Resentment

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 My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Reva’s apartment across town was a third-floor walk-up that smelled like sweaty gym clothes and French fries and Lysol and Tommy Girl perfume. Although she’d given me a spare set of keys to the place when she moved in, I’d been over only twice in five years. She preferred coming to my apartment. I think she enjoyed being recognized by my doorman, taking the fancy elevator with the gold buttons, watching me squander my luxuries. I don’t know what it was about Reva. I couldn’t get rid of her. She worshipped me, but she also hated me. She saw my struggle with misery as a cruel parody of her own misfortunes. I had chosen my solitude and purposelessness, and Reva had, despite her hard work, simply failed to get what she wanted—no husband, no children, no fabulous career. So when I started sleeping all the time, I think Reva took some satisfaction in watching me crumble into the ineffectual slob she hoped I was becoming. I wasn’t interested in competing with her, but I resented her on principle, and so we did argue. I imagine this is what having a sister is like, someone who loves you enough to point out all your flaws. Even on weekends, if she’d stayed over late, she’d refuse to sleep over. I wouldn’t have wanted her to anyway, but she always made a fuss about it, as though she had responsibilities I would never understand. I took a Polaroid of her one night and stuck it into the frame of the mirror in the living room. Reva thought it was a loving gesture, but the photo was really meant as a reminder of how little I enjoyed her company if I felt like calling her later while I was under the influence. “I’ll lend you my confidence-boosting CD set,” she would say if I alluded to any concern or worry. Reva was partial to self-help books and workshops that usually combined some new dieting technique with professional development and romantic relationship skills, under the guise of teaching young women “how to live up to their full potential.” Every few weeks, she had a whole new paradigm for living, and I had to hear about it. “Get good at knowing when you’re tired,” she’d advised me once. “Too many women wear themselves thin these days.” A lifestyle tip from Get the Most Out of Your Day, Ladies included the suggestion to preplan your outfits for the workweek on Sunday evenings. “That way you won’t be second-guessing yourself in the morning.” I really hated when she talked like that. “And come out to Saints with me. It’s ladies’ night. Girls drink for free until eleven. You’ll feel so much better about yourself.” She was an expert at conflating canned advice with any excuse for drinking to oblivion. “I’m not up for going out, Reva,” I said. She looked down at her hands, fiddled with her rings, scratched her neck, then stared down at the floor.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  This chapter outlines the eighteen types of victims, each one of which has a dominant lack. Although your target may well reveal the qualities of more than one type, there is usually a common need that ties them to- gether. Perhaps you see someone as both a New Prude and a Crushed Star, but what is common to both is a feeling of repression, and therefore a de- sire to be naughty, along with a fear of not being able or daring enough. In identifying your victim's type, be careful to not be taken in by outward ap- pearances. Both deliberately and unconsciously, we often develop a social exterior designed specifically to disguise our weaknesses and lacks. For in- stance, you may think you are dealing with someone who is tough and cynical, without realizing that deep inside they have a soft sentimental core. They secretly pine for romance. And unless you identify their type and the emotions beneath their toughness, you lose the chance to truly seduce them. Most important: expunge the nasty habit of thinking that other peo- ple have the same lacks you do. You may crave comfort and security, but in giving comfort and security to someone else, on the assumption they must want them as well, you are more likely smothering and pushing them away. Never try to seduce someone who is of your own type. You will be like two puzzles missing the same parts. 149 150 • The Art of Seduction The Eighteen Types The Reformed Rake or Siren. People of this type were once happy-go- lucky seducers who had their way with the opposite sex. But the day came when they were forced to give this up—someone corraled them into a rela- tionship, they were encountering too much social hostility, they were get- ting older and decided to settle down. Whatever the reason, you can be sure they feel some resentment and a sense of loss, as if a limb were miss- ing. We are always trying to recapture pleasures we experienced in the past, but the temptation is particularly great for the Reformed Rake or Siren be- cause the pleasures they found in seduction were intense. These types are ripe for the picking: all that is required is that you cross their path and offer them the opportunity to resume their rakish or siren ways. Their blood will stir and the call of their youth will overwhelm them. It is critical, though, to give these types the illusion that they are the ones doing the seducing.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  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. My father slept on the sofa in the den that year. I remember his thick glasses perched on the oak end table, their greasy lenses magnifying the dark grain of the wood. Without his glasses on, I barely recognized him. He was fairly nondescript—thinning brown hair, loosening jowls, a single wrinkle of worry etched deep into his brow. That wrinkle made him look perpetually perplexed, yet passive, like a man trapped behind his own eyes. He was kind of a nonentity, I thought, a stranger gently puppeting his way through his life at home with two strange females he could never hope to understand. Each night, he’d plop an Alka-Seltzer tablet in a glass of water. I stood by as it dissolved. I remember listening to the fizzing sound as he silently removed the cushions from the sofa and stacked them in the corner, his sad colorless pajamas dragging across the floor. Maybe that’s when his cancer started, a few odd cells forming during a bad night’s sleep in the living room. My father was neither an ally nor a confidant, but it seemed backward to me that this hardworking man would be relegated to the sofa while my lazy mother got the king-size bed. I resented her for that, but she seemed immune to guilt and shame. I think she got away with so much because she was beautiful. She looked like Lee Miller if Lee Miller had been a bedroom drunk. I assume she blamed my father for ruining her life—she got pregnant and dropped out of college to marry him. She didn’t have to, of course. I was born in August 1973, seven months after Roe v. Wade. Her family was the country club brand of alcoholic Southern Baptists—Mississippi loggers on one side, Louisiana oilmen on the other—or else, I assumed, she would have aborted me. My father was twelve years older than my mother. She’d been just nineteen years old and already four months pregnant when they got married.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  It was an automatic response to my good grade, a new shade of lipstick, the last popsicle, my expensive haircut. “No fair.” I’d make my fingers like a cross and hold them out between us, as though to protect me from her envy and wrath. I once asked her whether her jealousy had anything to do with her being Jewish, if she thought things came easier to me because I was a WASP. “It’s not because I’m Jewish,” I remember her saying. This was right around graduation, when I’d made the dean’s list despite having skipped more than half my classes senior year, and Reva had bombed the GRE. “It’s because I’m fat.” She really wasn’t. She was very pretty, in fact. “And I wish you’d take better care of yourself,” she said one day visiting me in my half-awake state at my apartment. “I can’t do it for you, you know. What do you like so much about Whoopi Goldberg? She’s not even funny. You need to be watching movies that are going to cheer you up. Like Austin Powers. Or that one with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. You’re like Winona Ryder from Girl, Interrupted all of a sudden. But you look more like Angelina Jolie. She’s blond in that.” This was how she expressed her concern for my well-being. She also didn’t like the fact that I was “on drugs.” “You really shouldn’t mix alcohol with all your medications,” she said, finishing the wine. I let Reva have all the wine. In college, she’d called hitting the bars “going to therapy.” She could suck a whiskey sour down in one sip. She popped Advil between drinks. She said it kept her tolerance up. She would probably qualify as an alcoholic. But she was right about me. I was “on drugs.” I took upwards of a dozen pills a day. But it was all very regulated, I thought. It was all totally aboveboard. I just wanted to sleep all the time. I had a plan. “I’m not a junkie or something,” I said defensively. “I’m taking some time off. This is my year of rest and relaxation.” “Lucky you,” Reva said. “I wouldn’t mind taking time off from work to loaf around, watch movies, and snooze all day, but I’m not complaining. I just don’t have that luxury.” Once she was drunk, she’d put her feet up on the coffee table, scooching my dirty clothes and unopened mail to the floor, and she’d go on and on about Ken and catch me up on the latest episode of their soap opera drama, Office Romance. She’d brag about all the fun things she was going to do over the weekend, complain that she’d gone off her most recent diet and had to do overtime at the gym to make up for it. And eventually, she’d cry about her mother. “I just can’t talk to her like I used to. I feel so sad. I feel so abandoned.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” she said. She sounded calmer now. “Maybe I can move on and meet somebody new. Maybe I’ll go online again. Or maybe there’ll be someone at the downtown office. I kind of like the Twin Towers. It’s peaceful up there. And I think if I start things off on the right foot, with a whole new group of people, they won’t treat me like a slave. Nobody ever listened to me at Ken’s office. We’d have these strategy meetings, and instead of letting me speak, they’d make me take notes like I’m some nineteen-year-old intern. And Ken treated me like shit at work because he didn’t want people to know we’re involved. Were involved. Isn’t it kind of weird that he brought his wife to my mother’s funeral? Who does that? What was that about?” “He’s an idiot, Reva,” I mumbled into my pillow. “Whatever. Everything’s going to be different now,” Reva said, putting out her cigarette in the mug. “I had a feeling this was going to happen. I told him I loved him, you know? Of course that would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. What a pussy.” “Maybe you’ll run into Trevor.” “Where?” “At the World Trade Center.” “I don’t even know what he looks like.” “He looks like any other corporate asshole.” “Do you still love him?” “Gross, Reva.” “Do you think he still loves you?” “I don’t know.” “Do you wish he did?” The answer was yes, but only so that he would feel the pain of me rejecting him. “And did I tell you my dad’s been having an affair?” Reva said. “Some client of his named Barbara. A divorcée with no kids. He’s taking her to Boca. Apparently he went in on a timeshare there. He’d been planning it for months. Now I know why he was being so cheap. Cremation? And Florida? Mom dies and suddenly he likes warm weather? I don’t understand him. I wish he had died and not her.” “Just wait,” I said. “Can I have another Xanax?” Reva asked. “I can’t spare another, Reva. Sorry.” She was quiet for a while. The air got tense. “The only thing I can think to do to make Ken pay for the way he’s jerked me around is to keep it. But I won’t. Anyway, thanks for listening.” She leaned over me on the sofa, kissed my cheek, said, “I love you,” and left. So I gathered that Reva was pregnant. I lay on the sofa contemplating that for a while. There was a tiny, living creature in her womb. The product of an accident. A side effect of delusion and sloppiness. I felt sorry for it, all alone, floating in the fluid of Reva’s womb, which I imagined to be full of diet soda, constantly jostled around in her hysterical aerobic workouts and pinched and prodded as she tensed her torso furiously in her Pilates classes.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Reva’s apartment across town was a third-floor walk-up that smelled like sweaty gym clothes and French fries and Lysol and Tommy Girl perfume. Although she’d given me a spare set of keys to the place when she moved in, I’d been over only twice in five years. She preferred coming to my apartment. I think she enjoyed being recognized by my doorman, taking the fancy elevator with the gold buttons, watching me squander my luxuries. I don’t know what it was about Reva. I couldn’t get rid of her. She worshipped me, but she also hated me. She saw my struggle with misery as a cruel parody of her own misfortunes. I had chosen my solitude and purposelessness, and Reva had, despite her hard work, simply failed to get what she wanted—no husband, no children, no fabulous career. So when I started sleeping all the time, I think Reva took some satisfaction in watching me crumble into the ineffectual slob she hoped I was becoming. I wasn’t interested in competing with her, but I resented her on principle, and so we did argue. I imagine this is what having a sister is like, someone who loves you enough to point out all your flaws. Even on weekends, if she’d stayed over late, she’d refuse to sleep over. I wouldn’t have wanted her to anyway, but she always made a fuss about it, as though she had responsibilities I would never understand. I took a Polaroid of her one night and stuck it into the frame of the mirror in the living room. Reva thought it was a loving gesture, but the photo was really meant as a reminder of how little I enjoyed her company if I felt like calling her later while I was under the influence. “I’ll lend you my confidence-boosting CD set,” she would say if I alluded to any concern or worry. Reva was partial to self-help books and workshops that usually combined some new dieting technique with professional development and romantic relationship skills, under the guise of teaching young women “how to live up to their full potential.” Every few weeks, she had a whole new paradigm for living, and I had to hear about it. “Get good at knowing when you’re tired,” she’d advised me once. “Too many women wear themselves thin these days.” A lifestyle tip from Get the Most Out of Your Day, Ladies included the suggestion to preplan your outfits for the workweek on Sunday evenings. “That way you won’t be second-guessing yourself in the morning.” I really hated when she talked like that. “And come out to Saints with me. It’s ladies’ night. Girls drink for free until eleven. You’ll feel so much better about yourself.” She was an expert at conflating canned advice with any excuse for drinking to oblivion. “I’m not up for going out, Reva,” I said. She looked down at her hands, fiddled with her rings, scratched her neck, then stared down at the floor.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  But then she had been quite frightened when Leon tipped her head back, and put a delicate little gold ring on the side of her nostril. Its prongs pierced her though not deeply, only enough to hold it in place, but she almost cried because she wanted so to wipe it away like the jewel, indeed, to pull all these adornments loose, though Leon was complimenting her. "Ah, when they give me something truly beautiful to work with, then I can show my skill," he sighed. He gave her hair a brisk brushing and then said she was ready. Now she entered this vast shadowy parlor on her hands and knees and hurried to the Prince's side, kissing his boots immediately. The Prince did not look up from his chessboard, and to Beauty's scalding shame, it was the Lady Juliana who greeted her: "Ah, but if it isn't the darling one, and how lovely she looks. Kneel up, my precious," she said in that gay, carefree voice, tossing one of her braids back over her shoulder. She laid her hand on Beauty's throat, examining the jewel necklace. It seemed her fingers caused a tingling through Beauty's flesh, but she did not even try to steal a glance at the young woman's face. "Why am I not sitting there as she is sitting, exquisitely dressed and free and proud," Beauty thought. "What has become of me, that I must kneel here before her and be handled as something less than human? I am a Princess!" And then she thought of all the other Princes and Princesses and felt foolish. "Do they think these thoughts?" This woman, more than any other, tormented her. But Lady Juliana was not satisfied. "Stand up my dear so that I can have a look at you and don't make me tell you to put your hands behind your neck and spread your legs." Beauty heard laughter from behind her and someone remarking to someone else that yes, the Prince's slave was well named. And realizing suddenly that there were no other slaves in this room, Beauty felt all the more bereft. She shut her eyes as she had before when Lady Juliana had inspected her. And she felt the Lady's hands on her thighs and then pinching her buttocks. "O, why can she not leave me alone, doesn't she know what I suffer?" Beauty thought, and through her narrowed eyelids she looked down to see the Lady beaming at her. "And what does her Highness think of her?" Lady Juliana asked with genuine curiosity, glancing at the Prince who was still deep in contemplation. "She does not approve," the Prince murmured. "She accuses me of passion." Beauty tried to remain composed, standing as she was in attendance.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The idea was simple: to combat atheism, "to recognize the existence of a Supreme Being and the Immortality of the Soul as the guiding forces of the universe." It was Robespierre's day of triumph. Standing before the masses in his sky-blue suit and white stockings, he initiated the festivities. The crowd adored him; after all, he had safeguarded the purposes of the French Revo- lution through the intense politicking that had followed it. The year before, he had initiated the Reign of Terror, which cleansed the revolution of its enemies by sending them to the guillotine. He had also helped guide the country through a war against the Austrians and the Prussians. What made crowds, and particularly women, love him was his incorruptible virtue (he lived very modestly), his refusal to compromise, the passion for the revolu- tion that was evident in everything he did, and the romantic language of his speeches, which could not fail to inspire. He was a god. The day was beautiful and augured a great future for the revolution. Two months later, on July 26, Robespierre delivered a speech that he The Charismatic • 117 thought would ensure his place in history, for he intended to hint at the end of the Terror and a new era for France. Rumor also had it that he was to call for a last handful of people to be sent to the guillotine, a final group that threatened the safety of the revolution. Mounting the rostrum to ad- dress the country's governing convention, Robespierre wore the same clothes he had worn on the day of the festival. The speech was long, almost three hours, and included an impassioned description of the values and virtues he had helped protect. There was also talk of conspiracies, treach- ery, unnamed enemies. The response was enthusiastic, but a little less so than usual. The speech had tired many representatives. Then a lone voice was heard, that of a man named Bourdon, who spoke against printing Robespierre's speech, a veiled sign of disapproval. Suddenly others stood up on all sides, and accused him of vagueness: he had talked of conspiracies and threats without naming the guilty. Asked to be specific, he refused, preferring to name names later on. The next day Robespierre stood to defend his speech, and the representa- tives shouted him down. A few hours later, he was the one sent to the guil- lotine. On July 28, amid a gathering of citizens who seemed to be in an even more festive mood than at the Festival of the Supreme Being, Robe- spierre's head fell into the basket, to resounding cheers. The Reign of Ter- ror was over. Many of those who seemed to admire Robespierre actually harbored a gnawing resentment of him—he was so virtuous, so superior, it was oppres- sive.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Some of these men had plotted against him, and were waiting for the slightest sign of weakness—which appeared on that fateful day when he gave his last speech. In refusing to name his enemies, he had shown either a desire to end the bloodshed or a fear that they would strike at him before he could have them killed. Fed by the conspirators, this one spark turned into fire. Within two days, first a governing body and then a nation turned against a Charismatic who two months before had been revered. Charisma is as volatile as the emotions it stirs. Most often it stirs senti- ments of love. But such feelings are hard to maintain. Psychologists talk of "erotic fatigue"—the moments after love in which you feel tired of it, re- sentful. Reality creeps in, love turns to hate. Erotic fatigue is a threat to all Charismatics. The Charismatic often wins love by acting the savior, rescu- ing people from some difficult circumstance, but once they feel secure, charisma is less seductive to them. Charismatics need danger and risk. They are not plodding bureaucrats; some of them deliberately keep danger go- ing, as de Gaulle and Kennedy were wont to do, or as Robespierre did through the Reign of Terror. But people tire of this, and at your first sign of weakness they turn on you. The love they showed before will be matched by their hatred now. The only defense is to master your charisma. Your passion, your anger, your confidence make you charismatic, but too much charisma for too long creates fatigue, and a desire for calmness and order. The better kind of 118 • The Art of Seduction charisma is created consciously and is kept under control. When you need to you can glow with confidence and fervor, inspiring the masses. But when the adventure is over, you can settle into a routine, turning the heat, not out, but down. (Robespierre may have been planning that move, but it came a day too late.) People will admire your self-control and adaptability. Their love affair with you will move closer to the habitual affection of a man and wife. You will even have the leeway to look a little boring, a little simple—a role that can also seem charismatic, if played correctly. Remem- ber: charisma depends on success, and the best way to maintain success, af- ter the initial charismatic rush, is to be practical and even cautious. Mao Zedong was a distant, enigmatic man who for many had an awe-inspiring charisma. He suffered many setbacks that would have spelled the end of a less clever man, but after each reversal he retreated, becoming practical, tol- erant, flexible; at least for a while. This protected him from the dangers of a counterreaction. There is another alternative: to play the armed prophet.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Exotic Fetishists, however, do not make particularly good victims. Whatever exoticism you have will soon seem banal to them, and they will want something else. It will be a struggle to hold their interest. Their underlying insecurity will also keep you on edge. One variation on this type is the man or woman who is trapped in a stultifying relationship, a banal occupation, a dead-end town. It is circum- stance, as opposed to personal neurosis, that makes such people fetishize the exotic; and these Exotic Fetishists are better victims than the self-loathing kind, because you can offer them a temporary escape from whatever op- presses them. Nothing, however, will offer true Exotic Fetishists escape from themselves. The Drama Queen. There are people who cannot do without some con- stant drama in their lives—it is their way of deflecting boredom. The great- est mistake you can make in seducing these Drama Queens is to come offering stability and security. That will only make them run for the hills. Most often, Drama Queens (and there are plenty of men in this category) enjoy playing the victim. They want something to complain about, they want pain. Pain is a source of pleasure for them. With this type, you have to be willing and able to give them the mental rough treatment they desire. That is the only way to seduce them in a deep manner. The moment you turn too nice, they will find some reason to quarrel or get rid of you. You will recognize Drama Queens by the number of people who have hurt them, the tragedies and traumas that have befallen them. At the ex- treme, they can be hopelessly selfish and anti-seductive, but most of them are relatively harmless and will make fine victims if you can live with the sturm und drang. If for some reason you want something long term with this type, you will constantly have to inject drama into your relationship. For some this can be an exciting challenge and a source for constantly re- newing the relationship. Generally, however, you should see an involve- ment with a Drama Queen as something fleeting and a way to bring a little drama into your own life. The Professor. These types cannot get out of the trap of analyzing and criticizing everything that crosses their path. Their minds are overdevel- oped and overstimulated. Even when they talk about love or sex, it is with great thought and analysis. Having developed their minds at the expense of their bodies, many of them feel physically inferior and compensate by lord- ing their mental superiority over others. Their conversation is often wry or ironic—you never quite know what they are saying, but you sense them looking down on you.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Learn a playful dandyism and you will become the magnet for people's dark, unre- alized yearnings. The key to such power is ambiguity. In a society where the roles every- one plays are obvious, the refusal to conform to any standard will excite in- terest. Be both masculine and feminine, impudent and charming, subtle and outrageous. Let other people worry about being socially acceptable; those types are a dime a dozen, and you are after a power greater than they can imagine. Symbol: The Orchid. Its shape and color oddly sug- gest both sexes, its odor is sweet and decadent —it is a tropical flower of evil. Delicate and highly cul- tivated, it is prized for its rarity; it is unlike any other flower. 52 • The Art of Seduction Dangers T he Dandy's strength, but also the Dandy's problem, is that he or she often works through transgressive feelings relating to sex roles. Al- though this activity is highly charged and seductive, it is also dangerous, since it touches on a source of great anxiety and insecurity. The greater dangers will often come from your own sex. Valentino had immense appeal for women, but men hated him. He was constantly dogged with accusa- tions of being perversely unmasculine, and this caused him great pain. Sa- lomé was equally disliked by women; Nietzsche's sister, and perhaps his closest friend, considered her an evil witch, and led a virulent campaign against her in the press long after the philosopher's death. There is little to be done in the face of resentment like this. Some Dandies try to fight the image they themselves have created, but this is unwise: to prove his mas- culinity, Valentino would engage in a boxing match, anything to prove his masculinity. He wound up looking only desperate. Better to accept society's occasional gibes with grace and insolence. After all, the Dandies' charm is that they don't really care what people think of them. That is how Andy Warhol played the game: when people tired of his antics or some scandal erupted, instead of trying to defend himself he would simply move on to some new image—decadent bohemian, high-society portraitist, etc.—as if to say, with a hint of disdain, that the problem lay not with him but with other people's attention span. Another danger for the Dandy is the fact that insolence has its limits. Beau Brummel prided himself on two things: his trimness of figure and his acerbic wit. His main social patron was the Prince of Wales, who, in later years, grew plump. One night at dinner, the prince rang for the butler, and Brummel snidely remarked, "Do ring, Big Ben."

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  In Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, written in 1748, the rake Lovelace is sheltered from the swells \ There in the still canals \ Those drowsy ships that dream of sailing forth; \ It is to satisfy \ Your least desire, they ply \ Hither through all the waters of the earth. \ The sun at close of day \ Clothes the fields of hay, \ Then the canals, at last the town entire \ In hyacinth and gold: \ Slowly the land is rolled \ Sleepward under a sea of gentle fire. \ There, there is nothing else but grace and measure, \ Richness, quietness, and pleasure. —CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, "INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE," THE FLOWERS OF EVIL, TRANSLATED BY RICHARD WILBUR 316 • The Art of Seduction attempting to seduce the novel's beautiful heroine. Clarissa is young, virtu- ous, and very much protected by her family. But Lovelace is a conniving se- ducer. First he courts Clarissa's sister, Arabella. A match between them seems likely. Then he suddenly switches attention to Clarissa, playing on sibling rivalry to make Arabella furious. Their brother, James, is angered by Lovelace's change in sentiments; he fights with Lovelace and is wounded. The whole family is in an uproar, united against Lovelace, who, however, manages to smuggle letters to Clarissa, and to visit her when she is at the house of a friend. The family finds out, and accuses her of disloyalty. Clarissa is innocent; she has not encouraged Lovelace's letters or visits. But now her parents are determined to marry her off, to a rich older man. Alone in the world, about to be married to a man she finds repulsive, she turns to Lovelace as the only one who can save her from this mess. Eventu- ally he rescues her by getting her to London, where she can escape this dreaded marriage, but where she is also hopelessly isolated. In these cir- cumstances her feelings toward him soften. All of this has been masterfully orchestrated by Lovelace himself—the turmoil within the family, Clarissa's eventual alienation from them, the whole scenario. Your worst enemies in a seduction are often your targets' family and friends. They are outside your circle and immune to your charms; they may provide a voice of reason to the seduced. You must work silently and subtly to alienate the target from them. Insinuate that they are jealous of your tar- get's good fortune in finding you, or that they are parental figures who have lost a taste for adventure. The latter argument is extremely effective with young people, whose identities are in flux and who are more than ready to rebel against any authority figure, particularly their parents.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  But we finally found a place. The only deserted place on board. An absolutely perfect place—both symbolically and practically (except that it had no bed): the Jewish Chapel in tourist class. “This is fantastic!” I yelled when we fumbled for the light and realized what room it was we had found. What a setting! Pews! A Star of David! Even a Torah—for Christ’s sake! I was really turned on. “I’ll just pretend I’m a vestal virgin or something,” I said, starting to unzip Charlie. “But there’s no lock on the door!” he protested. “Who’s going to come in here anyway? Certainly not all our WASP fellow-travelers and Anglican crewmen. Besides, we can just turn out the light again. Anyone who stumbles in will think we’re davining or something. What do they know about Jewish services?” “They’ll probably mistake you for the burning bush,” he said snidely. “Very funny.” I was stepping out of my underpants and switching off the light. But we only got to screw in the sight of God once, because the next day when we returned to our little temple of love, we found it padlocked. We never knew why. Charlie, of course, was sure (in his paranoid fashion) that somebody (God?) had photographed our vigorous coupling and also tape-recorded all our moans. He spent the rest of the trip panicked. He was positive we’d be met in Le Havre by an Interpol vice squad. The remainder of the crossing was pretty dull for me. Charlie sat in one of the lounges studying his scores and conducting imaginary musicians, while I watched him, seething with resentment about Sally, who I was sure he intended to see in Paris. I tried to put it out of my mind but it kept popping up like a candy wrapper which refuses to sink into Central Park Lake. What could I do? I tried writing but concentration was beyond me. All I could think of was Sally—that super-phony. She was keeping Charlie on the hook like Charlie was keeping me on the hook. All the problems of love are problems of maldistribution, goddamn it. There’s plenty to go around, but it always goes to the wrong people, at the wrong times, in the wrong places. The loved get more love and the unloved get more unloved. The closer we got to France, the more I included myself among the latter.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Everything’s going to be different now,” Reva said, putting out her cigarette in the mug. “I had a feeling this was going to happen. I told him I loved him, you know? Of course that would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. What a pussy.” “Maybe you’ll run into Trevor.” “Where?” “At the World Trade Center.” “I don’t even know what he looks like.” “He looks like any other corporate asshole.” “Do you still love him?” “Gross, Reva.” “Do you think he still loves you?” “I don’t know.” “Do you wish he did?” The answer was yes, but only so that he would feel the pain of me rejecting him. “And did I tell you my dad’s been having an affair?” Reva said. “Some client of his named Barbara. A divorcée with no kids. He’s taking her to Boca. Apparently he went in on a timeshare there. He’d been planning it for months. Now I know why he was being so cheap. Cremation? And Florida? Mom dies and suddenly he likes warm weather? I don’t understand him. I wish he had died and not her.” “Just wait,” I said. “Can I have another Xanax?” Reva asked. “I can’t spare another, Reva. Sorry.” She was quiet for a while. The air got tense. “The only thing I can think to do to make Ken pay for the way he’s jerked me around is to keep it. But I won’t. Anyway, thanks for listening.” She leaned over me on the sofa, kissed my cheek, said, “I love you,” and left. So I gathered that Reva was pregnant. I lay on the sofa contemplating that for a while. There was a tiny, living creature in her womb. The product of an accident. A side effect of delusion and sloppiness. I felt sorry for it, all alone, floating in the fluid of Reva’s womb, which I imagined to be full of diet soda, constantly jostled around in her hysterical aerobic workouts and pinched and prodded as she tensed her torso furiously in her Pilates classes. Maybe she should keep the baby, I thought. Maybe a baby would wake her up. I got up and took a Solfoton and a Xanax. Now more than ever, a movie would have helped me relax. I turned the TV on—ABC7 news—and off. I didn’t want to hear about a shooting in the Bronx, a gas explosion on the Lower East Side, police cracking down on high school kids jumping the turnstiles in the subway, ice sculptures defaced at Columbus Circle. I got up and took another Nembutal.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  The importance of sperm competition has been debated in scientific conferences and academic journals for the past few decades as if it were a new discovery, but several centuries BCE, Aristotle and his predecessors noted that if a bitch copulated with two dogs during a single fertile period, she could produce a litter of pups fathered by one or both of them. And consider the story of Heracles and Iphicles: the night preceding Amphitryon’s marriage to Alcmene, Zeus disguised himself as Amphitryon and slept with the bride-to-be. The following night, Amphitryon consummated her marriage. Alcmene had twins: Iphicles (fathered by Amphitryon) and Heracles (fathered by Zeus). Clearly, the ancient Greeks had an inkling of sperm competition. More recently, several researchers have demonstrated that a man’s sperm production increases significantly when he has not seen his partner for a few days, regardless of whether or not he ejaculated during her absence. This finding conforms to the notion that sperm competition has played a role in human evolution and may even reflect an adaptation to monogamy. In this scenario, not knowing what his strumpet of a wife was up to at that damned conference in Orlando leads a man’s body to hyper-produce sperm to increase his chances of fertilizing her ovum when she gets home, even if his worst fears (and possibly, hottest fantasies) are true. Along these same lines, women have also reported that their partners tend to be more vigorous in bed—reporting deeper, more vigorous thrusting—after a separation or if infidelity is suspected.9 (The possibility that the men may actually be turned on by the thought of their mates’ possible transgressions appears not to have made its way into the discussion as yet, but see the discussion of porn below.) The scandalous implications of sperm competition run smack into the long-held view of sacrosanct female sexuality. It’s a vision Darwin cultivated in public consciousness, featuring coy females who surrender only to a carefully chosen mate who has proven himself worthy—and even then, she’s only doing it for England. “The sexually insatiable woman,” declared a terrified Donald Symons, “is to be found primarily, if not exclusively, in the ideology of feminism, the hopes of boys, and the fears of men.”10 Perhaps, but Marvin Harris offers a different take, writing, “Like all dominant groups, men seek to promote an image of their subordinate’s nature that contributes to the preservation of the status quo. For thousands of years, males have seen women not as women could be, but only as males want them to be.”11 Despite all the controversy, there is no question as to whether sperm competition occurs in human reproduction.12 It does—every time. A single human ejaculate contains anywhere from fifty million to half a billion applicants all trying to elbow their way into the only job available: fertilizer in chief. The relevant question is whether those applicants are competing against only each other, or billions more eager job-seekers sent by other men as well.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  My hibernation was self-preservational. I thought that it was going to save my life. “Now get in the shower,” Reva would say, heading into the kitchen. “I’ll take out the trash.” I loved Reva, but I didn’t like her anymore. We’d been friends since college, long enough that all we had left in common was our history together, a complex circuit of resentment, memory, jealousy, denial, and a few dresses I’d let Reva borrow, which she’d promised to dry clean and return but never did. She worked as an executive assistant for an insurance brokerage firm in Midtown. She was an only child, a gym rat, had a blotchy red birthmark on her neck in the shape of Florida, a gum-chewing habit that gave her TMJ and breath that reeked of cinnamon and green apple candy. She liked to come over to my place, clear a space for herself on the armchair, comment on the state of the apartment, say I looked like I’d lost more weight, and complain about work, all while refilling her wine glass after every sip. “People don’t understand what it’s like for me,” she said. “They take it for granted that I’m always going to be cheerful. Meanwhile, these assholes think they can go around treating everyone below them like shit. And I’m supposed to giggle and look cute and send their faxes? Fuck them. Let them all go bald and burn in hell.” Reva was having an affair with her boss, Ken, a middle-aged man with a wife and child. She was open about her obsession with him, but she tried to hide that they were sexually involved. She once showed me a picture of him in a company brochure—tall, big shoulders, white button-down shirt, blue tie, face so nondescript, so boring, he may as well have been molded out of plastic. Reva had a thing for older men, as did I. Men our age, Reva said, were too corny, too affectionate, too needy. I could understand her disgust, but I’d never met a man like that. All the men I’d ever been with, young as well as old, had been detached and unfriendly. “You’re a cold fish, that’s why,” Reva explained. “Like attracts like.” As a friend, Reva was indeed corny and affectionate and needy, but she was also very secretive and occasionally very patronizing. She couldn’t or simply wouldn’t understand why I wanted to sleep all the time, and she was always rubbing my nose in her moral high ground and telling me to “face the music” about whatever bad habit I’d been stuck on at the time. The summer I started sleeping, Reva admonished me for “squandering my bikini body.” “Smoking kills.” “You should get out more.” “Are you getting enough protein in your diet?” Et cetera. “I’m not a baby, Reva.” “I’m just worried about you. Because I care. Because I love you,” she’d say.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I say this with the full weight of ambivalence behind it, knowing that then I might never have been born. We grew up in a sprawling fourteen-room apartment on Central Park West. The roof leaked (we lived on the top floor), the fuses all blew when you pushed the toast down in the toaster, the bathtubs were claw-footed and the plumbing rusty, the stove in the kitchen looked like something out of a TV commercial for old-Grandma-something-or-other’s-preserves, and the window frames were so old and cruddy that the wind whistled right through them. But it was a “Stanford White building” and there were “two studios with north light” and the library had “paneled walls” and “leaded windows” and the “forty-foot ceiling” in the living room was “real gold leaf.” I remembered these real-estate phrases echoing through my childhood. Gold leaf. I imagined a maple leaf which was made of gold. But how did they stick the leaves on the ceiling? And why didn’t they look like leaves? Maybe they ground them up and made them into paint? Where, I wondered, could you pick a “real gold leaf"? Did they grow on real gold trees? On real gold boughs? (I was the sort of kid who knew words like “bough.”) There was, in fact, a fat, darkly printed book in my parents’ library called The Golden Bough. I used to look in vain through its pages for any mention of “real gold leaf.” But there was plenty of sexy stuff in there. (Those were also the days when I used to hide Love Without Fear in my dresser drawer— beneath my undershirts.) So we stayed with Mama and Papa for the sake of “good north light” and “real gold leaf"—or at least my mother said so. And meanwhile my father traveled around the world for his tzatzka business and my mother stayed home and had babies and screamed at her mother and father. My father was designing ice buckets which looked like beer steins and beer steins which looked like ice buckets. He was designing families of ceramic animals chained together with tiny gold chains. And he was making quite a fortune at it—amazingly enough. We could easily have moved away, but obviously my mother would not or could not. A little gold chain chained my mother to her mother, and me to my mother. All our unhappiness was strung along the same (rapidly tarnishing) gold chain. Of course my mother had a rationalization for it all—a patriarchal rationalization, the age-old rationalization of women seething with talent and ambition who keep getting knocked up. “Women cannot possibly do both,” she said, “you’ve got to choose. Either be an artist or have children.” With a name like Isadora Zelda it was clear what I was supposed to choose: everything my mother had been offered and had passed up. How could I possibly take off my diaphragm and get pregnant?

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  A lanky, six-foot, pale boy with an active Adam’s apple, ogling Lo and her orange-brown bare midriff, which I kissed five minutes later, Jack. Winter in the desert, spring in the foothills, almonds in bloom. Reno, a dreary town in Nevada, with a nightlife said to be “cosmopolitan and mature.” A winery in California, with a church built in the shape of a wine barrel. Death Valley. Scotty’s Castle. Works of Art collected by one Rogers over a period of years. The ugly villas of handsome actresses. R. L. Stevenson’s footprint on an extinct volcano. Mission Dolores: good title for book. Surf-carved sandstone festoons. A man having a lavish epileptic fit on the ground in Russian Gulch State Park. Blue, blue Crater Lake. A fish hatchery in Idaho and the State Penitentiary. Somber Yellowstone Park and its colored hot springs, baby geysers, rainbows of bubbling mud—symbols of my passion. A herd of antelopes in a wildlife refuge. Our hundredth cavern, adults one dollar, Lolita fifty cents. A chateau built by a French marquess in N.D. The Corn Palace in S.D.; and the huge heads of presidents carved in towering granite. The Bearded Woman read our jingle and now she is no longer single. A zoo in Indiana where a large troop of monkeys lived on concrete replica of Christopher Columbus’ flagship. Billions of dead, or halfdead, fish-smelling May flies in every window of every eating place all along a dreary sandy shore. Fat gulls on big stones as seen from the ferry City of Sheboygan , whose brown woolly smoke arched and dipped over the green shadow it cast on the aquamarine lake. A motel whose ventilator pipe passed under the city sewer. Lincoln’s home, largely spurious, with parlor books and period furniture that most visitors reverently accepted as personal belongings. We had rows, minor and major. The biggest ones we had took place: at Lace work Cabins, Virginia; on Park Avenue, Little Rock, near a school; on Milner Pass, 10,759 feet high, in Colorado; at the corner of Seventh Street and Central Avenue in Phoenix, Arizona; on Third Street, Los Angeles, because the tickets to some studio or other were sold out; at a motel called Poplar Shade in Utah, where six pubescent trees were scarcely taller than my Lolita, and where she asked, à propos de rien , how long did I think we were going to live in stuffy cabins, doing filthy things together and never behaving like ordinary people? On N. Broadway, Burns, Oregon, corner of W. Washington, facing Safeway, a grocery.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Surely her punishment would be terrible if he had. Rather Lord Gregory was arguing only that Beauty must be taken to the Slaves' Hall and properly groomed. "Your Highness, you are enamored of her, of course," Lord Gregory said, "but you remember, surely, your own censure of other Lords, especially your cousin, Lord Stefan, on account of his excessive love for his slave..." "It is not excessive love," the Prince answered sharply, but then he stopped as if Lord Gregory had hit upon the truth. "Maybe you should take her to the Slaves' Hall," he murmured, "though only for the day." As soon as Lord Gregory had taken her out of the room, he unfastened the paddle attached to his belt and gave her several cruel spanks as she hurried on her hands and knees before him. "Keep your eyes down and your head down," he said coldly, "and lift your knees gracefully. Your back is to be a straight line at all times, and you are not to look to either side, is this clear to you?" "Yes, my Lord," Beauty answered timidly. She could see a great expanse of stone before her, and though the paddle smacks had not been very hard, she found she resented them enormously. They had not come from the Prince. And it was just coming to her that now she was in Lord Gregory's power. Perhaps she'd fancied he couldn't strike her, wouldn't be allowed to, but that was obviously not the case, and she realized he might tell the Prince she had disobeyed when she had not, and she might not be allowed to speak for herself. "Move faster," he told her. "You are always to take a rapid pace showing your eagerness to please your Lords and Ladies," he said, and again there came one of those sharp degrading little spanks that seemed suddenly quite worse than harder ones. They had come to a narrow doorway and Beauty perceived that a long curving ramp lay before her. It was quite clever as she could not have gone down the staircase on her hands and knees, but this she could follow, and she did with Lord Gregory's pointed leather boots right beside her. Several times he availed himself of the paddle, so that by the time they reached the door of a vast room on the lower floor, her buttocks were burning a little. But what concerned her much more was that there were people here. She had seen no one in the passage above.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The response was enthusiastic, but a little less so than usual. The speech had tired many representatives. Then a lone voice was heard, that of a man named Bourdon, who spoke against printing Robespierre's speech, a veiled sign of disapproval. Suddenly others stood up on all sides, and accused him of vagueness: he had talked of conspiracies and threats without naming the guilty. Asked to be specific, he refused, preferring to name names later on. The next day Robespierre stood to defend his speech, and the representatives shouted him down. A few hours later, he was the one sent to the guillotine. On July 28, amid a gathering of citizens who seemed to be in an even more festive mood than at the Festival of the Supreme Being, Robespierre's head fell into the basket, to resounding cheers. The Reign of Terror was over. Many of those who seemed to admire Robespierre actually harbored a gnawing resentment of him—he was so virtuous, so superior, it was oppressive. Some of these men had plotted against him, and were waiting for the slightest sign of weakness—which appeared on that fateful day when he gave his last speech. In refusing to name his enemies, he had shown either a desire to end the bloodshed or a fear that they would strike at him before he could have them killed. Fed by the conspirators, this one spark turned into fire. Within two days, first a governing body and then a nation turned against a Charismatic who two months before had been revered. Charisma is as volatile as the emotions it stirs. Most often it stirs sentiments of love. But such feelings are hard to maintain. Psychologists talk of "erotic fatigue"—the moments after love in which you feel tired of it, resentful. Reality creeps in, love turns to hate. Erotic fatigue is a threat to all Charismatics. The Charismatic often wins love by acting the savior, rescuing people from some difficult circumstance, but once they feel secure, charisma is less seductive to them. Charismatics need danger and risk. They are not plodding bureaucrats; some of them deliberately keep danger going, as de Gaulle and Kennedy were wont to do, or as Robespierre did through the Reign of Terror. But people tire of this, and at your first sign of weakness they turn on you. The love they showed before will be matched by their hatred now. The only defense is to master your charisma. Your passion, your anger, your confidence make you charismatic, but too much charisma for too long creates fatigue, and a desire for calmness and order. The better kind of 118 • The Art of Seduction