. Ryan wanted many and Grace didn’t want one. And then there’s marriage. You’re wed or you’re not. Grace wanted the ring and Ryan was hesitant to get on one knee. Lastly: where to live. You can’t live in Boise and Los Angeles. You typically have to pick one. Ryan wanted to be in a city and Grace wanted a rural area. In the end, someone wins, and someone loses. The best thing they had in their corner was that they each wanted the relationship to work out. They loved each other deeply and had ten years invested in a partnership that mattered a great deal to each of them. Perhaps that was part of the problem, though. Their love for each other (as well as a great sex life) was complicating some clear disagreements that showed no signs of resolving. That’s why I’m going to tell you right now that this isn’t a story about how their fairy-tale dreams came true with each other. There was a happy ending, but perhaps not in the way you’d expect. I worked with Grace and Ryan for quite some time. To their credit, they were both brutally honest about what they wanted in their future. We did an extensive dive into their values so that they could each make an informed decision about how the relationship fit into their lives and their futures. Ryan was clear about the fact that he wanted a family more than anything. He envisioned a bustling household that put Cheaper by the Dozen to shame. Grace was the opposite. As an introvert, she hoped for a quiet life with Ryan, traveling when they could and working on fixer-upper houses as a hobby together. She didn’t see a pack of kidlets as part of her story. She wanted Ryan to be hers and for him to declare this relationship as his own. She didn’t see a point in continuing the relationship if marriage wasn’t a part of the equation.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I nodded and smiled like an idiot: for the thrill of being addressed by her I would gladly have lost all of my old name, and taken a new one, or gone nameless entirely.So presently it was ‘Well, Nan ... !’ this, and ‘Lord, Nan ... !’ that; and, increasingly, it was ‘Be a love, Nan, and fetch me my stockings ...’ She was still too shy to change her clothes before me, but one night when I arrived I found that she had had a little folding screen set up, and ever afterwards she used to step behind it while we talked, and hand me articles of her suit as she undressed, and have me pass her the pieces of her ladies’ costume from the hook that she had hung them on before the show. I adored being able to serve her like this. I would brush and fold her suit with trembling fingers, and secretly press its various materials - the starched linen of the shirt, the silk of the waistcoat and the stockings, the wool of the jacket and trousers - to my cheek.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  My wish is that in all this heavy lifting, we each make it a little (or a lot) lighter for one another. In a world that’s mired in pain and tragedy, I want to intentionally be that parent—that person—who brings a laugh, offers a hug, and is willing to simply sit alongside. Rather than teach our children to succeed and achieve, I hope we send a message to simply love one another for the people we are, not for the things that we do. No matter how old we are, I hope we remember that we each need to be held (both by ourselves and emotionally by others). Rather than run away when it gets tough, we need to comfort one another when our day is rocked with another dose of unsettling news. Even though it can be so easy to stare into the abyss of our own pain (as our anxiety would like us to do), I believe we can each make a different choice to pour out our compassion toward others, not just toward ourselves. The more we’re willing to connect, the more we can collectively heal. With each generation, I see us getting closer and closer to becoming the loving, empathetic people we are meant to be. We are socially built—we are not meant to endure this life alone. As our care for one another grows, I see our anxiety and our self-interest dying in turn. This doesn’t mean we’re letting go of who we are—we’re instead expanding our definition of what is possible. I come back to a concept that I learned from one of my favorite authors, Reverend Dr. Jacqui Lewis, in her book, Fierce Love. She writes about the Zulu term ubuntu, meaning, “I am because of who we all are.” As I think of this, I can’t wait to see how my son will be shaped by the people around him, and in turn how he will shape their lives. As I watch him giggle, play, and cry without any self-judgment—and watch people respond to him—I want to encourage him to keep engaging unabashedly like that for the rest of his life. I hope he never outgrows it. More than anything, I hope his anxiety never tells him to hold himself back from being the person he wants to become. I wholeheartedly hope the same for you. May we never lose our childlike ability to smile at someone, even if it’s a stranger. Let’s not forget how to strike up a conversation and truly connect. Certainly, let’s not hide our tears just because we’re socialized as adults that crying is indecent. Deep down, we’re all just kids wanting to laugh, cry, and connect our way through life. Simply put: we need one another.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  You don’t remember, but he cried sometimes, cried when he belted the breath out of us, and later I found him asleep with his head in the toilet bowl. Be Papakwaka, I told him. Be harder. Be my rock-brother and I’ll be your stone-wife. Remember that gumball machine outside the Ranch 99 where he skinned fish? Remember how you only wanted the green ones, the ones you said would taste like our planet, and when you got the red one, you cried? Your father fed it more quarters, but the next one was white, then yellow, then pink, then white again. The gumballs stained your palms like a crime scene, and still you asked for green. He went inside the store and exchanged half a day’s wage for more quarters, kept feeding the machine until you got your green, your planet to suck soft, to embalm in spit. This is the man I want you to remember, the one who committed himself to your hunger: his hands cradling quarters, your green mouth glowing go like a stoplight. Don’t tell me when to stop. Here’s the third story, the one you need to believe. There was a god sent to earth, looking for disciples. He walked the forest—not jungle—and told all the animals that he was starving. The snakes volunteered to steal him an egg. The birds left to hunt him a mouse. The fox skulked off to rob a neighboring chicken farm in Arkansas. Only the rabbit offered itself. It leapt straight into the starving man’s cooking fire, inviting teeth to its meat. To commemorate the rabbit, the god hung the rabbit’s bones in the sky. And that is the moon. That’s how we know all sources of light begin as sacrifice. Your father, born year of the rabbit, hated that story. He thought no god was owed flesh or fidelity. But he still expected both of me. The year we were married I asked him to get baptized. Ma says our tribe used to have as many deities as trees, and that having many gods only multiplies your losses, diversifies your debts. The moon was our priest that night. I filled a kiddie pool with water from a park fountain. He said he wanted to be baptized in his own spit. I said no man can fit inside his own mouth. Get in. On the third day, your brother removes the paper from the windows. You decide that being nocturnal is lonely, and when you check the mirror, your eyes aren’t glowing. When your brother rips away the paper, I see you in the light for the first time in days, and your skin is no closer to being bone. When you go outside to feed your yard-holes, I drag you home by your calf. You bite my hand but I stay holding you. You’ll need more than teeth to be free of me. _

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Except, you have tied it crooked. Here.’ She came towards me, and took hold of the knot to straighten it; the pulse at my throat began at once to knock against her fingers, and I started a fruitless fumbling at my hips for a pair of pockets in which to thrust my hands. ‘What a fidget you are,’ she said mildly, quite as if she were addressing Cyril; but her cheeks, I noticed, had not paled - nor was her voice, I thought, quite steady.She finished at my throat at last, then stepped away again.‘There is just my hair,’ I said. I took two brushes and dampened them in my water-jug, and combed the hair away from my face till it was flat and sleek; then I greased my palms with macassar - I had macassar, now - and ran them over my head until the hair felt heavy, and the little, overheated room was thick with scent. And all the time, Florence leaned against the frame of the parlour door and watched me; and when I had finished, she laughed.‘My word, what a pair of beauties!’ This was Ralph, come that moment along the passageway, with Cyril at his feet. ‘We didn’t recognise them, did we, son?’ Cyril held up his arms to Florence, and she lifted him with a grunt. Ralph put his hand upon her shoulder and said, in an altogether softer tone, ‘How fair you look, Flo. I haven’t seen you look so fair, for a year and more.’ She tilted her head, graciously; they might for a moment have been a knight and his lady, in some medieval portrait. Then Ralph looked my way, and smiled; and I didn’t know who it was that I loved more, then - his sister, or him.‘Now, you will manage with Cyril, won’t you?’ said Florence anxiously, when she had handed the baby back to Ralph and begun to button her coat.‘I should think I will!’ said her brother.‘We won’t be late.’‘You must be as late as you like; we shall not wonder. Only mind you are careful.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Look at these people all about us: you left Whitstable to get away from people such as this!’ I gazed at her for a second in a kind of stupor; then I did as she urged me, and glanced about the tent - at Annie and Miss Raymond; at Ralph, who was still blinking and blushing into Mrs Costello’s face; at Nora and Ruth, who stood beside the platform with some other girls I recognised from the Boy in the Boat. In a chair at the far side of the tent - I had not noticed her before - sat Zena, her arm looped through that of her broad-shouldered sweetheart; close to them stood a couple of Ralph’s union friends — they nodded when they saw me looking, and raised a glass. And in the midst of them all, sat Florence. Her head was still bent to where Cyril clutched at it: he had tugged her hair down to her shoulder, and she had raised her hands to pull his fingers free. She was flushed and smiling; but even as she smiled, she lifted her eyes to mine, and I saw tears in them - perhaps, only from Cyril’s grasping - and, behind the tears, a kind of bleakness, that I did not think I’d ever seen in them before. I could not meet her smile with one of my own. But when I turned again to Kitty, my gaze was level; and my voice, when I spoke, was perfectly steady. ‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘I belong here, now: these are my people. And as for Florence, my sweetheart, I love her more than I can say; and I never realised it, until this moment.’ She let go of my arm and stepped away as if she had been struck. ‘You are saying these things to spite me,’ she said breathlessly, ‘because you are still hurt -’ I shook my head. ‘I’m saying these things because they’re true. Good-bye, Kitty.’ ‘Nan!’ she cried, as I made to move away from her. I turned back. ‘Don’t call me that,’ I said pettishly. ‘No one calls me that now. It ain’t my name, and never was.’ She swallowed, then stepped towards me again and said in a lower, chastened tone: ‘Nancy, then. Listen to me: I still have all your things. All the things you left at Stamford Hill.’ ‘I don’t want them,’ I said at once. ‘Keep them, or throw ’em away: I don’t care.’ ‘There are letters, from your family! Your father came to London, looking for you. Even now, they send me letters, asking if I have heard ...’ My father! I had had a vision, on seeing Diana, of myself upon a silken bed.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  On the baseball diamond at recess, Ben pulled me away into the dugout and showed me the key to the cage door: It was the silver pendant around her neck. Ben stepped closer until the key was against my chest, teething into my left breast. She said she’d been born with the key, a silver milk tooth jutting from her mouth. It tore her mother during birth, snagging on the placenta and causing her mother to hemorrhage. To this day, she said, the hospital still stands inside a flood. When Ben stepped back, the key swinging in the air between us, I thought about slipping my tail out. I wasn’t born with it, I would say, but it’s my name. _ One afternoon, we ran from our older brothers and their foam-pellet guns. They shut off every light in the house, chasing us through the kitchen and into the yard and back into the kitchen, where we rifled the drawers for a knife to threaten them back. Ben’s brother had too-large hands with fingers that curled naturally, adapted for pulling triggers and professional nose-picking. The two boys retreated temporarily to my brother’s room, saying that when they came back out, we’d better be hidden or already dead. There was nowhere that could fit both our bodies except behind the sofa, where we wouldn’t last. I kissed her before our deaths, pretended the dark was not man-made, pretended our brothers’ guns shot real bullets, not jelly-tipped shafts I could catch midair. I wanted permanent damage, a war where one side was the other’s shadow, one body was the other’s blade. We kissed, my tongue serenading her teeth. She put her palm on the back of my neck and I was sweating a dress. My hands honeymooned on her hips. The key around her neck nudged me just below the collarbone, but I didn’t pull away. Between our chests, the key heated until I thought it would weld itself into a new shape, a hinge between our bodies. Ben’s ribs parted against mine, releasing her heart into my hands, a fistful of feathers. My throat a perch for her teeth. Then I heard the sound of our brothers reloading on the other side of the sofa, squinting to separate our bodies from the dark. We kept our eyes closed, her mouth on my shoulder now. Tomorrow there would be a bruise, a dark spot on the ball of my shoulder, and I’d think for a second that my skin was of another species, that I was finally turning into what my tail wanted me to be. But then I’d remember yesterday, which was today, which was her mouth making my shoulder lift like a wing. Our brothers took aim, still squinting, unable to tell if there was one body or two. We let them. We were silent when the foam bullets bounced off our thighs and bellies.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She bucked, and the bed gave an answering creak; her own hands began to chafe distractedly at the flesh of my shoulders. There seemed no motion, no rhythm, in all the world, but that which I had set up, between her legs, with one wet fingertip.At last she gasped, and stiffened, then plucked my hand away and fell back, heavy and slack. I pressed her to me, and for a moment we lay together quite still. I felt her heart beating wildly in her breast; and when it had calmed a little she stirred, and sighed, and put a hand to her cheek.‘You’ve made me weep,’ she murmured.I sat up. ‘Not really, Kitty?’‘Yes, really.’ She gave a twitch that was half laughter, half a sob, then rubbed at her eyes again, and when I took her fingers from her face I could feel the tears upon them. I pressed her hand, suddenly uncertain: ‘Did I hurt you? What did I do that was bad? Did I hurt you, Kitty?’She shook her head, and sniffed, and laughed more freely. ‘Hurt me? Oh no. It was only - so very sweet.’ She smiled. ‘And you are - so very good. And I -’ She sniffed again, then placed her face against my breast and hid her eyes from me. ‘And I - oh, Nan, I do so love you, so very, very much!’I lay beside her, and put my arms about her. My own desire I quite forgot, and she made no move to remind me of it. I forgot, too, Gully Sutherland - who three hours before had put a gun to his own heart, because a man had sat through his routine unsmiling. I only lay; and soon Kitty slept. And I studied her face, where it showed creamy pale in the darkness, and thought She loves me, She loves me — like a fool with a daisy-stalk, endlessly exclaiming over the same last browning petal. The next morning we were shy together, at first - and Kitty, I think, was the shyest of all.‘How much we drank, last night!’ she said, not gazing at me; and for a terrible second I thought it might really have been only the champagne that made her cling to me, and say that she loved me, so very very much ... But as she spoke she blushed. I said, before I could stop myself: ‘If you unsay all those things you said last night, oh Kitty, I’ll die!’ and that made her raise her eyes to mine, and I saw that she had simply been anxious, that I might only have been drunk... And then we gazed and gazed at one another; and for all that I had gazed at her a thousand times before, I felt now that I was looking at her as if for the first time.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  [377] P. A. Chadbourne: Instinct, p. 28 (New York, 1872).[378] "It would be very simple-minded to suppose that bees follow their queen, and protect her and care for her, because they are aware that with-out her the hive would become extinct. The odor or the aspect of their queen is manifestly agreeable to the bees—that is why they love her so. Does not all true love base itself on agreeable perceptions much more than on representations of utility?" (G. H. Schneider, Der Thierische Wille, p. 187.) A priori, there is no reason to suppose that any sensation might not in some animal cause any emotion and any impulse. To us it seems unnatural that an odor should directly excite anger or fear; or a color, lust. Yet there are creatures to which some smells are quite as frightful as any sounds, and very likely others to which color is as much a sexual irritant as form.[379] Classics editor's note: James insertion.[380] Der Thierische Wille, pp. 282-3.[381] In the instincts of mammals, and even of lower creatures, the uniformity and infallibility which, a generation ago, were considered as essential characters do not exist. The minuter study of recent years has found continuity, transition, variation, and mistake, wherever it has looked for them, and decided that what is called an instinct is usually only a tendency to act in a way of which the average is pretty constant, but which need not be mathematically 'true.' Ct. on this point Darwin's Origin of Species: Romanes's Mental Evol., chaps. xi to xvi incl., and Appendix; W. L. Lindsay's Mind in Lower Animals, vol. I. 133-141; ii. chaps, v, xx; and K. Semper's Conditions of Existence in Animals, where a great many instances will be found.[382] Spalding, Macmillan's Magazine, Feb. 1873, p. 287.[383] Ibid . p. 289[384] For the cases in full see Mental Evolution in Animals. pp. 213-217.[385] Transactions of American Neurological Association, vol. I. p. 129(1875).[386] "Mr. Spalding," says Mr. Lewes (Problems of Life and Mind, prob. chap. ii. ' 22, note), "tells me of a friend of his who reared a gosling in the kitchen, away from all water; when this bird was some months old, and was taken to a pond, it not only refused to go into the water, but when thrown in scrambled out again, as a hen would have done. Here was an instinct entirely suppressed." See a similar observation on ducklings in T. R. H. Stebbing: Essays on Darwinism (London, 1871), p. 73.[387] "Senses and Intellect. 3rd ed. pp. 413-675.[388] Nature, xii. 507 (1875).[389] See, for some excellent pedagogic remarks about doing yourself when you want to get your pupils to do, and not simply telling them to do it, Baumann, Handbuch der Moral (1879), p. 32 ff.[390] Sympathy has been enormously written about In books on Ethics. a very good recent chapter is that by Thos. Fowler. The Principles of Morals, part ii. chap.

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  Social inclusivity and economic justice are the basis for human kinship. There can be no exiles for the Native Messiah. Consequently, there is no equivocation in his teachings about community. In the same spirit, there can be no doubt that the Native Messiah called us to account for our give-away relationship to all other living creatures in the greater network of our kinship. One of the hallmarks of the Native Covenant is the simple expression, “all my relations.” This phrase is often used as an introduction to prayer or public gatherings. It is a verbal icon that symbolically recognizes the presence of all living beings, all created things, in the circle of human kinship. Again, this is not a sentimental expression. It is a witness. It is a spiritual affirmation of both understanding and intent. It means that anyone who follows Jesus as the Native Messiah must be respectful of the matrix of life that encompasses God’s great community of creation. Our active commitment, even our sacrifice, to maintain ecological balance with other life forms is expected by God. It is that clear and that simple in Native theology. There can be no exiles. Jesus came to restore balance to all of life, not just to a portion of it. Because the Creator made everything that exists, and because everything that exists is made in love, the Messiah’s call to love encircles all of creation. When we love God with all of our heart, we are loving the Earth. We are loving the seas and the sky. We are loving the four-legged creatures who are our kin, just as we are loving the winged creatures and those who swim. Nothing is outside the circle of love; everything within the circle of love is our relation. The level of sacrifice that the two brothers, John and Jesus, accepted from their vision quests was a willingness to give away all they had, even their lives, for the sake of the circle of life. John lost his life as a sacred clown because he brought the chaos of hope into the place of power. He spoke the truth. Jesus lost his life because he loved without exclusion. He lived the give-away. Both offer us a clear message. They did not die for symbolism or sentiment. As holy people of the Native Covenant, they expected us to follow them with the same sense of courage and integrity. The give-away they made is unmistakable. The call of the Native Messiah is clear. Our task is not to hold back, not to look for half-measures or loop holes, but to do our part in bringing justice to our community, justice for the tribe of the human beings, justice for all of creation.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  The sea, on the other hand, was his glittering garment. He was so blessed, even the storms bounced off his boat. Ah Zheng resembled an ordinary hog*7 on land but was handsome on water, especially reflected off a surface—he wore the hat of a Tanka, but underneath, his hair was like water, stroking his shoulders or coiling on its own. He was born with a blowhole on the top of his head that he liked to stick a miniature flag inside, a flag that was just a piece of toilet paper. His eyes were the bitter color of grapes. Always remember to spit out the grape skins or you’ll get eyes like that too, all seed. You’ll see everything dark as light, everything loved as lost. All this to say: Old Guang, my beefhearted fishdicked hogspawned grandfather, fell in love with Ah Zheng. At the beginning of his piracy career, Old Guang was seasick, bent at the waist and waddling to the rails. Ah Zheng would clean my grandfather’s face with his own silk sleeve. He told my grandfather that acupuncture would cure his seasickness, and invited him back to the captain’s cabin. Ah Zheng’s acupuncture needles were made of fishbone, invisible to the light. Though Old Guang was afraid of needles, he said nothing. Ah Zheng was undressing him, and suddenly my grandfather’s mouth felt like a sea urchin, spike and salt. When Old Guang was naked, Ah Zheng directed him to lie facedown on the pallet. He sterilized each needle in seawater and strong vinegar, then hovered his hand over my grandfather’s left shoulder-bone. Old Guang yelped, and Ah Zheng laughed: I haven’t even put it in yet.*8 When Ah Zheng slipped the needle directly into the shoulder-bone, Old Guang moaned. It didn’t hurt, but the sensation stayed for days. Old Guang and Ah Zheng fucked with urgency. Ah Zheng’s beard tasted of sea spray, stinging his whole skin. My grandfather really believed that Ah Zheng was a reincarnation of a god—how else could he be so young and so confidently commanding a fleet larger than the emperor’s? How else did he grow such stately long legs, such a deeply cleft ass, a crack all shadows lusted to live inside? Sometimes, their lovemaking was closer to prayer: My grandfather held Ah Zheng’s semen*9 in his mouth for as long as possible, torturing it of taste.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  The piracy was obvious: We could see the glare of a screen embedded in a black frame, the walls of a theater shadowing both sides. At the climax, a woman in the audience stood up and shouted something at the screen. A row of heads bobbed along the bottom, a shadow skyline. We watched the movie being watched. We could hear a woman whispering in one of the front rows, repeating every line of dialogue like an echo. My mother and I shushed her even though we knew she couldn’t hear: She wasn’t here. In the middle of the movie, the camcorder lagged and the audio mismatched with the actors’ mouths, language spoken in a different time zone from the listener. We saw what was happening before we heard it. The knife cleaved a belly, too easy. The scream was stalled. In this shot, the sky was the same shade as my mother’s name. _ I ran upstairs to get my brother’s camcorder and came back down, started filming. When my mother asked what I was doing, I said, Pirating. I was the woman choosing between sides, between side-wounds: Ama and my mother, related by blade. I filmed the back of my mother’s head jutting into the frame, her commentary when the love interest committed suicide (I never liked that actress because she has my eyes), the oil on her hands like sunlight. I wanted to set them on fire, to turn her hands into light-bouquets and capture the smoke onscreen. My mother said, You’ll never be able to sell any of that, and I said I didn’t want to sell her. There was a scene near the end where my mother turned her head to look back at the camera, her face outliving the screen behind her, brighter. She held herself still as if posing for a photo. Behind her, credits ribboning down the black like names of the dead, cueing us to continue. I rewatched the footage later and saw that all the actors were blurred or out of frame, no storyline salvageable. Everything off-focus except my mother’s face, the light speaking what I can’t subtitle, clarifying for the audience: She’s the only one I’ve been watching. _

• From Bestiary (2020)

  Ah Zheng tucked Old Guang back into bed, and they slept in the shape of spears until morning. In the morning, the whole top deck of the ship was coated in crabs. Crabs of every color and size sequined the ship, filling it a foot deep. The first man to step out on the deck had gotten his big toe pinched off, and his shouts woke the whole ship. When Old Guang climbed up from the captain’s cabin, the crabs parted for him. He stepped onto the deck and crabs scrambled away, clearing a path. Old Guang repelled the crabs like magnets, all except one: the biggest of them all, the only crab that was an ordinary orange. It was the size of an infant, so fat its legs trembled. Old Guang reached out to touch it, and it immediately collapsed and retracted its legs, dead. All the other crabs had collapsed too. The other pirates were frightened: Did they follow us here? Where were they all hiding? They kicked each crab back into the sea—thousands of them—too terrified to think of eating the meat. Meanwhile, Old Guang kept the body of the big orange crab, which was already starting to smell of decay. Ah Zheng humored him, but reminded Old Guang that eating the crab could make him sick. Old Guang nodded, but secretly he disagreed. He recognized the crab. In dying, the crab had spoken its name. *12 Back on land, his wife and children had gotten an omen of their own: The evening before my grandfather returned home after years of piracy, it rained. The rain was rancid and full of guts, liquefied fish. The next morning, while everything was still damp and smeared, Old Guang arrived at our door, stained to the knees with mud. He didn’t speak for weeks, and he had brought nothing with him: no boat, no brother, no cutlass or evidence of his piracy. Nothing but a silk pouch, dark with blood, and inside it, a spoiled crab. The meatiest crab his wife had ever seen. The only thing he said to her, before resuming another week of silence, was Cook it for me on a full moon night. She obeyed. She could do nothing else: Old Guang would not eat or speak or come to bed. The night his wife cooked the crab, my grandfather finally spoke. He had spent all his days home reweaving his fishnet, cleaving trees for a new boat. Whatever had happened, he was ready to reenter the sea’s country. The family watched him shape a fish-hook out of a dog’s jawbone, rubbing his thumb again and again in the same place until it began to curve upward. At dinner, his wife arranged the crab in the center of the table. His children ate unsalted rice gruel and a pinch of egg yolk.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  At the beginning of December Kitty got a spot on the bill at a hall in Marylebone, and played there twice a night, all month. It was pleasant to sit gossiping in the green room between shows, knowing that we had no frantic trips to make across London in the snow; and the other artistes - a juggling troupe, a conjuror, two or three comic singers and a dwarf husband-and-wife team, ‘The Teeny Weenies’ - were all as complacent as we, and very jolly company.The show ended at Christmas. I should, perhaps, have passed the holiday in Whitstable, for I knew my parents would be disappointed not to have me there. But I knew, too, what Christmas dinner would be like at home. There would be twenty cousins gathered around the table, all talking at once, all stealing the turkey from one another’s plates. There would be such a fuss and stir they could not possibly, I thought, miss me - but I knew that Kitty would if I left her for them; and I knew, besides, that I should miss her horribly and only make the occasion miserable for everybody else. So she and I spent it together - with Walter, as ever, in attendance - at Mrs Dendy’s table, eating goose, and drinking toast after toast to the coming year with champagne and pale ale.Of course, there were gifts: presents from home, which Mother forwarded with a stiff little note that I refused to let shame me; presents from Walter (a brooch for Kitty, a hat-pin for me). I sent parcels to Whitstable, and gave gifts at Ma Dendy’s; and for Kitty I bought the loveliest thing that I could find: a pearl - a single flawless pearl that was mounted on silver and hung from a chain. It cost ten times as much as I had ever spent on any gift before, and I trembled when I handled it. Mrs Dendy, when I showed it to her, gave a frown. ‘Pearls for tears,’ she said, and shook her head: she was very superstitious. Kitty, however, thought it beautiful, and had me fasten it about her neck at once, and seized a mirror to watch it swinging there, an inch beneath the hollow of her lovely throat. ‘I’ll never take it off,’ she said; and she never did, but wore it ever after - even on the stage, beneath her neck-ties and cravats.She, of course, bought me a gift. It came in a box with a bow, and wrapped in tissue, and turned out to be a dress: the most handsome dress I had ever possessed, a long, slim evening dress of deepest blue, with a cream satin sash about the waist, and heavy lace at the bosom and hem; a dress, I knew, that was far too fine for me.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  When did you begin to think that you might learn to - to love me?’Now she did turn, and smiled. ‘I remember a hundred little times,’ she said. ‘I remember how you made my dressing-room so nice and neat; I remember your blushes as I kissed you good-night. I remember how you opened an oyster for me at your father’s table - but then, I think I loved you then, already. Indeed, I’m ashamed to say, that it must have been that moment, at the Canterbury Palace, when I first smelled the oyster-liquor on your fingers, that I began to think of you as - as I shouldn’t have.’‘Oh!’‘And I’m even more ashamed to say,’ she went on in a slightly different tone, ‘that it wasn’t until last night - when I saw you larking with that boy, and was so jealous - that I learned how much, how much ...’‘Oh, Kitty...’ I swallowed. ‘I’m glad you learned it, at last.’ She looked away, then came to me and took my fag, and gave me one brisk kiss.‘So am I.’After that she bent to rub with a cloth at the leather of her boots, and I found myself yawning: I was weary, and rather sick from the champagne and the excitements of the night. I said, ‘Must we really get up?’ and Kitty nodded.‘We must - for it’s almost eleven, and Walter will be here soon. Had you forgotten?’It was a Sunday, and Walter was coming, as usual, to take us driving. I had not forgotten - but had had no time and no desire, yet, to think of ordinary things. Now, at the mention of Walter’s name, I grew thoughtful. It would be rather hard on him, now that this had happened.As if Kitty knew what I was thinking, she said, ‘You will be sensible with Walter, won’t you, Nan?’ Then she repeated what she had said the night before upon the bridge: ‘You won’t let on, will you, to anyone? You will be careful - won’t you?’I silently cursed her for being so prudent; but took her hand and kissed it. ‘I have been being careful since the first minute I saw you.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She was flushed and smiling; but even as she smiled, she lifted her eyes to mine, and I saw tears in them - perhaps, only from Cyril’s grasping - and, behind the tears, a kind of bleakness, that I did not think I’d ever seen in them before.I could not meet her smile with one of my own. But when I turned again to Kitty, my gaze was level; and my voice, when I spoke, was perfectly steady.‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘I belong here, now: these are my people. And as for Florence, my sweetheart, I love her more than I can say; and I never realised it, until this moment.’She let go of my arm and stepped away as if she had been struck. ‘You are saying these things to spite me,’ she said breathlessly, ‘because you are still hurt -’I shook my head. ‘I’m saying these things because they’re true. Good-bye, Kitty.’‘Nan!’ she cried, as I made to move away from her. I turned back.‘Don’t call me that,’ I said pettishly. ‘No one calls me that now. It ain’t my name, and never was.’She swallowed, then stepped towards me again and said in a lower, chastened tone: ‘Nancy, then. Listen to me: I still have all your things. All the things you left at Stamford Hill.’‘I don’t want them,’ I said at once. ‘Keep them, or throw ’em away: I don’t care.’‘There are letters, from your family! Your father came to London, looking for you. Even now, they send me letters, asking if I have heard ...’My father! I had had a vision, on seeing Diana, of myself upon a silken bed. Now, more vividly, I saw my father, in the apron that fell to his boots; I saw my mother, and my brother, and Alice. I saw the sea. My eyes began to smart, as if there was salt in them.‘You can send me the letters,’ I said thickly: I thought, I’ll write, and tell them of Florence. And if they don’t care for it - well, at least they’ll know that I’m safe, and happy ...Now Kitty came nearer, and lowered her voice still further. ‘There’s the money, too,’ she said. ‘We have kept it all. Nan, there’s almost seven hundred pounds of yours!’I shook my head: I had forgotten about the money. ‘I have nothing to spend it on,’ I said simply.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I must learn to love Kitty as Kitty loved me; or never be able to love her at all.And that, I knew, would be terrible. Chapter 4 [image "006" file=wate_9781101078198_oeb_006_r1.jpg] The Star, when we reached it at noon the next day, turned out to be not a tenth as smart as those marvellous West End halls before which we had leaned, with Mr Bliss, to dream of Kitty’s triumph; even so, however, it was quite alarmingly handsome and grand. Its manager at this time was a Mr Ling; he met us at the stage door and took us to his office, to read aloud the terms of Kitty’s contract and secure her signature upon it; but then he rose and shook our hands and shouted for the call-boy, and had us shown, rather briskly, to the stage. Here, self-conscious and awkward, I waited while Kitty spoke with the conductor and ran through her songs with the band. Once a man approached me, with a broom on his shoulder, and asked me rather roughly who I was and what I did there.‘I’m waiting for Miss Butler,’ I said, my voice as thin as a whistle.‘Are you, then,’ he said. ‘Well, sweetheart, you’ll have to wait somewhere else, for I’ve to sweep this spot, and you are in my way. Go on, now.’ And I moved away, blushing horribly, and had to stand in a corridor while boys with baskets and ladders and pails of sand lumbered by me, looking me over, or cursing when I blocked their path.Our return visit, however, in the evening, was an easier one, for then we went straight to the dressing-room, where I knew my part a little better. Even so, when we entered the room I felt my spirits tumble rather, for it was nothing like the cosy little chamber at the Canterbury Palace, which Kitty had had all to herself, and which I was used to keeping so neat and nice. Instead it was dim and dusty, with benches and hooks for a dozen artistes, and one greasy sink that must be shared by all, and a door that must be propped shut or left to sag and let in every glance of every stage-hand and visitor that might be idling in the passageway beyond. We arrived late, and found most of the hooks already taken, and several of the benches occupied by girls and women in varying stages of undress. They looked up when we arrived, and smiled, most of them; and when Kitty took out her packet of Weights and a match, someone cried, ‘Thank God, a woman with a cigarette! Give us one, ducks, would you?

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  This was not easy, especially with Barack. That boy was so mischievous! In Onyango’s presence, he appeared well-mannered and obedient, and never answered back when his father told him to do something. But behind the old man’s back, Barack did as he pleased. When Onyango was away on business, Barack would take off his proper clothes and go off with other boys to wrestle or swim in the river, to steal the fruit from the neighbors’ trees or ride their cows. The neighbors were afraid to go directly to Onyango, so they would come to me and complain about these things. But I could not get mad at Barack, and would always cover up his foolishness from Onyango, for I loved him as my own son. Although he did not like to show it, your grandfather was also very fond of Barack, because the boy was so clever. When Barack was only a baby, Onyango would teach him the alphabet and numbers, and it was not long before the son could outdo the father in these things. This pleased Onyango, for to him knowledge was the source of all the white man’s power, and he wanted to make sure that his son was as educated as any white man. He was less concerned with Sarah’s education, although she was also quick like Barack. Most men thought educating their daughters was a waste of money. When Sarah was finished with primary school, she came to Onyango begging for school fees to go on to secondary school. He said to her, “Why should I spend school fees on you when you will come to live in another man’s house? Go help your mother and learn how to be a proper wife.” This created more friction between Sarah and her younger brother, especially because she knew that Barack was not always serious about his studies. Everything came too easily to him. At first he went to the mission school nearby, but he came back after the first day and told his father that he could not study there because his class was taught by a woman and he knew everything she had to teach him. This attitude he had learned from his father, so Onyango could say nothing. The next closest school was six miles away, and I began to walk him to this school every morning. His teacher there was a man, but Barack discovered this didn’t solve his problems. He always knew the answers, and sometimes would even correct the teacher’s mistakes before the whole class. The teacher would scold Barack for his insolence, but Barack would refuse to back down. This caused Barack many canings at the hand of the headmaster. But it also might have taught him something, because the next year, when he switched to a class with a woman teacher, I noticed that he didn’t complain.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  the people who cross our physical or virtual paths, spark the flame of our interest, earn our devotion and respect and protection our own family, because blood people we are committed to but don’t like anymore How have we been loving? defining love by obligation celebrating love on externally marked holidays keeping the realities of love behind closed doors framing love as a fairy tale on social media framing love as a product we give each other framing love as a limited resource that gets swallowed and used up, tied in plastic when we’re done and piled up out of sight prioritizing romantic love over self, comrade, and friend love This kind of love is not sufficient, even if it is the greatest love of our lives. The kind of love that we will be forced to celebrate or escape on Valentine’s Day is too small. We’re all going to die if we keep loving this way, die from isolation, loneliness, depression, abandoning each other to oppression, from lack of touch, from forgetting we are precious. We can no longer love as a secret or a presentation, as something we prioritize, hoard for the people we know. Prioritizing ourselves in love is political strategy, is survival. From religious spaces to school to television shows to courts of law, we are socialized to seek and perpetuate private, even corporate, love. Your love is for one person, forever. You celebrate it with dying flowers and diamonds. The largest celebration of your life is committing to that person. Your family and friends celebrate you with dishes and a juicer. You need an income to love. If something doesn’t work out with your love, you pay a lot of money to divide your lives, generally not telling people much unless it’s a soap opera dramatic ending. This way of approaching love strangles all the good out of it. What we need right now is a radical, global love that grows from deep within us to encompass all life. No big deal. To help make this a true day of love, here is brief radical love manifesto. Radical Honesty We begin learning to lie in intimate relationships at a very early age. Lie about the food your mother made, to avoid punishment, as you swallow your tears, about loving this Valentine’s Day gift, about the love you want and how you feel. Most of this is taught as heteropatriarchy 101: men love one way, women another, and we have to lie to impress and catch each other. Women are still taught too often to be submissive, diminutive, obedient, and later nagging and caregiving—not to be peers, emotionally complex powerhouses, loving other women and trans bodies. These mistruths in gender norms are self-perpetuating, affirmed by magazines and movies, girded at family dinner tables.