Remorse

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 Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  What were they concealing? Yet when they passed us in the street they were always very cordial, always smiled, always spoke in English and a most excellent English it was. They used to make us feel rather ashamed of ourselves—they were superior, that’s what it was. And there was still another baffling thing—with the other boys a direct question brought a direct answer, but with Claude de Lorraine there was never any direct answer. He always smiled very charmingly before replying and he was very cool, collected, employing an irony and a mockery which was beyond us. He was a thorn in our side, Claude de Lorraine, and when finally he moved out of the neighborhood we all breathed a sigh of relief. As for myself, it was only maybe ten or fifteen years later that I thought about this boy and his strange, elegant behavior. And it was then that I felt I had made a bad blunder. For suddenly one day it occurred to me that Claude de Lorraine had come up to me on a certain occasion obviously to win my friendship and I had treated him rather cavalierly. At the time I thought of this incident it suddenly dawned on me that Claude de Lorraine must have seen something different in me and that he had meant to honor me by extending the hand of friendship. But back in those days I had a code of honor, such as it was, and that was to run with the herd. Had I become a bosom friend of Claude de Lorraine I would have been betraying the other boys. No matter what advantages lay in the wake of such a friendship they were not for me; I was one of the gang and it was my duty to remain aloof from such as Claude de Lorraine. I remembered this incident once again, I must say, after a still greater interval—after I had been in France a few months and the word raisonnable had come to acquire a wholly new significance for me. Suddenly one day, overhearing it, I thought of Claude de Lorraine’s overtures on the street in front of his house. I recalled vividly that he had used the word reasonable . He had probably asked me to be reasonable , a word which then would never have crossed my lips as there was no need for it in my vocabulary. It was a word, like gentleman, which was rarely brought out and then only with great discretion and circumspection. It was a word which might cause others to laugh at you. There were lots of words like that—really , for example. No one I knew had ever used the word really —until Jack Lawson came along. He used it because his parents were English and, though we made fun of him, we forgave him for it. Really was a word which reminded me immediately of little Carl Ragner from the old neighborhood.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  In the fi rst sequence, a rabbi repents of literal harlotry; in the second, a gentile repents of meta phorical harlotry. Th e exe- cutioner leaps into the fi re, where he is consumed with the rabbi. A heav- enly voice announces that the executioner has been admitted to eternal life, ROMANCE IN THE LATE CLASSICAL WORLD  and again we hear the reaction of Rabbi, in identical words, that one may earn salvation in a single, wrenching moment of heartfelt repentance.  After the death of Haninah comes his daughter’s escape from the brothel, and this episode is surely to be read in light of all that has preceded it in this intricate, contrapuntal structure. Th e arrangement suggests two insights. First, harlotry is a meta phor for idolatry. Second, in the parallel episode, the rabbis learn that the Torah will save them from iniquity. When Rabbi Meir comes to test the chastity of his sister- in- law, she tells him that the “manner of women is upon her.” Obviously this ruse compares to the epileptic fi ts or fi ctitious diseases of the other heroines— the “devices of virtue” that are the heroine’s only defense. But this device is something more specifi c, more resonant. Th e virgin tells her prospective customer that she is menstruating. She evades him, in other words, by trying to observe niddah, the ritual sepa- ration of a woman commanded by the Torah. Elsewhere in the Talmudim, women use this prohibition to their advantage, even postponing the mikveh to avoid sex. Th e daughter of Haninah here uses her claim to ritual impurity as her device of virtue. She obeys the Torah, and just as the Torah came to the rescue of the rabbis walking past the brothel, the Torah will watch over her, in the brothel. Rabbi Meir is convinced of her purity, and he eff ects her release. Th e Bavli this time does not proclaim openly that the Torah will protect its adherents— perhaps because its parchment has been symboli- cally burned— but it is effi cacious nonetheless. Th is story ends with a twist. Rabbi Meir rescues his sister- in- law, and then the Romans begin to hunt for him. Walking down the street, he met Romans in hot pursuit. With nowhere else to escape, the Talmud reports, he darted into a nearby brothel, because no one would suspect Rabbi Meir of entering a brothel.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  IN THE COLORFUL trea sury of monastic tales known as Th e Spiritual Meadow, written down sometime around AD 600, we meet two brothers fol- lowing the ascetic life who have sworn never to be separated from each other. One of them sensed himself falling victim to the lures of the fl esh and asked his partner to release him from their oath of spiritual camaraderie. “I am being dragged into fornication, and I want to return to the world.” His brother would not release him from their bond but instead accompanied him “into the city,” standing right outside the door of the “den of fornica- tion.” After his assignation, the fallen brother refused to return to the des- ert; “I will remain in the world.” Still his faithful companion refused to depart from him, and so they continued living in the city, Jerusalem, earn- ing wages as day laborers, the one brother living in complete abandonment, the other in continual penance for his brother’s sins. Eventually the sinner was brought to repent of his transgressions and asked his holy brother, in contrition, to take him back “into the wilderness, so that I may be saved.” Th ey took up residence in a cave, where they would live out their days in fulfi llment of their oath. In this moralizing vignette we see, through the CONCLUSION Sex and the Twilight of Antiquity  FROM SHAME TO SIN eyes of monks, the lines between sexual sin and bodily restraint laid out across the landscape. Th e “world,” the “city,” was virtually synonymous with the submission to the fl esh. Th e wilderness, in its barren, craggy recesses, was a retreat from the corruption of the civilized order. In the stark fi gures of monastic imagination, the world remained, as ever, in the grip of demonic eros.  By the time John Moschus composed Th e Spiritual Meadow, it has become harder for us to see the “world” from the inside than from the distant and stilted view of monastic retreat. Such a perspective makes us wonder to what extent the eff ort to reform the sexual habits of the ancient city had, simply, failed to take more than superfi cially.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  The sedimentation of ascetic energy into monastic rules and institutions is, to be sure, one legacy of Christian sexual morality. But this is only one trajectory in the tumultuous final centuries of late antiquity. Around the time the two ascetics of the Spiritual Meadow left the civilized “world” to escape its temptations, a man in the Frankish territories of northern Gaul was succumbing to the power of eros. In the telling of Gregory of Tours, this man, a priest, was “much too attached to the life of luxury, a lover of women, abandoned to gluttony, fornication, and every iniquity.” He eventually fell in love with a certain woman and “often copulated with her, in the manner of a whore.” He cropped her hair, dressed her as a man, and led her to another town where they could live “without suspicion of adultery.” But she was “a freeborn woman, descended from honorable stock. When, after some time, her relations discovered what had passed, they rushed forth to avenge the dishonor brought upon their line. They found the priest and clamped him in irons, but the woman they flayed alive.” A bishop named Aetherius pitied the priest and ransomed him from their custody, employing him in the cathedral school and sponsoring his moral rehabilitation. But like a “dog to his vomit,” the priest returned to his sin and tried to seduce the mother of a boy under his tutelage. She, “being a woman of sexual modesty,” informed her husband, whose clan promptly subjected the priest “to excruciating torments” and would have killed him but for the intervention once more of the compassionate bishop. Such tales thrust us into a world that is far less familiar than the settled landscape of cities and ascetic retreats of the eastern Mediterranean. What is so conspicuously absent from the dramas reported by Gregory of Tours is any strong sense of the state, of a public power that acts as the communal arbiter of legitimate violence in the sexual arena. To be sure, private force had always played a role in the mechanics of sexual regulation, but only within the terms established by the public authorities, whose criminalization of adultery was the foundation of an ancient political economy of sex. In Gregory’s world, those authorities have lost a little of their precarious hold on the circulation of sexual honor.5

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

  AUGUSTINE. (de Cons. Ev. lib. ii. c. 79.) For I think we must understand that the same Mary did this twice, once indeed as Luke has related, when at first coming with humility and weeping, she was thought worthy to receive forgiveness of sins. Hence John, when he began to speak of the resurrection of Lazarus, before he came to Bethany, says, But it was Mary who anointed our Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. (John 11:2.) Mary therefore had already done this; but what she again did in Bethany is another occurrence, which belongs not to the relation of Luke, but is equally told by the other three. GREGORY. (in Hom. 33. in Evang.) Now in a mystical sense the Pharisee, presuming upon his pretended righteousness, is the Jewish people; the woman who was a sinner, but who came and wept at our Lord’s feet, represents the conversion of the Gentiles. AMBROSE. Or, the leper, is the prince of this world; the house of Simon the leper, is the earth. The Lord therefore descended from the higher parts to this earth; for this woman could not have been healed, who bears the figure of a soul or the Church, had not Christ come upon earth. But rightly does she receive the figure of a sinner, for Christ also took the form of a sinner. If then thou makest thy soul approach in faith to God, it not with foul and shameful sins, but piously obeying the word of God, and in the confidence of unspotted purity, ascends to the very head of Christ. But the head of Christ is God. (1 Cor. 11:3.) But let him who holds not the head of Christ, hold the feet, the sinner at the feet, the just at the head; nevertheless she also who sinned, has ointment. GREGORY. (ubi sup.) What else is expressed by the ointment, but the sweet savour of a good report? If then we do good works by which we may sprinkle the Church with the sweet odour of a good report, what else do we but pour ointment upon the body of our Lord? But the woman stood by His feet, for we stood over against the feet of the Lord, when yet in our sins we resisted His ways. But if we are converted from our sins to true repentance, we now again stand by His feet, for we follow His footsteps whom we before opposed.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  But they hadn’t always, had they? At the beginning, hadn’t she loved his casual way of cutting through what wasn’t important, to find the core of what was? The melancholy that settled over her, she couldn’t entirely blame on the wine, either. “Ethan, I—” “Bella, I—” They spoke at the same time, stopped, laughed, this time with hesitance. The easy humor from supper was gone. “Ladies first,” he said. She fortified herself with a sip of hot coffee, then cradled the mug in her hands, forcing herself to look at Ethan rather than down. “I…I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.” She hadn’t known exactly what she’d wanted to say until now, yet now it was very clear what she needed to say. “The affair. It was stupid. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t care about it. I just reacted badly to you confiding in someone other than me.” They weren’t sitting close, but when he shifted to face her more fully, his knee was an inch from her thigh. They both stared at the tiny gap for a moment. “I thought it was because I’d failed,” he said finally. “What?” “I thought you had the affair because I’d failed. I know you were making enough for us to get by, but I couldn’t handle not contributing.” He shook his head. “I’d lie awake at nights, stressing about money, wondering how you could stay with someone who wasn’t good enough to provide. So when you…” “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “I pulled away because you pulled away. You wouldn’t let me in, and it hurt so bad when you shared what you were feeling with someone else instead of me. Like I wasn’t important enough to you to confide in, to give you support.” “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have shut you out. I didn’t even realize I was doing it.” She set her mug down. “We’re a pair of fucking idiots.” He snorted. “No, I mean it,” she said. “Why didn’t we talk about this then?” “We were too busy blaming,” he said. “As I recall, there was a fair bit of shouting, too.” She saw him hesitate, guessed what he wanted to do. Prayed he would. And he did, taking her hands in his. “The blissful haze of memory,” he said. “We’re both way too stubborn. You’d think the marriage counselor could have gotten this conversation out of us, but no…” She freed one hand and picked up her coffee. The caffeine wasn’t helping the dizzy rush in her head from the wine and the conversation. “Do you remember,” Ethan said, “the first night we stayed here?” “You mean when we couldn’t even make it to the bedroom?” He nodded. His eyes never leaving hers, he took the mug from her hand and set it back on the table. She didn’t let him lean all the way in to kiss her. She met him halfway.

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

  13. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. 14. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. 15. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. 16. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. AMBROSE. St. Luke has given three parables successively; the sheep which was lost and found, the piece of silver which was lost and found, the son who was dead and came to life again, in order that invited by a threefold remedy, we might heal our wounds. Christ as the Shepherd bears thee on His own body, the Church as the woman seeks for thee, God as the Father receives thee, the first, pity, the second, intercession, the third, reconciliation. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. de Patre et duobus Filiis.) There is also in the above-mentioned parable a rule of distinction with reference to the characters or dispositions of the sinners. The father receives his penitent son, exercising the freedom of his will, so as to know from whence he had fallen; and the shepherd seeks for the sheep that wanders and knows not how to return, and carries it on his shoulders, comparing to an irrational animal the foolish man, who, taken by another’s guile, had wandered like a sheep. This parable is then set forth as follows; But he said, A certain man had two sons. There are some who say of these two sons, that the elder is the angels, but the younger, man, who departed on a long journey, when he fell from heaven and paradise to earth; and they adapt what follows with reference to the fall or condition of Adam. This interpretation seems indeed a lenient one, but I know not if it be true. For the younger son came to repentance of his own accord, remembering the past plenty of his father’s house, but the Lord coming called the race of man to repentance, because he saw that to return of their own accord to whence they had fallen had never been in their thoughts; and the elder son is vexed at the return and safety of his brother, whereas the Lord says, There is joy in heaven over one sinner repenting. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. But some say that by the elder son is signified Israel according to the flesh, but by the other who left his father, the multitude of the Gentiles.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I had wondered if Duffy and I would still recognize each other. Of course we did. He spotted me the moment he walked into the restaurant. I stood up as he approached the booth. “Jess.” He shook my hand. His eyes immediately filled with tears. “Jess, Pve waited years to tell you how sorry I am.” “Tt’s alright, Duffy. I know you didn’t do it on purpose. It was just a mistake.” Duffy dipped his head. “Can I have another chance?” I laughed. “You haven’t used up your chances Duffy dropped his eyes. “TI think in all the years I’ve organized it might have been the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. And all I could think about was what I'd cost you. I would have done anything to make yet yout life easier, Jess. And I screwed up so bad. ?m sorry.” I smiled. “You know, Duffy, there’s this person I love named Ruth. She’s different like I am. One time I got beat up and she called me in sick to work and she did the same damn thing. I know I was real mad at you at the time. But even then I knew you were always on my side. There weren’t that many people I could count on to stand with me, but I always knew you were one of them. Hey, how about the mistakes I made that you let slide?” Duffy smiled and chewed his lip. “Thanks, Jess. You let me off real easy.” I laughed. “Well, you’ve always been a good friend.” He blushed. “Sit down, Duffy.” We caught up quick by painting our lives in broad strokes. “Got red-baited out of the bindery where we used to work,” Duffy explained. “I got kind of burned out, drank too much. Then I quit drinking and got that job organizing, and I’m still working for the same union.” I told him I’d stopped taking hormones and moved to New York City and now I was a typesetter. “Nonunion?” he asked. I nodded. “Yeah. When the computers came on the scene, the owners could see first how it was going to transform the old hot-lead industry. So they hired all the people the old craft union didn’t realize were important to organize. That’s how they broke the back of Local 6.” He looked right at me in a way that made me uncomfortable. “It’s been real hard for you, Jess, hasn’t it?” I shrugged and nodded. “It shows in your face,” he said. “You look less scared but more hurt.” Strange, him knowing me like that. I changed the subject. “Something incredible happened to me today, Duffy. I got up in front of a rally and talked over a microphone. I wanted to tell them how it was in the plants, how when a contract’s almost up management works overtime trying to divide everybody. I didn’t know if they’d get what I meant if I said it took the whole membership to win the strike.”

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  My parents spoil me, I’ve got money, and now I’ve got a way I can get food without having to work for it —and I still get my break.” I had so many customers I was turning kids away. I had a rule: I would take five orders a day, high bidders only. I’d make so much that I could buy my lunch using other kids’ money and keep the lunch money my mom gave me for pocket cash. Then I could afford to catch a bus home instead of walking or save up to buy whatever. Every day I’d take orders, assembly would end, and I’d make my mad dash and buy everybody’s hot dogs and Cokes and muffins. If you paid me extra you could even tell me where you’d be and I’d deliver it to you. I’d found my niche. Since I belonged to no group I learned to move seamlessly between groups. I floated. I was a chameleon, still, a cultural chameleon. I learned how to blend. I could play sports with the jocks. I could talk computers with the nerds. I could jump in the circle and dance with the township kids. I popped around to everyone, working, chatting, telling jokes, making deliveries. I was like a weed dealer, but of food. The weed guy is always welcome at the party. He’s not a part of the circle, but he’s invited into the circle temporarily because of what he can offer. That’s who I was. Always an outsider. As the outsider, you can retreat into a shell, be anonymous, be invisible. Or you can go the other way. You protect yourself by opening up. You don’t ask to be accepted for everything you are, just the one part of yourself that you’re willing to share. For me it was humor. I learned that even though I didn’t belong to one group, I could be a part of any group that was laughing. I’d drop in, pass out the snacks, tell a few jokes. I’d perform for them. I’d catch a bit of their conversation, learn more about their group, and then leave. I never overstayed my welcome. I wasn’t popular, but I wasn’t an outcast. I was everywhere with everybody, and at the same time I was all by myself. I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done in life, any choice that I’ve made. But I’m consumed with regret for the things I didn’t do, the choices I didn’t make, the things I didn’t say. We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. “What if...” “If only...” “I wonder what would have...”

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Milli came home within hours. She left the apartment door open as she stormed up to me. I must have sensed what was coming because I buried my hands deep inside my pockets. She slapped me hard actoss my face. “T’m sorry,” was all I could say. I really, really meant it. “T’ll bet you are,” Milli said. Her voice was cruel and cold because she was hurting too. “Did you get to see everything you wanted?” “I’m sorry, baby,’ I tried to explain. “I didn’t go there to hurt you. I wanted to start over. I made a mistake.” “You sure did,” she said, but her voice was quieter. She looked at me quizzically. “What were you thinking of?” Then she stopped being angry for a moment. “How did you feel when you walked in there, Jess? Did it hurt you?” “It’s funny,” I said. “I sort of felt closer to you right then. And I was thinking about how brave you all are.” “Braver” Milli narrowed her eyes. “Yeah. I don’t think I could be strong enough to fight without my clothes on.” Milli stood and looked at me without speaking, Then she went into out bedroom and started throwing clothing into a suitcase. I didn’t move from where I stood. When she came out, she acted like she was looking around for whatever else she wanted to take, but I knew she was stalling. “Ts there anything I can say?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Milli softened her expression and came closer. “T’m sorry, baby.” I told her as the tears streamed down my face. She came into my arms for the last time. “T know I made a big mistake tonight, Milli. ’m sorry I hurt you.” She shook her head and took my face in her hands. “It was a mistake. But that’s all it was. Pve made some pretty big ones with you. That’s not why I’m leaving.” She went over to her suitcase and took out the porcelain kitten she’d left home with fifteen years before and put it down on the coffee table near me. She came back and put one hand on my cheek. “T just don’t think it’s going to be much different than it is, not for now anyway,” she explained. “I want to leave before we break everything,” Milli brushed my cheek with her lips, and then she walked through that open door. She was gone. I sat down on the couch and cried because I just didn’t know what else to do. I jumped up and ran downstairs and outside, but she was already gone. Besides, I didn’t know how to change everything back to the way it had been.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  Once this kid was beat to shit, Abel dragged him over to the car and held him up in front of me. “Say you’re sorry.” The kid was whimpering, trembling. He looked me in the eye, and I had never seen fear in someone’s eyes like I saw in his. He’d been beaten by a stranger in a way I don’t think he’d ever been beaten before. He said he was sorry, but it was like his apology wasn’t for what he’d done to me. It was like he was sorry for every bad thing he’d ever done in his life, because he didn’t know there could be a punishment like this. Looking in that boy’s eyes, I realized how much he and I had in common. He was a kid. I was a kid. He was crying. I was crying. He was a colored boy in South Africa, taught how to hate and how to hate himself. Who had bullied him that he needed to bully me? He’d made me feel fear, and to get my revenge I’d unleashed my own hell on his world. But I knew I’d done a terrible thing. Once the kid apologized, Abel shoved him away and kicked him. “Go.” The kid ran off, and we drove back to the house in silence. At home Abel and my mom got in a huge fight. She was always on him about his temper. “You can’t go around hitting other people’s children! You’re not the law! This anger, this is no way to live!” A couple of hours later this kid’s dad drove over to our house to confront Abel. Abel went out to the gate, and I watched from inside the house. By that point Abel was truly drunk. This kid’s dad had no idea what he was walking into. He was some mild-mannered, middle- aged guy. I don’t remember much about him, because I was watching Abel the whole time. I never took my eyes off him. I knew that’s where the danger was. Abel didn’t have a gun yet; he bought that later. But Abel didn’t need a gun to put the fear of God in you. I watched as he got right in this guy’s face. I couldn’t hear what the other man was saying, but I heard Abel. “Don’t fuck with me. I will kill you.” The guy turned quickly and got back in his car and drove away. He thought he was coming to defend the honor of his family. He left happy to escape with his life. When I was growing up, my mom spent a lot of time trying to teach me about women. She was always giving me lessons, little talks, pieces of advice. It was never a full-blown, sit-down lecture about relationships.

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

  Objection 3: Further, “Satisfaction,” as Anselm states (Cur Deus homo i) “consists in giving due honor to God.” But this can be done by other means than penal works. Therefore satisfaction needs not to be made by means of penal works. On the contrary, Gregory says (Hom. in Evang. xx): “It is just that the sinner, by his repentance, should inflict on himself so much the greater suffering, as he has brought greater harm on himself by his sin.” Further, the wound caused by sin should be perfectly healed by satisfaction. Now punishment is the remedy for sins, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. ii, 3). Therefore satisfaction should be made by means of penal works. I answer that, As stated above ([4857]Q[12], A[3]), satisfaction regards both the past offense, for which compensation is made by its means, and also future sin wherefrom we are preserved thereby: and in both respects satisfaction needs to be made by means of penal works. For compensation for an offense implies equality, which must needs be between the offender and the person whom he offends. Now equalization in human justice consists in taking away from one that which he has too much of, and giving it to the person from whom something has been taken. And, although nothing can be taken away from God, so far as He is concerned, yet the sinner, for his part, deprives Him of something by sinning as stated above ([4858]Q[12], AA[3],4). Consequently, in order that compensation be made, something by way of satisfaction that may conduce to the glory of God must be taken away from the sinner. Now a good work, as such, does not deprive the agent of anything, but perfects him: so that the deprivation cannot be effected by a good work unless it be penal. Therefore, in order that a work be satisfactory it needs to be good that it may conduce to God’s honor, and it must be penal, so that something may be taken away from the sinner thereby. Again punishment preserves from future sin, because a man does not easily fall back into sin when he has had experience of the punishment. Wherefore, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. ii, 3) punishments are medicinal. Reply to Objection 1: Though God does not delight in our punishments as such, yet He does, in so far as they are just, and thus they can be satisfactory.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  make it look as important as it feels to me. That’s what I want to leave behind, Ruth—the history of this ancient path we’re walking. I want it to help us restore our dignity.” Ruth pressed my hand to her lips. “But I want more, Ruth. There’s things I’ve been afraid to face in my life. They may sound small, but they hold me back from pride. Remember when I told you about Butch Al? I want to find out what really happened to her. “And there’s a butch I once put down because I couldn’t deal with the fact that she got turned on by other butches. I thought being butch automatically meant being attracted to femmes, just like I assumed transvestism meant gay.” Ruth smiled. “It’s an easy misunderstanding. You were hanging out in gay bars.” I nodded. “Yeah, but I always wanted all of us who were different to be the same. I can’t believe I rejected a butch friend because she took a butch lover. I want to tell Frankie Pm sorry.” Ruth kissed my cheek. “Anything else?” I nodded. “Yeah. There were two little kids— Kim and Scotty. I promised ’'d come back and find them someday. Oh, and there’s one more thing I need to do.” Ruth ran her fingers through my hair. “What?” I lay back and stared into the universe on the ceiling. “I want to write a letter to Theresa, a woman I still carry around in my heart. We parted in a real rough way. I want to finally find the words, even if she never reads them.” My eyelids felt heavy. Ruth curled up against me as I yawned. “You'll find the words,” she reassured me. I sighed. “First I have to let my own memories come back. I put them away somewhere because they hurt. Now I have to remember where I put them.” The breeze from the window chilled me. I pulled the tie quilt over both of us and snuggled up against Ruth. She felt warm and comforting beside me. “Sleepy?” she asked me. I nodded. “Stay with me for a while, Ruth. Please?” She nodded. I buried my face in her neck. She stroked my hair and kissed my forehead. “Sleep now, my sweet drag king.” I almost hung up when I heard Frankie’s voice on the other end of the phone. “It’s me—Jess. Do you remember me, Frankie?” That’s all I could think of to say. There was a long silence. “Jess? Jesus, is that really your It’s been a long time.” I cleared my throat. “Yeah, it has been. Listen, Frankie, I really want to talk to you. If you don’t want to, Pll understand. But I owe you an apology, and it’s long overdue. Id like to offer it to you in person, if you'll see me. I’m living in New York City now, but I could come to Buffalo.”

• From Best Erotic Romance

  Love you...” Dripping with sweat and shaking, he sagged into her as the white-hot ecstasy eased, his hips grinding mindlessly as he emptied himself inside her. She shuddered in his arms and a soft sob escaped her. “God... You’re an ass, Paul. You know that?” Fucking brilliant. He finally told her how he felt and it lacked all grace or romance. She’d walked away thinking he just wanted to get laid, and he’d hardly redeemed himself by cursing out his feelings in the middle of a full-throttle, no-preliminaries screw that had probably been heard by every guest on the floor. His forehead touched hers. Her arms fell to her sides, her exhales gusting over the perspiration-damp skin of his throat. “I have to go.” Paul’s gut knotted. He couldn’t let her walk out again. He wouldn’t survive it a second time. Gripping her behind the thighs, he hefted her up and kicked free of his boots and wide-legged jeans. In just his socks and shirt, with his dick still hard and buried in the sweetest pussy in the world, he carried her to the bedroom on shaky legs. “Not until you hear me out.” “I heard you loud and clear the last time.” Gritting his teeth, he pulled free of her and dropped her on the bed. Before she could scramble away, he caught her ankles and lifted her legs high and spread them wide. He looked down at her succulent pink pussy, the plump folds glistening with her desire. “I wasn’t done. I’m not done.” “ I’m done.” He licked his lips, hungry for the taste of her. “We’ll see about that.” Recognizing the intent in Paul’s hazel eyes, Robin struggled to back away before he destroyed her again. She loved a man who was damaged. She could work with that if Paul wanted to heal, but he didn’t. The look on his face when she’d suggested they rendezvous in his hometown of Portland had told her all she needed to know—she was his biweekly screw, his hot piece in Vegas. And everyone knew what happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas. She’d walked out of his hotel room that night with the intention of not looking back. She had told herself Paul Laurens was just a brief spate of madness in her life. But watching him leave the bar just now had been too much for her. She’d left her brother at the table without a word, chasing a man she couldn’t recover from. One last screw, she’d told herself. And then it would be over. Idiot.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  But they hadn’t always, had they? At the beginning, hadn’t she loved his casual way of cutting through what wasn’t important, to find the core of what was? The melancholy that settled over her, she couldn’t entirely blame on the wine, either. “Ethan, I—” “Bella, I—” They spoke at the same time, stopped, laughed, this time with hesitance. The easy humor from supper was gone. “Ladies first,” he said. She fortified herself with a sip of hot coffee, then cradled the mug in her hands, forcing herself to look at Ethan rather than down. “I…I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.” She hadn’t known exactly what she’d wanted to say until now, yet now it was very clear what she needed to say. “The affair. It was stupid. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t care about it. I just reacted badly to you confiding in someone other than me.” They weren’t sitting close, but when he shifted to face her more fully, his knee was an inch from her thigh. They both stared at the tiny gap for a moment. “I thought it was because I’d failed,” he said finally. “What?” “I thought you had the affair because I’d failed. I know you were making enough for us to get by, but I couldn’t handle not contributing.” He shook his head. “I’d lie awake at nights, stressing about money, wondering how you could stay with someone who wasn’t good enough to provide. So when you…” “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “I pulled away because you pulled away. You wouldn’t let me in, and it hurt so bad when you shared what you were feeling with someone else instead of me. Like I wasn’t important enough to you to confide in, to give you support.” “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have shut you out. I didn’t even realize I was doing it.” She set her mug down. “We’re a pair of fucking idiots.” He snorted. “No, I mean it,” she said. “Why didn’t we talk about this then?” “We were too busy blaming,” he said. “As I recall, there was a fair bit of shouting, too.” She saw him hesitate, guessed what he wanted to do. Prayed he would. And he did, taking her hands in his. “The blissful haze of memory,” he said. “We’re both way too stubborn. You’d think the marriage counselor could have gotten this conversation out of us, but no…” She freed one hand and picked up her coffee. The caffeine wasn’t helping the dizzy rush in her head from the wine and the conversation. “Do you remember,” Ethan said, “the first night we stayed here?” “You mean when we couldn’t even make it to the bedroom?” He nodded. His eyes never leaving hers, he took the mug from her hand and set it back on the table. She didn’t let him lean all the way in to kiss her. She met him halfway.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  He handed her a mug as she sat on the sofa. He’d remembered how she liked it—light on the cream, two sugars. Before he joined her, he lit the fat new cranberry-red candle on the coffee table. “Jane’s not going to like that,” Bella said of the realtor. He blinked, as if he hadn’t considered that until now. Then he shrugged. “So I’ll buy another.” Typical Ethan. His ability to brush off the details that didn’t really matter had infuriated her at the end. But they hadn’t always, had they? At the beginning, hadn’t she loved his casual way of cutting through what wasn’t important, to find the core of what was? The melancholy that settled over her, she couldn’t entirely blame on the wine, either. “Ethan, I—” “Bella, I—” They spoke at the same time, stopped, laughed, this time with hesitance. The easy humor from supper was gone. “Ladies first,” he said. She fortified herself with a sip of hot coffee, then cradled the mug in her hands, forcing herself to look at Ethan rather than down. “I…I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.” She hadn’t known exactly what she’d wanted to say until now, yet now it was very clear what she needed to say. “The affair. It was stupid. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t care about it. I just reacted badly to you confiding in someone other than me.” They weren’t sitting close, but when he shifted to face her more fully, his knee was an inch from her thigh. They both stared at the tiny gap for a moment. “I thought it was because I’d failed,” he said finally. “What?” “I thought you had the affair because I’d failed. I know you were making enough for us to get by, but I couldn’t handle not contributing.” He shook his head. “I’d lie awake at nights, stressing about money, wondering how you could stay with someone who wasn’t good enough to provide. So when you…” “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “I pulled away because you pulled away. You wouldn’t let me in, and it hurt so bad when you shared what you were feeling with someone else instead of me. Like I wasn’t important enough to you to confide in, to give you support.” “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have shut you out. I didn’t even realize I was doing it.” She set her mug down. “We’re a pair of fucking idiots.” He snorted. “No, I mean it,” she said. “Why didn’t we talk about this then?” “We were too busy blaming,” he said. “As I recall, there was a fair bit of shouting, too.” She saw him hesitate, guessed what he wanted to do.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Finally he found a few comrades hiding in a school building, and they told him what had happened: Mao was reasserting his authority once and for all; he was picking sides in various local conflicts to help create some order; and the military in the county had come down on the side of the East-Is-Red Corps as the more truly revolutionary group. The repercussions of this could be awful. Jianhua and several other comrades decided they would try to escape and regroup in the mountains, where Mengzhe had apparently fled, but there was a blockade throughout the county and they were forced back to school, which had become more of a prison, overseen by the East-Is-Red Corps. Now the Rebels could only expect the worst. To the Corps, they were a bunch of counterrevolutionaries who had beaten and killed their comrades. Then one day, as the Red Rebel members on campus were huddled together in a room, the leaders of the East-Is- Red Corps, including Fangpu and Little Bawang, entered with grenades tied to their belts. Fangpu carried a blacklist of all those who were to be taken from the room, clearly for some nefarious purpose. Fangpu appeared friendly toward Jianhua and told him it was not too late to change sides, but Jianhua could no longer see Fangpu in the same light. His friendliness made him seem even more sinister. That night they could hear the screams of their blacklisted comrades from another building. Then news reached them that Corps members had found Mengzhe, beaten him up, and marched him back to school, where he was under arrest as well. In the room next to where Jianhua and his friends now slept, they observed Little Bawang and his team covering the windows with blankets. They were transforming it into a torture chamber. Soon they noticed former Red Rebels limping about on campus, afraid to talk to anyone. Then it was Jianhua’s turn to be taken into the room. He was blindfolded and tied to a chair in a most uncomfortable position. They wanted him to sign a withdrawal statement, and as he hesitated to do so, they began to beat him with a chair leg. Jianhua screamed, “You can’t do this to me. We’re classmates. We’re all class brothers. . . .” Little Bawang would have none of this. Jianhua had to confess his crimes, the part he had played in the various battles in town, and name names of other Red Rebels hiding somewhere on campus. The blows on his legs became more intense, and then they began to hit him over the head. Still blindfolded, he feared for his life and in a panic suddenly spilled the name of a fellow Red Rebel, Dusu. Finally they carried Jianhua, unable to walk, out of the room. He quickly felt intense regret that he had named Dusu. What a coward he had been. He tried to warn Dusu, but it was too late.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  She fortified herself with a sip of hot coffee, then cradled the mug in her hands, forcing herself to look at Ethan rather than down. “I...I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.” She hadn’t known exactly what she’d wanted to say until now, yet now it was very clear what she needed to say. “The affair. It was stupid. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t care about it. I just reacted badly to you confiding in someone other than me.” They weren’t sitting close, but when he shifted to face her more fully, his knee was an inch from her thigh. They both stared at the tiny gap for a moment. “I thought it was because I’d failed,” he said finally. “What?” “I thought you had the affair because I’d failed. I know you were making enough for us to get by, but I couldn’t handle not contributing.” He shook his head. “I’d lie awake at nights, stressing about money, wondering how you could stay with someone who wasn’t good enough to provide. So when you...” “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “I pulled away because you pulled away. You wouldn’t let me in, and it hurt so bad when you shared what you were feeling with someone else instead of me. Like I wasn’t important enough to you to confide in, to give you support.” “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have shut you out. I didn’t even realize I was doing it.” She set her mug down. “We’re a pair of fucking idiots.” He snorted. “No, I mean it,” she said. “Why didn’t we talk about this then?” “We were too busy blaming,” he said. “As I recall, there was a fair bit of shouting, too.” She saw him hesitate, guessed what he wanted to do. Prayed he would. And he did, taking her hands in his. “The blissful haze of memory,” he said. “We’re both way too stubborn. You’d think the marriage counselor could have gotten this conversation out of us, but no...” She freed one hand and picked up her coffee. The caffeine wasn’t helping the dizzy rush in her head from the wine and the conversation. “Do you remember,” Ethan said, “the first night we stayed here?” “You mean when we couldn’t even make it to the bedroom?” He nodded. His eyes never leaving hers, he took the mug from her hand and set it back on the table. She didn’t let him lean all the way in to kiss her. She met him halfway. The kiss was tentative, which was so unlike him that she almost drew back. But the taste of him, which she’d almost forgotten until now and had never stopped missing, was almost too much to bear, and she couldn’t pull away.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  me. Please forgive me.” He died shortly thereafter. A month later, a visitor to the Tolstoy house reported the following words from Sonya: “What happened to me? What came over me? How could I have done it? . . . You know I killed him.” • • • Interpretation: Leo Tolstoy displayed all of the signs of the deep narcissist. His mother had died when he was two and left a giant hole in him that he could never fill, although he tried to do so with his numerous affairs. He behaved recklessly in his youth, as if this could somehow make him feel alive and whole. He felt continually disgusted with himself and could not figure out who exactly he was. He poured this uncertainty into his novels, assuming different roles in the characters he created. And by the age of fifty, he finally fell into a deep crisis over his fragmented self. Sonya herself rated high on the self-absorption scale. But in looking at people we tend to overemphasize their individual traits and not look at the more complex picture of how each side in a relationship continually shapes the other. A relationship has a life and personality all its own. And a relationship can also be deeply narcissistic, accentuating or even bringing out the narcissistic tendencies of both sides. What generally makes a relationship narcissistic is the lack of empathy that makes the partners retreat deeper and deeper into their own defensive positions. In the case of the Tolstoys this started right away, with the reading of his diary. Each side had their divergent values through which they viewed the other. To Sonya, raised in a conventional household, this was the act of a man who clearly regretted his marriage proposal; to Tolstoy, the iconoclastic artist, her reaction meant she was incapable of seeing into his soul, of trying to understand his desire for a new married life. They each misunderstood the other and fell into hardened positions that lasted for forty-eight years. Tolstoy’s spiritual crisis epitomized this narcissistic dynamic. If only in that moment they each could have attempted to see this action through the eyes of the other. Tolstoy could have clearly foreseen her reaction. She had lived her whole life in relative comfort, which had helped her manage the frequent pregnancies and upbringing of so many children. She had never been deeply spiritual. Their connection had always been more physical. Why should he expect her to suddenly change? His demands were almost sadistic. He could have simply explained his own side without demanding that she follow him, even expressing his understanding of her own position and needs. That would have revealed true spirituality on his part. And she, instead of focusing only on his hypocrisy, could have seen a man who was clearly unhappy with himself, someone who had never felt loved enough since early childhood and who was undergoing a very real personal crisis. She

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Soon he fell deathly ill and had to be carried to a stationmaster’s cottage near the railway tracks in some out-of-the-way village. In bed, it was clear now he was dying. He heard that Sonya had arrived in town but could not bear the thought of seeing her now. The family kept her outside, where she continued to peer through the window at him as he lay dying. Finally, when he was unconscious, she was allowed in. She knelt beside him, kissed him continually on the forehead, and whispered into his ear, “Forgive me. Please forgive me.” He died shortly thereafter. A month later, a visitor to the Tolstoy house reported the following words from Sonya: “What happened to me? What came over me? How could I have done it? . . . You know I killed him.” • • • Interpretation: Leo Tolstoy displayed all of the signs of the deep narcissist. His mother had died when he was two and left a giant hole in him that he could never fill, although he tried to do so with his numerous affairs. He behaved recklessly in his youth, as if this could somehow make him feel alive and whole. He felt continually disgusted with himself and could not figure out who exactly he was. He poured this uncertainty into his novels, assuming different roles in the characters he created. And by the age of fifty, he finally fell into a deep crisis over his fragmented self. Sonya herself rated high on the self-absorption scale. But in looking at people we tend to overemphasize their individual traits and not look at the more complex picture of how each side in a relationship continually shapes the other. A relationship has a life and personality all its own. And a relationship can also be deeply narcissistic, accentuating or even bringing out the narcissistic tendencies of both sides. What generally makes a relationship narcissistic is the lack of empathy that makes the partners retreat deeper and deeper into their own defensive positions. In the case of the Tolstoys this started right away, with the reading of his diary. Each side had their divergent values through which they viewed the other. To Sonya, raised in a conventional household, this was the act of a man who clearly regretted his marriage proposal; to Tolstoy, the iconoclastic artist, her reaction meant she was incapable of seeing into his soul, of trying to understand his desire for a new married life. They each misunderstood the other and fell into hardened positions that lasted for forty-eight years. Tolstoy’s spiritual crisis epitomized this narcissistic dynamic. If only in that moment they each could have attempted to see this action through the eyes of the other. Tolstoy could have clearly foreseen her reaction. She had lived her whole life in relative comfort, which had helped her manage the frequent pregnancies and upbringing of so many children. She had never been deeply spiritual. Their connection had always been more physical.