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 American Swing (2008)

  AND I REALLY FEEL THAT SOME OF THE TIMES THAT HE SAID HE WAS WORKING, HE WASN'T WORKING. WHEN HE FIRST MARRIED GLORIA, I DON'T THINK ANY OF US THOUGHT THAT IT WOULDN'T LAST BECAUSE WE DIDN'T KNOW ANYBODY WHO HAD SEPARATED OR DIVORCED. I THOUGHT HE WAS CHEATING ON ME. Danny Levenson: MY DAD AND MY MOM GOT DIVORCED WHEN I WAS SIX. SO MY DAD REALLY WASN'T AROUND A LOT. MY PARENTS SEPARATED WHEN I WAS VERY YOUNG. SO MY FIRST RECOLLECTION ACTUALLY IS WHEN MY DAD USED TO WORK AT McDONALD'S AND HE BROUGHT ME THE HAMBURGLAR-- IT WAS A LITTLE STUFFED HAMBURGLAR. SO THAT'S WHAT I USED TO SLEEP WITH-- I USED TO SLEEP WITH A LITTLE HAMBURGLAR. ALL I CAN REMEMBER IS THROUGH THOSE YEARS, MY MOTHER YELLING AT MY FATHER ON THE PHONE, "THEY'RE WAITING FOR YOU. YOU DIDN'T SHOW UP. YOU SAID YOU WERE COMING." AND OF COURSE EVERY BUSINESS THAT LARRY WAS IN WAS ON THE WEEKENDS. SO THE TIMES WHEN FATHERS WOULD BE WITH THEIR CHILDREN, LARRY WAS EITHER OFF SELLING SODAS ON THE BEACH OR PREPARING FOR SWINGERS PARTIES, WHEREVER THEY MIGHT BE HELD. I WAS VERY SURPRISED WHEN LARRY WAS INVOLVED IN THAT KIND OF LIFESTYLE. I REALLY DIDN'T THINK THAT IT WAS SOMETHING THAT WOULD BE HIS THING TO DO. BUT MAYBE I JUST DIDN'T KNOW HIM THAT WELL. ♪ WHAT'S OUR FAVORITE EVENING GAME? ♪ ♪ NIGHT BASEBALL? ♪ ♪ OH, BABY, YOU'RE ALL WET ♪ ♪ LET'S SWAP PARTNERS IS THE NAME ♪ ♪ SUBURBAN ROULETTE... ♪ YOU KNOW WHAT I DON'T LIKE TO SEE IS THIS THING ABOUT YOU HAVE TO BE MONOGAMOUS. I SAY NOBODY'S MONOGAMOUS. AND IF YOU MAKE SOMEBODY SAY THAT YOU'RE FUCKING MONOGAMOUS AND YOU'RE GONNA BE LEGITIMATE, "I MARRIED HER. I'M NEVER GONNA FUCK," I'M A LIAR. THE SWINGING MOVEMENT WAS VERY SMALL AND VERY SECRET. WE ALL HAVE JOBS AND WE ALL PAY MORTGAGES. JUST BECAUSE WE CONSIDER OURSELVES SWINGERS, WE'RE NOT FREAKS OF NATURE. ♪ I LOVE YOUR SISTER ♪ ♪ TOMORROW NIGHT... ♪ AT A SWING PARTY, YOU CAN GO, YOU CAN FIND-- MEET OTHER PEOPLE THAT MAYBE CAN MEET SOME OF YOUR SEXUAL NEEDS THAT MAYBE YOUR SPOUSE CAN'T. AND YET YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO OUT AND CHEAT. SWINGING IS A SITUATION WHERE A MAN AND A WOMAN, PART OF THEIR SEX LIFE IS TO FIND OTHER COUPLES OR OTHER PEOPLE THAT HAVE SIMILAR INTERESTS, THAT THEY LIKE SOCIALLY, THEY LIKE TO BE WITH, BUT IN PARTICULAR THEY WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH. ♪ SUBURBAN ROULETTE... ♪ ♪ SUBURBAN ROULETTE! ♪ THE MEETING AREA WAS USUALLY A BAR THAT THEY TOOK OVER FOR FRIDAY, SATURDAY NIGHT. I WORKED AS A WAITRESS AND SOME GUYS USED TO COME IN AND THEY BROUGHT IN "SCREW" MAGAZINE AND I BROUGHT IT HOME AND I SHOWED IT TO CHARLIE. - AND THAT'S ALL IT TOOK. - AND THERE WERE ALL KINDS OF ADS IN IT.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  We are already down one loud and buoyant family member, and her departure will take us from what was just recently five inhabitants to three. The night before she is to leave, Hudson surprises me by packing Daisy’s astounding volume of belongings into the car trunk while I’m in the pool with Georgia. This help was a peace offering, and I stand dripping in my bathing suit while he proudly shows me that he got every last pillow and bin of food shoved in there. I have not had time to see #3 or #4, but both men still text me most days to say hi – a pleasant surprise given how sure I was that #3 had decided I came with too much baggage. After a period of lying low, we seem to have found our way back to the easy repartee we had established so quickly early on, and of course I am determined to stay in touch with #4, hoping for a repeat opportunity of mind-blowing sex. All that I want to share with Michael right now I share with them instead, expressing concern with how all of her belongings will be transported to her room and how I am terrible at goodbyes even when it’s just a normal “See you later!” I recall the first time Michael and I drove Daisy to sleepaway camp when she was just eight years old. I started crying as we drove up the dirt road to the camp and he sternly reprimanded me, “Get it together, Laura. You can cry all you want after we drop her but for now it’s your job to send her off, not fall apart.” I knew that he was right, and it wasn’t until I gave her a hug and quickly walked away with my head down that I realized Michael was not walking next to me. Glancing behind me, I saw him on his knees in the grass, eye level with Daisy, saying “OK, just one more hug” many times more than once. I walked back and gently took hold of his elbow, saying, “It’s time to leave now, Michael.” I had felt like a confident parent then, doing my part to gracefully separate from my oldest child; I was both moved and annoyed by his inability to do the same. Here I am eleven years later, ready to repeat the scene and launch this child into the world, but now I need to be brave without any support as I am very much alone. Texting #3 and #4 about this monumental event is wholly inadequate – they don’t know her, they hardly even know me. #3 has told me sweetly that he could show up in the parking lot with a school hat on and pretend he’s part of a move-in committee, and #4 has said that he’s going to wrap me in a long hug and keep me there a while the next time he sees me.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  “We called them the A’s or the T’s or the J’s or whatever,” he explained on Canadian television. Nineteen seventy-six, for example, was the era of the J’s: between June and October of that year, Oler’s wives gave birth to Jared, Jeanette, Julia, and Jennifer. Dalmon Oler acquired his second wife, Memory Blackmore, just a year after arriving in Bountiful. She was the oldest daughter of Ray Blackmore, and her marriage to Debbie’s dad gave Debbie her first inkling that plural marriage wasn’t always as wonderful as she had been told. “Mother Mem” was insecure and terribly jealous, and she beat Debbie when her birth mother wasn’t present. When Debbie was six, her birth mother died, and Mem grew even more violent in her treatment of Debbie, who, even as a young girl, was proving to be intelligent and willful and disinclined to defer blindly to authority. Debbie tended to ask questions and to think for herself—qualities not regarded as attributes in the Fundamentalist Church. Until 1986, when Rulon Jeffs assumed leadership of the UEP, the prophet was LeRoy Johnson, a plainspoken farmer known to his followers as “Uncle Roy.” Many of Johnson’s sermons were variations on the theme “The path to heaven is through total obedience.” Today, Uncle Roy’s legacy is visible throughout Bountiful, where the community motto—“Keep Sweet, No Matter What”—is posted on walls and refrigerator doors in every home. Mormonism is a patriarchal religion, rooted firmly in the traditions of the Old Testament. Dissent isn’t tolerated. Questioning the edicts of religious authorities is viewed as a subversive act that undermines faith. As the eminent LDS first counselor N. Eldon Tanner famously declared in the official church magazine, Ensign, in August 1979, “When the prophet speaks, the debate is over.” Men, and only men, are admitted to the priesthood and given positions of ecclesiastical authority, including that of prophet. And only prophets may receive the revelations that determine how the faithful are to conduct their lives, right down to the design of the sacred undergarments individuals are supposed to wear at all times. All of this holds true in both the mainstream LDS Church and in the Fundamentalist Church, although the fundamentalists take these rigid notions—of obedience, of control, of distinct and unbending roles for men and women—to a much greater extreme. The primary responsibility of women in FLDS communities (even more than in the mainline Mormon culture) is to serve their husbands, conceive as many babies as possible, and raise those children to become obedient members of the religion. More than a few women born into the FLDS Church have found this to be problematic. Debbie Palmer is one of them. Tracing a mazelike series of lines with her index finger, Debbie attempts to demystify an incredibly complicated schematic diagram that at first glance appears to map out the intricacies of some massive engineering project—a nuclear power plant, perhaps. Upon closer examination, the diagram turns out to be her family tree.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  For the most part the members of this genealogical tree look like withered leaves: the women are frail and they have a startled, frightened look in their eyes: the men have a keen, intelligent look, like educated chimpanzees. They are all there, about ninety of them, with their white bullocks, their dung cakes, their skinny legs, their old-fashioned spectacles; in the background, now and then, one catches a glimpse of the parched soil, of a crumbling pediment, of an idol with crooked arms, a sort of human centipede. There is something so fantastic, so incongruous about this gallery that one is reminded inevitably of the great spawn of temples which stretch from the Himalayas to the tip of Ceylon, a vast jumble of architecture, staggering in beauty and at the same time monstrous, hideously monstrous because the fecundity which seethes and ferments in the myriad ramifications of design seems to have exhausted the very soil of India itself. Looking at the seething hive of figures which swarm the façades of the temples one is overwhelmed by the potency of these dark, handsome peoples who mingled their mysterious streams in a sexual embrace that has lasted thirty centuries or more. These frail men and women with piercing eyes who stare out of the photographs seem like the emaciated shadows of those virile, massive figures who incarnated themselves in stone and fresco from one end of India to the other in order that the heroic myths of the races who here intermingled should remain forever entwined in the hearts of their countrymen. When I look at only a fragment of these spacious dreams of stone, these toppling, sluggish edifices studded with gems, coagulated with human sperm, I am overwhelmed by the dazzling splendor of those imaginative flights which enabled half a billion people of diverse origins to thus incarnate the most fugitive expressions of their longing. It is a strange, inexplicable medley of feelings which assails me now as Nanantatee prattles on about the sister who died in childbirth. There she is on the wall, a frail, timid thing of twelve or thirteen clinging to the arm of a dotard. At ten years of age she was given in wedlock to this old roué who had already buried five wives. She had seven children, only one of whom survived her. She was given to the aged gorilla in order to keep the pearls in the family. As she was passing away, so Nanantatee puts it, she whispered to the doctor: “I am tired of this fucking. … I don’t want to fuck any more, doctor.” As he relates this to me he scratches his head solemnly with his withered arm. “The fucking business is bad, Endree,” he says. “But I will give you a word that will always make you lucky; you must say it every day, over and over, a million times you must say it. It is the best word there is, Endree… say it now… OOMAHARUMOOMA!” “OOMARABOO.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  He thought about her day and night; he wrote her name into the stories he composed for English class; he dedicated songs to her on his radio show. This had gone on for days. For two years now, he had spent virtually every afternoon with Davenport and Frost and Brendan Gilford. Out in the woods getting high. He breathed the same room freshener they breathed (Ozium); he had borrowed their records and loaned them his own. They all knew how to play the same Emerson, Lake and Palmer song on guitar. They knew the same jokes and disliked the same masters. They all volunteered for dish duty at the same time. But he knew it was coming to an end, that the loose association that other people called the Cult was just something you had at one time in your life. In September, when Davenport had declared himself King of the Cult at his birthday party—he was on bounds at the time, unable to receive visitors in his room, for breaking curfew—the whole thing began to sour. And it had just been a joke anyway. A joke to make feeling like a loser tolerable. Soon everybody was giving themselves titles. It was just like the Fantastic Four. It was all relationships and politics and power. The Conrail riders observed an unnatural calm. They were stretched out across the three-seaters with their luggage strewn carelessly around them. Paul always left things behind: watches, magazines, umbrellas. He borrowed articles and lost them. So he clutched F.F . #141, like it was a religious scroll or high-court decision, along with the November issue of Creem . And when the train rumbled down into the tunnel at 97th Street, and into the terminal, and when it disgorged its passengers with a sigh of hydraulic brakes, he was grateful to be a lone traveler, unencumbered with possessions or obligations. Grand Central Terminal was deserted. The Kodak sign featured a happy, white family celebrating around a Christmas tree. As Paul had been instructed to do since he was a little boy, he found a spot against the wall and looked up at the stars on the ceiling. Sunk in dust and grime, the hulking simplicity of the constellations moved him. They were the imaginative work of another time. They were the superheroes of the past. On the floor of the terminal, in the vast open spaces—bereft of the usual commuters—a platoon of men with blank faces and the cheapest spectacles sold books and records about meditation to the unsuspecting. Paul moved through them like a warrior. Libbets Casey. Paul’s destination. Deep in that stronghold of the silent majority, the Upper East Side. Her dad didn’t have a job. He didn’t need one. At an office in midtown, which he paid for himself, he occasionally wielded a gold letter opener and moved around lunch appointments and tennis dates with other professional board members and consultants. Libbets wouldn’t have to work either.

• From While You Were Out (2023)

  Mary Kay finally had freedom to do what she wanted, when she wanted. And she loved it. Still, those early days of school hadn’t been easy. Classes were harder than she’d expected, and she had enrolled in one too many. By mid-fall, she was exhausted, lonely, and having trouble concentrating. Her roommate had a serious boyfriend. So, she was alone most of the time, not really fitting in with one crowd or another. She started having dark thoughts. Sometimes, waves of sadness would come over her with no warning and no obvious cause. They’d settle over her for days, leaving her too confused to focus but too jittery to sleep. My mother suggested that Mary Kay find someone to talk to at the school counseling center, but the woman she spoke to there wasn’t much help. She offered only predictable advice: eat healthy food, get plenty of rest. The worst days were the ones when she could not see a way out. That was an awful, scary feeling. She felt overwhelmed, unable to figure out how to get all her work done. On those days, just being alive seemed to be a chore. One day, she found herself on the roof of her eight-story dorm, where she would go to sunbathe. She swung her feet over the edge of the roof and stared down at the street. If I jumped, would it even matter? She wondered if she might be better off dead. But by spring, Mary Kay was starting to feel better. She found a crowd of like-minded counterculture thinkers who organized war protests and sit-ins. When she wasn’t with them, she’d head over to hang out at her boyfriend’s fraternity where sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll flowed freely. Coming home that summer to the same demands from all of us sent her into a tailspin again. Mary Kay was working as a waitress at the Pancake House when she began feeling nauseous and tired. She hadn’t noticed that she had missed her period. We didn’t discuss sex at home, much less birth control. The closest I ever got to a discussion of any kind of sex education was years earlier when I was in fifth grade. My mother pulled me aside after breakfast to warn me that I would be getting a special lesson at school that day. You know how your sisters get bad stomach cramps once a month? Well, you’re going to see a film strip about that in gym class. Sure enough, the boys were sent out to the playground while Mrs. Wickerscheim, the school nurse, fired up the projector to show us a filmstrip on menstruation. According to the narrator, we girls each had fallopian tubes coiled inside us that would start releasing eggs soon. If those eggs were left unfertilized (no mention of how the alternative might happen), they would wash right out of our bodies and into a bloody mess in our underwear.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  In this underpopulated part of the world, where everybody knew everybody, reputations formed in grade school shadowed a person all the way to the grave. Sonny was widely known as a good-hearted loser, friendly, never met a stranger, fun to chew the fat with, smart enough but you wouldn’t mistake him for Einstein. He’d had a rough go of it, the war and all, but he married above himself and settled into the modest life that was offered out here. He knew what they thought. Now, with the drought, Sonny was bumping close to the bottom, facing a diminishing future in the ranching business, but hardly alone in that. The prospect of failure sharpened his ambition to do something, be somebody, but those blanks had yet to be filled in. Life hadn’t turned out the way he had hoped. Like a lot of wounded people in this part of the world he parked his failed dreams in a mental corral. The auction manager tallied the cattle emerging from the trailer. “Fifteen heifers,” he noted. “And the bull,” Sonny remarked. The auction manager recognized Sonny. They had played ball together at Sul Ross State University. Joe Frank Schotz. His father owned the sale house. “Splendid animal. Sure you want to sell?” “Want has nothing to do with it.” “I hear that.” Joe Frank took a closer look at the bull: reddish-brown saddle and pure white face with curls from his nose to his horns. You’d want to kiss him, but you’d have to respect the raw power in the animal, the mass of muscle that makes a man feel puny by comparison. “He’s a beast,” Joe Frank said. “Awful pretty. Got nuts like soccer balls. Registered, I’ll bet.” “I brought the papers.” “Sonny, I gotta tell you this ain’t the best time to go to market with an animal like this. What’s his name?” “Joaquin.” “Joaquin. Goddamn. What a sweetheart.” Joe Frank tore off the tally sheet and handed it to Sonny. “Hope you get what you came for.” Sonny hosed down Joaquin and gave him a thorough shampoo, followed by a blow dry and a light buzz with a beard trimmer to even out the pelt. Normally, Joaquin liked primping for a show, he was quite the vain creature, but Sonny felt him trembling. “Settle down, buddy,” he whispered as Joaquin’s ear bent toward him. “You’ll have a whole new harem. One day you’re gonna thank me.”

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  212.“Marriage to him would have meant a life” : Ibid., p. 247.“When I think of all the energy, all the misplaced artistic aggression” : Erica Jong, Fear of Flying (Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973), p. 205.“She had been a spirited, adventurous young woman” : Gloria Steinem, “Ruth’s Song (Because She Could Not Sing It). Accessed as a PDF online: https://englishiva1011.pbworks.com/f/RUTHSONG.PDF .“The family must have watched this energetic, fun-loving, book-loving woman” : Ibid.“The world still missed a unique person named Ruth” : Ibid.Essie typed out many of Judy’s manuscripts over the years : Sarah Larson, “Judy Blume’s Unfinished Endings,” The New Yorker , April 25, 2023. Accessed online: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/judy-blumes-unfinished-endings .“When they ask how she knows all those things” : Judy Blume, Wifey, Introduction, p. xii.Chapter Sixteen Divorce“I don’t think we could have survived two more years together” : Judy Blume, Letters to Judy , p. 125.Meanwhile, publicists at Blume’s paperback publisher, Dell : Email with Sarah Gallick, June 22, 2022.He handled it “brilliantly,” Blume said : V.C. Chickering, “A Judy Blume Interview from the Bust Archives,” Bust , February 12, 2015, originally published in the 1997 Spring/Summer issue. Accessed online: https://bust.com/tbt-a-very-special-judy-blume-exclusive-from-our-bust-vault/ .“Adult readers will enjoy this light romance” : Library Journal , September 1, 1978.The reviewer from the LA Times praised Blume’s abilities : Marilyn Murray Willison, “Judy Blume Writes One for the Grown-Ups,” Los Angeles Times , September 24, 1978, p. K8.“a bawdy account of a suburban wife’s rebellion” : Eric Pace, “Fictional Heroines with a Will,” New York Times , November 22, 1979.Reviewer Sue Isaacs suggested, in a culturally prescient takedown : Sue Isaacs, “Hello Grown-Ups, It’s Me Judy,” Washington Post , October 8, 1978, p. E5. Newsday attributed it to a librarian in Garden City, New York : David Behrens, “Sugar—And a Little Spice,” Newsday , March 1, 1978, p. 1A.“I cringe, even today, thinking of that article” : Judy Blume, Wifey (New York: Berkley Books, 1978), Introduction, p. xi.“We have a very nice family life” : Mary Daniels, “Preteen Readers Find Their Boswell in Blume,” Chicago Tribune , June 23, 1978, p. D3.by November 1979, there were a reported three million copies : Eric Pace, “Fictional Heroines with a Will,” New York Times , November 22, 1979.“I think divorce is a tragedy, traumatic and horribly painful for everybody” : Peter Gorner, “Tempo: The Giddy/Sad, Flighty/Solid Life of Judy Blume,” Chicago Tribune , March 15, 1985, p. D1.“My breasts were growing or else they were just fat” : Judy Blume, Just as Long as We’re Together (New York: Orchard Books, 1987), p. 190.“I hate not knowing what’s going to happen!” : Ibid., p. 263.Most of the kids who contacted Judy received a mailer in return : Mailer viewed at the Elizabeth Public Library’s main branch, June 28, 2022.“Could you sort of be a second mother to me and tell me the facts of life?” : Judy Blume, Letters to Judy , p.

• From The Perfect Vagina: The Dangers of Extreme Plastic Surgery

  29:37 light and regards her Foo with 29:40 29:40 affection too many women want to go for 29:42 29:42 the quick fix and have 29:45 29:45 surgery it's probably unrealistic to 29:48 29:48 think that I can encourage insecure 29:49 29:49 girls not to have surgery but apparently 29:52 29:52 that's what holistic sexual educator 29:54 29:54 Rachel fuks does well there's very few 29:57 29:57 opportunities I think that would women 29:58 29:58 have to actually talk about their 30:00 30:00 vaginas that actually have to talk about 30:02 30:02 their genital healing and I get to hear 30:04 30:04 about it on Ono one with clients I like 30:07 30:07 Rachel's ethos but one of her more 30:09 30:09 bizarre techniques is to encourage women 30:11 30:11 to show each other their vaginas in a 30:13 30:13 bid to stop them going under the knife 30:15 30:15 it seems extreme but she swears by it 30:18 30:18 I'm going to find out more okay so what 30:21 30:21 they're doing first of all is they're 30:22 30:22 looking at their own vaginas so they're 30:24 30:24 having a very good look at themselves 30:26 30:26 and she is now talking about how she 30:29 30:29 feels looking at herself I think it's 30:31 30:31 from having sex quite a lot in the last 30:33 30:33 week that this area here is quite um 30:37 30:37 almost like rough like a yeah and you 30:39 30:39 can see that she's getting a little bit 30:40 30:40 upset here as she um touches into some 30:44 30:44 memories that I've not been treating 30:48 30:48 myself um or not been giving myself that 30:51 30:51 um I I can't find the words from my 30:54 30:54 experience of working with women I've 30:56 30:56 had a lot of experience of of of seeing 30:59 30:59 what stories are locked into the vagina 31:02 31:02 so do you think you think I'm just 31:04 31:04 laughing so every vagina's got a story 31:06 31:06 why would there not be emotions in the 31:08 31:08 vagina why would there not be like 31:10 31:10 Memories for example of uh of of times 31:14 31:14 you know it just it's really funny like 31:16 31:16 part of there is part of me that wants 31:18 31:18 that really wants to go with this and 31:19 31:19 then part of me just goes it's just a 31:21 31:21 bit sort of trippy hippie I just don't 31:24 31:24 you know do I look trippy 31:26 31:26 hippie this is their choice and it's 31:28 31:28 it's up to them isn't it to do to do 31:30 31:30 what they want to do some people might 31:31 31:31 like to go to the football on a Saturday 31:33 31:33 some people might like to do this it's 31:35 31:35 amazing that Rachel has stopped women 31:37 31:37 having surgery but getting your fanny 31:39

• From While You Were Out (2023)

  In the story I’ve created for myself of that night so many years ago, the next thing I recall is waking and finding the whole house dark. I remember Patty in her bed next to mine. Danny, the baby, was snuggled in the crib in the corner of our room in his light-yellow Dr. Denton pajamas zipped up tight, lying on his belly with his face to the side and his little butt in the air. My throat was sore, and my head was throbbing. I stumbled down the hallway, running my arm along the wall to guide me. I remember hearing Grandma snore in the next room while her false teeth soaked in a glass on the bathroom sink. Or do I? This sounds like a cartoon. These flourishes are a little too tidy. It can’t really have happened that way. But, as I strain to fill in the blanks, that’s the way I remember it. Mom, I whispered. Mommmmmmmmm. The room glowed with the light from their TV, which emitted no sound, at least none that I can recall. I spotted Holmer lying on his side, smiling slightly and hugging his pillow like he was spooning with my mother. I sidled around to her side of the bed, hoping to burrow in next to her. We all loved to curl there with my mother at bedtime as she read us our favorite books, Nappy the Dog and, my favorite, Dr. Seuss’s Happy Birthday to You! If you’d never been born, you might be a wasn’t. A wasn’t has no fun at all. No, he doesn’t. I’d often wander into my parents’ bedroom late at night after the others were asleep. I’d hop in on my mother’s side of the bed to rest my head on her soft, warm belly. Then I’d run my fingers up her arm and feel her scratchy armpit, like sandpaper or the cat’s tongue. She’d bat my arm away and roll over with her back to me. Cut that out, kid, she’d say dreamily. But the sheet on her side of the bed was cold. I reached for her pillow and tried to smell my way to her—some hairspray, a little whiff of Chanel No. 5 perhaps. Nothing. Just Holmer’s tang, a mixture of Old Spice, cigarettes, and bourbon. Or was it rum? I can’t recall, but this much I know with dead certainty: My mother wasn’t there. I remember stumbling back to my bed thinking I’d really blown it this time. Why did I have to go and ruin everything by screaming at the dinner table like that? Sister Mary Assisi says, Try to be a better girl, Margaret. Be more like the Little Flower. She coughed up blood, but no one heard her making a big fuss about it. She knew how to offer up her suffering to the poor souls in purgatory. She knew how to keep a secret.

• From The Perfect Vagina: The Dangers of Extreme Plastic Surgery

  33:36 so blatantly it maybe want to say get 33:38 33:38 your [ __ ] out then and go oh that's 33:40 33:40 doesn't look very nice which I think 33:41 33:41 maybe is stepping be on the boundary for 33:42 33:42 somebody who won't have to any employed 33:44 33:44 to paint my 33:45 33:45 [Music] 33:47 33:47 beams Rosie suffered at the hands of men 33:50 33:50 making comments about her vagina which 33:52 33:52 was one of the reasons she had her labia 33:54 33:54 trimmed 33:56 33:56 [Music] 33:58 33:58 although her recovery was excruciating 34:01 34:01 she's pleased that she had the operation 34:03 34:03 but I'm sad that I wasn't able to stop 34:07 34:07 her it looks so much better than it did 34:09 34:09 before doesn't 34:12 34:12 it it does so what I'm going to do I'm 34:16 34:16 going to just cut the stitches mhm just 34:18 34:18 to EAS the 34:19 34:19 tension think 34:21 34:21 about the more you relaxed Yeah the more 34:25 34:25 comfortable you will be in minutes yeah 34:27 34:27 okay I'm trying I'm so sorry know I know 34:30 34:30 so once we take it off you should be 34:32 34:32 comfortable you're shaking okay no no no 34:36 34:36 it's all right e a very well Rosie I'm 34:39 34:39 just holding it I'm not pulling it I 34:41 34:41 know I know I know right I know I know 34:44 34:44 do you want me to give you some local no 34:46 34:46 you sure yeah sorry I'm just scared 34:50 34:50 that's okay well I know you are 34:53 34:53 scared take some deep breaths you have 34:56 34:56 okay okay good go all done thank you 35:01 35:01 good 35:03 35:03 go that's it you'll feel much 35:05 35:05 comfortable within half an hour yeah 35:07 35:07 okay mhm you can get dress that's got to 35:10 35:10 be a relief yeah within half an hour 35:12 35:12 you're going to feel better 35:17 35:17 show you're right yeah mhm how many of 35:21 35:21 these operations do you do say in a 35:23 35:23 month on average I mean you know I'm not 35:25 35:25 on average I would say about 1015 a 35:29 35:29 month when I started this operation and 35:33 35:33 I was criticized for doing it but I 35:36 35:36 remember one Australian patient came to 35:38 35:38 me about 35:39 35:39 lipoplasty and when she saw her GP and 35:42 35:42 she told him she had quite a lot of 35:44 35:44 skin hanging down he was hysteric the 35:48 35:48 way he 35:49 35:49 laughed and she walked out of the clinic 35:52 35:52 and she never went into relationship 35:53 35:53 after his laugh so her male GP laughed 35:56 35:56 at her that's just a ping yes that's 35:59 35:59 apping that it happens right he he felt 36:02

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  But Sister Catherine, leaving no doubt that she was in command, announced that evening in our refectory that the children, together with their father, Brother Theodore, would have to leave the Center. She had no appetite for another custody battle on which a verdict had already been rendered. Gasps and sobs broke the silence. Even some of the Angels were crying. Sister Catherine herself looked beaten, her normally broad shoulders hunched. But she mustered a smile as she looked lovingly at each of the four children about to depart. “You will be in our hearts and prayers every day, and we will ask Our Lady to keep you safe from the evils of the world,” she said. Maud, one of the four children, sat at my table. Tears cascaded down her cheeks onto her blue jumper. For the past five years, she’d been my breakfast, lunch, and dinner companion, sitting in the same spot to my right. Despite Sister Catherine’s rule against particular friendships, it was impossible not to have a special bond with her and the three other Little Sisters at my table. Being four years her senior, I had played the role of her defender on more than a few occasions when Sister Maria Crucis accused her unfairly of wrongdoing. The next few days passed in anguish as we hovered around our soon-to-depart Little Sisters and Brothers. The Cullinane case had been awful, but those five Little Brothers were still with us while we appealed the judge’s decision. Now suddenly, four members of our family, with whom we’d lived all our lives, would vanish. The questions came fast and furious to Sister Catherine. How long would they be gone? “I don’t know.” Would they be able to come and visit? “Of course,” Sister Catherine told us, trying to sound reassuring. “Brother Theodore will bring them back for visits.” That gave us a glimmer of hope, something to look forward to. And then the day of their departure arrived. Brother Boniface sat in the driver’s seat of the big black car. He was Brother Theodore’s brother, and the uncle of the four children. Brother Theodore, his face somber, held the hands of his youngest two children, just eight and nine years old, who sobbed as they walked to the car. It was a scene I hadn’t witnessed since we’d moved to Still River: one of the Center parents holding his own child’s hand. “Please don’t make us go,” they pleaded, one after another. The entire community gathered, silent and tearful, as Brother Theodore helped his children into the car. He walked over to Sister Catherine and kissed her. She dabbed her eyes with her white handkerchief. Then as the vehicle pulled out of the driveway, four little red-eyed faces peered through the back window and waved, and Sister Catherine waved her white handkerchief high above her head as a final farewell gesture.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “I have something to tell you.” They could see from the look on her face it was serious. Miri pulled off the sweater, rebuttoned her nightgown, and sat on the floor with her friends, waiting for Robo’s news. She hoped it wasn’t serious, as in someone was going to die. She didn’t want to hear anything bad on her birthday. “We’re moving,” Robo said. “To Millburn.” They gasped. “But why?” Suzanne asked. “You already live in a beautiful house.” “My parents say it’s because of my father’s job. He’s building one of those new shopping centers nearby…but I think it’s because of…” She trailed off. “Let me guess,” Eleanor said. “The crash.” “Well, yes, even though they won’t admit it. Instead they say things like the schools in Millburn are really good.” Then, embarrassed, she added, “Not that there’s anything wrong with the schools here.” “But the crash is over,” Suzanne argued. “I know, but what can I do?” Robo wouldn’t look at them. Her friends. They’d been together for almost three years. At Battin they’d have three more. “I thought you have to be really rich to live there,” Suzanne said. “Only on some streets,” Robo said, growing defensive. “You’ll come visit. It’s not that far away. Just twenty minutes or so by car.” “Only another planet,” Eleanor said. “There’s a Lord & Taylor,” Robo said, trying to find something positive to say. “We can go shopping.” “You can go shopping.” Eleanor didn’t add that Natalie was the only one of their crowd who could afford to shop at Lord & Taylor. Until now. Who knew Robo’s parents—Milton and Pamela Boros—were rich enough to move to Millburn? “You sound angry,” Robo said to Eleanor. “Are you angry?” “No. Yes.” Eleanor shook her head and shrugged. “Maybe.” “Because it’s not my fault.” “I know it’s not your fault,” Eleanor said. “I’m just…I don’t know…disappointed because I always thought the five of us would be together all through high school.” Miri never would have guessed Eleanor cared so much. She had her whole life planned out, including winning the Nobel Prize in math or science. “I can’t control my parents,” Robo said. “If you want the truth, they didn’t even ask me. They took me and my sister for a ride last week and pointed to a house. ‘This is our new house,’ my father said. We’re moving before Lincoln’s birthday.” “Now?” Suzanne said. “You’re moving in the middle of the school year?” Robo flushed. “I have no choice.” Natalie said only, “We’ll miss you.” Just that. Just the perfect thing to say. “Thank you, Nat.” They set their hair in pin curls, or socks, depending on the length, spread out their sleeping bags on the floor of Miri’s room and turned out the lights. Then, on cue, her four friends serenaded her in the dark. They try to tell us we’re too young.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  It was standard procedure to save two of every five that reached the theater just for parts. The plane was gradually modified and improved, and in 1948 the Air Force made surplus C-46s available to airlines for rental at the very attractive rate of $300 a month. Here was a transport that could be modified to carry 52 passengers, enabling non-scheduled airlines to offer cut-rate service across the country, and between this area and Florida in the winter. Despite the improvements, a summary of aircraft acci dents shows 45 involving the C-46 between January 1947 and October 1951, 11 of them fatal, taking 137 lives. The need for careful maintenance is obvious, yet like any plane, it makes money only when flying. Miami Airlines, the non-scheduled operator of the ill- fated Dec. 16 flight, is already in litigation with the Civil Aeronautics Board for flying an excessive number of flights between Newark and Florida. But because the crash is still under investigation it is too soon to say whether pressure to keep the plane in the air contributed to the disaster. 7 [image "image" file=Image00005.jpg] [image file=Image00005.jpg] MiriThe fathers took turns driving their daughters to and from events, a get-together in someone’s finished basement, a dance at the Y, a Saturday night movie. Miri was the only one without a father. Not that any of her friends asked about him. They figured either he was dead or her parents were divorced. Either way, they understood she didn’t see him, didn’t talk about him, and that was enough. Once, when they didn’t know she was in the girls’ room at school, she’d heard them speculate that maybe he’d died in the war. She sometimes hoped he had died in the war. That would simplify everything. Mothers might drive them somewhere during the day, but at night it was strictly fathers. Anyway, Rusty didn’t drive. She’d never had a car. She and Miri walked or took the bus around town. Sometimes Henry would give them a lift, but only in decent weather, because one of them, almost always Miri, would have to sit in the rumble seat. Ben Sapphire, on the other hand, drove a big black Packard. The car was new. It was the car he’d planned on driving to Miami Beach. Miri had seen photos of his wife standing next to it. Not that she wanted to see his family photos, but he’d brought an album to Irene’s one day and she knew Irene expected her to be polite. She couldn’t tell him that when she pictured his beloved Estelle, it was inside the ball of fire that had fallen out of the sky. No, she could never tell anyone that. Well, maybe Natalie, since she claimed to have a special connection with Ruby Granik, but if Ruby knew anything about Estelle Sapphire, Natalie hadn’t shared it with Miri. They’d held the funeral for Estelle three days after the crash.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Stein was glad to see Miri, and always invited her in, offering a Tastykake, or a piece of fruit, or even a sandwich. If Miri accepted, Mrs. Stein would have something to eat, too, just to keep her company, laughing about whatever new diet she was going to start the following Monday. She liked flipping through her family photo albums, pointing out pictures of her dog, Goldie, who had died over the summer. “This is Goldie as a puppy. And here she is as a sweet old girl. A whole lifetime in twelve years.” In one photo Miri thought she recognized the girl in the green velvet dress from the Osners’ New Year’s Eve party. “That’s my niece Kathy,” Mrs. Stein said. “A wonderful girl. She’s a freshman at Syracuse.” So it was Kathy Stein from New Year’s Eve. Mrs. Stein seemed lonely to Miri, especially when she talked about her children. “I miss my daughter. She’s away at college. University of Michigan. And next year, when Phil leaves, I don’t know what I’ll do.” “Maybe you should get another dog,” Miri suggested. “I’ve thought about that,” Mrs. Stein said, “but what would we do when we travel? My husband is hoping to spend more time traveling once both children are at college.” “Where does he want to go?” Miri asked. “Oh, he has some meshuggeneh idea about adventure, about exotic lands,” Mrs. Stein said, helping herself to a second Tastykake. “Maybe India. Maybe Israel. Frankly, I’d rather see California. I’m not sure my stomach could handle India. I have a sensitive gut. You know what that’s like.” As far as guts were concerned, Miri knew only that certain foods, like raw tomatoes, triggered Irene’s heartburn, and when they did, she’d drink a glass of Alka-Seltzer. “Anyway, my husband doesn’t want another dog. He’s afraid I won’t want to leave a puppy at the kennel when we travel. It’s true I never liked leaving Goldie, even when she was grown.” She sighed and looked out the window. “It feels like snow, doesn’t it?” “I hope it does. I’d like to have fresh snow for my birthday.” “Your birthday?” “Yes, tomorrow. I’ll be fifteen on the fifteenth.” Mrs. Stein brightened. “Fifteen on the fifteenth! That’s sure to be a lucky sign. You have to take every bit of luck that comes your way and turn it into something bigger, something lasting.” Miri was mulling that over when Mrs. Stein touched her arm. “Come with me. I have something for you.” “Oh, no, really…” Miri said. “Oh, yes…really.” Miri had never seen Mrs. Stein so animated. Fred trotted up the stairs behind them to Mrs. Stein’s bedroom. Until then, Miri hadn’t seen much of the Steins’ house, which was on the fanciest street in town, where all the houses were big and old and set back from the street, surrounded by stately trees. She was familiar only with the back porch and the kitchen. But this—Mrs.

• From Opening Up by Writing It Down (2016)

  Those in the comparison or control group were asked to write about superficial or irrelevant topics during each session. For example, on different days they were asked to describe in detail such things as their dorm room or the shoes they were wearing. The two groups were in the same location, interacting with the same experimenters, and engaging in the activity of writing for the same amount of time; what differed was the content of writing—one group wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings, and the comparison group wrote about emotionally neutral (and likely quite uninteresting) topics. Thus, the purpose of the control group was to evaluate what effect writing in an experiment per se had on health changes, independent of what was believed to be the important contribution of the content of the writing. Any differences between the two groups should, therefore, be due to the content of the writing, not any aspects of their participation in the study. For the students, the immediate impact of the study was far more powerful than we had ever imagined. Several of the students cried while writing about traumas. Many reported dreaming or continually thinking about their writing topics over the four days of the study. Most telling, however, were the actual writing samples. Essay after essay revealed people’s deepest feelings and most intimate sides. Many of the stories depicted profound human tragedies. One student recounted how his father took him into the backyard on a hot summer night and coolly announced his plans to divorce and move to another town. Although the student was only nine years old at the time, he vividly remembers his father’s voice: “Son, the problem with me and your mother was having kids in the first place. Things haven’t been the same since you and your sister’s birth.” On all four days of the experiment, one woman detailed how, at age 10, her mother asked her to pick up her toys because her grandmother was visiting that evening. She didn’t pick up her toys. That night, her grandmother arrived, slipped on one of the toys, and broke her hip. The grandmother died a week later during hip surgery. Now, eight years later, the woman still blamed herself every day. Another woman described being seduced by her grandfather when she was 13. She depicted the terrible conflict she experienced. On one hand she admitted the physical pleasure of his touching her and the love she felt for her grandfather. On the other, she suffered with the knowledge that this was wrong, that he was betraying her trust. Other essays disclosed the torture of a woman not able to tell her parents about her being a lesbian, a young man’s feelings of loss about the death of his dog, or the anger about parents’ divorces. Family abuse, alcoholism, suicide attempts, and public humiliation were also frequent topics.

• From Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  The period had its AIDS tragedies (“You remember your little hustler friend Mark?” a redheaded hustler, Tony, in black leather pants and black leather jacket, who specialized in heavy S&M topping, told me one evening, elbow to elbow with me at the bar in Trix. “Two weeks before he died, we all got together and sent him home—upstate, to Binghamton. He wanted to die at home. So we sent him there. And he did.”) and jailhouse cases (blue-eyed, black-haired Paul, who came out of Rikers Island correctional facilities, back to the Venus, with the worst case of crabs I’ve ever seen; and hulking German John, whom I met on the strip when he was twenty-one [with his own movie tales: “Once this guy takes me into the Cameo, and he has me take my sneakers off and sit in the row behind him and put my feet over the seats in front. Then he plays with them, and kisses them, and fondles ’em and stuff—and they were pretty damned powerful, too, ’cause I’d been sleeping on the street for almost three weeks by then”] and who, eighteen years later, still writes and phones me now and again from jail in Southern California, where he’s been serving time for the last six years. And scruffy little “Sundance” McLoughlin, missing a forefinger from a motorcycle accident, a regular in the back balcony of the Capri, who last phoned me from jail in Toronto). But not all tales end in premature death or incarceration. For most, indeed, we never learn an end at all. Maybe thirty-six, Bobby lived in Oliver Sacks land. Homeless, he collected cans and frequented the Capri for about three years in the late eighties. Among our dozen encounters in the theater, I took him home with me some three times. Once, in the midst of sex, suddenly he insisted that I “fuck him like a whore!” Bobby didn’t know where he was from, what his last name was—and was unclear on his first. (“Bobby” was just the one I picked for him; but, in his vague, friendly way, he responded pretty much to any name you addressed him by.) The last time I saw him, sometime in ’87 or ’88, sitting on the island in the middle of Broadway, with his green plastic garbage bag of empty beer and soda cans against his knee, without shoes and wearing a pair of dress pants so tight he could not close the zipper, Bobby—like the soldier of Arete—avowed with as much sincerity as he had the second, the fourth, the sixth time we’d met, and, indeed, all three times he’d come to my house, that he had no memory of me whatsoever.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  The book you are reading is my story. It is not a biography of Terence Hanbury White. But White is part of my story all the same. I have to write about him because he was there. When I trained my hawk I was having a quiet conversation, of sorts, with the deeds and works of a long-dead man who was suspicious, morose, determined to despair. A man whose life disturbed me. But a man, too, who loved nature, who found it surprising, bewitching and endlessly novel. ‘A magpie flies like a frying pan!’ he could write, with the joy of discovering something new in the world. And it is that joy, that childish delight in the lives of creatures other than man, that I love most in White. He was a complicated man, and an unhappy one. But he knew also that the world was full of simple miracles. ‘There is a sense of creation about it,’ he wrote, in wonderment, after helping a farmer deliver a mare of a foal. ‘There were more horses in the field when I left it than there were when I went in.’ In England Have My Bones White wrote one of the saddest sentences I have ever read: ‘Falling in love is a desolating experience, but not when it is with a countryside.’ He could not imagine a human love returned. He had to displace his desires onto the landscape, that great, blank green field that cannot love you back, but cannot hurt you either. When, on their final meeting, he confessed to the writer David Garnett that he was a sadist, Garnett blamed White’s early emotional maltreatment and years of flogging at school. ‘He was an extremely tender-hearted and sensitive man,’ Garnett wrote, who had ‘found himself always in the dilemma of either being sincere and cruel, or false and unnatural. Whichever line he followed, he revolted the object of his love and disgusted himself.’

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  I grew up understanding something of the violence of gender norms: an uncle incarcerated for his anatomically anomalous body, deprived of family and friends, living out his days in an “institute” in the Kansas prairies; gay cousins forced to leave their homes because of their sexuality, real and imagined; my own tempestuous coming out at the age of 16; and a subsequent adult landscape of lost jobs, lovers, and homes. All of this subjected me to strong and scarring condemnation but, luckily, did not prevent me from pursuing pleasure and insisting on a legitimating recognition for my sexual life. It was difficult to bring this violence into view precisely because gender was so taken for granted at the same time that it was violently policed. It was assumed either to be a natural manifestation of sex or a cultural constant that no human agency could hope to revise. I also came to understand something of the violence of the foreclosed life, the one that does not get named as “living,” the one whose incarceration implies a suspension of life, or a sustained death sentence. The dogged effort to “denaturalize” gender in this text emerges, I think, from a strong desire both to counter the normative violence implied by ideal morphologies of sex and to uproot the pervasive assumptions about natural or presumptive heterosexuality that are informed by ordinary and academic discourses on sexuality. The writing of this denaturalization was not done simply out of a desire to play with language or prescribe theatrical antics in the place of “real” politics, as some critics have conjectured (as if theatre and politics are always distinct). It was done from a desire to live, to make life possible, and to rethink the possible as such. What would the world have to be like for my uncle to live in the company of family, friends, or extended kinship of some other kind? How must we rethink the ideal morphological constraints upon the human such that those who fail to approximate the norm are not condemned to a death within life?14

• From Escape (2007)

  “It’s true,” she said. “I am really going to have a baby and I hope it will be a girl.” I thought Tammy would be overjoyed, but she seemed subdued. “Maybe if it’s not a girl then you’ll get one next time.” “Barbara was the first person I told, then Merril. I’ve waited a few weeks before telling my sister wives.” “Tammy, I’m so happy for you,” I said. Tammy and I were not close at this point because I no longer felt I could trust her. She was always tattling on her sister wives to Barbara. We’d barely been on speaking terms, but this broke the ice between us. Conceiving was never a problem for me, which made Tammy envy me. But now we were on even ground again. A few months later I became pregnant for the fourth time and was vomiting daily from morning sickness. Tammy gave birth in January. She wanted her delivery to be a big production. Not only did she invite Merril’s six wives, but she also wanted all of her sister wives from her marriage to the late prophet, Uncle Roy, to come, too. There were at least a dozen people in the delivery room. Thankfully, I was too sick to attend—one of the only gifts morning sickness ever gave to me. But Tammy’s baby became stuck in the delivery canal during labor. She had to be moved into several different and awkward positions to try and free the baby. I was told later that the mood at the clinic was tense because Tammy’s baby was in real trouble. Merril left the delivery room at that point. He was uncomfortable with the situation and found a place at the clinic to take a nap. Barbara went with him and rubbed his head, neck, and shoulders trying to help him relax and sleep. Tammy seemed to have been abandoned and betrayed in her hour of need. She had been blindly loyal to Barbara and Merril and was very upset that they had not stayed by her side during the traumatic birth. Her newborn son started having seizures after birth. Merril wouldn’t let her take him to the hospital, but she was allowed to see a doctor. Merril named Tammy’s son, Parley, without consulting her. Tammy had another name picked out for her son, and she wanted to include her family at the naming ceremony. But for whatever reason, Merril prevented this from happening. We had a family Sunday school in the living room. Tammy was there with Parley. After Sunday school ended, Merril took Parley away from her and asked his sons to help him name him. I had never been able to choose any of my children’s names or even participate in a discussion with Merril about them. This was just the way we did things in the FLDS, and I was used to the idea.