Pride

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 How to Be a Great Lover (1999)

  TechniquesLadies, you may be familiar with some of these techniques, but I believe the more you know, the more pleasure you (both) will find. Even the world’s best chefs don’t rest on their laurels after mastering just one dish. They are always looking for ways to create something new using the same ingredients. And in a sexual relationship, those ingredients are your bodies, your attitudes, and your personal style. In the seminars, we experiment and try out these various techniques with an “instructional product,” otherwise known as a dildo. I give all the ladies their choice of which to use. Dildos, which have a base support and come in three natural skin shades—white, black, or mulatto—range in size from 5 inches (the executive model) to 6 inches and even 8 inches long. Believe it or not, most men measure in at 5–6 inches. By the way, most women prefer to practice these movements on something other than “the real thing,” and I suggest that you try these techniques at home first. If you don’t possess a dildo, a cucumber will do just fine; prop it up in a tall box of tissue to keep it steady. Some women have tried using bananas, but the results were disappointing: bananas aren’t nearly firm enough. Going to the green grocers will never feel quite the same again! All of the techniques require two hands, and are designed ideally with the woman kneeling between his legs, facing her lover. Again, this will afford more range of motion. He should be propped up (with a pillow). I would also suggest that you ask him if he would enjoy watching—men invariably do. The first technique I’m going to share with you is the now infamous Ode to Bryan. If you recall, Bryan was the friend who first taught me, using a spoon from a cup of latte, what feels best to men. Secret from Lou’s Archives Ladies, tell your partners that they should not try some of these techniques solo. One male partner of a female seminar attendee reported, “Much as I want to be able to do all of these to myself, I can’t. They require my thumb to be in a position that I can’t master.” ODE TO BRYAN (requires a semierect to fully erect penis) This is the all-time favorite. A female teacher from Seattle said, “For the first time I was going to make love to him the way I wanted to.” Step 1. Apply the lubricant of your choice generously to both hands. It’s a good idea to warm your hands and the lubricant by gently rubbing your hands together.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  But in the time between when something gets thought and when it gets done, the ball hit me square across the side of the face. I fell, the back of my head slamming against the gym floor. I then stood up immediately, as if unhurt, and left the gym. Pride had gotten me off the floor of the gym, but as soon as I was outside, I sat down. “I am concussed,” I announced, entirely sure of my self-diagnosis. “You’re fine,” Takumi said as he jogged back toward me. “Let’s get out of here before we’re killed.” “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I can’t get up. I have suffered a mild concussion.” Lara ran out and sat down next to me. “Are you okay?” “I am concussed,” I said. Takumi sat down with me and looked me in the eye. “Do you know what happened to you?” “The Beast got me.” “Do you know where you are?” “I’m on a triple-and-a-half date.” “You’re fine,” Takumi said. “Let’s go.” And then I leaned forward and threw up onto Lara’s pants. I can’t say why I didn’t lean backward or to the side. I leaned forward and aimed my mouth toward her jeans—a nice, butt-flattering pair of jeans, the kind of pants a girl wears when she wants to look nice but not look like she is trying to look nice—and I threw up all over them. Mostly peanut butter, but also clearly some corn. “Oh!” she said, surprised and slightly horrified. “Oh God,” I said. “I’m so sorry.” “I think you might have a concussion,” Takumi said, as if the idea had never been suggested. “I am suffering from the nausea and dizziness typically associated with a mild concussion,” I recited. While Takumi went to get the Eagle and Lara changed pants, I lay on the concrete sidewalk. The Eagle came back with the school nurse, who diagnosed me with—get this—a concussion, and then Takumi drove me to the hospital with Lara riding shotgun. Apparently I lay in the back and slowly repeated the words “The. Symptoms. Generally. Associated. With. Concussion.” So I spent my date at the hospital with Lara and Takumi. The doctor told me to go home and sleep a lot, but to make sure and have someone wake me up every four hours or so. I vaguely remember Lara standing in the doorway, the room dark and the outside dark and everything mild and comfortable but sort of spinny, the world pulsing as if from a heavy bass beat. And I vaguely remember Lara smiling at me from the doorway, the glittering ambiguity of a girl’s smile, which seems to promise an answer to the question but never gives it. The question, the one we’ve all been asking since girls stopped being gross, the question that is too simple to be uncomplicated: Does she like me or like me?

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  I’m not saying we should ignore the collective wisdom that can readily be found in all moral traditions. But I do think the value of that wisdom increases dramatically when we test it in the laboratories of own lives and, when appropriate, choose to make it our own. I’m also convinced that ethical values are far more likely to affect our actions when we focus on fundamental principles rather than complicated lists of rules that can easily distract us. Three such principles are of utmost importance to everyone’s erotic well-being: (1) respecting self and others, (2) acknowledging rather than denying one’s dark side, and (3) claiming the responsibilities of freedom. RESPECTING SELF AND OTHERSWe have observed how, with rare exceptions, an awareness of otherness is essential for both passion and emotional closeness. Relatively few people are interested in mere reflections of themselves. The vast majority of us are keenly aware that desired ones are attractive because they exist outside the physical and psychic boundaries that define where we end and they begin. We know that lusty attractions tend to objectify the desired one to a certain extent, especially during moments of high arousal. Contrary to what some people believe, lusty objectification can be thoroughly exciting and validating for everyone involved. Positive objectification accentuates the separateness of the other by using one or more of the other’s features as focal points for passionate energy. Problems occur when someone is seen only as an object of desire without any recognition of his or her feelings, preferences, or rights—in short, when basic respect is lacking. The desire to reach out for connection springs from a similar realization of separateness, for only two distinct individuals can share intimacy. When a compelling romantic response generates an intense urge to merge, most of us never completely forget that the self and the other remain two separate entities, even as we revel in feelings of oneness. When partners do lose sight of each other’s individuality, with one treating the other merely as an appendage, the relationship ultimately sours and both feel depleted rather than enriched by the exchange. In erotic life, recognition and respect for the separateness of the other is manifested, first and foremost, in a profoundly simple conviction: sexual contact is appropriate only when both partners give their full consent. This means never willingly submitting to unwanted sex no matter how persistent the pursuer, and never pressing another past the point of an unambiguous “no.” It means remembering that no one ever owes sex to anyone. And it certainly means that those who become so desperately “lovesick” or resentful that they resort to pestering, stalking, or coercion must seek help—or be stopped by the community. Healthy eroticism simply cannot exist unless requests to be left alone are honored.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  Not long afterward, she was walking home from the library after midnight when three men jumped out of some bushes, yelling: “Bitch, give us your money.” She later told me that she took that same karate stance and yelled back: “Okay, guys, I’ve been looking forward to this moment. Who wants to take me on first?” They ran away. If you’re hunched over and too afraid to look around, you are easy prey to other people’s sadism, but when you walk around projecting the message “Don’t mess with me,” you’re not likely to be bothered. Integrating Traumatic MemoriesPeople cannot put traumatic events behind until they are able to acknowledge what has happened and start to recognize the invisible demons they’re struggling with. Traditional psychotherapy has focused mainly on constructing a narrative that explains why a person feels a particular way or, as Sigmund Freud put it back in 1914 in Remembering, Repeating and Working Through:[32] “While the patient lives [the trauma] through as something real and actual, we have to accomplish the therapeutic task, which consists chiefly of translating it back again in terms of the past.” Telling the story is important; without stories, memory becomes frozen; and without memory you cannot imagine how things can be different. But as we saw in part 4, telling a story about the event does not guarantee that the traumatic memories will be laid to rest. There is a reason for that. When people remember an ordinary event, they do not also relive the physical sensations, emotions, images, smells, or sounds associated with that event. In contrast, when people fully recall their traumas, they “have” the experience: They are engulfed by the sensory or emotional elements of the past. The brain scans of Stan and Ute Lawrence, the accident victims in chapter 4, show how this happens. When Stan was remembering his horrendous accident, two key areas in his brain went blank: the area that provides a sense of time and perspective, which makes it possible to know that “that was then, but I am safe now,” and another area that integrates the images, sounds, and sensations of trauma into a coherent story. When those parts of the brain are knocked out, you experience something not as an event with a beginning, a middle, and an end but in fragments of sensations, images, and emotions. A trauma can be successfully processed only if all those brain structures are kept online. In Stan’s case, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) allowed him to access his memories of the accident without being overwhelmed by them. When the brain areas whose absence is responsible for flashbacks can be kept online while remembering what has happened, people can integrate their traumatic memories as belonging to the past.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  “The feeling of autonomy and control. The ability to explore and learn about myself. Being sexual and getting up and leaving afterward. How it was liberating to me as a brown femme survivor to be, like, I get to have wildly uncontained sexuality. Casual sex makes me feel connected to a lineage of queer sex radicalism, public sex and non-married/committed sex, which I feel is getting lost. It felt radical to articulate that sex can just be about pleasure, it doesn’t have to be about Commitment, Marriage, and the Family.”

• From Cultish (2021)

  If they told me about aliens when I first got there, I would have been out, and it would have saved me a lot of money.” For this reason, Scientology’s intro courses—Overcoming Ups and Downs in Life, Communication—are all quite broad, and delivered in plain English. To ease you into the ideology, the vernacular is introduced bit by bit. “They start just by shortening a lot of words,” Cathy told me. Indeed, Scientology’s lexicon is replete with insider-y acronyms and abbreviation s. If a word can be shortened, they do it: ack (acknowledgment), cog (cognition), inval (invalidation), eval (evaluation), sup (supervisor), R-factor (reality factor), tech (technology), sec (security), E-Meter (electropsychometer), OSA and RFP (parts of the organization), TR-L and TR-1 (training routines), PC, SP, PTS, and so on ad nauseam. Spend ten or twenty years committed to the church, and your vocabulary will be replaced wholesale by Hubbardese. Take a look at this dialogue, an example of an entirely plausible conversation between Scientologist s that Margery Wakefield composed for her 1991 book Understanding Scientology . Translations (by yours truly) are in brackets. Two Scientologists meet on the street. “How’re you doing?” one asks the other. “Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve been a bit out ruds [rudiments; tired, hungry, or upset] because of a PTP [present time problem] with my second dynamic [romantic partner] because of some bypassed charge [old negative energy that’s resurfaced] having to do with my MEST [Matter, Energy, Space, and Time, something in the physical universe] at her apartment. When I moved in I gave her an R-Factor [reality factor, a harsh talking-to] and I thought we were in ARC [affinity, reality, and communication; a good state] about it, but lately she seems to have gone a bit PTS so I recommended she see the MAA [an officer in the SEA-Org] at the AO [Advanced Organization] to blow some charge [get rid of engram energy] and get her ethics in [getting your Scientology shit together]. He gave her a review [auditing assessment] to F/N [floating needle, sign of a completed audit] and VGIs [very good indicators] but she did a roller coaster [a case that improves and worsens], so I think there’s an SP somewhere on her lines [auditing and training measures]. I tried to audit her myself but she had a dirty needle [an irregular E-Meter reading] . . . and was acting really 1.1 [covertly hostile] so I finally sent her to Qual [Qualifications Division] to spot the entheta on her lines [something that happens if you’ve recently consumed black PR]. Other than that, everything’s fine . . . In the beginning, learning this private terminology makes speakers feel, well, cool. “In the early days, it was really fun . . . or ‘theta,’ as we’d say,” Cathy told me, referencing Scientology’s slang term for “awesome.” Who doesn’t love a secret language?

• From What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013)

  "But even before I reached the pool, I threw caution to the wind. My bathing suit came off. I buried it in my tote bag. The guests were every age from twenty-five to eighty. There were women I tried never to stand next to, because they looked so good, and there were women who didn't look good at all. There were cesarean scars and hysterectomy scars and women who were totally out of shape, and I thought, If they can stand there and expose themselves, why shouldn't I? Bodies aren't perfect. … And these men were rotating the float with the zebra-hat woman on the water, stroking her arms, kissing her breasts, stroking her legs, licking her clit. I spent thirty minutes watching her."

• From Cultish (2021)

  A name-giver appointed by Yogi Bhajan used something called tantric numerology as an algorithm to determine followers’ special 3HO monikers, which they received in exchange for a fee. All women were given the same middle name, Kaur, while men were all christened Singh. Everyone shared the last name Khalsa. Like one big family. “Getting your new name was the biggest deal ever,” Tasha says. “Most people would change their names on their driver’s licenses.” Until last year, Tasha Samar’s California ID read “Daya Kaur Khalsa.”

• From Cultish (2021)

  “Quite frankly, the language is everything,” one ex-Scientologist told me in a hushed tone during an interview. “It’s what insulates you. It makes you feel special, like you’re in the know, because you have this other language to communicate with.”

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I could have stayed, and the realization of this astounds me. I could have stayed. At a crossroads, I had a choice: go back and salvage what I could, or forge ahead alone. I had been terrified, but I gave myself a chance anyway; I had run headfirst into a wall and decided not to retreat, but to claw my way over it to see what was on the other side. This did not happen to me, I made it happen, and now I know this about myself, that I am a person who can transform and endure. […] I think back to a recent conversation I had with #6 as I attempted to clarify our status, explaining that I love him and want him in my life, but not at the cost of my freedom. I had told him, you may not continue to be comfortable with my being with other men as we become more deeply invested in each other, and that's a choice you have to make. He had misunderstood my meaning, thinking I was seeking his permission, that I was requesting that he allow me to be with other men. "No," I had said, shaking my head, "my freedom is not yours to give me or withhold from me, it's simply for you to decide if it works for your own needs."

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Minutes before it was to be presented on the floor, a spokeswoman from each of the women-of-color caucuses gathered in an empty coatroom to give the final okay to the text, then rushed out on the floor to surround a mike in the huge Coliseum. First, Maxine Waters read the preamble on the discriminatory impact of sex and race combined. It was an honor that this young California assemblywoman had earned by her organizing skill in bringing all three hundred diverse members of the Black Caucus together. Then Billie Nave Masters, a Cherokee educator and activist, spoke on behalf of the Native American and Alaskan Native Caucus, citing their unique issues of sovereignty, and calling on “Earth Mother and the Great Spirit.” Those words didn’t seem to belong in a political plan of action, but I had asked the other caucuses if I could leave them in. An older woman in the Black Caucus had agreed. “Those are the only words my grandmother would give a damn about,” she said. “Issues are the head; those words are the heart.” When Billie read them, I saw delegates standing on their chairs to see who was speaking poetry. Next came Mariko Tse, a young Japanese American actor, who cited the struggles of Asian and Pacific Americans against language barriers, cultural bias, the realities of sweatshops, and the stereotypes of being “a model minority,” one supposedly without rebellion or problems. For the Hispanic Caucus, three delegates—Mexican American leader Sandy Serrano-Sewell; Ana Maria Perera, a Cuban American; and Celeste Benitez from the Puerto Rican senate—came to the mike together. This was the first time that different Spanish-speaking groups had unified in public across national boundaries as Hispanics, something they were encouraging male counterparts to consider. They took turns reading, and stood together on everything from immigrant rights and a minimum wage for migrant workers to reminding the media that Spanish-language reporters were not foreign press. Last came Coretta Scott King, standing with her bodyguard, a reminder of past tragedies and present danger. She cited the unemployment rate for young black women that was even higher than that for young black men, as well as housing bias against black families, black children in need of adoption, and more. Then she spoke for all the caucuses when she called for “the enthusiastic adoption of this substitute resolution on behalf of all the minority women in this country!” There were cheers, but her voice rode over them: “Let this message go forth from Houston and spread all over this land. There is a new force, a new understanding, a new sisterhood against all injustice that has been born here. We will not be divided and defeated again!”14 With chants, applause, and tears, the two thousand delegates accepted the new so-called Minority Plank by acclamation. It was the high point of the conference. I was as proud of my facilitating role as anything I had ever done in my life.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  I identify as a Black mixed person in the particular racial construct of this country at this time. I understand that race is a social construct, not a biological one—and in this life I experience a lot of pleasure in being Black. I love Black girl magic, Black joy, Black love, and work toward Black liberation. I feel unapologetic glee at the ways in which we subvert white supremacy, dominate culture, and “coolness,” often inviting people to the pleasures we have constructed from dreams and thin air. And … I understand this to be temporary—that there were, among my ancestors, feelings of love to be of tribes whose names I will never know or from nations no longer on any maps. In the future, there may be a time when the term “Black” feels to my nibblings’ nibblings the way the terms “Negro” or “Quadroon” sound to me now;2 perhaps these future nibblings will invent new terminology indicating some way of understanding themselves that I cannot comprehend. There may be a time beyond these borders, beyond these racial constructs, beyond this planet even. I feel humble in the face of all that time. And, in this time, it’s a gift to be Black. Similarly, I am learning that much of how we experience and practice gender is a social construct—and I love the particular pleasures of being a woman. I love being of women who transform the brutal conditions we survive, who are upending rape culture, knowing we are inferior to no one, weaving our suffering into a fierce togetherness, into homes, chosen families, radical sisterhood, and tomorrows. And I’m a woman with some boy in me and haven’t found the language for that. I know it is a privilege to feel aligned with the gender assignment I was given at birth. I love the bodies I was born from and with. And I love the wildly diverse spectrum of bodies I have gotten to hold, kiss, doula, and love in my lifetime. I imagine there have been periods in my ancestry when gender was held very differently, maybe didn’t matter so much, or was less binary. And I imagine there will be a future with a multitude of widely known and understood genders. In this moment, I get to be part of the expansion of possible genders that can live and love safely on this planet.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  Forever is a traditional teenage love story with a twist, and that twist has a name: Ralph. Ralph is what the male character calls his penis. Boy and girl meet; boy and girl get swept off their feet—and then, oh hello, Ralph has joined the party. Forever was the first book of its kind to show a young couple’s sexual journey. The writing is explicit, for sure; there are descriptions of nudity, orgasms, and semen. But Judy was careful to avoid pitfalls that would make Forever easily dismissible as smut. For one thing, the emotional relationship between the pair is just as nuanced as their physical connection. Equally important, Blume is intentional in the way she presents the two main characters. They aren’t rebels or burnouts or outsiders, sneaking around in the streets after dark. They’re sweet, wholesome kids. Michael and Katherine are seniors in high school: she’s from Westfield, New Jersey, and he’s from the neighboring town of Summit. They meet at a mutual friend’s fondue party—the tamest possible teenage get-together—where they flirt and banter. The next day, they go on a drive and talk about their interests. They’re both athletes, with Michael a skier and Katherine an avid tennis player. The colleges on their wish lists are competitive: Penn State, University of Vermont, Middlebury. Michael’s favorite food is literally spinach! Katherine tells Michael that she volunteers at the local hospital once a week as a candy striper. Katherine in particular is family oriented. Her dad is her most frequent tennis partner; the first thing she does after her date with Michael is go home and tell her mom about him. Her younger sister, Jamie, is a precociously talented artist and cook, but Katherine doesn’t let her own insecurities get in the way of their sisterly bond. Other details, offered early in the novel, telegraph Katherine’s level-headedness. She has a “92 average” in school, and she’s thin. “We are exactly the same size—five-feet-six and 109 pounds,” she says of her and her mother. It’s one of the few times Blume provides a physical description as specific as a character’s weight. You get the sense that she’s using Katherine’s svelte body as a shorthand for self-control, which wouldn’t fly now but was par for the course in the diet-obsessed 1970s. When it comes to sex, Katherine is equally disciplined. She’s still a virgin and broke up with her last boyfriend, she tells us, because he pressured her in bed. “He threatened that if I wouldn’t sleep with him he’d find somebody else who would,” she says. “I told him if that was all he cared about he should go right ahead.” Like Judy, Katherine has been warned by her parents about the dangers of parking. After her second date with Michael, she invites him back to her house, where they make out in the den. Michael wants to go farther, but Katherine holds him off, dutifully performing her role as the good girl.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Ladies and gentleman, Henry Ammerman.” Enthusiastic applause. Henry speaks well, painting a picture of Elizabeth at that time—the fear, the chaos, the adolescent rumors involving spaceships, zombies, sabotage, ultimately of a community coming together. Miri is as proud of him today as she was then. She smiles at Leah. Miri has never been as close to Leah as she’d once hoped. She supposes it has to do with the distance between them, which has become more than geographical. Leah was maternal to her during her college years, when she chose American University, with a major in journalism. But Miri was into trying her wings when she came to Washington, and Leah wanted to clip them. The last thing Miri needed was another mother. She offered to babysit her little cousins once a month, more if she found she had a free weekend. She’d had plenty of experience by then with her brothers, William and Stuart, born a year apart. She’d spent her high school years surrounded by babies and toddlers. By senior year Leah was lobbying for her to stay in D.C. “There’s not one good reason for you to go back to that ridiculous town.” “There’s my family,” Miri said. “And a job offer from the Sun. ” “You can do better. Go to New York. Don’t waste all that talent.” When Miri said, “I’m just going home for the summer,” Leah didn’t buy it. “There’s a boy, isn’t there? The one you met over the holidays.” Well, yes, there was someone she’d met over the holidays, a dental intern working for Dr. O. But so what? Half the girls in her graduating class were already engaged, showing off their diamond rings every chance they got. “What’s his name?” Leah said. “Andy. He’s from San Francisco. Went to Stanford.” She hoped Leah would be impressed. “Andy.” “Yes.” “You’re just twenty-two, Miri.” She knew how old she was. “Give yourself a chance.” “I’m not getting married.” “You will.” “Someday.” “Just don’t settle.” “I won’t settle.” She didn’t give a hoot about a diamond ring, and the idea of one had probably never entered Andy’s mind. When they became engaged a year later, he gave her new skis and a black pearl to wear around her neck on a chain. She still wears it, is wearing it now. He was a young dentist then and insisted on checking her teeth, like a horse dealer buying a mare. “Nice,” he’d said, once he had her in the chair. “Healthy gums.” Before she’d even closed her mouth he’d asked, “Will you marry me?” “This is a proposal?” she’d said. He’d nodded, embarrassed, and brought out a bottle of Champagne he’d hidden in the cabinet. He filled two pleated paper cups and passed one to her. “I must be the first person ever to be proposed to in a dental chair.” “Is that a yes ?” he said. She gulped down the Champagne, held out her cup for more. “Yes!” Her family was happy.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  This book will center the experiences of Black women pursuing and related to pleasure, because these are the particular experiences with which I am both most familiar and most in community. But I am also always human and take seriously the truth that I am connected to all humans. I do not subscribe to any politics of reduction. I may see the humor in stereotypes, but I do not live my life or desires through the lens or limitation of anyone else’s construction of power, identity, or supremacy. This book includes a few voices that are not Black or woman-identified but that I trust in the human experience of finding pleasure beyond oppression. I have been a student of facilitation since my late teens, learning how to make it easier for people to be with each other. Along this journey I have been asked to facilitate people at a lot of different levels, each request teaching me more about what facilitation can do—coach, healer, doula, relationship supporter, grief supporter and death doula, breakup guide, and confidante for sexual adventures, as well as an organizational, network, and coalition/alliance facilitator.3 I have often said yes, sometimes with trepidation, often with enthusiasm, because I am fascinated by how we interact with each other. This book comes about partially because I realized that I have supported thousands of people in taking steps they crafted, articulated, and needed to take—steps closer to pleasure and liberation. I have seen, over and over, the connection between tuning into what brings aliveness into our systems and being able to access personal, relational and communal power. Conversely, I have seen how denying our full, complex selves—denying our aliveness and our needs as living, sensual beings—increases the chance that we will be at odds with ourselves, our loved ones, our coworkers, and our neighbors on this planet. I enter this book with a lot of experience pursuing pleasure and power in human systems and a ton of hope and curiosity about what might be possible if we were all living our full pleasure potential. What would happen if we aligned with a pleasure politic, especially as people who are surviving long-term oppressive conditions? In the writing and gathering process, whenever I came to one of my edges or limitations, I reached out and gathered in a comrade who knows more than I do—about sex work, BDSM, burlesque, legalizing marijuana, pleasure during gender transition, recovering pleasure after childhood sexual abuse, pleasure while battling cancer, pleasure over age sixty, and parenting to generate pleasure-oriented children. I think the tapestry of voices here shows how many people are orienting toward and around radical pleasure in this political moment and just how many ways there are to do that. Some other things to know:

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  They just grunt and moan a little at each other. Opposing schools’ fans get very offended. There’s something of the air of professional wrestling in their histrionics. They do it to psych out their opponents and it works about half the time. It sure works on me. I love it so much I just want to applaud. It takes me until my second round before I even feel like serious wrestling. Roman Polanski would love the L.C. warm-ups. We’re all bunched up behind the locker-room door. Coach has left us and gone out to the bench to chuckle at L.C. Sausage is on tiptoes, peering through the little window in the door to see when they finish. He’s all set to lead us out on the mat and take us through our exercises. “Okay,” Sausage says. He turns back to face us. He takes a big breath. The captain is always supposed to give a big battle cry as we charge out. “Dog style!” yells Sausage as we burst through the door to heavy cheers and thread our way between the bleachers to the mat. We’re all sprinting, legs high, and whooping hard and laughing a little, too, at Sausage’s chilling call to arms. I’d say he’s in the right frame of mind. We’re fairly loose and sweating just a bead or two by the end of the exercises. Sausage leads us a couple times around the big gold circle as we whoop and holler, then to the bench. In a minute we’re out on the mat again for the introductions. The two teams line up, facing each other. The announcer gives the weight class, then introduces the wrestlers. Sausage has only a black apparition with which to shake hands. But we know Mash is in there. He moves like a small but mighty thunderhead back to the L.C. bench to take off his warm-up suit and do a few more twists and bends. Coach takes Konigi and Sausage back behind our bench and kneads their shoulders in turn and talks steadily to them. Romaine gives me a couple fists to bang. I do it twice. “Brother man,” he says and bangs back once. “Good luck, Romaine,” I reply. I sure like him. As long as we’ve been acquainted I’ve always wanted to get to know him better. Go camping or to some shows or something. Otto knows him pretty well. Romaine is a wide receiver and defensive halfback. Little Konigi decisions his man in a crummy match characterized by mutual stalling. He got two takedown points and then wrestled defensively the rest of the match. His older brother yells at him by the drinking fountain. They’re a funny pair. Little Konig is a hell-raiser everywhere but on the mat, where he’s technically good enough but wrestles like he’s signed a nonaggression pact. Big Konig is shy everywhere but on the mat, where he goes for broke every second. His matches never go beyond two rounds.

• From Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex (2023)

  What she was looking at, it turns out, was the monitor of her digital camera; looking at herself, her portrait half-shrouded by dick, tied-up scrotum, and her own hair falling in front of her face, waiting to see the image she wants on the screen, and then capturing that. In this way, her camera itself is a presence in her work; or rather, she takes no pains to hide the intrusion of a recording device, blurring her sex life and her art work together. In an interview printed in Digital Diaries, Eric Kroll asked the artist, “Which comes first—sex or photography?” She answered, “I can’t separate them … I can’t just do one without thinking about the other.” Paul Mpagi Sepuya has also, and more recently, photographed himself “as a cocksucker.” In Darkroom Mirror (_2060403), he appears, camera in hand, bare-chested, head turned slightly to his right. A white cock is in his mouth, a sliver of the thighs and stomach of its owner visible at the edge of the frame. To his other side, another erect, white cock appears, its head invisible behind Sepuya’s own. The torso and hands of this person are partly visible at the frame’s other edge. The background is black. Art in America described the work in Sepuya’s 2019 show The Conditions as having “an almost religious aura.” Sepuya’s focus is as much on the making of an image as it is on the image itself; like Merritt’s embrace of self-portraiture, Sepuya is disinterested in tricks that would render his tools invisible. He is interested in showing the mirror’s stains and smudges and his own handiwork with his camera; interested in what these traces of the work’s production might indicate about the movement before and after the photo, about the subjects of his photos, most of whom are friends or lovers—even if the indication is simply of their presence. His appreciation of such traces is a mode of foregrounding Blackness and queerness in his erotic work: To make visible a lot of these latent indexical traces requires thinking about Blackness—the material within the studio construction, or the body itself, or the camera—that those fundamentals of the medium itself, the uses of the tools, the surfaces that make visibility or invisibility possible, that they cannot be separated from a Black body, Blackness as material. But also, the ways in which that language of darkness—the dark room, the queer dark room—all kind of collapsed together, can then hopefully make those subjects inseparable from photography itself. What brings Merritt’s and Sepuya’s work together is that both hinge on self-objectification, though Merritt’s gaze is apolitical, while Sepuya’s is explicitly political.

• From Action (2014)

  I love talking and thinking about sex as much as I do having it. Speaking about sex comes, in part, from the attendant preference for wanting to listen to how others feel about it, too. In this book I have tried not to mistranslate and express ownership over experiences that are not mine, which is exactly the behavior that leaves people feeling overlooked, erased from the record, and socially shut down. All I can do is recount how sex has featured in my life and how that has felt. I’m not a doctor—I am equipped to write about sex only in that I am a person who has a pretty normal life that (mostly) does not include anxiety meltdowns about sex i/r/t identity. If I am “qualified” to be honest about my whole sexual deal, of course you are, too. No academic degree—or degree of skankitude—can imbue someone with the grand and lofty ability to know what feels good for them/fuck like a maniac; you’ve already got that (if you want it). I am trying not only to talk about sex, but also putting forth mad ideas about how to get your partners to talk back (remember that whole fun “listening” gambit? It pays off!). I am a single person, albeit one who happens to have been with many others, so this book cannot even come close to encompassing the boundless interactions people have with their partners. (I’m wild grateful for that—homogeneity is boring, and premature death.) I do not expect you to agree with me throughout all of this. I’d rather you observe the aspects in which you are unlike me—and make up your own mind about how you’d have met the decisions I came to. This is ostensibly a contemporary, youthful, we-do-it-so-different-here’s-how-we’re-special-and-new guide to the rutting that our ancestors have enjoyed and started wars over since humankind took its place among the cosmic junk of our vast and terrible universe, so I’ll quickly hearken back to my original point. Here is what you learn about a person when you’re taking off their clothes: Are they good to the people they fuck—those people in those vulnerable, powerful states of anticipatory pleasure, trust, and fear? Yo—are you? You are, and you can show them how to be good to you. (And have great orgasms about it.) I think we’re about ready to figure out how that goes down. Dilige et quod vis fac. Let’s go get some action. By Definition: A Glossary of Terms asexual: Used to describe a person who does not experience, or feel compelled to act on, sexual desire. cis and cisgender: Used to describe a person whose male or female gender identity is the one widely expected of the body they were born with. non-binary: Someone whose male or female gender identity, or attraction to partners, does not adhere tightly to the one expected of them or the people to whom they are attracted.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  I do not think I took more than two days to fix up these matters with the men. Thereafter I at once advertised for a piece of land situated near a railway station in the vicinity of Durban. An offer came in respect of Phoenix. Mr. West and I went to inspect the estate. Within a week we purchased twenty acres of land. It had a nice little spring and a few orange and mango trees. Adjoining it was a piece of 80 acres which had many more fruit trees and a dilapidated cottage. We purchased this too, the total cost being a thousand pounds. The late Mr. Rustomji always supported me in such enterprises. He liked the project. He placed at my disposal second-hand corrugated iron sheets of a big godown and other building material, with which we started work. Some Indian carpenters and masons, who had worked with me in the Boer War, helped me in erecting a shed for the press. This structure, which was 75 feet long and 50 feet broad, was ready in less than a month. Mr. West and others, at great personal risk, stayed with the carpenters and masons. The place, uninhabited and thickly overgrown with grass, was infested with snakes and obviously dangerous to live in. At first all lived under canvas. We carted most of our things to Phoenix in about a week. It was fourteen miles from Durban, and two and a half miles from Phoenix station. Only one issue of Indian Opinion had to be printed outside, in the Mercury press. I now endeavoured to draw to Phoenix those relations and friends who had come with me from India to try their fortune, and who were engaged in business of various kinds. They had come in search of wealth, and it was therefore difficult to persuade them; but some agreed. Of these I can single out here only Manganlal Gandhi’s name. The others went back to business. Manganlal Gandhi left his business for good to cast in his lot with me, and by ability, sacrifice and devotion stands foremost among my original co-workers in my ethical experiments. As a self-taught handicraftsman his place among them is unique. Thus the Phoenix Settlement was started in 1904, and there in spite of numerous odds Indian Opinion continues to be published. But the initial difficulties, the changes made, the hopes and the disappointments demand a separate chapter.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  “Sometimes it’s hard for parents to accept the facts,” she says in her own defense, implying that at her age, she’s evolved enough to face the realities of her granddaughter’s awakening sexuality. As Hallie writes in her note that came with the pamphlets: “I don’t judge, I just advise.” And Katherine eventually takes Hallie’s advice to heart. She has strong mentors in Diana and Hallie, and Katherine, ever sensible, becomes a diligent student. Throughout history, a girl’s virginity has been everybody’s business. For Victorian parents, an explicit part of the contract of marrying off one’s daughter included the assurance that she was “pure,” meaning that she’d never had sex. Doctors were employed to check the state of a would-be bride’s hymen; Kate Millett described this practice trenchantly as “a sign of property received intact.” A young woman who strayed brought shame upon her family, and “ruined” herself. By the Jazz Age this had started to change, with flappers cutting their hair and embracing their sexual freedom, like men. But flappers weren’t “nice” girls. They gave up their claim to niceness in exchange for the thrill of shadowy corners in speakeasies, illicit liquor fueling the fire in their bellies. Up through the mid-century, there were two kinds of girls: those who went “all the way” and those who didn’t, as Katherine recounts. The ones who didn’t had an easier time getting hitched. As Diana tells her daughter: “There were double standards then… boys were supposed to get plenty of experience before marriage,” while good girls were still expected to keep their legs closed. Then, in the 1960s, the importance of female virginity started to wane. This dovetailed, interestingly, with a development in women’s health: the widespread acceptance of tampons. The first commercially available tampons appeared on the market in 1936, under the brand name Tampax, which were invented by a male doctor named Earle Cleveland Haas. Three years later in 1939, Tampax was featured at the World’s Fair in Flushing, Queens, in the Hall of Pharmacy. The exhibit boasted the world’s largest medicine chest, demonstrations of pharmaceutical chemistry, and an area devoted to “the drug store of tomorrow.” Married women—in other words, those who were “appropriately” sexually active—embraced the product easily, appreciating the efficacy and discretion of tampons as opposed to bulky sanitary pads. But the idea of tampon use among teens remained much more controversial. Would Tampax interfere with virginity? Would adolescent girls be more inclined to masturbate if they got comfortable inserting something into their bodies? Physicians were invited to weigh in. Referencing a 1945 paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association , Joan Jacobs Brumberg writes that a doctor named Robert Latou Dickinson used a sketch to show “that a tampon took up no more room than a standard nozzle for douching and it was smaller than the average penis.