Relief

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 Fear of Flying (1973)

  Being told he was “psychotic” had given me a strange sense of relief. Here was a disease to be treated, a problem to be solved. Naming the thing made it less frightening. Also, it diminished my guilt. Insanity was no one’s fault. It was an act of God. There was something very comforting about that. All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness. We endured the afternoon together with Johann Sebastian Bach. “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast” quoth Congreve (who surely is in heaven playing cards with Mozart). When I think of all the bad times that Bach has helped me get through I’m sure he’s in heaven too. Dr. Steven Pearlmutter walked in at five—all apologies and sweaty palms. From then on our life was in the hands of the doctors and their smug little categories. My husband, Brian, Dr. Pearlmutter assured me, was “a very sick young man.” He was going to “try to help him.” He began by trying to give him a shot of Thorazine—at which point Brian bolted and ran down the back stairs (all thirteen floors) and into Riverside Park. The doctor and I chased him, found him, stopped him, cajoled him, watched him bolt again, chased him again, cajoled him again and so on. The rest of the details are as sordid as they are common. From then on hospitalization became inevitable. Brian was now completely panicked and his delusions became more and more colorful. The days that followed were nightmarish. Brian’s parents flew in from California and promptly declared that Brian was perfectly OK but that I was crazy. They tried to prevent him from taking any medication and they constantly made fun of the doctors (which, admittedly, wasn’t very hard to do). They urged him to leave me and come home to California—as if being away from me would automatically make him all better. Dr. Pearlmutter had referred Brian to a psychiatrist who tried for five gallant days to keep him out of the hospital. It was no use. Between Brian’s mother and father, Brian’s boss, the Miracle Foam people, Brian’s well-meaning former professors and the doctors, our lives were no longer our own. Brian was hounded by his would-be caretakers and each day he flipped out more. On the fifth morning after Dr. Pearlmutter’s visit, Brian took all his clothes off near Belvedere Tower in Central Park. Then he tried to climb on King Jagiello’s bronze horse along with bronze King Jagiello (crossed swords and all). The police finally took him to the psycho ward at Mount Sinai (sirens screaming, Thorazine flowing like wine), and except for a few weekend passes, we never lived together again. It took another eight months or so for our marriage to sputter out completely.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Nonhuman primates offer intriguing evidence of the “soft power of peace”—and not just horny bonobos, either. Frans de Waal and Denise Johanowicz devised an experiment to see what would happen when two different macaque species were placed together for five months. Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) are aggressive and violent, while stump-tails (Macaca arctoides) are known for their more chilled-out approach to life. The stump-tails, for example, make up after conflict by gripping each other’s hips, whereas reconciliations are rarely witnessed among rhesus monkeys. Once the two species were placed together, however, the scientists saw that the more peaceful, conciliatory behavior of the stump-tails dominated the more aggressive rhesus attitudes. Gradually, the rhesus monkeys relaxed. As de Waal recounts, “Juveniles of the two species played together, groomed together, and slept in large, mixed huddles. Most importantly, the rhesus monkeys developed peacemaking skills on a par with those of their more tolerant group mates.” Even when the experiment concluded, and the two species were once again housed only with their own kind, the rhesus monkeys were still three times more likely to reconcile after conflict and groom their rivals.22 A fluke? Neuroscientist/primatologist Robert Sapolsky has spent decades observing a group of baboons in Kenya, starting when he was a student in 1978. In the mid-1980s, a significant proportion of adult males in the group abruptly died of tuberculosis they’d picked up from infected food in a dump outside a tourist hotel. But the prized (albeit infected) dump food had been eaten only by the most belligerent baboons, who had driven away less aggressive males, females, or juveniles. Justice! With all the hard-ass males gone, the laid-back survivors were in charge. The defenseless troop was a treasure ready-made for pirates: a whole troop of females, sub-adults, and easily cowed males just waiting for some neighboring tough guys to waltz in and start raping and pillaging. Because male baboons leave their natal troop at adolescence, within a decade of the dump cataclysm, none of the original, atypically mellow males were still around. But, as Sapolsky reports, “the troop’s unique culture was being adopted by new males joining the troop.” In 2004, Sapolsky reported that two decades after the tuberculosis “tragedy,” the troop still showed higher-than-normal rates of males grooming and affiliating with females, an unusually relaxed dominance hierarchy, and physiological evidence of lower-than-normal anxiety levels among the normally stressed-out low-ranking males. Even more recently, Sapolsky told us that as of his most recent visit, in the summer of 2007, the troop’s unique culture appeared to be intact.23

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Cartoon in The New Yorker: Two cavemen are shown chatting, one of whom is saying, “Something’s just not right—our air is clean, our water is pure, we all get plenty of exercise, everything we eat is organic and free-range, and yet nobody lives past thirty.” Statistical distortions due to infanticide are not the only source of confusion concerning prehistoric longevity. As you might imagine, it’s not so easy to determine the age at death of a skeleton that’s been in the ground for thousands of years. For various technical reasons, archaeologists often underestimate the age at death. For example, archaeologists estimated the ages at death of skeletons taken from mission cemeteries in California. After the estimates had been made, written records of the actual ages at death were discovered. While the archaeologists had estimated that only about 5 percent had lived to age forty-five or beyond, the documents proved that seven times that many (37 percent) of the people buried in these cemeteries were over forty-five years of age when they died.10 If estimates can be so far off on skeletons just a few hundred years old, imagine the inaccuracies with remains that are tens of thousands of years old. One of the most reliable techniques archaeologists use to estimate age at death is dental eruption. They look at how far the molars have grown out of the jawbone, which indicates roughly how old a young adult was at death. But our “wisdom teeth” stop “erupting” in our early to mid-thirties, which means that archaeologists note the age at death of skeletons beyond this point as “35+.” This doesn’t mean that thirty-five was the age of death, but that the person was thirty-five or older. He or she may have been anywhere from thirty-five to one hundred years old. Nobody knows. Somewhere along the line this notation system was mistranslated in the popular press, leaving the impression that our ancient ancestors rarely made it past thirty-five. Big mistake. A wide range of data sources (including, even, the Old Testament) point to a typical human life span of anywhere from seventy (“three score and ten”) to over ninety years. In one study, scientists calibrated brain and body-weight ratios across different primates, arriving at an estimate of sixty-six to seventy-eight years for Homo sapiens.11 These numbers bear up under observation of modern-day foragers. Among the !Kung San, Hadza, and Aché (societies in Africa and South America), a female who lived to forty-five could be expected to survive another 20, 21.3, and 22.1 years, respectively.12 Among the !Kung San, most people who reached sixty could reasonably expect to live another ten years or so—active years of mobility and social contribution. Anthropologist Richard Lee reported that one in ten of the !Kung he encountered in his time in Botswana were over sixty years of age.13

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Do it with spirit, my girl." Beauty obeyed without hesitation, and as if it were water washing through her, she felt again that calm, that sense of what was it? Release? Resignation? "Nothing can save me," she thought. All the sounds about her mingled in a din. Her buttocks seemed to glow with pain, and she imagined a great light emanating from them. And then she was back on her feet, and another hard blow sent her crying into the dark cellar chamber of the castle. Slaves everywhere were thrown over barrels, their sore bodies being washed quickly with cool water. Beauty felt it flow over her abraded flesh, and then the soft toweling. At once, Leon had her on her feet. "You've pleased the Queen marvelously. Your form was magnificent. You were born for the Bridle Path." "But the Prince..." Beauty whispered. And she felt dizzy, and mistakenly envisioned Prince Alexi. "Not tonight for you, lovely one, he is quite busy with a thousand amusements. And you must be placed where you can serve and rest, as the exertion of the Bridle Path is quite enough in one night for a novice." He unfastened her braids and brushed out her hair in ripples. She was breathing deeply and evenly now and bent her forehead against his chest. "Was I truly graceful?" "Pricelessly beautiful," he whispered, "and Lady Juliana is thoroughly in love with you." But now he ordered her down on her knees and told her to follow him. She was suddenly out in the night again, on the warm grass with the noisy crowd all about her. She saw the table legs, the gathered gowns, hands moving in the shadows. There was a shriek of laughter nearby and then she saw before her a long banquet table covered with sweets, fruit and pastries. Two Princes attended it and decorative pillars stood at both ends to which slave girls were affixed, their hands above their heads, their feet chained slightly apart at the bottom. One of these was removed as Beauty approached and she was quickly fastened in the girl's place, standing firmly, her head and swollen buttocks pressed back against the pillar. She could see the whole feast around her, even with her lids lowered, and she felt herself quite firmly bound in place, unable to move, and it did not matter. The worst was over. Even when a passing Lord stopped to smile at her and pinch her nipples, she did not care. She was amazed to see the little brass bells had been taken away. She was so weary she hadn't noticed. Leon was still nearby, at her ear, and she was about to murmur some question as to how long she would be here, when quite distinctly in front of her she saw Prince Alexi. He was as beautiful as she had remembered, his auburn brown hair curling against the hollows of his handsome face, his soft brown eyes fixed on her.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  I hurried to her on my hands and knees and kissed her slippers. She took a white silk handkerchief and wiped my face. "'You please me very well,' she said. I was puzzled. What did Lord Gregory see in me that she did not see? "But I was too relieved to ponder this. Had she greeted me with anger, ordered more punishments and amusements, I would have wept with despair. As it was, she was all beauty and softness. She ordered me to undress her and to turn down her bed. I obeyed as well as I could. But she refused the silk dressing gown. "And for the first time, she stood behind me naked. "I had not been told I could look up. I was crouched at her feet. Then she said that I might look. As you can imagine, she was unspeakably lovely. She has a firm body, powerful somewhat, with shoulders just a little too strong for a woman, and long legs, but her breast were magnificent, and her sex was a gleaming nest of black hair. I found myself breathless. "'My Queen,' I whispered, and after I kissed her feet, I kissed her ankles. She did not protest. I kissed her knees. She did not protest. I kissed her thighs, and then impulsively I buried my face in that nest of perfumed hair, finding it hot, so hot, and she lifted me up until I was standing. She lifted my arms and I embraced her, and felt for the first time, her full womanly form, and also that no matter how strong and powerful she appeared, she was small next to me, and yielding. I moved to kiss her breasts, and she bid me silently do it, and I suckled them until she was sighing. They tasted so sweet, and they were so soft, yet plump at the same time and resistant to my respectful fingers. "She sank down on the bed, and I on my knees buried my face between her legs again. But she said she wanted my cock now and that I must not 'come' until she allowed it. "I moaned to show how difficult this would be out of love for her. But she lay back on her pillows, opening her legs, and I saw for the first time the pink lips there. "She pulled me down. I could not quite believe it when I felt the sheath of her hot vagina. It had been so long since I had felt such satisfaction with a woman. Not since I had been taken prisoner by her soldiers had I felt it. I struggled not to consummate my passion at once, and when she commenced to move her hips I thought surely I would lose the struggle. She was so wet and hot and tight and my penis ached from punishment.

• From Querelle (1953)

  31 I QUERELLE Querelle stood there with his mouth half-open, his palate a little dry. "No, sure, that's all right. I'll take care of all that." Mario was wearing a very plainly cut double-breasted maroon suit, with a red tie. Like Querelle and Nono (Norbert), he was drinking white wine, but like a true cop he seemed completely disinterested in their conversation. Querelle recognized the authority in the man's thighs and chest, the sobriety of move ment that endows a man with total power: this, again, stem ming from an undisputed moral authority, a perfect social organization, a gun, and the right to use it. Mario was one of the masters. Once more Querelle held out his hand, and then, turning up the collar of his peacoat, he headed for the back door: it was indeed better to leave through the small yard at the back of the house. "So long." Mario's voice, as we have observed, was loud and impassive. On hearing it, Querelle felt reassured in some strange way. As soon as he left the ho�se he compelled himself to be aware of hi s attire, his sailor's attributes: above all, of the stiff collar of the peacoat, which he felt protected his neck like armor. Within its seemingly massive enclosure he could feel how deli cate his neck was, yet strong and proud, and at the base of that neck, the tender bones of the nape, the perfect point of v ulner ability. Flexing his knees lightly he could feel them touching the fabric of his pants. Quereiie was stepping out like a true sailor who sees himself as one hundred per cent just that, a sailor. Rolling the shoulders, from left to right, but not exces sively. He thought of hitching the coat up a bit and putting his hands in the vertical front pockets, but changed his mind and instead raised a finger to his beret and pushed it to the back of his head, almost to the nape of his neck, so that its edge brushed against the upturned collar. Such tangible certainty of being every inch a sailor reassured him and calmed him down.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I don’t know why I didn’t just quit. I didn’t need the money. I was relieved when, at last, in June, Natasha called from Switzerland to fire me. I had messed up a shipment of press materials for Art Basel, apparently. “Out of curiosity, what are you on?” she wanted to know. “I’ve just been really tired.” “Is it a medical issue?” “No,” I said. I could have lied. I could have told her that I had mono, or some sleep disorder. Cancer maybe. Everybody was getting cancer. But defending myself was useless. I had no good reason to fight to keep my job. “Are you letting me go?” “I’d love it if you’d stay on until I get back and use the time to show Angelika the ropes, the filing system, whatever you’ve been doing on the computer, if anything.” I hung up the phone, took a handful of Benadryl, and went down to the supply closet and fell sleep. • • • OH, SLEEP. Nothing else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness. I was not a narcoleptic—I never fell asleep when I didn’t want to. I was more of a somniac. A somnophile. I’d always loved sleeping. It was one thing my mother and I had enjoyed doing together when I was a child. She was not the type to sit and watch me draw or read me books or play games or go for walks in the park or bake brownies. We got along best when we were asleep. When I was in the third grade, my mother, due to some unspoken conflict with my father, let me sleep with her in their bed because, as she said, it was easier to wake me up in the mornings if she didn’t have to get up and go across the hall. I accumulated thirty-seven tardies and twenty-four absences that year. Thirty-seven times, my mother and I woke up together, bleary and exhausted at seven A.M., tried to get up, but fell back into bed and slept on while cartoons flashed from the small television on her bedside table. We’d wake up a few hours later—shades drawn, extra pillows lying shipwrecked on the rough beige rug—dress in a daze and lurch out into the car. I remember her holding one eye open with one hand, steering with the other. I’ve often wondered what she was on that year, and if she’d been slipping me any of it. Twenty-four times we slept through the alarm, got up sometime past noon, and abandoned the thought of school altogether. I’d eat cereal and read or watch television all day. My mother would smoke cigarettes, talk on the phone, hide from the housekeeper, take a bottle of wine with her into the master bathroom, and draw a bubble bath and read Danielle Steel or Better Homes & Gardens.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Do you wish to get out?” asked Annushka. “Yes, I want a little air. It’s very hot in here.” And she opened the door. The driving snow and the wind rushed to meet her and struggled with her over the door. But she enjoyed the struggle. She opened the door and went out. The wind seemed as though lying in wait for her; with gleeful whistle it tried to snatch her up and bear her off, but she clung to the cold door post, and holding her skirt got down onto the platform and under the shelter of the carriages. The wind had been powerful on the steps, but on the platform, under the lee of the carriages, there was a lull. With enjoyment she drew deep breaths of the frozen, snowy air, and standing near the carriage looked about the platform and the lighted station. Chapter 30

• From Querelle (1953)

  It is one that can be seen functioning in everybody's consciousness, not only in those who have attained an awareness of their complexity. Nevertheless it should be pointed out that Querelle who needed to have all his resources at his disposal any given moment was thus obliged to rely more or less constantly on extracting them from his own inner contradictions. When Dede had told him about the fight.between the two brothers, gleefully dwelling on the insults Robert had been hurling at Querelle, Mario at once experienced a feeling of tremendous deliverance while not yet knowing from what it was he had been saved. It originated in a sudden and as yet hazy notion that Querelle had had something to do With the murder of the sailor called Vic. It was hazy, because the dominant feeling was one of relief, sweetness and light. Mario felt himself saved, by this single, far from lucid idea. Slowly, and taking this sense of salvation for his point of departure, he then established .. effective connections between that murder and what he thought he knew about homosexuals : if it were true that Nona had buggered him, then Querelle had to be a "queer." And that immediately made him a very plausible candidate for the murderer of that or any sailor. l\1ario's fantasies about Querelle were inaccurate, no doubt, yet they enabled him to discover the truth. Continuing his musings about Querelle and the murder, he immediately came up against the idea regarded as quite 142 I JEAN GENET certain by the police authorities-that Gil had committed both murders; for fear of betraying himself, he could not contradict it openly. Then he proceeded to establish his own conclusions, by methodical guesswork, and finally decided to give in to the lovely dance of hypotheses. He thought of Querelle in love with Vic, then killing him in a fit of jealous rage; or vice versa, Vic, overwhelmed by similar emotion, trying to kill Querelle and becoming his victim. Mario spent an entire day juggling these ideas, none of which were verifiable, but slowly becoming more and more certain of Querelle's guilt. Mario conjured up Querelle's face, pale despite its sailor's tan, pale and so similar to his brother's. That resemblance provoked a kind of charming confusion in �1ario's mind, a witches' cauldron of thoughts that were not to Querelle' s advantage. One evening, down by the old moat, the appearance of the two brothers made him feel ill �t ease in a way not dissimilar to Madame Lysiane's experience. Mario found he could take every one of Querelle's traits and effortlessly recombine them into a mental image of Robert's face. Slowly this image filled out and took the place of the face Mario was looking at. In the dark of the night, under the trees, Mario remained motionless for a few seconds. He was tom between the actual face he saw and the superimposed image.

• From Querelle (1953)

  I don't give a shit if you're lovers with Nono. It's none of my fucking business. You can do what you please with your asshole, but that's no reason to fly off the handle . . ." "Listen, Mario, so maybe I am buddies with Nono. And it is my business, right. So there was no call for you to give me that shit back there in the old bagnio.'' "I wasn't giving you shit. Just kidding, asking you if we could pretend I was Nono. So what does that mean, I ask you? And there wasn't anybody there, to hear what we were saying." - "So OK, there wasn't anybody there. But you got to realize it ain't no pleasure to listen to cracks like that. Like you said, I have the right to do what I please. That is nobody else's business, and I am big enough to take care of rr:.yself. You better get this thing straight, Mario. If you hadn't whipped out that blade, there's no way you could have beaten me." 201 I QUERELLE 0 0 0 They walked off · into the fog, side by side like brothers, isolated by the mist and by their low, almost confidential voices. They turned left, in the direction of the ramparts. Not only had Querelle lost his fear, but little by little Death, having so strangely abandoned him, returned to his body and strengthened it again with a flexible and unbreakable armor. "He11, come on, don't you bear a grudge now. \Vhat I said, I meant it to be a joke. Didn't mean no offense. Besides, I didn't fight as dirty as you n1ay think. I did pull that blade, but I could have shot you with my si.x-thirty-five. I had the right. I could have covered it up. But I didn't want to do it." Once again Querel]e knew it was a copper walking at his side. He felt very peaceful. "And Nono, don't you think I know that old sonofabitch? You ask him, some time. When I go to La Feria, I go there as a buddy, not as a cop. Make no mistake, I'm straight. Ain't no one going to tell you otherwise. If they do, don't believe 'em. Myself, I've never been up to any monkey business with boys, never, you hear me. Well, not that that's saying much. You're a Navy guy, old buddy, and we've seen what they can be up to! But I'm telling you, they're real tough guys nevertheless." .,Sure enough. And besides, it ain't all true what they say about Nono, either." Mario laughed, sounding very delighted, very young. He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and without saying anything offered one to Quere11e. "Oh, come on . . . !10 need to kid me . . " Querelle, too, laughed : . "Honest, I'm not trying to kid you . . . " "I told you, you're free to do whatever you feel like doing.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Mario strove to sound as much as possible like the tough guys with whom he liked to associate. They went outside. Querelle turned in the direction away from the city and walked a few steps in silence. It was dark. Beside him, perhaps half a step behind, l\1ario walked hands in pockets, his left clutching a crumpled handkerchief. · "How far we going?'' Querelle stopped� looked at him. "\Vhat is �t you want from me?" "As if you didn't know." "\Vhat proof have you got?" "Nona told me about it, what more do I need? And if you let Nona screw you, why should I act all coy about it?" Querelle felt the blood rush to his heart, from the very points of his fingertips. In the dark, he turned so pale he looked almost transparent : this cop was no cop. Querelle himself was neither a murderer nor a thief: there was no danger. He opened his mouth to burst into laughter. He restrained himself. An enor· mous sigh rose from his innards, up into his throat, to shut his mouth like a wad of cotton. He wanted to kiss Mario, give 196 I JEAN GENET himself to him, sing and shout: and he d.id all those things, but within himself, and in one second. "Oh, I see." He sounded hoarse. To himself, he sounded raucous. He turned away from Mario and took a few steps. He didn't want to be heard clearing his throat. He felt that the detective's excitement had to be good for something; it might provoke the unfolding of another drama just as necessary-perhaps even more so-as the one that had not taken ·place. It had to be the solemn musical accompaniment to the thunderstorm. Mario had appeared so determined, under such severe stress : and all the while had been thinking about a totally different matter. That meant that his true preoccupation with Querelle involved considerable tension. "No need to turn this into an expedition to the North Pole. If there are games you don't like to play, you just have to say so." "Yeah, that's right . . . " _

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He experienced the sensations of a man who has had a tooth out after suffering long from toothache. After a fearful agony and a sense of something huge, bigger than the head itself, being torn out of his jaw, the sufferer, hardly able to believe in his own good luck, feels all at once that what has so long poisoned his existence and enchained his attention, exists no longer, and that he can live and think again, and take interest in other things besides his tooth. This feeling Alexey Alexandrovitch was experiencing. The agony had been strange and terrible, but now it was over; he felt that he could live again and think of something other than his wife. “No honor, no heart, no religion; a corrupt woman. I always knew it and always saw it, though I tried to deceive myself to spare her,” he said to himself. And it actually seemed to him that he always had seen it: he recalled incidents of their past life, in which he had never seen anything wrong before—now these incidents proved clearly that she had always been a corrupt woman. “I made a mistake in linking my life to hers; but there was nothing wrong in my mistake, and so I cannot be unhappy. It’s not I that am to blame,” he told himself, “but she. But I have nothing to do with her. She does not exist for me....” Everything relating to her and her son, towards whom his sentiments were as much changed as towards her, ceased to interest him. The only thing that interested him now was the question of in what way he could best, with most propriety and comfort for himself, and thus with most justice, extricate himself from the mud with which she had spattered him in her fall, and then proceed along his path of active, honorable, and useful existence.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  And the doctor began scientifically explaining to the princess, as an exceptionally intelligent woman, the condition of the young princess, and concluded by insisting on the drinking of the waters, which were certainly harmless. At the question: Should they go abroad? the doctor plunged into deep meditation, as though resolving a weighty problem. Finally his decision was pronounced: they were to go abroad, but to put no faith in foreign quacks, and to apply to him in any need. It seemed as though some piece of good fortune had come to pass after the doctor had gone. The mother was much more cheerful when she went back to her daughter, and Kitty pretended to be more cheerful. She had often, almost always, to be pretending now. “Really, I’m quite well, mamma. But if you want to go abroad, let’s go!” she said, and trying to appear interested in the proposed tour, she began talking of the preparations for the journey. Chapter 2 Soon after the doctor, Dolly had arrived. She knew that there was to be a consultation that day, and though she was only just up after her confinement (she had another baby, a little girl, born at the end of the winter), though she had trouble and anxiety enough of her own, she had left her tiny baby and a sick child, to come and hear Kitty’s fate, which was to be decided that day. “Well, well?” she said, coming into the drawing-room, without taking off her hat. “You’re all in good spirits. Good news, then?” They tried to tell her what the doctor had said, but it appeared that though the doctor had talked distinctly enough and at great length, it was utterly impossible to report what he had said. The only point of interest was that it was settled they should go abroad.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  That was it. I was free. The real estate agent upstate sent a handwritten note the next day to say there’d been an offer on my parents’ house. “Ten K below asking, but you might as well. We’ll put it in stocks. Your phone seems to be out of order and has been for quite some time.” I took the letter with me on a walk in Central Park. The humidity carried in the warm wind mixed the sweat of the city and its dirt and grime with the heady fragrant lushness of the grass and trees. Things were alive. Life buzzed between each shade of green, from dark pines and supple ferns to lime green moss growing on a huge, dry gray rock. Honey locusts and ginkgos aflare in yellows. What was cowardly about the color yellow? Nothing. “What kind of bird is that?” I heard a child ask his young mother, pointing to a bird that looked like a psychedelic crow. Its feathers were iridescent black, a rainbow reflected in the gleaming darkness, eyes bright white and alive, vigilant. “A grackle,” the woman replied. I breathed and walked and sat on a bench and watched a bee circle the heads of a flock of passing teenagers. There was majesty and grace in the pace of the swaying branches of the willows. There was kindness. Pain is not the only touchstone for growth, I said to myself. My sleep had worked. I was soft and calm and felt things. This was good. This was my life now. I could survive without the house. I understood that it would soon be someone else’s store of memories, and that was beautiful. I could move on. I found a pay phone on Second Avenue. “OK,” I said into the realtor’s answering machine. “Sell it. And tell them to throw out whatever’s in the attic. I don’t need it. Just mail me whatever I have to sign.” Then I called Reva. She answered on the fourth ring, panting and tense. “I’m at the gym,” she said. “Can we talk later?” We never did. Eight ON SEPTEMBER 11, I went out and bought a new TV/VCR at Best Buy so I could record the news coverage of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers. Trevor was on a honeymoon in Barbados, I’d later learn, but Reva was lost. Reva was gone. I watched the videotape over and over to soothe myself that day.

• From Querelle (1953)

  201 I QUERELLE 0 0 0 They walked off· into the fog, side by side like brothers, isolated by the mist and by their low, almost confidential voices. They turned left, in the direction of the ramparts. Not only had Querelle lost his fear, but little by little Death, having so strangely abandoned him, returned to his body and strength ened it again with a flexible and unbreakable armor. "He11, come on, don't you bear a grudge now. \Vhat I said, I me ant it to be a joke. Didn't mean no offense. Besides, I didn't fight as dirty as you n1ay think. I did pull that blade, but I could have shot you with my si.x-thirty-five. I had the right. I could have covered it up. But I didn't want to do it." Onc e again Querel]e knew it was a copper walking at his side. He felt very peaceful. "And Nono, don't you think I know that old sonofabitch? You ask him, some time. When I go to La Feria, I go there as a buddy, not as a cop. Make no mistake, I'm straight. Ain't no one going to tell you otherwise. If they do, don't believe 'em. Myself, I've never been up to any monkey business with boys, never, you hear me. Well, not that that's saying much. You're a Navy guy, old buddy, and we've seen what they can be up to! But I'm telling you, they're real tough guys nevertheless." . ,Sure enough. And besides, it ain't all true what th ey say about Nono, either." Mario laughed, sounding very delighted, very young. He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and without saying any th ing offered one to Quere11e. "Oh, come on ... !10 need to kid me . . " Querelle, too, laughed : . "Honest, I'm not trying to kid you ... " "I told you, you're free to do whatever you feel like doing. I've been around, you don't have to pretend with me. Your brother, now, th at's a differen t story. He's into the girls, he

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  In the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and towards evening he reached home. On the journey in the train he talked to his neighbors about politics and the new railways, and, just as in Moscow, he was overcome by a sense of confusion of ideas, dissatisfaction with himself, shame of something or other. But when he got out at his own station, when he saw his one-eyed coachman, Ignat, with the collar of his coat turned up; when, in the dim light reflected by the station fires, he saw his own sledge, his own horses with their tails tied up, in their harness trimmed with rings and tassels; when the coachman Ignat, as he put in his luggage, told him the village news, that the contractor had arrived, and that Pava had calved,—he felt that little by little the confusion was clearing up, and the shame and self-dissatisfaction were passing away. He felt this at the mere sight of Ignat and the horses; but when he had put on the sheepskin brought for him, had sat down wrapped up in the sledge, and had driven off pondering on the work that lay before him in the village, and staring at the side-horse, that had been his saddle-horse, past his prime now, but a spirited beast from the Don, he began to see what had happened to him in quite a different light. He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. In the first place he resolved that from that day he would give up hoping for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and consequently he would not so disdain what he really had. Secondly, he would never again let himself give way to low passion, the memory of which had so tortured him when he had been making up his mind to make an offer. Then remembering his brother Nikolay, he resolved to himself that he would never allow himself to forget him, that he would follow him up, and not lose sight of him, so as to be ready to help when things should go ill with him. And that would be soon, he felt. Then, too, his brother’s talk of communism, which he had treated so lightly at the time, now made him think. He considered a revolution in economic conditions nonsense. But he always felt the injustice of his own abundance in comparison with the poverty of the peasants, and now he determined that so as to feel quite in the right, though he had worked hard and lived by no means luxuriously before, he would now work still harder, and would allow himself even less luxury. And all this seemed to him so easy a conquest over himself that he spent the whole drive in the pleasantest daydreams. With a resolute feeling of hope in a new, better life, he reached home before nine o’clock at night.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Oh, a great deal! And I know that he’s her favorite; still one can see how chivalrous he is.... Well, for instance, she told me that he had wanted to give up all his property to his brother, that he had done something extraordinary when he was quite a child, saved a woman out of the water. He’s a hero, in fact,” said Anna, smiling and recollecting the two hundred roubles he had given at the station. But she did not tell Kitty about the two hundred roubles. For some reason it was disagreeable to her to think of it. She felt that there was something that had to do with her in it, and something that ought not to have been. “She pressed me very much to go and see her,” Anna went on; “and I shall be glad to go to see her tomorrow. Stiva is staying a long while in Dolly’s room, thank God,” Anna added, changing the subject, and getting up, Kitty fancied, displeased with something. “No, I’m first! No, I!” screamed the children, who had finished tea, running up to their Aunt Anna. “All together,” said Anna, and she ran laughing to meet them, and embraced and swung round all the throng of swarming children, shrieking with delight. Chapter 21 Dolly came out of her room to the tea of the grown-up people. Stepan Arkadyevitch did not come out. He must have left his wife’s room by the other door. “I am afraid you’ll be cold upstairs,” observed Dolly, addressing Anna; “I want to move you downstairs, and we shall be nearer.” “Oh, please, don’t trouble about me,” answered Anna, looking intently into Dolly’s face, trying to make out whether there had been a reconciliation or not. “It will be lighter for you here,” answered her sister-in-law. “I assure you that I sleep everywhere, and always like a marmot.” “What’s the question?” inquired Stepan Arkadyevitch, coming out of his room and addressing his wife. From his tone both Kitty and Anna knew that a reconciliation had taken place. “I want to move Anna downstairs, but we must hang up blinds. No one knows how to do it; I must see to it myself,” answered Dolly addressing him. “God knows whether they are fully reconciled,” thought Anna, hearing her tone, cold and composed. “Oh, nonsense, Dolly, always making difficulties,” answered her husband. “Come, I’ll do it all, if you like....” “Yes, they must be reconciled,” thought Anna. “I know how you do everything,” answered Dolly. “You tell Matvey to do what can’t be done, and go away yourself, leaving him to make a muddle of everything,” and her habitual, mocking smile curved the corners of Dolly’s lips as she spoke. “Full, full reconciliation, full,” thought Anna; “thank God!” and rejoicing that she was the cause of it, she went up to Dolly and kissed her.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The position seemed hopeless. But in the Oblonskys’ household, as in all families indeed, there was one inconspicuous but most valuable and useful person, Marya Philimonovna. She soothed her mistress, assured her that everything would _come round_ (it was her expression, and Matvey had borrowed it from her), and without fuss or hurry proceeded to set to work herself. She had immediately made friends with the bailiff’s wife, and on the very first day she drank tea with her and the bailiff under the acacias, and reviewed all the circumstances of the position. Very soon Marya Philimonovna had established her club, so to say, under the acacias, and there it was, in this club, consisting of the bailiff’s wife, the village elder, and the counting-house clerk, that the difficulties of existence were gradually smoothed away, and in a week’s time everything actually had come round. The roof was mended, a kitchen maid was found—a crony of the village elder’s—hens were bought, the cows began giving milk, the garden hedge was stopped up with stakes, the carpenter made a mangle, hooks were put in the cupboards, and they ceased to burst open spontaneously, and an ironing-board covered with army cloth was placed across from the arm of a chair to the chest of drawers, and there was a smell of flatirons in the maids’ room. “Just see, now, and you were quite in despair,” said Marya Philimonovna, pointing to the ironing-board. They even rigged up a bathing-shed of straw hurdles. Lily began to bathe, and Darya Alexandrovna began to realize, if only in part, her expectations, if not of a peaceful, at least of a comfortable, life in the country. Peaceful with six children Darya Alexandrovna could not be. One would fall ill, another might easily become so, a third would be without something necessary, a fourth would show symptoms of a bad disposition, and so on. Rare indeed were the brief periods of peace. But these cares and anxieties were for Darya Alexandrovna the sole happiness possible. Had it not been for them, she would have been left alone to brood over her husband who did not love her. And besides, hard though it was for the mother to bear the dread of illness, the illnesses themselves, and the grief of seeing signs of evil propensities in her children—the children themselves were even now repaying her in small joys for her sufferings. Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Slowly I drove downhill, and presently found myself going at the same lazy pace in a direction opposite to Parkington. I had left my raincoat in the boudoir and Chum in the bathroom. No, it was not a house I would have liked to live in. I wondered idly if some surgeon of genius might not alter his own career, and perhaps the whole destiny of mankind, by reviving quilted Quilty, Clare Obscure. Not that I cared; on the whole I wished to forget the whole mess—and when I did learn he was dead, the only satisfaction it gave me, was the relief of knowing I need not mentally accompany for months a painful and disgusting convalescence interrupted by all kinds of unmentionable operations and relapses, and perhaps an actual visit from him, with trouble on my part to rationalize him as not being a ghost. Thomas had something. It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moments our main, if not only, handle to reality. I was all covered with Quilty—with the feel of that tumble before the bleeding. The road now stretched across open country, and it occurred to me—not by way of protest, not as a symbol, or anything like that, but merely as a novel experience—that since I had disregarded all laws of humanity, I might as well disregard the rules of traffic. So I crossed to the left side of the highway and checked the feeling, and the feeling was good. It was a pleasant diaphragmal melting, with elements of diffused tactility, all this enhanced by the thought that nothing could be nearer to the elimination of basic physical laws than deliberately driving on the wrong side of the road. In a way, it was a very spiritual itch. Gently, dreamily, not exceeding twenty miles an hour, I drove on that queer mirror side. Traffic was light. Cars that now and then passed me on the side I had abandoned to them, honked at me brutally. Cars coming towards me wobbled, swerved, and cried out in fear. Presently I found myself approaching populated places. Passing through a red light was like a sip of forbidden Burgundy when I was a child. Meanwhile complications were arising. I was being followed and escorted.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  About the bookChristopher Ryan and Dan Savage in ConversationThe following is heavily edited from two Savage Love podcasts recorded with Dan Savage in 2010 as well as an unpublished conversation. The full, unedited, raunchy, NSFW podcast recordings can be found (free) at the iTunes store or at www.thestranger.com. Episode 194 was broadcast on July 6, and episode 210 on October 27. Dan Savage is the best-known sex advice columnist in the United States. His podcast and syndicated column reach millions of readers weekly. Dan Savage: You know how every once in a while you see a movie or you read a book or an article in a magazine—or perhaps some advice in an advice column—and you think, “Oh my god, I’m not crazy!”? I’ve just had that experience reading your book. I don’t know how to start this interview with you but by gushing. I understand that you’re married to a woman, but where have you been all my life? Christopher Ryan: (laughing) I’ve been trying to get your attention for the past couple of years! DS: I’ve been reading your book and screaming and yelling and jumping up and down. I feel so vindicated by the research that you guys have done because for years, I’ve been pointing out just from observation and anecdotal evidence that monogamy is hard, doesn’t work, and makes people kind of miserable. And yet we’re told it should come easily and naturally when we’re in love, that a monogamous commitment is effortless where there’s love. And you guys have demonstrated that this is simply not true. CR: That’s our conclusion. DS: What inspired you to write this book, to paint this bull’s-eye on your backs? Because you are going to get criticized from all sides. CR: I guess what got me into this line of thinking initially was the Clinton-Lewinsky situation. I was thinking, How is it possible that if men have had all the power—political, economic, even physical power—since the beginning of time, how is it that the most powerful man in the world is being publicly humiliated for having a consensual sexual relationship with someone? It just didn’t make sense. So that led me to investigate evolutionary psychology. For the first year or so, I had the passion of the convert. I thought it explained everything. Luckily, at the time, I was living in San Francisco, working for a nonprofit organization called Women in Community Service. I was one of the only men working there. Consequently, I had lots of very intelligent, outspoken women around me who helped me see that the depiction of female sexuality that is fundamental to evolutionary psychology really doesn’t make much sense at all. DS: And what is the picture painted of female sexuality? You say in the book that “women are whores”—that’s what they’re telling us.