Sadness

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 Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Public opinion, generous to princes who married ugly princesses out of duty and then took mistresses of their choosing, will not be as kind with the Haakons and Willems of the twenty-first century who fight hard to marry the women they love, and then take mistresses. And kings and princes, even those completely lacking in personal attractions, never lack female admirers. Swooning from the eroticism of royalty, in coming centuries women will continue, as Louis XIV said, to “lay siege to the heart of a Prince as to a citadel.”18 ConclusionThroughout history, women have been relegated to the kitchen and the nursery. A few have made it into the bedrooms, and throne rooms, of kings. We will never know the virtues and vices of most of these few, obscured as they are by the heavy shadows of time or only faintly illuminated by the guttering candle of semi-literacy. But we can focus our spotlight on others and scrutinize them quite closely at our leisure. First, we close our eyes and inhale their heady perfume—water lily and orange blossom and rose water. We hear the crack of a fan and feel a fluttering movement of air. Opening our eyes, we see that the mistresses standing before us are not all what we would expect. Some indeed are young and sexy, their skin moist and supple, pampered and well oiled, boldly offering their sexuality. Some are motherly and comforting, while yet others are just plain ugly but exude an earthy sex appeal. Looking more closely, we see that our spotlight shines unmercifully on many vices. We see greed, certainly: Alice Perrers prying rings from the stiffening fingers of the freshly deceased Edward III; Lady Castlemaine grabbing so much cash, silver, jewels, land, and pensions that Charles II had nothing left to pay his soldiers and sailors; Madame du Barry as dazzling as the sun, covering herself in gems and playing in gardens while French peasants starved. We see ruthless intrigue: the viperous Mailly-Nesle sisters vying to unseat one another; the treacherous Madame de Montespan dumping foul potions of toads’ excrement and babies’ intestines into the king’s meat to keep his love. We see the vaunting ambition of Bianca Cappello, Lola Montez, and Wallis Warfield Simpson, roiling entire nations and ruining their men to achieve personal goals. We see the collateral damage of heartbroken wives: Charles II’s Catherine of Braganza, blood streaming from her nose, fainting upon meeting Lady Castlemaine, the woman she knows her husband truly loves; Louis XV’s dowdy Queen Marie sighing over the younger, prettier, wittier Madame de Pompadour, flushed and triumphant from the king’s embraces; and Princess Diana, crouched over a toilet at the thought that her husband loves not her, but Camilla.

• From Less (2017)

  His escort, Amélie, a slim, pretty girl of Algerian parentage, spoke very little English; he wondered how on earth she had qualified for this position. Yet she met him every morning at his hotel, smiling, dressed in wonderful woolens, delivered him to the provincial librarian, sat in the backseat of the car throughout their tour, and delivered him home at night. Where she herself lived was a mystery. What purpose she served was an equal one. Was he meant to sleep with her? If so, they had mistranslated his books. The provincial librarian spoke better English but seemed burdened with unknown sadnesses; in the late autumn drizzle, his pale bald head seemed to be eroding into blandness. He was responsible for Less’s daily schedule, which usually consisted of visiting a school during the day and a library at night, with sometimes a monastery in between. Less had never wondered what was served in a French high school cafeteria; should he have been surprised it was aspic and pickles? Attractive students asked wonderful questions in horrible English, dropping their “aitches” like Cockneys; Less gracefully answered, and the girls giggled. They asked for his autograph as if he were a celebrity. Dinner was usually at the library, often in the only place with tables and chairs: the children’s section. Picture tall Arthur Less crammed into a tiny chair, at a tiny table, watching a librarian remove the cellophane from his slice of pâté. At one venue, they had made “American desserts” that turned out to be bran muffins. Later: he read aloud to coal miners, who listened thoughtfully. What on earth was everyone thinking? Bringing a midlist homosexual to read to French miners? He imagined Finley Dwyer entertaining in a velvet-draped Riviera theater. Here: gloomy skies and gloomy fortunes. It is no wonder that Arthur Less grew depressed. The days grew more gray, the miners more grim, his spirit more glum. Even the discovery of a gay bar in Mulhouse—Jet Sept—only deepened his sorrow; it was a sad black room, with a few characters from The Absinthe Drinkers, and a bad pun besides. When Less’s tour of duty was done and he had enriched the life of every coal miner in France, he returned by train to Paris to find Freddy asleep, fully clothed, atop the hotel bed; he had just arrived from New York. Less embraced him and began to shed ridiculous tears. “Oh, hi,” the sleepy young man said. “What’s happened to you?” Finley wears a plum-colored suit and a black tie. “How long ago was it? We were traveling together?” “Well, you remember, we didn’t get to travel together.” “Two years at least! And you had…a very handsome young man, I think.” “Oh, well, I—” A waiter comes by with a tray of champagne, and both Less and Finley grab one. Finley handles his unsteadily, then grins at the waiter; it occurs to Less that the man is drunk.

• From Less (2017)

  Whatever it is—Less never learned it. By his forties, all he has managed to grow is a gentle sense of himself, akin to the transparent carapace of a soft-shelled crab. A mediocre review or careless slight can no longer harm him, but heartbreak, real true heartbreak, can pierce his thin hide and bring out the same shade of blood as ever. How can so many things become a bore by middle age—philosophy, radicalism, and other fast foods—but heartbreak keeps its sting? Perhaps because he finds fresh sources for it. Even foolish old fears have never been vanquished, only avoided: telephone calls (frenetically dialing like a man decoding a bomb), taxicabs (fumbling the tip and leaping out as from a hostage situation), and talking to attractive men or celebrities at parties (still mentally rehearsing his opening lines, only to realize they are saying their good-byes). He still has these fears, but the passage of time solved them for him. Texting and email saved him from phones forever. Credit card machines appeared in taxis. A missed opportunity could contact you online. But heartbreak—how can you avoid it except to renounce love entirely? In the end, that is the only solution Arthur Less could find. Perhaps it explains why he gave nine years to a certain young man. I have neglected to mention that he has, on his lap, a Russian cosmonaut’s helmet. But now a bit of luck: from the world outside the lobby, a chime rings out, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, causing Arthur Less to pop out of his seat. Look at him: staring at his betrayer, the clock, then running to the front desk and asking—at last—the essential temporal question. “I don’t understand how you could think I was a woman.” “You are such a talented writer, Mr. Less. You tricked me! And what are you carrying?” “This? The bookstore asked me to—” “I loved Dark Matter. There is a part that reminded me of Kawabata.” “He’s one of my favorites! The Old Capital. Kyoto.” “I am from Kyoto, Mr. Less.” “Really? I’ll be there in a few months—” “Mr. Less. We are having a problem…” This conversation takes place as the woman in the brown wool dress leads him down a theater hallway. It is decorated with a lone prop tree, the kind the hero hides behind in comedies; the rest is all brick painted glossy black. Less and his escort have run from the hotel to the event space, and he can already feel the sweat turning his crisp white shirt into a transparency.

• From Wild (2012)

  Together we descended Trail Pass Trail two miles down to a picnic area and campground at Horseshoe Meadows, where we met up with Doug and Tom and hitched a ride into Lone Pine. I hadn’t planned to go there. Some PCT hikers had resupply boxes sent to Lone Pine, but I’d planned to push through to the town of Independence, another fifty trail miles to the north. I still had a few days’ worth of food in my bag, but when we reached town I went immediately to a grocery store to replenish my stock. I needed enough to last for the ninety-six-mile section I’d be hiking once I made the bypass, from Sierra City to Belden Town. Afterwards, I found a pay phone and called Lisa and left a message on her answering machine, explaining my new plan as quickly as I could, asking her to send my box addressed to Belden Town immediately and hold all the others until I gave her the details of my new itinerary. I felt dislocated and melancholy when I hung up the phone, less excited about being in town than I thought I’d be. I walked along the main street until I found the men. “We’re heading back up,” said Doug, his eyes meeting mine. My chest felt tight as I hugged him and Tom goodbye. I’d come to feel a sort of love for them, but on top of that, I was worried. “Are you sure you want to go up into the snow?” I asked. “Are you sure you don’t?” Tom replied. “You still have your good luck charm,” said Doug, pointing to the black feather he’d given me back in Kennedy Meadows. I’d wedged it into Monster’s frame, up over my right shoulder. “Something to remember you by,” I said, and we laughed. After they left, I walked with Greg to the convenience store that doubled as the town’s Greyhound bus station. We passed bars that billed themselves as Old West saloons and shops that had cowboy hats and framed paintings of men astride bucking broncos displayed in their front windows. “You ever see High Sierra with Humphrey Bogart?” Greg asked. I shook my head. “That was made here. Plus lots of other movies. Westerns.” I nodded, unsurprised. The landscape did in fact look straight out of Hollywood—a high sage-covered flat that was more barren than not, rocky and treeless with a view that went on for miles. The white peaks of the Sierra Nevada to the west cut so dramatically up into the blue sky that they seemed almost unreal to me, a gorgeous façade. “There’s our ride,” Greg said, pointing to a big Greyhound bus in a parking lot of the store as we approached.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  In 1670 the king, anxious to take Madame de Montespan on a military campaign, needed to drag both the queen along as chaperone to avoid scandal and Louise to confuse the public about his relationship with Madame de Montespan. As the duc de Saint-Simon reported, “He paraded the two of them in the carriage with the Queen, along the frontier, at the encampments…. Crowds came running everywhere along the route, pointing at the carriage and naively calling to one another to come and see the three Queens!”29 In 1671 the poor queen found herself on another journey stuffed into a carriage with her husband and his two mistresses. One night, seven exalted travelers found themselves obliged to stay in the same room with one bed. Marie-Thérèse was given the bed, while the other six—the king, his brother and sister-in-law, his cousin Anne-Marie, Louise de La Vallière, and Athénaïs de Montespan, slept on mattresses on the floor. The flabbergasted queen cried out in her throaty Spanish accent, “What? All of us here together?” To which her husband retorted, “If you leave your bed curtains open, you can keep an eye on us all!”30 Marie-Thérèse often waited up quite late for her husband, who, out of courtesy to her, never failed to come to her bed, even if the sun was rising. When he finally did come, still warm from his mistress’s embrace, his wife greeted him with a smile. She was grateful that the king showed the court his respect for her so clearly. As one courtier remarked, “The King renders her the full honors of her position. He eats and sleeps with her…converses with her as gallantly as if there were no mistresses in his life…and fulfills his connubial duties…. He usually has commerce with her about twice a month.”31 At some point the queen stopped resisting the tide of beautiful nubile women rushing toward her husband. Perhaps time healed the first, ragged wounds into thick, strong scars. She even took to wearing Madame de Montespan’s signature hairstyle—curls on the brow and each side of the head to just below the ear, and a braid coiled on the back of the head, entwined with ribbons and pearls. One day, noticing they were both wearing the same coiffeur, the queen explained, “I’ve cut my hair like this because the King likes it, not to steal your hair style.”32

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  It wasn’t a gaol.’‘A reformat’ry, then. But it’s true you were in one.’ She didn’t answer. ‘I don’t mind it,’ I added quickly.She gave a jerk to her head, and said: ‘No, I don’t mind it, now...’Had she said such a thing, in such a tone, to Diana, I think Diana would have slapped her. Indeed, she looked at me now a little fearfully; but when she did so, I grimaced. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Do you think me very rude? It’s only - well, it is what Diana said, about why they had you in there at all. Is it true, what she said? Or is it only one of her stories? Is it true that they had you in there, because you ... kissed another girl?’She let her hands fall to her lap, then sat back upon her heels and gazed into the unlit grate. Then she turned her face to me and gave a sigh.‘I was a year in the reformat’ry,’ she said, ‘when I was seventeen. It was a cruel enough place, I suppose, though not so hard as other gaols I heard of; its mistress is a lady Mrs Lethaby knows from her club, and that is how she got me. I was sent to the reformat‘ry on the word of a girl I was friends with at a house in Kentish Town. We were maids there, together.’‘You were a maid before you came here?’‘I was sent out as a skivvy when I was ten: Pa was rather poor. That was at a house in Paddington. When I was fourteen I went to the place in Kentish Town. It was altogether a better place. I was a housemaid, then; and I got very thick with another girl there, named Agnes. Agnes had a chap, and she threw the chap over, miss, for my sake. That’s how thick we were ...’She gazed very sadly at her hands in her lap, and the room grew still, and I grew sorry. I said, ‘And was it Agnes told the story that got you sent to the reformat’ry?’She shook her head. ‘Oh, no! What happened was, Agnes lost her place, because the lady didn’t care for her. She went to a house in Dulwich — which, as you will know, is very far from Kentish Town, but not so far that we couldn’t meet on a Sunday, and send each other little notes and parcels through the post. But then - well, then another girl came. She was not so nice as Agnes, but she took to me like anything. I think she was a bit soft, miss, in the head.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  The tradition is to stand in silence in memory of the six million who were murdered.” They all stood for a long moment until the siren ended. Then the granddaughter said, “I’m sure that was strange for you; it is never easy for us either.” Her voice was tender. “I work as a teacher, and kids here tend to giggle during the siren. I remember this from my own childhood. Coming from a different country you probably understand that it’s a lot for children to handle, that it’s hard for them to process the horror.” Rachel looks at me and starts to cry. We feel the ground shift, realizing that this secret nightmare has been her way to live the memory of an unimaginable trauma. As the narrative of the past takes shape, we watch Rachel’s ghost turn into an ancestor. She finally has a story that she can tell rather than relive again and again. The room is quiet but for the muffled sounds of her tears and breath, less labored now. 1 LIFE AND DEATH IN LOVE AFFAIRS E ve drives an hour, twice a week, to get to her session with me. She tells me that she hates driving, and how much she wishes someone would drive her, wait for her outside my office, and then drive her back home. She doesn’t need that person to entertain her; they don’t even need to talk. It would be more than enough for her to just sit next to the driver and listen to the music in the background. I feel a wave of sadness listening to Eve describing herself sitting silently next to the driver. I picture the little girl she used to be, trying to be good and quiet, not to interrupt anyone, not to get in trouble, pretending she doesn’t exist. I asked her in one of our first sessions what her earliest childhood memory was. She said, “I was five years old, waiting outside school for my mother to pick me up, and she forgot. I figured that I had to sit there and wait until my mother remembered. ‘Be patient,’ I told myself.” A first childhood memory often conceals within it the main ingredients of future therapy. It frequently illustrates the reasons the patient seeks therapy, and portrays a picture of the patient’s view of herself. Every memory hides within it previous and also subsequent repressed memories. Eve’s first memory conveys to me the experience of being forgotten. Slowly it becomes clear that she was often left alone with no parental supervision and that she grew up, the oldest of four children, in a family where there was much neglect and emotional deadness. I feel drawn to Eve. She is in her forties, her long brunette hair flowing onto her shoulders, her green eyes usually covered with big dark sunglasses. Eve takes off her sunglasses as she walks into the room, then quickly sits on the couch.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  The person you choose must be able to listen to you nonjudgmentally and sympathetically, be interested in learning about cults and processes of influence and control, and be objective and supportive of your efforts to heal. One exercise that can be quite useful is to recall what your cult believed or said about leaving. Many former members remember their leaders telling the group that those who leave would become emotionally ill or even die. Did your group attempt to keep you under its control with threats of insanity or death? By taking a look at your group's beliefs about emotions or emotional difficulties, you may find a way to defuse any hold those beliefs still have over you. Hana Whitfield spent approximately twenty years in an extremely control ling group, serving at leadership levels. These activities are ones that helped her get through her bouts of depression after she left the group: • I put my attention on things I had to deal with every day. • I frequently told myself that the depression too would pass, as the cult experience had passed. That helped. • Doing physical tasks helped take my mind off the depression: scrubbing the floor, cleaning and waxing the car (whether or not it needed it), doing some hard digging in the yard, taking a rather physical walk, or jogging, and so on. • I kept a daily list of actions to accomplish that I felt would better my life, my living situation, my salary, and so on, no matter how small they were. Things like seeing the landlady at an apartment house, buying a newspaper to look for part-time jobs, making a certain phone call, filing my nails, washing some clothes. I did this religiously and gave myself a pat on the back every single time something got done. This definitely gave me a sense of real accomplishment. Each evening I would prepare a list for the following day. • I encouraged trusting myself; I did this consciously. Every day I would look at what I had accomplished that day and give myself strokes for it. I would tell myself that I could handle things, that I was getting ahead, even if slowly, and that I was in control. Hana added these following insights: • Know that the depression will not last forever. • Underlying the depression are feelings of anger, sorrow, hurt, and betrayal. • It's all right to start experiencing those feelings and to let them surface. • It helps to write down whatever is surfacing, to let it come out. • It's all right to feel sorrow, hate, indecision, revenge, or even to feel like killing someone in the group.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  I was happy about that. And I was most especially excited about my first geometry class. Yep, I have to admit that isosceles triangles make me feel hormonal. Most guys, no matter what age, get excited about curves and circles, but not me. Don’t get me wrong. I like girls and their curves. And I really like women and their curvier curves. I spend hours in the bathroom with a magazine that has one thousand pictures of naked movie stars: Naked woman + right hand = happy happy joy joy Yep, that’s right, I admit that I masturbate. I’m proud of it. I’m good at it. I’m ambidextrous. If there were a Professional Masturbators League, I’d get drafted number one and make millions of dollars. And maybe you’re thinking, “Well, you really shouldn’t be talking about masturbation in public.” Well, tough, I’m going to talk about it because EVERYBODY does it. And EVERYBODY likes it. And if God hadn’t wanted us to masturbate, then God wouldn’t have given us thumbs. So I thank God for my thumbs. But, the thing is, no matter how much time my thumbs and I spend with the curves of imaginary women, I am much more in love with the right angles of buildings. When I was a baby, I’d crawl under my bed and snuggle into a corner to sleep. I just felt warm and safe leaning into two walls at the same time. When I was eight, nine, and ten, I slept in my bedroom closet with the door closed. I only stopped doing that because my big sister, Mary, told me that I was just trying to find my way back into my mother’s womb. That ruined the whole closet thing. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against my mother’s womb. I was built in there, after all. So I have to say that I am pro-womb. But I have zero interest in moving back home, so to speak. My sister is good at ruining things. After high school, my sister just froze. Didn’t go to college, didn’t get a job. Didn’t do anything. Kind of sad, I guess. But she is also beautiful and strong and funny. She is the prettiest and strongest and funniest person who ever spent twenty-three hours a day alone in a basement. Revenge Is My Middle Name After Oscar died, I was so depressed that I thought about crawling into a hole and disappearing forever. But Rowdy talked me out of it. “It’s not like anybody’s going to notice if you go away,” he said. “So you might as well gut it out.” Isn’t that tough love? Rowdy is the toughest kid on the rez. He is long and lean and strong like a snake.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  But Maria’s young heart withered in the old man’s arms. On the altar of self-immolation, Maria plaintively wrote to a friend, “He is kind. He paid all of my mother’s farm debts…. I must be a good wife to him…. Does one ever get all one wants in this life?”3 The count, who had been surprisingly youthful for his years, aged quickly after the wedding. He grew querulous, criticizing his wife’s appearance and behavior and throwing jealous scenes when men spoke to her. Yet her socially ambitious husband dragged Maria to balls and dinner parties, where her beauty constantly attracted admirers. In the social whirl of scheming women, Maria’s genuine modesty was perhaps her greatest asset—greater even than her long blonde hair, her large, innocent blue eyes, and her flawless white complexion. In December 1806, Napoleon and the French army entered Warsaw and were welcomed with open arms by an adoring populace. The Poles were convinced that Napoleon would liberate them from foreign occupation and re-create Poland as a free and sovereign nation. Tens of thousands of young Poles flocked to join the imperial armies, to advance, with their blood, the debt Napoleon would owe Poland and would undoubtedly repay. In January 1807, Napoleon gave a brilliant ball for Warsaw society. Count Anastase Walewski and his young wife were invited. Maria was extremely nervous about meeting her hero, the man she was convinced would save Poland. She asked her husband’s permission to stay home. Not only did he refuse, but he instructed her to wear her most beautiful gown and ordered his family’s diamond and sapphire necklace to be brought in from their country estate. The count, though peevishly jealous of the male attention his wife’s beauty aroused, wanted to show her off to the emperor. Wearing a narrow gown of cornflower blue to match her eyes, a silver cord twisted under the high waist, Maria was presented to Napoleon. He looked at her closely and silently passed on. Afterward, he turned to Minister Talleyrand and uttered those ancient, fateful words which have changed so many women’s lives: “Who is she?”4 Maria went home that evening pleased to have met her hero and thought nothing more of it. Everyone but Maria knew that the Conqueror of Europe was dazzled by her beauty, and that his comment “There are many beautiful women in Warsaw” referred to Maria.5 A few days later at the foreign minister’s ball, Napoleon wasted no time in singling Maria out and dancing with her. He was seen to squeeze her hand after the dance and to watch her closely from across the room. Indeed, it seemed as if Napoleon did nothing else but stare at Maria the entire night.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  TenDeath of the KingI am as one who is left alone at a banquet, the lights dead and the flowers faded. —EDWARD ROBERT BULWER, FIRST EARL OF LYTTON DEATH IN HIS BLACK ROBES WAS A FREQUENT VISITOR TO royal palaces in centuries past. The highest in the land were often struck down at the peak of their youth and power. A member of the court or royal family could be dancing one night, dead the next. Even kings must die. Inevitably, the day came when Death, gaunt and hollow-eyed, began to pluck with clawlike fingers at the monarch’s soul, patiently plucking until in shrieking agony it tore through bone and sinew. Now indeed was no time for fond memories of candlelit lovemaking, of hazy wine-filled nights, of women’s lips and breasts and thighs. Not now, as the king prepared to walk into the gulf alone. For the first time in his life he would be truly alone, with no retinue of fawning courtiers or mincing ministers to strew rose petals in his path. In the end he was crownless, reduced in stature to that of the scurviest beggar, worth no more than any other human soul fleeing rancid human flesh. Looking Death in the face after a reign of seventy years, Louis XIV soberly reflected, “We do what we choose while we are alive, but when we are dead we have less power than the lowliest individual.”1 The king’s protection of his mistress ceased with the beating of his heart; sometimes, in a desperate fit of repentance, earlier. The mistress was often barred entrance into his sick chamber by angry relatives, unless of course the king had a contagious disease such as smallpox, in which case she would be expected to nurse him. Even if she did make it to the deathbed to bid her lover farewell, she was sent away before the priest came to administer last rites. To the dying monarch, his mistress had become a living accusation of mortal sin, and he was not permitted to sully his newly cleansed soul by even looking at her. There was no one less pitied than the courtesan of a dead king. Her carefully constructed position—which had been upheld only at the king’s insistence—suddenly collapsed, flinging her far below ordinary mortals. She was rarely permitted the right of the poorest citizen to participate in her lover’s funeral obsequies or visit the body lying in state. Retribution from the royal family for perceived insults was often swift and merciless. While former mistresses, long since dismissed by the deceased monarch, were forgotten and permitted to rusticate gracefully, it was the king’s final mistress who bore the full resentment of the royal family, courtiers, and commoners. In 1350 when Alfonso XI of Castile died of the black plague, his mistress Leonor de Guzman was imprisoned by Alfonso’s long-ignored wife Queen Maria and murdered in her cell by the queen’s express order.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  We lay together very straight and stiff, our heads upon the same prickling bolster, but hers turned from mine and her eyes shut fast. The coughing of the other lodgers, the soreness at my cheek, my general wretchedness and panic, kept me wakeful. When Zena gave a shiver, I put my hand upon her; and when she didn’t take the hand away, I moved a little closer to her. I said, very low: ‘Oh Zena, I cannot sleep, for thinking of it all!’ ‘I daresay.’ I trembled. ‘Do you hate me, Zena?’ She wouldn’t answer. ‘I shan’t blame you, if you do. But oh! do you know how sorry I am?’ A woman in the bed beside us gave a shriek — I think she was a drunkard - and that made both of us jump, and brought our faces even closer. Her eyes were still hard shut, but I could tell that she listened. I thought of how differently we had lain together, only a few hours before. My wretchedness since then had knocked the fire right out of me; but because it hadn’t been said by either of us, and I thought it ought to be, I whispered now: ‘Oh, if only Diana hadn’t come when she did! It was fun - wasn’t it? - before Diana came and stopped it ...’ She opened her eyes. ‘It was fun,’ she said sadly. ‘It is always fun before they catch you.’ Then she gazed at me, and swallowed. I said: ‘It won’t be so bad, Zena - will it? You’re the only tom I know in London, now; and since you’re all alone, I thought - we might make a go of it, mightn’t we? We might find a room, in a rooming-house. You could get work, as a sempstress or a char. I shall buy another suit; and when my face is all healed up - well, I know a trick or two, for making money. We shall have your seven pounds back in a month. We shall have twenty pounds in no time. And then, you can make your trip out to the colonies; and I’ — I gave a gulp — ‘I might go with you. You said they always need landladies there; surely, they’ll always need gentlemen’s tarts, too - even in Australia ... ?’ She gazed at me as I murmured, saying nothing. Then she bent her head and kissed me once, very lightly, upon the lips. Then she turned away again, and at last I slept. When I woke, it was daylight. I could hear the sounds of women coughing and spitting, and discussing, in low, peevish voices, the nights that they had passed, and the days they must now move on to.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  1LIFE AND DEATH IN LOVE AFFAIRSEve drives an hour, twice a week, to get to her session with me. She tells me that she hates driving, and how much she wishes someone would drive her, wait for her outside my office, and then drive her back home. She doesn’t need that person to entertain her; they don’t even need to talk. It would be more than enough for her to just sit next to the driver and listen to the music in the background. I feel a wave of sadness listening to Eve describing herself sitting silently next to the driver. I picture the little girl she used to be, trying to be good and quiet, not to interrupt anyone, not to get in trouble, pretending she doesn’t exist. I asked her in one of our first sessions what her earliest childhood memory was. She said, “I was five years old, waiting outside school for my mother to pick me up, and she forgot. I figured that I had to sit there and wait until my mother remembered. ‘Be patient,’ I told myself.” A first childhood memory often conceals within it the main ingredients of future therapy. It frequently illustrates the reasons the patient seeks therapy, and portrays a picture of the patient’s view of herself. Every memory hides within it previous and also subsequent repressed memories. Eve’s first memory conveys to me the experience of being forgotten. Slowly it becomes clear that she was often left alone with no parental supervision and that she grew up, the oldest of four children, in a family where there was much neglect and emotional deadness. I feel drawn to Eve. She is in her forties, her long brunette hair flowing onto her shoulders, her green eyes usually covered with big dark sunglasses. Eve takes off her sunglasses as she walks into the room, then quickly sits on the couch. She greets me with a shy smile, and I notice the dimple on her right cheek. She takes off her high heels and stays barefoot, sitting crossed legged on the couch. Eve is beautiful, and in some moments, when looking at me with the eyes of a young girl, she seems lost. I wonder if Eve’s mother eventually picked her up, and I try to imagine how Eve felt waiting there for her, hiding her fear that her mother might never come. I ask, but Eve is silent. She doesn’t remember. In our sessions, she often becomes dissociative, gazing out the window as if she is with me but also not with me. Something about her is breathtaking, but at times she seems flat. Eve is frequently distant; she is careful about expressing intense emotion, and she lapses into long silences.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Research indicates that low maternal responsiveness at three and nine months predicts insecure attachment at twelve months, negative feelings and aggressive behavior at three years, and other behavioral problems from age ten on. I try to picture Jon as a baby, recognizing his withdrawal as an adult. I try to imagine what he saw in his mother’s eyes: her pain, her anger, her guilt, and her lack of responsiveness toward him. I wonder what he sensed even when it wasn’t directly communicated to him. I am aware that there is much I don’t know and may never know. Some of those early experiences are forever sealed. Jon walks into the room and sits on the armchair. “Last night I had a conversation with Jake, my oldest brother,” he says. “I told him about my therapy. I told him that a lot of things from my childhood are coming up now, especially from the time I was a baby. It was surprising, I have to tell you. I never thought I would be able to talk to him about these things, and I was shocked when he told me that he has been in therapy for years now. ‘We had a lot to deal with, as kids,’ Jake said, ‘especially you.’ “‘Why me?’ I was kind of confused. ‘You guys knew Jane, I didn’t.’” Jon pauses and looks at me. “My brother Jake said that in his therapy he realized that there are two kinds of people: those who have lost and those who never had anything to begin with. ‘I struggle with that idea,’ he said, ‘and I always tell my therapist that you, Jon, unlike the rest of us, who had lost, you never had. I tell her, “This is why he is the most wounded one of us all.”’ “You can imagine how confused that made me,” Jon says. “I told him, ‘Jake, I’m not sure what you are saying.’ And then he basically told me that he was eight years old when my parents found out Mom was pregnant with me, and that she was very upset and angry. She didn’t want another baby, and she blamed my dad for that pregnancy and wanted to get an abortion. There were a lot of fights and they didn’t talk for a while. “‘Then you were born and a few months later Jane died,’ Jake said, and I felt a kick in my stomach. Everything you and I talked about suddenly made sense. They didn’t want me to begin with.” He looks straight into my eyes. “My parents never wanted a fifth child. Four was enough for them. They ended up with four after all. But not with the four they wanted. ” We are both silent. I’m stunned but not surprised. It is often easy to recognize those people who were not fully invited into this world. They seem like visitors, outsiders who might leave at any minute.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Three days before the wedding, which was to take place on Easter Sunday, Gabrielle traveled to Paris by barge to prepare for the ceremony while Henri remained at the palace of Fontainebleau. When Henri bid her farewell on the bank of the river, she burst into tears and clung to him. The king thought Gabrielle was suffering from nerves; but perhaps in some secret part of her soul she knew it was the last time she would ever see Henri, feel his flesh warm and solid against hers. Landing in Paris, Gabrielle ate at the house of her friend the banker Zamet, where dinner included a lemon. Feeling unwell, Gabrielle canceled her appearance at several gala events. By the next afternoon she was in labor—four months early. Her birth pangs were keener than they had ever been. She twisted in agony as doctors dismembered the dead child inside her and drew it out. Despite the presence of two surgeons, three apothecaries, and a priest, Gabrielle died on Easter Saturday, the day before she was to have become queen of France. The timing of Gabrielle’s death was so strange that—naturally—rumors swept France that she had been poisoned. The likely culprits were the Vatican or the House of Medici, which had been violently opposed to Henri’s marriage to Gabrielle, hoping he would marry Tuscan duchess Marie de Medici instead. The doctors—baffled despite a careful autopsy—concluded she had been killed by a “corrupt” lemon.3 Modern doctors, reading reports of Gabrielle’s symptoms and suffering, believe she died of a septic pregnancy. Whatever the cause of Gabrielle’s death, many Catholics thought God had struck her down in the nick of time, saving them the indignity of having a whore as queen. Hearing of her sudden grave illness, Henri raced to see her but was stopped on the way with the news of her death. Devastated, he went into mourning, immediately donning black instead of the traditional white or violet, something which French monarchs had never done before. His love had been deep; initially his grief was extreme. During a long life of philandering, Henri was faithful to only one woman, and that woman was Gabrielle.

• From Less (2017)

  “But I am,” Less says from where he lies in the bed. “I will be.” Our hero resting sideways on his elbows. The dappled sunlight showing how the trumpet vine has grown, over the years, to lattice the window. Less is forty-four. Freddy, twenty-nine, wearing his red glasses, Less’s tuxedo jacket, and nothing else. In the center of his furred chest, barely an indent where the hollow used to be. Freddy looks at himself in the mirror. “I think I look better in your tuxedo than you do.” “I want to make sure,” Less says, lowering his voice, “that I’m not preventing you from meeting anyone.” Freddy catches Arthur Less’s gaze in the mirror. The young man’s face tightens slightly, as if he had a toothache. At last, he says, “You don’t have to worry about it.” “You’re at an age—” “I know.” Freddy has the look of someone paying very close attention to every word. “I understand where we are. You don’t have to worry about it.” Less settles back in the bed, and they look at each other silently for a moment. The wind sets the vine tapping against the window, scrambling the shadows. “I just wanted to talk—” he begins. Freddy turns around. “We don’t need to have a long talk, Arthur. You don’t have to worry about it. I just think you should give me this tuxedo.” “Absolutely not. And stop using my cologne.” “I will when I’m rich.” Freddy gets onto the bed. “Let’s watch The Paper Wall again.” “Mr. Pelu, I just want to make sure,” Less goes on, unable to let go until he is certain he has made his point, “that you don’t get attached to me.” He wonders when their conversations had begun to sound like a novel in translation. Freddy sits up again, very serious. A strong jaw, the kind an artist would sketch, a jaw that reveals the man he has become. His jaw, and the eagle of dark hair on his chest—they belong to a man. A few details—the small nose and chipmunk smile and blue eyes in which his thoughts can so easily be read—are all that remains of that twenty-five-year-old watching the fog. Then he smiles. “It’s incredible how vain you are,” Freddy says. “Just tell me you think my wrinkles are sexy.” Crawling closer: “Arthur, there isn’t a part of you that isn’t sexy.” The water has grown cold, and the tiled windowless room feels like an igloo now. He sees himself reflected in the tiles, a wavering ghost on the shiny white surface. He cannot stay in here. He cannot go to bed. He has to do something not sad. When you’re fifty I’ll be seventy-five. And then what will we do? Nothing to do but laugh about it. True for everything.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  “Those were your exact words when I met you for the first time,” I say, trying to learn something about her from the way she looks: the black T-shirt, the black long silk skirt, her sneakers and blue nail polish, and her long straight hair, which I think used to be curly. I’m trying to read what has happened to her in the years since then. Where has she been? Is she happy? Did she find out what really happened? “I know it’s your birthday today,” she then says to my surprise. I nod and smile. Some things don’t change. She still knows more about me than I expect. “Don’t worry, I can’t read your mind,” she adds as if reading my mind. “When I tried to find you, I googled you, and one of the first things I found on your Wikipedia page was your birthday. I was happy you scheduled our session for today. I really wanted to give you a gift.” Traditionally, therapists do not accept gifts from patients. The contract with our patients is clear; there is no dual relationship, no exchanges other than our professional services for an hourly fee. Psychoanalyst and patient share a joint goal of trying to explore the unconscious; therefore, it’s interesting to understand when and why a patient brings a gift and what that gift represents. But in reality nothing can make a gift feel unappreciated and dismissed more than analyzing it. Lara opens her bag and hands me a small puppet. It is a girl wearing a red dress. Our Little Red Riding Hood. She surprises me again. “Do you remember?” she asks, and she suddenly sounds like the little girl she used to be. “Of course I do. I never forgot,” I say. We look at each other. I like her as much as I did all those years ago, and I wonder what has made her look for me now. “I came to see you because I need your help.” She answers the question I haven’t yet asked out loud. We start where we stopped years before. Lara tells me about her family’s move back then to the West Coast. It was sudden; she didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye. “In retrospect maybe we were running away,” she says. “Running away from the unhappiness my family lived in. But the unhappiness followed us and in fact only got worse.” The tension between Lara’s parents, Hanna and Jed, became intolerable, and four years later, they got divorced. Jed lost his job and had to move to work in Denver. Hanna grew even more depressed and was hospitalized. Lara found herself alone, and at the age of fourteen she had to move yet again, this time to live with her grandmother Masha. Lara talks and I feel sad and worried. How was it for her to move again, to separate from both her parents? To live with her grandmother, whom she used to have mixed feelings about?

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  The saddest case was that of the actress Dorothy Jordan. Her ten children with the future William IV allowed her to die alone in exile and poverty while they were attending parties with their royal father. Their mother had become an embarrassment, but high society welcomed them with open arms when accompanied by William. All eight of the ten children who married did so into English nobility, living lives of luxury and conveniently forgetting that their mother was buried in a pauper’s grave in France. Legitimate BastardsKings usually legitimized these offspring by royal decree. This legitimization was an official recognition of fatherhood, leaving the children bastards, but bastards with high expectations. In 1360 King Pedro of Portugal wanted to legitimize his children with his mistress Inez de Castro, whom he had married after their births. The pope declared that the children could be legitimate only if their mother was crowned queen—and Inez had died five years earlier. Undeterred, King Pedro dug her up, dressed her skeleton in regal robes, and had it placed in a chair in the cathedral and crowned in an elaborate ceremony which all the nobles were forced to attend. After that no one protested when he legitimized the children. By the sixteenth century Europe had become somewhat more civilized. When Henri IV of France wanted to legitimize his son with Gabrielle d’Estrées in 1594, he merely issued documents proclaiming César his son. “We accord to him these letters,” Henri wrote, “inasmuch as the stigma that is attached to the birth of our son excludes him from all hopes of succeeding to this our Crown…. His state would be but a poor one, were it not for this, his legitimation, whereby he is rendered capable of receiving all the gifts and benefits which may be conferred on him both by us and others.”7 In addition to legitimizing their bastard children, kings often ennobled them, creating a string of infant counts and countesses, dukes and duchesses. While royal bastards were not considered suitable marriage partners for foreign royalty, they were highly sought after in marriage by noble families of the same nationality—thus mixing their blood with the sacred blood of the king. Because of the frequent marriage of bastard dukes and duchesses into established noble families, most of European nobility today is directly related to royal children born on the wrong side of the blanket.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I stared at her. Still she would not catch my eye, but got to her feet, and crossed her arms over her waist. ‘Do you remember the gentleman who called on me last night,’ she said, ‘ - Mr Bliss?’ I nodded. She hadn’t mentioned him today; and in all my fussing over her visit, I had forgotten to ask after him. Now she went on: ‘Mr Bliss is a manager - not a theatre manager, like Tricky, but a manager for artistes: an agent. He saw my turn and - oh, Nan!’ - she couldn’t help but be excited now - ‘he saw my turn and liked it so much, he has offered me a contract, at a music hall in London!’ ‘London!’ I could only echo her in disbelief. This was terrible beyond all words. Had she gone to Margate or Broadstairs, I might have visited her sometimes. If she went to London I would never see her again; she might just as well go to Africa, or to the moon. She went talking on, saying how Mr Bliss had friends at the London halls, and had promised her a season at them all; how he had said she was too good for the provincial stage; that she would find fame in the city, where all the big names worked, and all the money was... I hardly listened, but grew more and more miserable. At length I placed a hand before my eyes, and bowed my head, and she grew silent. ‘You’re not happy for me, after all,’ she said quietly. ‘I am,’ I said - my voice was thick - ‘but I am more unhappy, for myself.’ There was a silence then, broken only by the sound of laughter and scraping chairs from the parlour below, and the shriek of gulls outside the open window. The room seemed to have darkened since we entered it, and I felt colder, suddenly, than I had all summer. I heard her take a step. In a second she was sitting beside me again, and had taken my hand from my brow. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I have something to ask you.’ I looked at her; her face was pale, except for its cloud of freckles, and her eyes seemed large. ‘Do you think that I look handsome today?’ she said. ‘Do you think I have been kind, and pleasant, and good? Do you think your parents like me?’ Her words seemed wild.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  In 1936, sixty-seven-year-old Alice was lunching at the Ritz in London when an announcement was made that King Edward VIII was abdicating to marry his mistress, Wallis Warfield Simpson. She winced. “Things were done much better in my day,” she sniffed loudly.22 ElevenThe End of a Brilliant Career and BeyondDecay’s effacing fingers have swept the lines where beauty lingers. —LORD BYRON PADDING SILENTLY THROUGH GILDED CORRIDORS, SOMETIMES Death slipped past the king’s chamber and glided on to another, where he visited a mistress. The dead royal mistress was scooped up still warm, thrown in a grave, and promptly forgotten by courtiers, who focused immediately on her replacement. Most mistresses, however, were not fated to die tragically young or suffer dramatic punishment after the death of their royal lovers. Most were destined for a more mundane fate—they lived to despise their mirrors, were dismissed and replaced by younger, prettier faces. In centuries past the cruel hand of time swooped down earlier to wreak its ravages on female beauty. Louis XIV’s beautiful blonde Louise de La Vallière immured her fading looks in a convent at the ripe old age of twenty-nine. Samuel Pepys described one of Charles II’s mistresses, a venerable twenty-three, as beginning to “decay.”1 One day when Lady Castlemaine ran into her enemy the duke of Ormonde at court, she vociferously wished him disfigurement, dismemberment, and a last gasp at the end of the hangman’s rope. The duke looked coolly at the twenty-nine year old and replied, “I am not in so much haste to put an end to your days, Madam, for all I wish is that I may live to see you old.”2 What happened to rejected mistresses as they aged? Many continued active lives away from court, marrying, bearing children, visiting friends, enjoying their ill-gotten gains in lovely country homes filled with fine furnishings. In their later years, many former royal mistresses found in religion the antidote to their youthful sins. And while most surrendered their beauty wearily to that most puissant enemy, time, a few battled bravely until the last. Death Takes a MistressIt is not surprising that Death took many royal mistresses at the peak of their youth and beauty. Their doleful end was often presaged months earlier in the happy news of a longed-for pregnancy, a tangible tie to the king forever. Death must have laughed as he looked for Gabrielle d’Estrées, for he timed his visit with exquisite irony—only hours before she was to wed her lover Henri IV, becoming queen of France and clearing the way for her son César to inherit the throne. By March 1599 Gabrielle was five months pregnant. She had sailed through her three previous pregnancies in glowing health. This one was markedly different, however. She was peevish, fretful, depressed. She complained often of feeling unwell, feared some impending disaster. She spent many sleepless nights and suffered horrible nightmares when she did sleep.