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.

Page 18 of 174 · 20 per page

• From The Girls (2016)

  It had happened, after all, and I kept up a vivid catalog of happy data: the fact that I was sitting beside Suzanne, our friendly silence. My perverse pride that I’d been with Russell. I took pleasure in replaying the facts of the act, even the messy and boring parts. The odd lulls while Russell made himself hard. There was some power in the bluntness of human functions. Like Russell had explained to me: your body could hurtle you past your hang-ups, if you let it. Suzanne smoked steadily as she drove, occasionally offering her cigarette to me with serene ritual. The quiet between us wasn’t slack or uncomfortable. Outside the car, olive trees flashed by, the scorched summer earth. Far-off waterways, sloughing to the sea. Suzanne kept changing the radio station until she abruptly snapped it off. “We need gas,” she announced. We, I echoed silently, we need gas. Suzanne pulled into the Texaco, empty except for a teal-and-white pickup towing a boat trailer. “Hand me a card,” Suzanne said. Nodding at the glove box. I scrambled to open it, loosing a jumble of credit cards. All with different names. “The blue one,” she said. She seemed impatient. When I handed her the card, she saw my confusion. “People give them to us,” she said. “Or we take them.” She fingered the blue card. “Like this one is Donna’s. She lifted it from her mom.” “Her mom’s gas card?” “Saved our ass—we would’ve starved,” Suzanne said. She gave me a look. “Like you hustling that toilet paper, right?” I flushed at the mention. Maybe she’d known I had lied, but I couldn’t tell from her shuttered face—maybe not. “Besides,” she continued, “it’s better than what they’d do with it—more crap, more stuff, more me, me, me. Russell’s trying to help people. He’s not judgmental, that’s not his trip. He doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor.” It made a kind of sense, what Suzanne was saying. They were just trying to equalize the forces in the world. “It’s ego,” she went on, leaning against the car but keeping a sharp eye on the gas gauge: none of them ever filled up a tank more than a quarter full. “Money is ego, and people won’t give it up. Just want to protect themselves, hold on to it like a blanket. They don’t realize it keeps them slaves. It’s sick.” She laughed. “What’s funny is that as soon as you give everything away, as soon as you say, Here, take it—that’s when you really have everything.” One of the group had been detained for dumpster diving on a garbage run, and Suzanne was incensed, recounting the story as she pulled the car back onto the road. “More and more stores get wise to it. Bullshit,” she said. “They throw something away and they still want it. That’s America.” “That is bullshit.” The tone of the word was strange in my mouth. “We’ll figure something out. Soon.” She glanced in the rearview.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  The Maccabean rebels suffered terribly in fighting him, but they succeeded in returning Judaea to a native dynasty descended from heroes in the liberation struggle; known from an earlier ancestor as the Hasmoneans, they ruled as high priests for the Jerusalem Temple. Though the Hasmonean monarchy proved to be the last Judaean experience of prolonged independence in the ancient world, it was an extraordinary achievement against a great power: a victory to cherish, reinforcing the sense of a unique Judaic destiny and distinctiveness in God’s purpose. The Hasmoneans remained a significant regional force in the eastern Mediterranean for a century until conquered by a new imperial power arriving from far to the west of Judaea’s previous overlords. When the Hasmoneans first encountered the Roman Republic in the second century BCE , Rome was still a far-away city, a potential ally against their threatening neighbours. By 63 BCE , the Roman army’s invasion of Judaea was part of its mopping-up operations around Rome’s real prizes, the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires. Roman conquest led to a further Jewish Diaspora into the western Mediterranean: the Jewish community in Rome was one of the first to be affected by Christian activism in the first century CE . In 37 BCE , looking for a compliant local ruler for Judaea but finding no convincing Hasmonean candidate, the Romans displaced the last Hasmonean and replaced him with a relative by marriage, who reigned for more than three decades. Their choice, an outsider from the land of Edom (which the Romans called Idumea) south of Judaea, was Herod I, ‘the Great’. Herod rebuilt the Second Temple as one of the largest sacred complexes in the ancient world; its remnants still impress by their monumentality. Yet his subjects gave him little thanks, and self-conscious Judaean upholders of purity in God’s Covenant were angered by Herod’s Greek-style innovations such as public sporting contests (male nudity always a possibility), gladiatorial combats or horse-racing in newly built arenas. [4] After Herod’s death in 4 BCE , his sons divided the extensive territories that the first Roman emperor Augustus had allowed the puppet king to build up. For more than a century thereafter, and during the life of Jesus, Rome experimented with a mixture of indirect rule through various members of the Herodian family and, for parts of Judaea, direct imperial control through a Roman official.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Intervening in a long-standing debate in the Church about how often laypeople should receive the Eucharistic elements of bread and wine when attending Mass, he recommended as frequent reception as possible. In 1907 he further decreed that the minimum age for a first communion should be lowered from twelve or fourteen years to seven. Now this ‘First Communion’ became a new piece of charming theatre for young children dressed in appropriately innocent finery, with their putatively adoring parents looking on. This innovation in Catholic folk-culture liturgically affirmed family life in the local parish church: it is a fixture now, though so comparatively recent in origin. [37] The Roman Catholic Church as it had evolved by the beginning of the twentieth century might be considered the unwanted but spectacularly successful child of the French Revolution. For all its rhetoric of tradition and its campaign against Modernism, it was a new creation, rebuilt out of the trauma and lack of leadership of 1800. It followed newly constricted doctrinal paths backed by the restored prestige and authority of its celibate clergy, against the backdrop of vigorous numerical growth across the world aided by all the possibilities of communication that technological advance offered. Memories of both the Enlightenment and Revolution combined with the Papacy’s new self-confidence in its teaching role to determine how it would face a host of fresh challenges to Christian life and belief. Not all have concerned sex, but many do. During the same period the rival heirs of medieval Western Christianity, Protestants of all varieties, produced their own solutions to these same questions, equally played out on a global stage.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  184 eripmE namoR yloH ot eripmE namoR morF :52 erutceL • “Popes and Franks” may sound like ballpark food, but the phrase sums up precisely the two power sources that worked to create the catholic world of the Middle Ages. Political Context: 9th to 15th Centuries • The second stage in the medieval political context begins with Charles the Great (Charlemagne, 742–814), the son of Pepin III, who is one of the most significant figures in the political and religious history of the West. • Charles was anointed as king of the Franks by Pope Stephen III in 754 and became sole heir of the kingdom in 771. He immediately engaged in a path of conquest and consolidation under his authority. o Between 771 and 799, he Charlemagne’s military triumphs conquered Lombardy, the established his authority firmly over the West; he was crowned Saxons, Bavaria, the Avars, emperor in the year 800 by Pope Pannonia, and Italy. Leo III in Rome. In 778, he crossed the Pyrenees to conquer Spain, which was o in the hands of the Muslims, and was defeated at the Battle of Roncevalles. Thirteen years later, in 801, he conquered Barcelona and made it the center of the Spanish March (a buffer zone separating the Muslim and Frankish kingdoms). • In view of these triumphs, Pope Leo III, on Christmas Day, 800, in the city of Rome, crowned Charlemagne as emperor. It was an extraordinary act, and its implication (that the Franks were the approved continuation of the Roman heritage) was not appreciated by the Byzantines. Eventually, the emperor of the West would claim the formal title of Holy Roman Emperor. .kcotsknihT/aremeH ©

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Up onstage, Monique ignored the noise from the crowd as she did her nasty thang like she’d been born with a golden pole wedged between her legs. She slipped her hips and popped her spine the way she had practiced a thousand times before in the mirror, and it was that kind of dedication to her grind that had made her the Spot’s top moneymaker for the last two years. Monique didn’t mind the fact that all kinds of niggahs wanted to fuck her. She was proud to be the kind of freak that men just couldn’t resist. And yeah, her body was simply fuckin’ stunning. Damn right they was feenin’ for her, because what good was having the best shit on the shelf if you couldn’t make a niggah cry for it? Tonight Monique was doing one of her new ill na-na routines. She had about thirty dance acts she worked, switching the moves up every other night, and every last one of her routines kept niggahs digging deep in their pocket stash, producing guaranteed cash results each time. Some long-legged hustler sitting right up front screeched like a bitch as Monique squeezed her firm cantaloupe-sized breasts in her hands and let her red-polished fingernails flick her inch-long nipples seductively. He screamed again as she lowered her head and licked that stiff little nipple that sat smack in the middle of her upper chest, the one protruding from her tiny third breast that was round and perfect, but sat up closer to her neck than her normal breasts did, and was much, much smaller, like a twelve-year-old’s. Yeah, she thought as niggahs started whistling and wildin’ at the sight of her tongue swirling around that little tiny titty. Everybody loved a freak. And of all the things Monique could claim to be, she was a true freak-a-leek above all else. She turned her back on the crowd and popped her hips, letting her chips dip and her backbone slip. Ya’ll niggahs take a good fuckin’ look at all this chocolate birthday cake, Monique thought, clapping her thick booty cheeks and showing them flashing bits of her pink pussy and her sweet asshole. ’Cause a bitch is gonna be off this stage and paid in a minute. Straight fuckin’ paid. Niggahs moaned out loud and nutted in their drawers, but Monique couldn’t care less about their sexual satisfaction. She had thoughts of retirement on her mind, and if shit went down the way she and Pluto planned, she was about to give up the poles and become the number-one bitch at her very own strip club down in B-More.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It is possible that the office of rector goes back as far as 1200, when an official was called "the head of the Paris scholars."1292 As early as 1245 the title appears distinctly and the rector is distinguished from the proctors.1293 At a later time it was the proper custom, in communicating with the university, to address the "rector and the masters." The question of precedence as between the rector and other high dignitaries, such as the bishop and chancellor of Paris, was one which led to much dispute and elbowing. Du Boulay, himself an ex-rector, takes pride in giving instances of the rector’s outranking archbishops, cardinals, papal nuncios, peers of France, and other lesser noteworthies at public functions.1294 The faculties came to be presided over by deans, the nations by proctors. In the management of the general affairs of the university, the vote was taken by faculties. The liberties, which the university enjoyed in its earlier history, were greatly curtailed by Louis XI. and by his successors in the latter half of the fifteenth century. The university was treated to sharp rebukes for attempting to interfere with matters that did not belong to it. The right of cessation was withdrawn and the free election of the rectors denied.1295 The police of the city were invested with larger jurisdiction, and the sovereign’s will was made a controlling element. The fame of the University of Paris came from its schools of arts and theology. The college of the Sorbonne, originally a bursary for poor students of theology, afterwards gave its name to the theological department. It was founded by Robert of Sorbon, the chaplain of St. Louis, the king himself giving part of the site for its building. In the course of time, its halls came to be used for disputations, and the decisions of the faculty obtained a European reputation. Theological students of twenty-five years of age, who had studied six years, and passed an examination, were eligible for licensure as bachelors. For the first three years they read on the Bible and then on the Sentences of the Lombard. These readers were distinguished as Biblici and Sententiarii. The age limit for the doctorate was thirty-five. One of the most interesting chapters in the history of the university is the struggle over the admission of the mendicant friars in the middle of the thirteenth century. The papacy secured victory for the friars. And the unwilling university was obliged to recognize them as a part of its teaching force.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Mr. Patterson’s thick fingers strummed against his desk. Pretty picked up the pattern and bobbed his head every time he heard the thud. He wasn’t going to answer automatically. He felt the transition of power. He had something Mr. Patterson wanted. The knowledge of Mr. Patterson’s self. Mr. Patterson thought everyone loved him. He thought no one ever said anything bad about him. Sure he ran this ship like a slave one, but he gave out great Christmas gifts. He gave rewards like Scooby snacks when people met quotas. He pampered on his own time. Pretty held on to the information like an informant did to get a better deal. What was it worth to Mr. Patterson? He watched Mr. Patterson glance at him through his bluest eye. Mr. Patterson’s voice was huge. “Well?” “Tell me your proposition first.” Pretty wasn’t going to let Mr. Patterson string this proposition out for hours. He wanted to know what was going on. He needed to know the particulars. “Enough of the bullshit, Jarvis. This proposition benefits you more than it would me.” He spoke slowly, and with conviction. “What do they call me?” Pretty laughed. “Mr. Fatterson!” He fell back into his seat and awaited his response. He figured Mr. Patterson would want to know who it was. He thought Mr. Patterson would be angry and disturbed that someone would actually call him such names. Instead, Mr. Patterson chuckled loudly. “They’ve always called me that. They couldn’t think of anything new? I’ve heard that all of my life.” He patted his stomach. “Well, since I’ve grown this. A stomach doesn’t make a man, Jarvis.” Pretty laughed with him. This was the first thing they’d ever shared. And it happened to come at Mr. Patterson’s expense. “Come back to my office at exactly one-thirty if you want to hear the proposition,” he said plainly. He offered Pretty the door. He knew that he’d put enough in Pretty’s head to stimulate it. He never said what it was, and he knew that would get Pretty interested. He couldn’t run a ship so tight without being smart. • • • At one-thirty Pretty knocked twice. “Come in, Jarvis.” Pretty walked in and found Mr. Patterson standing by a makeshift bar, with a drink in hand. The shabby silver cart housed two big bottles of liquor, a long slender bottle of red wine, and three glasses: one shot glass, a wineglass, and a wide glass people used when they swirled around expensive scotch. Mr. Patterson held his glass in the air. “Scotch, Jarvis?” Pretty stopped in his tracks. He looked up toward the ceiling and searched for hidden cameras. “No, thank you. I’m good.” Mr. Patterson noticed the apprehension and walked near. “Who runs this establishment, Jarvis?” He took great pleasure in saying the name “Jarvis.” He knew he wanted to be called Pretty, but it wouldn’t be by him. Every chance he got, he would let Pretty’s government name put him in his place.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  I made it to the changing room and quickly got dressed. I heard one of the girls in the room say, “That bitch is wilding. I don’t know why Tears picked her for.” It was hate talking, but I ignored her jealous ass and threw on my shit and met up with Tears outside the club. I had counted up twelve hundred dollars, and most if it had come from him. Tears stood outside in front of the club, leaning against his gleaming black Escalade that was parallel parked next to a few cars out front. I smiled and strutted up to him in my short denim skirt and heels and gave him a hug like I’d known him forever. “You ready?” he asked. “Yeah.” I jumped into his truck and he drove off. It was like we connected. We went and got something to eat, and I ended up fuckin’ him in the backseat of his truck. We were parked by a grassy area and I straddled him in the backseat with my skirt pulled up to my waist and feeling his dick steadily moving in and out of me. A month later, unexpectedly, he asked me to move in with him and I accepted. But before we hooked up like that he said to me, “Yo, when we do this . . . you my wifey forever, you feel me? I’m gonna take care of you, Ayeesha . . . you know what I’m sayin’? But if you ever cheat on me, I’ll fuckin’ kill you. I mean it. Ain’t gonna be no conversation neither. I’m just gonna pull out my gat and your life will be over.” He was so serious! But I knew I loved him, and cheating on my boo was far from my mind at the time. Tears promised to take care of me, and he did, without missing a beat. Because of him, I finished paying for school and got my degree. A year later I was driving a brand-new Lexus. We might have been living in the projects but our apartment had everything money could buy. From a flat-screen TV, Gucci, and Donna Karan, to imported furniture and a Jacuzzi in the bathroom. • • • I stood in the shower thinking over my two years with Tears, some good and some bad. Surprisingly for me, I had never cheated on him. I really loved him and I was trying to make things exciting for us. But lately Tears had been making that impossible. He was too caught up in the streets, grinding, hustling, and forever across state lines moving weight. When we first got married Tears used to dick me down every fuckin’ night. Now I’ll be lucky if I get it once a week. “Ayeesha, I’m out,” Tears shouted, knocking on the bathroom door. “Ayyite, baby . . . be safe,” I shouted back. But I was still frustrated and still fuckin’ horny.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  “You fuckin’ over me with a secretary? You know what, Jamel? You ain’t even worth going to jail for. I ain’t gonna stab ya ass. You could’ve at least cheated on me with somebody who has a better job than me. Just pack ya shit and leave, niggah. This relationship is done.” • • • Now that Jamel was out of her life, Mikala had a new attitude. To celebrate her independence she bought herself a dark blue 2006 Lexus SC 430. She got it fully loaded with all of the finest amenities that Lexus had to offer. The new car matched her new personality. It was fast, flashy, and stood out in a crowd. That was just the vibe Mikala wanted to send off when she went out in public. She made heads turn everywhere, and that gave her a sense of confidence that she’d never felt before. It had been two and a half months since her breakup with Jamel. He had tried to call her numerous times to try and get back together, but she shut him down every time. He had nothing coming from her. She ran into him and Shelby in the mall one day and it only reinforced her confidence. Shelby wasn’t in her league. She was short, a little over five feet tall, and round-shaped. She had on a midriff shirt, with her belly hanging out. Her face was chubby and she had some big-ass lips. Jamal could have his little chickenhead if that was what he wanted to settle for, she reasoned. It was Saturday night and Mikala and Chastity planned to party at the Eden’s Lounge. Mikala hadn’t really dated too much since the breakup and tonight she felt her jones kicking in. If she didn’t get some good lovin’ soon, she was gonna erupt like a volcano. She wasn’t looking for a man to run her damn life. All she wanted was somebody who could take care of her physical needs. A homey-lover-friend would be great right about now. Mikala pulled up to Chastity’s apartment ready to get the party started. She had on a pair of skintight Apple Bottom jeans that hugged her ass just right, and a T-shirt that had the word “Devilish” scrawled across her ample chest. Her open sandals showed off her freshly manicured toes. But Chastity came out of her apartment looking a mess. Her hair was still wrapped up in a scarf, and she had on a wrinkled sweatshirt and her house slippers. She wasn’t dressed to go out and Mikala wondered why. “Come inside, Mikala!” Chastity yelled. Mikala did as she was instructed, parking her car and making her way into Chastity’s apartment. “C, why are you not dressed yet? You know the half-priced apple martini special ends at ten. It’s nine o’clock now,” Mikala said. “We’re not going to the club tonight. I had something different in mind,” Chastity said. “And what is that?”

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  I swept my arm across the table, raked the money into my bag. “Damn right, I do.” I strutted over to him, kissed him on the cheek and slapped his ass. “What, baby? You were going to sneak-thief us, or just take the money?” Lil’ Lee’s stutter ran from his mouth to the south. He quaked in his boots. “N-nah. Y-you know me betta than that. I ain’t no cr-crab-ass niggah. What I look like h-holdin’ up a wo-woman, Sweets?” “Thought I was a bitch.” I dug my long, French-manicured nails into his firmness, gripped his ass. “Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with sticking a bitch for her paper, right?” Lil’ Lee threw me a sideways glance; pleading masked the scowl I knew was hidden underneath. He’d kill me quicker than I could make two cents if he could. Fuck me even faster. And I was hella paid, churning out paper faster than the U.S. Mint. “Say ya sorry,” I whispered, moving my grip from his ass to his jaw. “Make nice, niggah.” Lil’ Lee hung his head. His rep used to precede him around the way. He’d been a tough sonuvabitch who’d taken no slack, stacked his chips as high as his bitches. Dime-store pimp, player, triple-momma baby maker, he’d made himself a millionaire before his twenty-first birthday. But now he’d have to ice my cake—if he wanted to live past the stroke of midnight. With a nod of my head, 12 o’clock laced him up—dragged him into the back office—patted him down, shook him for all his weapons. “Sit’im down, 12,” I instructed. He sat Lil’ Lee down on one of my hot-pink chaises, then took his position, blocking the office door. He cocked his burner, made sure one was in the chamber. Lil’ Lee nervously looked from 12 to me. Confusion furrowed his brow before he bitched up. “Can’t we talk about this, Sweets? Y’know I ain’t mean no disrespect, Ma. All kinda shit is said when niggah’s gamblin’. It was game.” “Still is, baby,” flowed out of my mouth as I licked my lips. I was going to have some fun with Lil’ Lee. As dirty as I knew he’d wanted to do me at the craps table, I couldn’t help but notice that he was a pretty mu’fucka. His blue-blackness, beating tunes like an African drum, made my pussy throb. With just one look I knew his ancestors hadn’t been as violated as mine, and that shit turned me on. He was a Mandingo brutha if I’d ever saw one. Leaning against my desk, I spread my legs, let my skirt ride up my thighs, expose just enough of my amber flesh to tempt him. Lil’ Lee fidgeted. Gave me a look that said if 12 o’clock wasn’t in the room he’d try to push up. But 12 was there, and no one moved inside of my groove unless I said so. Except one man. Whisky.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Mrs. Patterson strode in as if she had just jumped off a high horse. She smelled expensive and looked rich. She appeared to own something. She walked with patient steps toward her husband. She reached her destination and gave him adequate affection. Their kiss was cursory; their hug was even worse. Mr. Patterson switched hands and introduced Pretty. “My dear, this is Jarvis.” He turned back to his wife. “Jarvis, this is my proposition.” He walked around his desk and poured a glass of wine. Mrs. Patterson accepted his offering. She didn’t kick her feet up as he did; instead, she folded her legs and fell into the throes of his leather. She took a sip of wine and closed her eyes. She inhaled deeply and let it out silently. Pretty sat in disbelief. He looked behind; his eyes transfixed on Mrs. Patterson. Her skin was as creamy as whole milk, and her hair was as short as his, and blond. She had many features that were youthful. He assumed she was in her early thirties and regularly visited the gym. Her cleavage brought men near; her beauty made them fall. She opened her eyes and reached for her pocketbook. She moved her lips seductively as she painted them with an earthy tone of brown. She pushed her compact below her eyes and stole a peek at Pretty. She couldn’t hide her smile. Pretty watched Mr. Patterson as he sat on the edge of the desk watching the incident unfold. His eyes went from his wife’s legs to Pretty’s expression. He nodded his head, cleared his throat, and began, “Should I explain what I would like, Jarvis?” “Let’s see what the lady would like, Mr. Patterson,” Pretty said. Mr. Patterson ignored Pretty’s feeble attempt at assertion. He asked his wife, “Do you like what you see, dear?” Mrs. Patterson pressed her lips to a napkin and observed her print on it. Her lips were oversized and perfectly shaped. Her tongue glided easily against her teeth and she inhaled. She folded her legs seductively and let her fingers trail down her athletic calf. She spoke slowly, “I do like what I see, Geronimo.” Pretty snickered. Mr. Patterson shot him a quick glance. It stopped the laugh, but it wasn’t potent enough to erase the information. No one knew Mr. Patterson’s first name, and now Pretty had something to combat his disrespectful tone when he spat “Jarvis” like Pretty was his slave. Pretty glanced at the desk and reread the designer golden nameplate. G. TONY PATTERSON. Pretty called his horse, laughed, and jumped high. “If I do accept this opportunity, I would prefer to be called Pretty.” He paused. “Can you do that, Geronimo?” Pretty watched Mrs. Patterson’s reaction. She was appreciative of his thriving nature. Mr. Patterson exchanged glances with his wife. She won. He twitched and mumbled something incoherent under his breath before nodding in agreement. “Anything else, Pretty?” The word stumbled from his mouth.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  I saw Dushawn from a mile down on the highway. His mouth dropped and his dick pointed to the left like a traffic cop when I hopped out my ride. The eighteen months had been good to me. I was thicker and curvier than ever. I had figured plenty of things out about men and sex and seduction. What I hadn’t read, I’d learned from experience. When my heels hit the asphalt, they clicked with absolute confidence. One look and Dushawn knew I wasn’t the nervous little girl he had sucked and fucked out of her mind in the factory. When we got inside the room he must have said, “Damn. . .” ten times in a row. He asked, “You wanna get some’m to eat?” I said, “Sho! . . . after we fuck!” He pulled the drapes open wide and sat me in a cushioned chair facing the ocean. He ran both hands through my braids and across my scalp and gave me a kiss that made me know how much I had been missed. I bent the dial when I slapped it back on him. He praised my new skillz, “You’ve learned a few things, huh, La La?” “I sure have. Thanks for that bomb first lesson, Dushawn.” He slowly untied each strap on my bikini until it fell away from my body, revealing all. He asked, “This one?” as he dove tongue first into my juicy cunt, joined by his big thick fingers. This time he reached deeply and twisted his fingers in and out of me while he sucked and tongued my clit with a hot new rhythm. He picked me up and sat me on top of the dark wood dresser on the other side of the room. I dug my heels lightly into his shoulders and gapped my thighs wide for him. Dushawn took slow deep fuckin’ to the Olympic Gold level. Just when he was starting to lose it, he put me back in the chair and sucked my pussy like a pro. I was more than ready to come, and when I did I shuddered and let loose an animal-like grunt as Dushawn tongued me back down to earth. “Your turn, Mr. Lambert.” I twirled the head of his slippery dick in my mouth and popped it from side to side until he called out my name. I stroked his dick from the tip to the back of his thick shaft— soft and slow, and then wild, fast, and hard. Suddenly I stopped and made him sit in the chair. I knelt in front of him and let him look out at the ocean. I sucked him into a wicked pulse and ran my fingers through his curly black hair. He was just about to pop, but he pulled away just in time and said, “Let’s fuck watchin’ the ocean together, La La.” I asked, “How we gon’ do that?”

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Her husband, a mathematician and meteorologist, was very much the same way. He was always careful to ask me what my latest project was, what I was reading, or what kind of animal I was dissecting and why. He talked very seriously with me about science and medicine and encouraged me to go as far as I could with my plans and dreams. He, like my father, had a deep love for natural science, and he would discuss at length how physics, philosophy, and mathematics were, each in their own ways, jealous mistresses who required absolute passion and attention. It is only now, in looking back—after deflating experiences later in life when I was told either to lower my sights or to rein in my enthusiasms—that I fully appreciate the seriousness with which my ideas were taken by my parents and their friends; and it is only now that I really begin to understand how desperately important it was to both my intellectual and emotional life to have had my thoughts and enthusiasms given not only respect but active encouragement. An ardent temperament makes one very vulnerable to dreamkillers, and I was more lucky than I knew in having been brought up around enthusiasts, and lovers of enthusiasts. So I was almost totally content: I had great friends, a full and active life of swimming, riding, softball, parties, boyfriends, summers on the Chesapeake, and all of the other beginnings of life. But there was, in the midst of all of this, a gradual awakening to the reality of what it meant to be an intense, somewhat mercurial girl in an extremely traditional and military world. Independence, temperament, and girlhood met very uneasily in the strange land of cotillion. Navy Cotillion was where officers’ children were supposed to learn the fine points of manners, dancing, white gloves, and other unrealities of life. It also was where children were supposed to learn, as if the preceding fourteen or fifteen years hadn’t already made it painfully clear, that generals outrank colonels who, in turn, outrank majors and captains and lieutenants, and everyone, but everyone, outranks children. Within the ranks of children, boys always outrank girls.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  The tribes of Israel go up to Jerusalem, and because “there is no falsehood in them,” those tribes are in themselves the “testimony [testimonium] of Israel.” Whither do they go up, and why? “To testify [confiteri] to your name, Lord.” It could not be more eloquently put. Pride asserts, humility testifies [confitetur]. The proud want to seem what they are not. The one who gives testimony [confessor] does not want to appear what he is not, but to love what, in the full sense, is. (P 121.8) And Augustine’s favorite Gospel in the Christian Scriptures, John’s, says that the Son must testify to the Father, as the Spirit does to the Son. Christians are brought into the inmost mystery of the Trinity when the Spirit testifies in them to the triune glory: “As the Spirit gave them an inner testimony of Christ, they spread the testimony themselves” (S 94.2). It is this action of the Spirit in Christians that Augustine wants to manifest: “This it is to testify [confiteri], to speak out what the heart holds true. If the tongue and the heart are at odds, you are reciting, not testifying” (J 26.2). Little if any of this rich theological resonance carries over to the word “confessions” in English. That is why, unsettling as it is to many, I translate Confessiones as The Testimony of Augustine (with T as the key to citations of it). Better a shock of the new than indulging old associations that mislead. We must be on guard from the outset for such misreadings, since Augustine seems deceptively easy of access. People feel, for instance, that they understand intuitively Augustine’s testimony to his own sexual sins. In fact, they are convinced that Augustine was a libertine before his conversion, and was so obsessed with sex after his conversion that they place many unnamed sins to his account—though his actual sexual activity was not shocking by any standards but those of a saint. He lived with one woman for fifteen years “and with her alone, since I kept faith with her bed” (T 4.2). This kind of legal concubine was recognized in Roman law—a man who took another’s concubine could be prosecuted as an adulterer. Even the Church recognized the legitimacy of such a relationship (Council of Toledo 400, Canon 17).

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  I resented the bowings, but I loved the elegance of the dress uniforms, the music and dancing, and the beauty of the cotillion evenings. However much I needed my independence, I was learning that I would always be drawn to the world of tradition as well. There was a wonderful sense of security living within this walled-off military world. Expectations were clear and excuses were few; it was a society that genuinely believed in fair play, honor, physical courage, and a willingness to die for one’s country. True, it demanded a certain blind loyalty as a condition of membership, but it tolerated, because it had to, many intense and quixotic young men who were willing to take staggering risks with their lives. And it tolerated, because it had to, an even less socially disciplined group of scientists, many of whom were meteorologists, and most of whom loved the skies almost as much as the pilots did. It was a society built around a tension between romance and discipline: a complicated world of excitement, stultification, fast life, and sudden death, and it afforded a window back in time to what nineteenth-century living, at its best, and at its worst, must have been: civilized, gracious, elitist, and singularly intolerant of personal weakness. A willingness to sacrifice one’s own desires was a given; self-control and restraint were assumed. My mother once told me about a tea she had gone to at the home of my father’s commanding officer. The commanding officer’s wife was, like the women she had invited to tea, married to a pilot. Part of her role was to talk to the young wives about everything from matters of etiquette, such as how to give a proper dinner party, to participation in community activities on the air base. After discussing these issues for a while, she turned to the real topic at hand. Pilots, she said, should never be angry or upset when they fly. Being angry could lead to a lapse in judgment or concentration: flying accidents might happen; pilots could be killed. Pilots’ wives, therefore, should never have any kind of argument with their husbands before the men leave to go flying. Composure and self-restraint were not only desirable characteristics in a woman, they were essential. As my mother put it later, it was bad enough having to worry yourself sick every time your husband went up in an airplane; now, she was being told, she was also supposed to feel responsible if his plane crashed. Anger and discontent, lest they kill, were to be kept to oneself. The military, even more so than the rest of society, clearly put a premium on well-behaved, genteel, and even-tempered women. Had you told me, in those seemingly uncomplicated days of white gloves and broad-rimmed hats, that within two years I would be psychotic and want only to die, I would have laughed, wondered, and moved on. But mostly I would have laughed.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  SETTLED ON HIS FATHER’S PROPERTY in Thagaste, Augustine accepted for a while the duties of a decurion. New dialogues were written, but now his son was old enough (sixteen) to be an interlocutor—a brilliant one in The Teacher. By the time the dialogue was published, Godsend had died. Was his mother present when he died? It is overwhelmingly probable. She had gone back to Africa to live as a vowed Christian celibate. She must have returned to whatever was left of her family, which was probably in Thagaste. Vowed celibate women usually lived with their families in those days, unless the family provided money for life in a community. Augustine’s sister would later be a nun within her brother’s episcopal jurisdiction in Hippo, but she could well have been living a celibate widow’s life in Thagaste before he went to Hippo. There is no evidence or probability that her son did not communicate with Una, and the boy who cried so at his grandmother’s death would clearly want his own mother at his side when he was dying. Even if his death was a sudden one, she would have been nearby for his Christian funeral. The fact that Augustine does not mention Una after his return to Africa could reflect as much her wish as his own. He did not mention his sister except when he had to exercise authority over her community. Augustine’s ideal, even for married couples, was an affection without sex, and he had achieved enough self-control not to deny Una her maternal rights. He knew when he returned to Africa that he was returning to her region, perhaps even to her town. It was clear in his earliest Christian writings that Augustine felt two duties incumbent on him—to expound the whole circle of knowledge in Christian terms, and to refute other schools, within Christianity or outside it. In pursuit of the first goal he began an ambitious treatise, Music. His other goal he had already pursued at Cassiciacum, where Answer to Skeptics renounced his own most recent errors, those of Cicero’s Academics. But Manicheism, which had been a greater part of his past history, called for more thorough examination and refutation. He had already addressed Manichean ideas in his dialogues written at Cassiciacum and Rome. But now he finished one of the Roman works (Free Choice) and addressed Manichean dualism in The Manicheans’ “Two Souls.” Augustine had been a star disputant for the Manicheans, so he published these early works to clear his record. He began his first important treatment of Scripture to show that the “crude” Jewish account of creation makes more sense than the fanciful (indeed obscene) cosmogony of the Manicheans. This is Augustine’s first attempt to deal with the Bible symbolically, and it is a bit tentative (Genesis in Answer to the Manicheans, 388–89).

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  which we keep staring while the truth lies elsewhere, away from it all, somewhere as yet undiscovered. I myself, added Austerlitz, in spite of all the accounts of it I have read, remember only the picture of the final defeat of the Allies in the battle of the Three Emperors. Every attempt to understand the course of events inevitably turns into that one scene where the hosts of Russian and Austrian soldiers are fleeing on foot and horseback on to the frozen Satschen ponds. I see cannonballs suspended for an eternity in the air, I see others crashing into the ice, I see the unfortunate victims flinging up their arms as they slide from the toppling floes, and I see them, strangely, not with my own eyes but with those of shortsighted Marshal Davout, who has made a forced march with his regiments from Vienna and, glasses tied firmly behind his head with two laces, looks like an early motorist or aviator. When I look back at André Hilary’s performances today, said Austerlitz, I remember once again the idea I developed at the time of being linked in some mysterious way to the glorious past of the people of France. The more often Hilary mentioned the word Austerlitz in front of the class, the more it really did become my own name, and the more clearly I thought I saw that what had at first seemed like an ignominious flaw was changing into a bright light always hovering before me, as promising as the sun of Austerlitz itself when it rose above the December mists. All that school year I felt as if I had been chosen, and although, as I also knew, such a belief in no way matched my uncertain status, I have held fast to it almost my whole life. I don’t think that any of my fellow pupils at Stower Grange knew my new name, and the masters, who had been informed of my double identity by Penrith-Smith, went on calling me Elias too. André Hilary was the only one to whom I myself told my real name. It was soon after we had handed in an essay on the concepts of empire and nation that Hilary summoned me to his study outside regular school hours to return my work, which he had marked with a triple-starred A, giving it back in person and not, as he put it, along with everyone else’s pathetic efforts. He himself had published various articles in historical journals, and he said he could not have written such a perceptive piece in so comparatively short a space of time; he wondered whether I had perhaps been initiated into historical studies at home by my father or an elder brother. When I answered Hilary’s question I had some difficulty in not losing my command over myself, and it was in this situation, which I felt I could no longer endure, that I told him the secret of my real name. It was some time before he was able to calm down. He struck his forehead again and again, breaking into exclamations of astonishment, as if Providence had finally sent him the pupil he had always wanted. For the rest of my time at Stower Grange, Hilary supported and encouraged me in every possible way. I owe it to him first and foremost,

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The same year, as if to show his independence of papal dictation and at the same time the sincerity of his crusading purpose, the emperor actually started upon a crusade, usually called the Fifth Crusade. On being informed of the expedition, the pope excommunicated, him for the third time and inhibited the patriarch of Jerusalem and the Military Orders from giving him aid. The expedition was successful in spite of the papal malediction, and entering Jerusalem Frederick crowned himself king in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Thus we have the singular spectacle of the chief monarch of Christendom conducting a crusade in fulfillment of a vow to two popes while resting under the solemn ban of a third. Yea, the second crusader who entered the Holy City as a conqueror, and the last one to do so, was at the time not only resting under a triple ban, but was excommunicated a fourth time on his return from his expedition to Europe. He was excommunicated for not going, he was excommunicated for going, and he was excommunicated on coming back, though it was not in disgrace but in triumph. The emperor’s troops bearing the cross were met on their return to Europe by the papal army whose banners were inscribed with the keys. Frederick’s army was victorious. Diplomacy, however, prevailed, and emperor and pope dined together at Anagni (Sept. 1, 1230) and arranged a treaty.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  There is a correspondence between the four possible attitudes on both aspects of the Johannean question, and the parties advocating them. The result of the conflict will be the substantial triumph of the faith of the church which accepts, on new grounds of evidence, all the four Gospels as genuine and historical, and the Apocalypse and the fourth Gospel as the works of John. The Assaults on the Fourth Gospel. Criticism has completely shifted its attitude on both parts of the problem. The change is very remarkable. When the first serious assault was made upon the genuineness of the fourth Gospel by the learned General Superintendent Bretschneider (in 1820), he was met with such overwhelming opposition, not only from evangelical divines like Olshausen and Tholuck, but also from Schleiermacher, Lücke, Credner, and Schott, that he honestly confessed his defeat a few years afterward (1824 and 1828).1086 And when Dr. Strauss, in his Leben Jesu (1835), renewed the denial, a host of old and new defenders arose with such powerful arguments that he himself (as he confessed in the third edition of 1838) was shaken in his doubt, especially by the weight and candor of Neander, although he felt compelled, in self-defence, to reaffirm his doubt as essential to the mythical hypothesis (in the fourth edition, 1840, and afterward in his popular Leben Jesu, 1864). But in the meantime his teacher, Dr. Baur, the coryphaeus of the Tübingen school, was preparing his heavy ammunition, and led the second, the boldest, the most vigorous and effective assault upon the Johannean fort (since 1844).1087 He was followed in the main question, though with considerable modifications in detail, by a number of able and acute critics in Germany and other countries. He represented the fourth Gospel as a purely ideal work which grew out of the Gnostic, Montanistic, and paschal controversies after the middle of the second century, and adjusted the various elements of the Catholic faith with consummate skill and art. It was not intended to be a history, but a system of theology in the garb of history. This "tendency" hypothesis was virtually a death-blow to the mythical theory of Strauss, which excludes conscious design. The third great assault inspired by Baur, yet with independent learning and judgment, was made by Dr. Keim (in his Geschichte Jesu von Nazara, 1867). He went beyond Baur in one point: he denied the whole tradition of John’s sojourn in Ephesus as a mistake of Irenaeus; he thus removed even the foundation for the defence of the Apocalypse as a Johannean production, and neutralized the force of the Tübingen assault derived from that book. On the other hand, he approached the traditional view by tracing the composition back from 170 (Baur) to the reign of Trajan, i.e., to within a few years after the death of the apostle.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I see in the swollen muscles of their lyric throats the staggering effort that must be made to turn the wheel over, to pick up the pace where one has left off. I see that behind the daily annoyances and intrusions, behind the cheap, glittering malice of the feeble and inert, there stands the symbol of life’s frustrating power, and that he who would create order, he who would sow strife and discord, because he is imbued with will, such a man must go again and again to the stake and the gibbet. I see that behind the nobility of his gestures there lurks the specter of the ridiculousness of it all—that he is not only sublime, but absurd. Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. Today I am proud to say that I am inhuman , that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles. I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity—I belong to the earth! I say that lying on my pillow and I can feel the horns sprouting from my temples. I can see about me all those cracked forebears of mine dancing around the bed, consoling me, egging me on, lashing me with their serpent tongues, grinning and leering at me with their skulking skulls. I am inhuman! I say it with a mad, hallucinated grin, and I will keep on saying it though it rain crocodiles. Behind my words are all those grinning, leering, skulking skulls, some dead and grinning a long time, some grinning as if they had lockjaw, some grinning with the grimace of a grin, the foretaste and aftermath of what is always going on. Clearer than all I see my own grinning skull, see the skeleton dancing in the wind, serpents issuing from the rotted tongue and the bloated pages of ecstasy slimed with excrement. And I join my slime, my excrement, my madness, my ecstasy to the great circuit which flows through the subterranean vaults of the flesh. All this unbidden, unwanted, drunken vomit will flow on endlessly through the minds of those to come in the inexhaustible vessel that contains the history of the race. Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with which they imbue it turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song. Out of the dead compost and the inert slag they breed a song that contaminates.