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 Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  For some black religious leaders like Albert Cleage, a Detroit pastor who ministers in a black ghetto church, Jesus’ actual skin pigmentation was black. He was a black man who arose from the Black Nation of Israel. Cleage, along with some biblical scholars, insist that Jesus belonged to the nonwhite tribe of Judah, a mixture of different dark-skinned people groups who freely mixed with those of Africa. Hence Mary, Jesus’ mother, was a black woman. Likewise, God is black. If God is Jesus’ father, and if humans are created in the image of God, and if humans come in different colors, then these colors must find their source in God. Now, if these different colors exist in God, then God cannot be white, based on how Euroamericans legally and socially define whiteness. By definition, according to Cleage, the son of a black God who was born to a black Mary is also black in the same way African Americans are defined as black in the United States. Cleage maintains that Jesus would not have been able to pass the “one-drop” rule, which defines blackness as having one drop of African blood flowing in your veins. Other African American theologians, such as James Cone and J. Deotis Roberts, understand Christ's blackness as symbolic. For Cone, the inability of finite humans to capture the Infinite Being forces humans to use words as symbols, which always fall short in communicating the complete essence of the divine. A black Christ becomes the best way to represent Christ to African Americans struggling to survive in a racist society. Hence, Cone insists that Jesus’ blackness is informed by his identification with the oppressed and despised people of the world, “the least of my people.” Like Cone, Roberts also understands Jesus’ blackness as symbolic. Yet, while Cone points to Jesus’ blackness to emphasize Christ's particular relationship with African Americans, Roberts underscores Jesus’ blackness to emphasize Christ's universal relationship with all of humanity. He attempts to meet a psychocultural need to claim self-worth for a people who are on their knees worshiping a Deity formed in the image of their historic oppressors. For Roberts, African Americans have a right to comprehend Jesus as black in the same way that white, red, yellow, and brown people have a right to comprehend Jesus in their own likeness. His call for a “universal” Christ will, he hopes, lead to long-lasting reconciliation among different people groups. All three views agree that Jesus’ blackness, whichever way that blackness is to be defined or envisioned, debunks blackness as something to be abhorred. Because the divine is black, Christ's identification with the struggle of African Americans is affirmed, and Christ's commitment to black liberation is emphasized.16 To say that Jesus is black becomes more than promoting a notion that his ethnicity is of black origins. Skin color is not what is important.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  The extreme interpersonal end of the continuum exists only theoretically as any interaction between people is always conditioned in some fashion by social category and group membership. The extreme intergroup end of the continuum however is imaginable in the real world. 28 As one moves toward the intergroup side the more homogeneous people are seen to be according to the active stereotypes, both within one’s group (ingroup) and without (outgroup). 29 One’s understanding of one’s self is also different on the intergroup side of the continuum as one might cease seeing one’s own uniqueness (deindividuation) and one might instead see oneself as a “prototypical representative ... of their ingroup category.” 30 A pregnant woman might feel that she is the quintessential pregnant woman and this might prompt different forms of behavior to both ingroup (to other pregnant women as a presumed model and guide) and outgroup (to non-pregnant women or to men). There are also different levels of commitment that individuals will give to a group. The level of commitment becomes obvious between the “fair-weather” and the “die- hard” group members when the group is threatened. The fair-weather group members, being more concerned with personal identity, are typically inclined to dissociate themselves from the threatened group letting it dissolve. The die-hard group members are likely to fight to protect the group’s “distinctiveness, even when that group has a negative image.” 31 The issue of identity was of great significance for Matthew. Being a leader in his community he was certainly a high-identifier group member and his level of commitment may not have been the same as an average group member. However, we cannot be sure from Matthew what the average member’s level of commitment was. Given the high level of polemic it is likely that Matthew’s community lived as a whole in tension with the community represented by the Pharisees. It could be that some average Matthean believers maintained relations with Pharisaic neighbors by keeping their beliefs hidden, yet Matthew’s redaction of Mark 8:34–9:1 speaks against this. In Mark there are severe warnings against being ashamed of Jesus, which would have been appropriate had Matthew wished to combat a trend in his community toward keeping group membership hidden, and these warnings are all excised in Matthew’s version. It is possible that given the stakes of being a follower of Jesus (such as losing kinship relations) in Matthew’s community that most members were high identifiers. This would mean that for Matthew’s community group membership meant a great deal. In other words, they would have typically defined themselves primarily in terms of their membership to the ἐκκλησία. 27 Henri Tajfel, “Interindividual Behaviour and Intergroup Behaviour,” in Tajfel, Differentiation between Social Groups, 41. 28 Ibid., 41. 29 Turner and Onorato, “Social Identity,” 19. 30 Ibid., 21. 31 Bertjan Doosje and Naomi Ellemers, “Stereotyping under Threat: The Role of Group Identification,” in Spears et al., Social Psychology, 271.

• From Stripped: Las Vegas (2021)

  - And it forced you to have to take your brand seriously, because it's not a short game anymore of dancing, getting all this guy's money and you never see them again. You're gonna see them again 'cause you're online, and word of mouth online travels like that, and you can lose your fan base, and then where's your money? [placid music] - [Photographer] I want you to grab the rail a little bit, that's perfect, there you go. - My name now means a lot more to me and my brand that I'm trying to produce means a lot more to me. So, I really try very hard to portray the person I am. I'm really good at makeup, obviously, like duh, but [laughs]. And I'm not scared to show anybody my bad side, and I'm not scared to show anybody my goofy side, and how I've gotten from point A to point Z. Social media is a great way for everybody to see how I'm progressing, because there's a lot of levels to this shit. [siren ringing] - [Photographer] One, two. [camera clicking] One more, one more. - So, I obtained and made sure I maintained photo-shoots and constantly trying to be active on my social media to promote myself, that's all we have. It's a fantasy ultimately that I'm trying to sell and that I do sell. So I wanna be something totally different, something exclusive, something that they're fantasizing about. So, I rely heavily on Instagram. My first Instagram that I was promoting myself on had around 87,000 people or followers. And that page, I made so much money. - So, at the start of the pandemic, I was in Santa Cruz for my birthday, the weekend that everything got shut down. So, I was in California for a while, working at the beach lifeguarding. They needed a lot of help. We were facing beach closures. We were doing 70 hour weeks during a pandemic. - Union 93's 14 John NN3, 108, good morning. - [Dispatcher] Good work, good morning. - Copy, we'll be in route. It was really high stress. On top of listening to the 911 scanner all day, hearing about how there's no beds at the hospital every 10 minutes. [siren ringing] Northern 14th John, entering [mumbles]. [radio beeping] We're just gonna wait until Harbor gets here, and then you're gonna get on the Harbor boat and help them with this. Then we're all gonna go back to the Harbor. - Sounds good. - Yeah. You guys get a free jet ski ride today [laughs]. [jet ski droning] There were so many more deaths, there were so many more drownings. It was a lot. [upbeat music] I love lifeguarding. I love being able to take control of a situation where I might be the only person in control. [jet ski droning] One hand. I would lifeguard full-time if it made sense financially for me.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  “I don’t get how your flings were supposed to be taking care of me, though I know in your mind it makes sense,” Jackie tells him. “It’s not OK, but I understand it. Still, I was always surprised at how easily you let yourself be caught. Like you were asking for it, so you could come to Mommy and get punished. I’m not interested in replaying your family drama. I’ll leave you first, and you know it.” To me she says, “Realizing I had the strength to leave helped me make the choice to stay. I have a lot more freedom. When I initiate sex now, I can feel almost brazen, and I like that. ‘You want this, Philip? Take it!’ It doesn’t have to be romantic or even particularly personal. I like a lot of different things. I prefer tender love, but sometimes greedy is good, too.” I’ve worked with Jackie and Philip on and off for years. Philip has stopped acting out, and over time he has searched for ways to undo the deeply ingrained belief that hot sex can’t happen at home. By finding ways to experience himself as a sexual man who is also a faithful man, he was able to undo family patterns that were at least three generations old. In the past, Philip’s fascination with porn was a haven for him, a fantasy of immediacy where the moment of desire and satisfaction merged. The women on the screen offered no resistance and required no effort on his part. Hence the tension between wanting and getting was nullified, and Philip never had to reconcile desire in the context of love. Gradually, he has allowed the dislocated parts of his sexuality to come home, and has been more able to remain present with his wife. The ongoing challenge for Jackie and Philip is to continue to bring the erotic home—to experience small transgressions, illicit striving, and passionate idealization in the midst of their intimate lives. The English analyst Adam Phillips underscores this point in his book Monogamy: If it is the forbidden that is exciting—if desire is fundamentally transgressive—then the monogamous are like the very rich. They have to find their poverty. They have to starve themselves enough. In other words they have to work, if only to keep what is always too available sufficiently illicit to be interesting. Can You Want What You Have?

• From Stripped: Las Vegas (2021)

  [upbeat music] So when she comes over, I like to teach her and show her the stuff that I know and the stuff that I've learned. It's really fun to be able to teach her those things because she is the reason why I do this in the first place. - [Angel] There you go. - That was really good. - [Angel] Did I do okay [laughs]? [upbeat music] - So, wait, okay, ready? Come on, three, two. I have a seven year old daughter, she's my pride and joy. She came in my 12th grade year of high school. I like that, hey. The importance of family to me is everything. [upbeat music] [bowl clinking] They're the only ones who know my struggle. Me and my brothers and sisters, we get together very frequently, whether it be dinner or going out. But one of our favorite things are just eating and vibing together. [chattering] It gives my daughter a chance to be around her family, her uncles who love her so much. And she loves them being around. So, they really give her a lotta love. They're everything to her. [chattering] Watching my brothers interact with my daughter just makes me so proud that I was able to one, bring up loving and caring men, and for two, it just makes me so happy to see that she's able to be a kid and she's able to have fun and smile and laugh. During this pandemic, it's really tough on me though. I'm sure any parent could understand what I'm going through with online school, it's the most tedious thing. 10, so it's 10, 20? - [Brooklyn's Daughter] 30? - One, two, three, you have to look at the last number. So if all the first numbers are the same, look at the second number, good job. Having a seven year old try and sit down all day is the hardest job I've ever had in my life. [upbeat music] - Join the party. - When I say my dad is my best friend, I mean that my dad is my best friend. - Up to it, down to it. Fuck those that don't do it. We do it 'cause we used to, drink, mother fucker, drink, woo, woo. - We can sit with each other forever and not say anything or say everything and still have more to say. My dad is always surprising me. His stories, they go on and on and on. And they're so interesting. - I was getting ready to go on a new kids tour, and that's when they had just designed this shirts for the tour, you know what I mean? We selling t-shirts on the tour. [chattering] - I thought you knew. The relationship that I have with my little sister, I try to set the best example for her as her big sister. I try to be someone that she can confide in.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Ever since, when I make love, I pursue that intensity.” For Julie, a mother of three, motherhood has brought a positive new identity. “In my early twenties I dressed like a boy: big sweaters, jeans, size-nine Keds. It was a total denial of femininity and a feminist distrust of its motives. I mistook appreciation for objectification, and didn’t trust that a man might be interested in me beyond my availability as a sexual object. These days the pants are stylish, tight, and fun; the blouses show cleavage. Finally, I’m the kind of woman my Italian father would recognize, and who would make my mother blush—greedy, sexy, entitled. Why? I feel safe now. I have no one’s eye to catch. I’m already caught, thoroughly enmeshed in the needs and desires of others (four males as it turns out). And I am finding freedom in this place, where there is no power game. I don’t have to respond to anyone I haven’t already chosen. As a mother I’m not afraid to be sexual, sensual, to assert my desire.” When Daddy Sings the Baby Blues For every man like Warren, who feels sexually abandoned when his wife becomes a mother, there is a man like Leo, whose libido makes a break for it on the way home from the delivery room. Dwindling desire in mothers is, in some ways, old news. We might not like it, but we can at least make sense of it. But what are we to make of the father who can no longer eroticize the mother of his children? This story, though just as common, is admitted far less frequently. When Carla and Leo came to see me, she was at her wit’s end. They’d been together seventeen years: the first six a frenzy of the flesh, the next four the chaos of babyhood, the last seven a sexual desert. She went from talking to pleading to screaming to compensating. She had a number of flings and then a serious affair. He found out, she threatened divorce, he suggested therapy, and here they are. She says, “I am so sick of the excuses. It’s his work, it’s the stress, it’s his dying father, he has to get up early, he hasn’t been to the gym and so he doesn’t have the energy, his back hurts, it’s my breath, it’s my weight, it’s his weight. I took it personally for so long, but now I’m done. I love this man, I’m prepared to stay, but I can’t live like this.” He says, “I always considered myself to be very competent sexually.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  “Dwight,” my mother said, “you did tell him.” He said, “I don’t make the rules, Rosemary.” I started to argue, but my mother gave my shoulder a hard squeeze. When I glanced up at her she shook her head. Dwight couldn’t figure out how the rifle fit together, so I did it for him while he looked on. “That,” he said, “is the most stupidly constructed firearm I have ever seen, bar none.” A man with a clipboard came up to us. He was collecting entry fees. After Dwight paid him he started to move off, but my mother stopped him and held out some money. He looked at it, then down at his clipboard. “Wolff,” she said. “Rosemary Wolff.” Still studying his clipboard, he asked if she wanted to shoot. She said she did. He looked over at Dwight, who busied himself with the rifle. Then he dropped his eyes again and mumbled something about the rules. “This is an NRA club, isn’t it?” my mother asked. He nodded. “Well, I am a dues-paying member of the NRA, and that gives me the right to participate in the activities of other chapters when I’m away from my own.” She said all of this very pleasantly. Finally he took the money. “You’ll be the only woman shooting,” he said. She smiled. He wrote her name down. “Why not?” he said suddenly, uncertainly. “Why the heck not.” He gave her a number and wandered off to another group of shooters. Dwight’s number was called early. He fired his ten rounds in rapid succession, hardly pausing for breath, and got a rotten score. A couple of his shots hadn’t even hit the paper. When his score was announced he handed my mother the rifle. “Where’d you get this blunderbuss, anyway?” he asked me. My mother answered. “A friend of mine gave it to him.” “Some friend,” he said. “That thing is a menace. You ought to get rid of it. It shoots wild.” He added, “The bore is probably rusted out.” “The bore is perfect,” I said. My mother’s number should have been called after Dwight’s, but it wasn’t. One man after another went up to the line while she stood there watching. I got antsy and cold. After a long wait I walked over to the river and tried to skip rocks. A mist drifted over the water. My fingers grew numb but I kept at it until the sound of rifle fire stopped, leaving a silence in which I felt too much alone. When I came back my mother had finished her turn. She was standing around with some of the men. Others were putting their rifles in their cars, passing bottles back and forth, calling to each other as they drove away into the dusk. “You missed me!” she said when I came up. I asked her how she had done. “Dwight brought in a ringer,” one of the men said. “Did you win?” She nodded. “You won?

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, It was most fitting for the Law to be given at the time of Moses. The reason for this may be taken from two things in respect of which every law is imposed on two kinds of men. Because it is imposed on some men who are hard-hearted and proud, whom the law restrains and tames: and it is imposed on good men, who, through being instructed by the law, are helped to fulfil what they desire to do. Hence it was fitting that the Law should be given at such a time as would be appropriate for the overcoming of man’s pride. For man was proud of two things, viz. of knowledge and of power. He was proud of his knowledge, as though his natural reason could suffice him for salvation: and accordingly, in order that his pride might be overcome in this matter, man was left to the guidance of his reason without the help of a written law: and man was able to learn from experience that his reason was deficient, since about the time of Abraham man had fallen headlong into idolatry and the most shameful vices. Wherefore, after those times, it was necessary for a written law to be given as a remedy for human ignorance: because “by the Law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20). But, after man had been instructed by the Law, his pride was convinced of his weakness, through his being unable to fulfil what he knew. Hence, as the Apostle concludes (Rom. 8:3,4), “what the Law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sent [Vulg.: ‘sending’] His own Son . . . that the justification of the Law might be fulfilled in us.” With regard to good men, the Law was given to them as a help; which was most needed by the people, at the time when the natural law began to be obscured on account of the exuberance of sin: for it was fitting that this help should be bestowed on men in an orderly manner, so that they might be led from imperfection to perfection; wherefore it was becoming that the Old Law should be given between the law of nature and the law of grace. Reply to Objection 1: It was not fitting for the Old Law to be given at once after the sin of the first man: both because man was so confident in his own reason, that he did not acknowledge his need of the Old Law; because as yet the dictate of the natural law was not darkened by habitual sinning.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Those poems we read in class, he said then, I had never seen anything like them, I didn’t know anything like them existed. He was talking about Frank O’Hara, I understood, whose poems had shocked most of my students, as I intended them to. I had never read anything before, he went on, I mean a story or a poem, that seemed like it was about me, that I could have written it. He didn’t look at me as he said this, looking instead at his hands, both of which were on the table in front of him and in one of which a cigarette had shrunk almost to its nub between two fingers. I felt two things as he spoke, first my usual dismay when talking to gay men here, who were more excluded than I had been, growing up in the American south, where at least I had found books that, even if they were always tragic, offered a certain beauty as compensation. But in addition to dismay I felt satisfaction or pride at having provided (as I thought of it) some degree of solace, and maybe this was the bigger part of what I felt. I had gathered him up, I thought, and this sparked a sense of warmth that started in the central pit of me and then radiated out. It was a craftsman’s pride, I suppose: I had worked hard to find the right poems for the students, choosing O’Hara for his subject matter but primarily for his joy, his freedom from guardedness and guilt, which would only have reinforced what many of my students already believed about that category or class of people of which I was a part. My satisfaction only deepened when G. continued, after our coffee arrived and we took a moment to add sugar and milk. You’re the only person I know who talks about it, who’s so public and who isn’t ashamed, he said; it’s good that you’re that way, it must be hard here. This was a kind of acknowledgment one hardly ever hears, and it recalled the sense of mission I had had when I first started teaching, which had faded so decisively since. And again this had the effect of increasing the distance between us, so that even as I saw he remained agitated, tense and anxious, that he was miserable with something he still had to say, I was suffused with a sense of accomplishment, a peculiar and sharp pleasure.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Bonnie found herself helpless and passive or easily enraged under everyday stress, not realizing that this was a replay of the brief pretense at submissiveness that probably saved her life. Her “submission” successfully fooled the assailant, allowing a momentary opportunity for the instinctual energy of a wild animal to take over, propelling her arms and legs in a successful escape. However, it had all happened so fast that she had not had the chance to integrate the experience. At a primitive level, she still didn’t “know” that she had escaped, and remained identified with the “submissiveness” rather than with her complete two-phase strategy that had in fact saved her life. Motorically and emotionally, it was like part of her was still in the assailant’s clutches. After processing and completing the rape-related actions, Bonnie now reported having an overall sense of capability and empowerment. She was “back to even more of her [old] self” in place of the previous submissive self-hatred. This new self came from being able to physically feel the motor response of elbowing her assailant, and then to sense the immense power in her legs that had, in fact, carried her to safety. This is a case where symptoms did not emerge full-blown for twelve to eighteen months after the traumatic experience. Hence, it was not readily apparent that they were sequelae to a precipitating event. For reasons largely unknown, it is not uncommon for symptoms to be delayed by six months or even one and a half to two years. In addition, symptoms may only manifest after yet another traumatic encounter occurs—sometimes years later. How many of our own habitual behaviors and feelings are outside of our conscious awareness or are long accepted as part of ourselves, of who we are, when in fact they are not? Rather, these behaviors are reactions to events long forgotten (or rationalized) by our minds but remembered accurately by our bodies. We can thank Freud for correctly surmising that both the imprints of horrible experiences, as well as the antidote, and latent catalyst for transformation, exist within our bodies. Sharon: September 11, 2001The body has its reasons that reason cannot reason. —Pascal

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I’d spent too much time goofing off with the wrong boys. I’d forgotten to check for the tongue during artificial respiration. Why couldn’t I remember that? Check for the goddam tongue! I could work on some poor drowned sonofabitch till the cows came home but it wasn’t going to do squat for him if he’d swallowed his tongue. Was that so hard to remember? And I would say No, next time I’d remember, but the truth was I hadn’t forgotten at all, I just didn’t want to put my fingers in some kid’s mouth after he’d been eating peanut butter and crackers. If I ever came across an actual drowned person I would do everything I was supposed to do, even the business with the tongue; I just couldn’t perform solemn and efficient resuscitation upon the body of a boy who was whispering that his pud was waterlogged and in need of a big squeeze. But I liked being a Scout. I was stirred by the elevated diction in which we swore our fealty to the chaste chivalric fantasies of Lord Baden-Powell. My uniform, baggy and barren though it was, made me feel like a soldier. I became a serious student of the ranks and honors available to the ambitious, and made up calenders of deadlines by which I planned my rise from Tenderfoot to Eagle. I developed a headwaiter’s eye; when we met with other troops to compete at Scout skills I could read their uniforms at a glance and know exactly who was who. The main purpose of scouting as I understood it was to accumulate symbols that would compel respect, or at least civility, from those who shared them and envy from those who did not. Conspicuous deeds of patriotism and piety, rope craft, water wisdom, fire wizardry, first-aid, all the arts of forest and mountain and stream, seemed to me just different ways of getting badges. Dwight gave me Skipper’s old Scout manual, Handbook for Boys , outdated even when Skipper had it, a 1942 edition full of pictures of “Fighting Scouts” keeping a lookout for Nazi subs and Jap bombers. I read the Handbook almost every night, cruising for easy merit badges like Indian Lore, Bookbinding, Reptile Study, and Personal Health (“Show proper method of brushing teeth and discuss the importance of dental care. . . .”). The merit-badge index was followed by advertisements for official Scout gear, and then a list of The Firms That Make the Things You Want, among them Coca-Cola, Eastman Kodak, Evinrude and Nestle’s (“The Boy Scout Emergency Ration”), and finally by a section called Where to Go to School. The schools were mostly military academies with sonorous double-barreled names. Carson Long. Morgan Park. Cochran-Bryan. Valley Forge. Castle Heights. I liked reading all these advertisements. They were a natural part of the Handbook , in whose pages the Scout Spirit and the spirit of commerce mingled freely, and often indistinguishably.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I couldn’t feature myself sinking a last-second clincher from the key, as Elgin Baylor did for Seattle that year in the NCAA playoffs against San Francisco. Ditto school politics; the unending compulsion to test one’s own popularity was baffling to me. These were not ideas I had of myself, and I did not propose to urge them on anyone else. I declined to say I was a football star, but I did invent a swimming team for Concrete High. The coach wrote a fine letter for me, and so did my teachers and the principal. They didn’t gush. They wrote plainly about a gifted, upright boy who had already in his own quiet way exhausted the resources of his school and community. They had done what they could for him. Now they hoped that others would carry on the good work. I wrote without heat or hyperbole, in the words my teachers would have used if they had known me as I knew myself. These were their letters. And on the boy who lived in their letters, the splendid phantom who carried all my hopes, it seemed to me I saw, at last, my own face. Arthur and I had fallen into a sharp way of talking to each other. It was supposed to be banter, but it turned easily cruel and sometimes led to shoving matches, grunting, scuffling affairs during which we smiled fixedly to show how little of our strength we were using. We started doing this after school one day while we were at the bus stop. It would have played itself out as usual except that some other boys took an interest and began shouting encouragement. This in turn attracted the attention of Mr. Mitchell, who ran across the street yelling, “Break it up! Break it up!” He came between us and held us apart as if we were slavering to get at each other. “Okay,” he said, “what’s the problem here?” Neither of us answered. I knew exactly what was going to happen, and that nothing I could say would change it. “You don’t fight on school property,” Mr. Mitchell told us. “If you’ve got a grudge, I’ve got the place to work it out.” He took out his notebook, wrote down our names, and congratulated us on volunteering for the smoker. MR. MITCHELL HAD started the smokers some years back to showcase the boxing talent of a few boys, and his own talent as their coach, but since then they had become big business. The tickets cost three dollars and sold out in a matter of days. This didn’t happen because the quality of the fights got better, but because they got worse. Nobody wanted to see artful flyweights dance up and down, moving their shoulders prettily while darting in for another scientific love tap. They wanted to see slope-shouldered bruisers stand toe to toe and pound each other into goulash. They wanted to see blood. They wanted to see pain. Mr.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  After lunch I walked around the campus. The regular students had not yet returned from their Christmas vacation, and the quiet was profound. I found a bench overlooking the lake. The surface was misty and gray. Until they rang the bell for the math test I sat with crossed legs and made believe I belonged here, that these handsome old buildings, webbed with vines of actual ivy to which a few brown leaves still clung, were my home. ARTHUR HATED SHOP , which was a required course for boys at Concrete High. After making his eighth or ninth cedar box he revolted. He was able to negotiate his way out by agreeing to work in the school office during that period. I thought he would help me, but he refused angrily. His anger made no sense to me. I did not understand that he wanted out, too. I backed off and didn’t ask again. But a few days later he came up to me in the cafeteria, dropped a manila folder on the table, and walked away without a word. I got up and took the folder to the bathroom and locked myself in a stall. It was all there, everything I had asked for. Fifty sheets of school stationary, several blank transcript forms, and a stack of official envelopes. I slipped them into the folder again and went back to the cafeteria. Over the next couple of nights I filled out the transcripts and the application forms. Now the application forms came easy; I could afford to be terse and modest in my self-descriptions, knowing how detailed my recommenders were going to be. When these were done I began writing the letters of support. I wrote out rough copies in longhand, then typed up the final versions on official stationary, using different machines in the typing lab at school. I wrote the first drafts deliberately, with much crossing out and penciling in, but with none of the hesitance I’d felt before. Now the words came as easily as if someone were breathing them into my ear. I felt full of things that had to be said, full of stifled truth. That was what I thought I was writing—the truth. It was truth known only to me, but I believed in it more than I believed in the facts arrayed against it. I believed that in some sense not factually verifiable I was a straight-A student. In the same way, I believed that I was an Eagle Scout, and a powerful swimmer, and a boy of integrity. These were ideas about myself that I had held on to for dear life. Now I gave them voice. I made no claims that seemed false to me. I did not say that I was a star quarterback or even a varsity football player, because even though I went out for football every year I never quickened to the lumpen spirit of the sport. The same was true of basketball.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  A sense of triumph and heroism almost always signals the successful conclusion of a renegotiated traumatic event. By following Sammy’s lead after setting up a potentially activating scene, joining in his play and making the game up as we went along, Sammy got to let go of his fear. It took minimal direction (30–45 minutes) and support to achieve the unspoken goal of aiding him to experience a corrective outcome. * Recall the discussion in Chapter 4 of Beatrice Gelder’s work demonstrating how attuned we humans are to the survival-based postures of others. These findings also relate to research on mirror neurons. A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when it observes the same action performed by another animal. Thus, the neuron mirrors the behavior of the other, as though the observer herself were performing the very same act. Such neurons have been directly observed in primates and are found in the premotor cortex and in the insula and cingulate, suggesting their importance in communicating internal bodily states and emotions. The neuroscientist Stephanie Preston, the Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal and other neuroscientists have independently posited that the mirror neuron system is centrally involved in empathy and that since it is the body that is being mirrored, intimate moments are nonverbal in nature. In humans, brain activity consistent with that of mirror neurons has been found in the premotor cortex and the inferior parietal cortex. See Chapter 4 for specific references to this research. † I do this to help her keep connected with me as she goes inside, as well as to feel more grounded. ‡ This is an important difference between “talk therapy” and body-oriented therapy. Rather than trying to help patients make new meanings or understand their problems, body therapy creates a space for the “body story” to unfold and complete. When this occurs, new meanings and insights emerge spontaneously, generated by the patients themselves, as an integral part of this process. § The sense of a foreshortened life, of wordless despair, is a central characteristic of severe trauma. The person is in a fundamental way stuck in the horrific imprint of the past and thus cannot imagine a future different from the past. ‖ This is an effect of dissociation. It is as though Sharon is describing what happened to another person; it is as though she is outside of her body, observing, but not really being present. She lives back at the moment of shock where dissociation is what allowed her to survive the unimaginable horror and terror. In the Hollywood, Hitchcock version of trauma, the sufferer is barraged by flashbacks.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Of course they don’t always get what they want, but I am impressed by their fluid transmission of desire between body and mind. They let themselves feel in a way I’d forgotten, or been trained away from; and watching them makes me more aware of my own body and reminds me of my own desire.” For Renee, pregnancy ushered in a self-acceptance she had never felt. “Pregnancy was a healing experience for me. I was sexually abused as a child, and had always loathed any signs of womanliness in my body. I’d been at war with my thighs for twenty-five years. I was hospitalized for an eating disorder the year before I got pregnant. In fact, I was so skinny I didn’t even think I could get pregnant. I hadn’t had a regular period in years. But the minute I saw that plus sign in the EPT everything changed. It was the first time in my life that food became decontaminated. I relished watching my body grow ripe. For once in my life my breasts were naturally round and I was so proud. Most of my friends complained of the discomfort and weight gain. But for me, I felt like it was finally OK to look like a woman. I gave birth naturally; it was powerful. I was amazed by what my body could do and what it could endure. I was capable of so much more than I thought. Ever since, when I make love, I pursue that intensity.” For Julie, a mother of three, motherhood has brought a positive new identity. “In my early twenties I dressed like a boy: big sweaters, jeans, size-nine Keds. It was a total denial of femininity and a feminist distrust of its motives. I mistook appreciation for objectification, and didn’t trust that a man might be interested in me beyond my availability as a sexual object. These days the pants are stylish, tight, and fun; the blouses show cleavage. Finally, I’m the kind of woman my Italian father would recognize, and who would make my mother blush—greedy, sexy, entitled. Why? I feel safe now. I have no one’s eye to catch. I’m already caught, thoroughly enmeshed in the needs and desires of others (four males as it turns out). And I am finding freedom in this place, where there is no power game. I don’t have to respond to anyone I haven’t already chosen. As a mother I’m not afraid to be sexual, sensual, to assert my desire.” When Daddy Sings the Baby Blues For every man like Warren, who feels sexually abandoned when his wife becomes a mother, there is a man like Leo, whose libido makes a break for it on the way home from the delivery room. Dwindling desire in mothers is, in some ways, old news.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  (4) Whether above the priestly Order there should be an episcopal power? (5) Whether the episcopate is an Order? (6) Whether in the Church there can be any power above the episcopate? (7) Whether the vestments of the ministers are fittingly instituted by the Church? Whether those who are ordained ought to wear the tonsure?Objection 1: It would seem that those who are ordained ought not to wear the tonsure in the shape of a crown. For the Lord threatened captivity and dispersion to those who were shaven in this way: “Of the captivity of the bare head of the enemies” (Dt. 32:42), and: “I will scatter into every wind them that have their hair cut round” (Jer. 49:32). Now the ministers of Christ should not be captives, but free. Therefore shaving and tonsure in the shape of a crown does not become them. Objection 2: Further, the truth should correspond to the figure. Now the crown was prefigured in the Old Law by the tonsure of the Nazarenes, as stated in the text (Sent. iv, D, 24). Therefore since the Nazarenes were not ordained to the Divine ministry, it would seem that the ministers of the Church should not receive the tonsure or shave the head in the form of a crown. The same would seem to follow from the fact that lay brothers, who are not ministers of the Church, receive a tonsure in the religious Orders. Objection 3: Further, the hair signifies superabundance, because it grows from that which is superabundant. But the ministers of the Church should cast off all superabundance. Therefore they should shave the head completely and not in the shape of a crown. On the contrary, According to Gregory, “to serve God is to reign” (Super Ps. 101:23). Now a crown is the sign of royalty. Therefore a crown is becoming to those who are devoted to the Divine ministry. Further, according to 1 Cor. 11:15, hair is given us “for a covering.” But the ministers of the altar should have the mind uncovered. Therefore the tonsure is becoming to them. I answer that, It is becoming for those who apply themselves to the Divine ministry to be shaven or tonsured in the form of a crown by reason of the shape. Because a crown is the sign of royalty; and of perfection, since it is circular; and those who are appointed to the Divine service acquire a royal dignity and ought to be perfect in virtue. It is also becoming to them as it involves the hair being taken both from the higher part of the head by shaving, lest their mind be hindered by temporal occupations from contemplating Divine things, and from the lower part by clipping, lest their senses be entangled in temporal things. Reply to Objection 1: The Lord threatens those who did this for the worship of demons.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, The vestments of the ministers denote the qualifications required of them for handling Divine things. And since certain things are required of all, and some are required of the higher, that are not so exacted of the lower ministers, therefore certain vestments are common to all the ministers, while some pertain to the higher ministers only. Accordingly it is becoming to all the ministers to wear the “amice” which covers the shoulders, thereby signifying courage in the exercise of the Divine offices to which they are deputed; and the “alb,” which signifies a pure life, and the “girdle,” which signifies restraint of the flesh. But the subdeacon wears in addition the “maniple” on the left arm; this signifies the wiping away of the least stains, since a maniple is a kind of handkerchief for wiping the face; for they are the first to be admitted to the handling of sacred things. They also have the “narrow tunic,” signifying the doctrine of Christ; wherefore in the Old Law little bells hung therefrom, and subdeacons are the first admitted to announce the doctrine of the New Law. The deacon has in addition the “stole” over the left shoulder, as a sign that he is deputed to a ministry in the sacraments themselves, and the “dalmatic” (which is a full vestment, so called because it first came into use in Dalmatia), to signify that he is the first to be appointed to dispense the sacraments: for he dispenses the blood, and in dispensing one should be generous. But in the case of the priest the “stole” hangs from both shoulders, to show that he has received full power to dispense the sacraments, and not as the minister of another man, for which reason the stole reaches right down. He also wears the “chasuble,” which signifies charity, because he it is who consecrates the sacrament of charity, namely the Eucharist. Bishops have nine ornaments besides those which the priest has; these are the “stockings, sandals, succinctory, tunic, dalmatic, mitre, gloves, ring, and crozier,” because there are nine things which they can, but priests cannot, do, namely ordain clerics, bless virgins, consecrate bishops, impose hands, dedicate churches, depose clerics, celebrate synods, consecrate chrism, bless vestments and vessels.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  mess hall. She filled the house with plants, mothered Pearl, and insisted that all of us spend time together like a real family. And so we did. But our failure was ordained, because the real family we set out to imitate does not exist in nature; a real family as troubled as ours would never dream of spending time together. Dwight thought that most of these troubles were my fault. And a lot of them were. I screwed up constantly, even when I meant to do well. Every screwup was good for a scene, and this fight I’d gotten into with Arthur Gayle was going to be good for a big one. When the whistle blew at five o’clock Pearl went outside to wait for Dwight. * * * HE CAME STRAIGHT to my room. When the door opened behind me I stared at the homework on my desk and prepared a bland, innocent face. I turned and presented it to him. He was grinning. He crossed the room and sat on Skipper’s bed. Still grinning, he said, “Who won?” He had me tell the story again and again. Each time I told it he laughed and slapped his leg. I began by admitting, reluctantly, that I might have started the fight by calling Arthur a sissy; then, seeing how much pleasure it gave Dwight to hear this, I recalled that my actual words were “big fat sissy.” I told him I’d knocked Arthur down and I described his swollen eye. I allowed Dwight to think that I had kicked some very serious ass that day. “You actually gave him a black eye?” Dwight said. “Well, it wasn’t black yet” “But it was all puffed up?” I nodded. “Then it’s a shiner,” he said. “For sure.” I hedged the big question, the question of who had won. I let on that my victory had been less than decisive because Arthur had hit me in the ear when I wasn’t expecting it. “That was your fault,” Dwight told me. “You must have had your guard down.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  It was a craftsman’s pride, I suppose: I had worked hard to find the right poems for the students, choosing O’Hara for his subject matter but primarily for his joy, his freedom from guardedness and guilt, which would only have reinforced what many of my students already believed about that category or class of people of which I was a part. My satisfaction only deepened when G. continued, after our coffee arrived and we took a moment to add sugar and milk. You’re the only person I know who talks about it, who’s so public and who isn’t ashamed, he said; it’s good that you’re that way, it must be hard here. This was a kind of acknowledgment one hardly ever hears, and it recalled the sense of mission I had had when I first started teaching, which had faded so decisively since. And again this had the effect of increasing the distance between us, so that even as I saw he remained agitated, tense and anxious, that he was miserable with something he still had to say, I was suffused with a sense of accomplishment, a peculiar and sharp pleasure. I asked whether there was something else, besides the poems we had read, that made him want to talk to me now. I don’t know, he said, I just had to talk to someone, and he twisted his coffee cup slowly in circles as he spoke, the handle passing from one palm to the other. You don’t know what it’s like, he said, speaking my name, which startled me a little, I’m not sure why, making me feel again—just for a moment and like a kind of echo—how shocking it had been, years before, when my students first called me by my surname. It was so alien then, so little connected to who I was, though now it feels inevitable, the self I have become, perhaps, a diminished self, as it sometimes seems. You don’t know what it’s like, he went on, there’s no one I can talk to, it’s impossible here, and he catalogued for me the sources of comfort unavailable to him, his parents, his friends, the adults at school who, in the States, might have been turned to for support; and of course there were no public resources here, no community centers or networks he could seek out. What about online, I said, couldn’t you find people there, and he looked up at me sharply. Is that what you think I want, he asked, to meet someone online?

• From Story of O (1954)

  When she had finally finished, and had kept from her entire wardrobe only her blouses, all of which buttoned down the front, her black pleated skirt, her coats of course, and the suit she had worn home from Roissy, she went to prepare tea. She turned up the thermostat in the kitchen; the cleaning woman had not filled the wood basket for the living-room fire, and O knew that her lover liked to find her in the living room beside the fire when he arrived home in the evening. She filled the basket from the woodpile in the hallway closet, carried it back to the living-room fireplace, and lighted the fire. Thus she waited for him, curled up in a big easy chair, the tea tray beside her, waited for him to come home, but this time she waited, the way he had ordered her to, naked. The first difficulty O encountered was in her work. Difficulty is perhaps an exaggeration. Astonishment would be a better term. O worked in the fashion department of a photography agency. This meant that it was she who photographed, in the studios where they had to pose for hours on end, the most exotic and prettiest girls whom the fashion designers had chosen to model their creations. They were surprised that O had postponed her vacation until this late in the fall and had thus been away at a time of year when the fashion world was busiest, when the new collections were about to be presented. But that was nothing. What surprised them most was how changed she was. At first glance, they found it hard to say exactly what was changed about her, but none the less they felt it, and the more they observed her the more convinced they were. She stood and walked straighter, her eyes were clearer, but what was especially striking was her perfection when she was in repose, and how measured her gestures were. She had always been a conservative dresser, the way girls do whose work resembles that of men, but she was so skillful that she brought it off; and because the other girls—who constituted her subjects—were constantly concerned, both professionally and personally, with clothing and its adornments, they were quick to note what might have passed unperceived to eyes other than theirs. Sweaters worn right next to the skin, which gently molded the contours of the breasts—René had finally consented to the sweaters—pleated skirts so prone to swirling when she turned: O wore them so often it was a little as though they formed a discreet uniform. “Very little-girl-like,” one of the models said to her one day, a blond, green-eyed model with high Slavic cheekbones and the olive complexion that goes with it. “But you shouldn’t wear garters,” she added. “You’re going to ruin your legs.”