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.

Page 44 of 212 · 20 per page

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Reese rotates onto a hip, and pushes her back up against the closet wall, gathering the skirts of her dress beneath her. “So you detransitioned into a mansplainer, huh?” she asks. Ames withdraws his hand. “And you’ve only gotten sweeter.” Reese frowns, and Ames sees that she might cry again. “I’m just sad and angry,” she says in a small voice. She gestures at the West Elm bedroom set that they had picked out together on a fall Saturday five years ago, giggling in the store as they flopped down together on mattresses of memory foam and opened chests of drawers. “This was supposed to be my life. No, it wasn’t supposed to be. It was.” “Tt still can be,” Ames says. “That’s the whole point here. We can still be so important in each other’s lives.” Reese shakes her head. “No, we can’t go back. Look at you. Everything has changed. Except for maybe how the closet smells.” Two years prior, Katrina and Ames’s agency acquired Ketel One Vodka as a client, one of its larger accounts. Because Ketel One— along with other flagrantly gay brands such as Delta Air Lines and Hyundai—is, and has been for some time, a sponsor of the GLAAD awards gala, the agency has purchased a ten-seat table at the event. Only a few employees wanted to go, so Ames claimed three of the remaining tickets for himself, Reese, and Katrina. His logic, he explained to Reese when he called to invite her, was that the spectacle would offer sufficient distractions to cover any awkwardness arising from their first meeting together. “Plus Madonna will be there.” He dangled the bait. “Sarah Jessica Parker will be there too. Your inner fangirl won’t let you miss this.” “My inner fangirl is a cynic,” Reese corrected. “But that’s just another reason to come.” So here she is now, the glitz of a hotel already putting her in a better mood as she trails Ames up an escalator that deposits her at the entrance to the red carpet. There, a GLAAD volunteer checks a clipboard and directs Ames and Reese toward an area where noncelebrities mill around drinking Ketel One martinis. Reese tries not to take her banishment from the red carpet as an insult. She wears a red satin Marchesa gown that she found marked down to sixty dollars at Beacon’s Closet, but which does wonders for her curves. Some tiny part of Reese had indulged in a fantasy that the organizers or media consultants, or someone important, would take one look at her in the Marchesa gown, gasp, and usher her onto the red carpet, whereupon photographers would clamor all over her.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  “Friends,” Reese says aloud, suddenly placing the déja vu. She walks over to examine the banks of glass panes, then whirls to let Katrina in on her discovery. “These windows—they look like windows on the set of Rachel and Monica’s apartment on Friends.” “T know,” replies Katrina. She pops open the plastic container holding the delivery sushi—fish for Reese, vegetarian rolls for Katrina in her pregnancy—from the place down the block. “I’m sure it’s on purpose. They added them when they remodeled this whole building. I think they saw a perfect way to tap into the nostalgia of Gen Xers. Give them the New York experience they saw as teenagers on TV.” “Who wants to live in Friends? That show is a Disneyland of New York.” Katrina pours the soy sauce packets into little ramekins. “You don’t have to spend much time in marketing to understand that even though New Yorkers are snobs about it”—she smiles apologetically at having to implicitly include Reese among her misinformed fellow snobs—“they secretly like the television fantasy version of the city. Who wouldn’t like to live in a huge loft on a waitress’s salary?” “Okay, I see the appeal,” Reese concedes. “If you put a couple Friends replica apartments in a remodeled building in Fort Greene and have it overlooking the airshaft, then, when sad ladies are in the middle of a divorce and need a comforting place, they subconsciously can rent a spot in Friends—a show that comforted them as a child.” Reese doesn’t mull Katrina’s point too deeply, instead she thinks about the words “sad ladies”: how when Katrina seems like she’s bullshitting through some borderline show-offy intellectual riff, her thoughts often curve back around in a scorpion’s tail to reveal an emotional barb. When, Reese wonders, did Katrina learn to dress up her feelings like that? Was it a defense or a skill, or maybe both? Reese presses her fingers against the cold panes of glass to peer down over the balcony into the concrete bottom of the gloomy air shaft. Beside Reese, the plants Katrina has hung to catch the daylight that penetrates the air shaft at certain hours give off a lush, living scent. The air in the apartment is thick and dark, but soothing, as on a forest floor. “You're a sad divorced lady susceptible to nineties Friends nostalgia? But I thought you left him?” Reese asks. “T did. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t suffer over it and want comfort and familiarity. Every time he told me I was making a mistake, I believed him—I just believed it was a mistake I had to make.” Reese understands exactly. She tells Katrina, “You should paint the walls purple. Weren’t the walls in Monica and Rachel’s place some awful nineties color scheme? Purple and green or something?” Katrina makes a face. “Gross! I would never!”

• From Untrue (2018)

  The sexual, economic, and ecological circumstances of the lives of women could not be more closely linked or interdependent. In Annika’s case, the suburban house was not so different from a macaque’s cage or a menstrual hut in Mali—a container that distorted and re-formed her sexuality—as well as a way for her husband to ensure that he could do his thing while keeping track of her and keeping her isolated from other men. Sarah’s hesitation to act on her sexual and romantic desires and her feelings of regret, resentment, and sadness about not doing what she wanted to do, her lack of sexual autonomy and her conflicted allegiance to a strong code of behavior that applies unequally to men and women, in spite of her feminism and achievements, are another version of constraint. And the experiences of both of these women are of a piece with a massive, overarching cultural shift, a treachery writ large, if you will, in which female independence and self-determination—economic, personal, sexual—was transformed into subservience, permission seeking, and dependence. A growing number of anthropologists tell us the pitiless and unlikely agent of this transformation was not individual men or women. It was not politics or politicians. It was not the rise of the nation-state or even organized religion. It was agriculture. If it weren’t for farms and farming, Annika, Sarah, and you and I might be living very different lives indeed. Chapter Four Ploughs, Property, ProprietySo much of a woman’s sex life in the US today, so much of what happens to and is possible for and is not available to the Annikas and the Sarahs, is linked to an unlikely-seeming moment in the past. Like butterflies pinned, or bugs caught and preserved in amber, our libido and our superego, our sense of freedom and of propriety, the expansive pulsing of our desire and the contraction of our self-censure, are present-day artifacts of an unfurling of events long ago, when highly mobile foraging women were “pegged” as if onto the paper of history, literally immobilized into another way of being and thinking and living…and having sex.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good. The self is more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones.” They cite John Gottman, the well-known expert in marital relations, who observed that the long-term success of a relationship depends far more on avoiding the negative than on seeking the positive. Gottman estimated that a stable relationship requires that good interactions outnumber bad interactions by at least 5 to 1. Other asymmetries in the social domain are even more striking. We all know that a friendship that may take years to develop can be ruined by a single action. Some distinctions between good and bad are hardwired into our biology. Infants enter the world ready to respond to pain as bad and to sweet (up to a point) as good. In many situations, however, the boundary between good and bad is a reference point that changes over time and depends on the immediate circumstances. Imagine that you are out in the country on a cold night, inadequately dressed for the torrential rain, your clothes soaked. A stinging cold wind completes your misery. As you wander around, you find a large rock that provides some shelter from the fury of the elements. The biologist Michel Cabanac would call the experience of that moment intensely pleasurable because it functions, as pleasure normally does, to indicate the direction of a biologically significant improvement of circumstances. The pleasant relief will not last very long, of course, and you will soon be shivering behind the rock again, driven by your renewed suffering to seek better shelter. Goals are Reference Points Loss aversion refers to the relative strength of two motives: we are driven more strongly to avoid losses than to achieve gains. A reference point is sometimes the status quo, but it can also be a goal in the future: not achieving a goal is a loss, exceeding the goal is a gain. As we might expect from negativity dominance, the two motives are not equally powerful. The aversion to the failure of not reaching the goal is much stronger than the desire to exceed it. People often adopt short-term goals that they strive to achieve but not necessarily to exceed. They are likely to reduce their efforts when they have reached an immediate goal, with results that sometimes violate economic logic. New York cabdrivers, for example, may have a target income for the month or the year, but the goal that controls their effort is typically a daily target of earnings. Of course, the daily goal is much easier to achieve (and exceed) on

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  The admission was so intimate, so unprofessional, so inappropriate, that Amy almost came, but abruptly Kaya held Amy to her large soft breasts, called her baby girl, told her that mommy was going to take care of her. Afterward, as Amy gathered her things and discreetly placed a tip on a pillow, Kaya told Amy to come back next week. “We can work out a deal, maybe not even money. I just like this.” They saw each other twice more, but to her surprise, Amy enjoyed herself more when she paid. She had never before felt so entitled to the sex she wanted, and the entitlement came as a revelation. Most of her life, she had expressed her desires only with the maximum exertion of will and fortitude, straining to keep playing whatever creep show was happening in her head to keep herself turned on, while putting on an external veneer of interest in her partner. Only with Reese had the two ever merged, but still, she rarely managed to talk dirty with any kind of abandon, terrified at what might tumble out of her mouth if she opened the sluice gates more than a crack. At four hundred dollars an hour, however, the compunction to hold back crumbled, and so there Amy was, sucking on Kaya’s tits, calling her mommy, while Kaya wiggled a finger in her and asked if she was old enough to be such a dirty slut. But at the price Kaya asked for the second and third time—a hundred dollars and some takeout Thai— Amy once again found herself shy. A hundred dollars and some Thai food didn’t offer enough value for Amy to feel entitled to her own desires. Instead, Amy found herself needing to be reassured that Kaya would say what Kaya wanted, if Kaya didn’t really find Amy kind of burdensome, if Amy didn’t ask for too much emotional labor? Then alone, packed into commuters on the train, returning home from Kaya’s place, came the sadness: Why couldn’t Amy just ask the women in her life for what she needed? Why did she need to pay to feel like she deserved what she liked? Even Kaya just wanted to give it away to her! What kind of fucked-up trans-misogyny or late- capitalist angst or trauma had colonized her? She had never been able to ask her mom for validation as a girl, had never been able to ask her girlfriends for the pleasure she needed when she was a boy, and even now, with a girlfriend who obviously needed sex with her, it was easier to just jerk off to the thought of Kaya, to knowingly leave Reese lonely, than for Amy to make herself vulnerable to Reese. No wonder Reese went back to Stanley. Tiny raindrops pricked the windshield of the BMW as it pulled up to McCarren Park. Even after nearly a decade in New York, Amy had still not bothered to learn how to decipher eastern weather. In the

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  historical fact. Like most American cities, Madison, Wisconsin, had replaced the blue-white lighting of incandescent and mercury-vapor streetlamps with the orange of sodium-vapor. This not only required less energy to run but, because a trick of the human eye perceives orange light to be brighter and thus more revealing than the same lumens of white-blue light, cities installed sodium-vapor in the “super-predator”-panicked nineties as a method to deter street crime. As though one would comfortably rape and murder and steal in the privacy of blue light, but would hew to a life of church going and clean language if illuminated by the eerie public gaze of yellow- orange sodium-vapor lamps. In the pictures of Reese’s early childhood, cities shone as stars, but now they burned a combustion- orange glow heavenward, flames licking the firmament as whole cities engulfed themselves in nocturnal conflagration, eternally incinerating, blazing, scorching everybody caught within their scaffolds of kindling. And at the center, her daughter, Thalia, queen of fire. “T think I need my shot,” Reese tells Thalia. “’'m feeling very grandiose and morose and old. That’s always a sign that I’m hormonal. I was thinking that night is a different color than it used to be.” “T have to change songs,” Thalia says, taking Reese lightly by the arm. “Stop being weird and come back inside.” And this, Reese reflects, is the other reason to be a mother—in whatever fashion motherhood comes your way—so when you're old and alone and feeling sorry for yourself, your daughter will roll her eyes at your theatrics and bring you in from the cold. After the disaster of their dinner with Biz Dev and Marketing, Ames puts a drunk Katrina into a cab and, despite her protests, gets in after her. “I’m not leaving you alone. No matter what you say to or about me,” he insists. His reasons for staying with her were twofold: wanting to make sure she was safe and because the driver seemed skeptical about having a drunk woman in his car without a chaperone. Now Katrina slumps against the window, holding her head. “Tm not that into pet insurance anyway,” Ames says finally, into Katrina’s silence. Katrina doesn’t change position. The car travels slowly, block by block through traffic. Tourists and a few groups of teenagers Frogger their way across the streets. “Did you drink like that to punish me or the baby?” Ames asks as the car pulls back onto Lake Shore Drive. Katrina pulls her head up from a loll. If there wasn’t all the road noise, Ames guesses he’d hear the whirring of a mind calculating the most damaging insult. But instead, she pulls her thin jacket closer and starts to softly cry. “I don’t know,” she chokes out after a minute or so. “I didn’t mean to out you. I don’t want to hurt you either. I don’t know what I’m doing. You were supposed to care about me. I wasn't supposed to be alone.”

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  The door buzzer startles me from my anguish, and my heart skips a beat. Who could that be? I press the intercom, my scalp prickling in sudden anticipation. “Delivery for Ms. Steele.” A bored, disembodied voice answers, and my disappointment is overwhelming. I listlessly make my way downstairs and find a young man holding a large cardboard box, leaning against the front door and noisily chewing gum. I sign for the package and take it upstairs. The box is huge and surprisingly light. Inside are two dozen long-stemmed, white roses and a card. Congratulations on your first day at work. I hope it went well. And thank you for the glider. That was very thoughtful. It has pride of place on my desk. Christian I stare at the typed card, the hollow in my chest expanding. No doubt, his assistant sent this. Christian probably had very little to do with it. It’s too painful to think about. I examine the roses—they are beautiful, and I can’t bring myself to throw them in the trash. Dutifully, I make my way into the kitchen to hunt down a vase. And so a pattern develops: wake, work, cry, sleep. Well, try to sleep. I can’t even escape him in my dreams. Gray burning eyes, his lost look, his hair burnished and bright all haunt me. And the music…so much music—I cannot bear to hear any music. I’m careful to avoid it at all times. Even the jingles in commercials make me shudder. I have spoken to no one, not even my mother or Ray. I don’t have the capacity for idle talk now. No, I want none of it. I have become my own island state. A ravaged, war-torn land where nothing grows and the horizons are bleak. Yes, that’s me. I can interact impersonally at work, but that’s it. If I talk to Mom, I know I will break even further—and I have nothing left to break. I’m finding it difficult to eat. By lunchtime on Wednesday, I manage a cup of yogurt, and it’s the first thing I’ve eaten since Friday. I am surviving on a newfound tolerance for lattes and Diet Coke. It’s the caffeine that keeps me going, but it’s making me anxious. Jack has started to hover over me, irritating me and asking me personal questions. What does he want? I’m polite, but I need to keep him at arm’s length. After lunch I begin scanning through a pile of correspondence addressed to him, and I’m pleased with the distraction of menial work. My email pings, and I quickly check to see who it’s from. Holy shit. An email from Christian. Oh no, not here…not at work. From: Christian Grey Subject: Tomorrow Date: June 8 2011 14:05 To: Anastasia Steele Dear Anastasia Forgive this intrusion at work. I hope that it’s going well. Did you get my flowers?

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  I take my shoes off and roll down the window. He’s gazing at me, his expression unfathomable, eyes dark. “Drive safely,” he says quietly. “Goodbye, Christian.” My voice is hoarse from unbidden, unshed tears. Jeez, I’m not going to cry. I give him a small smile. As I drive away, my chest constricts, my tears start to fall, and I choke back a sob. Soon tears are streaming down my face, and I really don’t understand why I’m crying. I was holding my own. He explained everything. He was clear. He wants me, but the truth is I need more. I need him to want me like I want and need him, and deep down I know that’s not possible. I don’t even know how to categorize him. If I do this thing…will he be my boyfriend? Will I be able to introduce him to my friends? Go to bars, the movies, bowling, even, with him? The truth is I don’t think I will. He won’t let me touch him and he won’t let me sleep with him. I know I’ve not had these things in my past, but I want them in my future. And that’s not the future he envisages. What if I do say yes, and in three months’ time he says no, he’s had enough of trying to mold me into something I’m not? How will I feel? I’ll have emotionally invested three months, doing things that I’m not sure I want to do. And if he then says no, agreement over, how could I cope with that level of rejection? Perhaps it’s best to back away now with what self-esteem I have reasonably intact. But the thought of not seeing him again is agonizing. How has he gotten under my skin so quickly? It can’t just be the sex…can it? I dash the tears from my eyes. I don’t want to examine my feelings for him. I’m frightened what I’ll uncover if I do. What am I going to do? I park outside our apartment. No lights on. Kate must be out. I’m relieved. I don’t want her to catch me crying again. As I undress, I wake up the mean machine, and sitting in my inbox is a message from Christian. From: Christian Grey Subject: Tonight Date: May 25 2011 22:01 To: Anastasia Steele I don’t understand why you ran this evening. I sincerely hope I answered all your questions to your satisfaction. I know I have given you a great deal to contemplate, and I fervently hope that you will give my proposal your serious consideration. I really want to make this work. We will take it slow. Trust me. Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  If you unmoor her from the rock that is Jake, God have mercy on us all. That would be some drama, indeed. And as a rule, I like to avoid drama.” “It’s not because I want to make out with her.” “Hold on.” He grabbed a pencil and scrawled excitedly at the paper as if he’d just made a mathematical breakthrough and then looked back up at me. “I just did some calculations, and I’ve been able to determine that you’re full of shit.” — And he was right. How could I abandon my parents, who were nice enough to pay for my education at Culver Creek, my parents who had always loved me, just because I maybe liked some girl with a boyfriend? How could I leave them alone with a giant turkey and mounds of inedible cranberry sauce? So during third period, I called my mom at work. I wanted her to say it was okay, I guess, for me to stay at the Creek for Thanksgiving, but I didn’t quite expect her to excitedly tell me that she and Dad had bought plane tickets to England immediately after I called and were planning to spend Thanksgiving in a castle on their second honeymoon. “Oh, that—that’s awesome,” I said, and then quickly got off the phone because I did not want her to hear me cry. I guess Alaska heard me slam down the phone from her room, because she opened the door as I turned away, but said nothing. I walked across the dorm circle, and then straight through the soccer field, bushwhacking through the woods, until I ended up on the banks of Culver Creek just down from the bridge. I sat with my butt on a rock and my feet in the dark dirt of the creek bed and tossed pebbles into the clear, shallow water, and they landed with an empty plop , barely audible over the rumbling of the creek as it danced its way south. The light filtered through the leaves and pine needles above as if through lace, the ground spotted in shadow. I thought of the one thing about home that I missed, my dad’s study with its built-in, floor-to-ceiling shelves sagging with thick biographies, and the black leather chair that kept me just uncomfortable enough to keep from feeling sleepy as I read. It was stupid, to feel as upset as I did. I ditched them , but it felt the other way around. Still, I felt unmistakably homesick. I looked up toward the bridge and saw Alaska sitting on one of the blue chairs at the Smoking Hole, and though I’d thought I wanted to be alone, I found myself saying, “Hey.” Then, when she did not turn to me, I screamed, “Alaska!” She walked over. “I was looking for you,” she said, joining me on the rock. “Hey.” “I’m really sorry, Pudge,” she said, and put her arms around me, resting her head against my shoulder.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  Romantically, though, I’ve never put myself out there, ever. A lifetime of insecurity—I’m too pale, too skinny, too scruffy, uncoordinated; my long list of faults goes on. So I have always been the one to rebuff any would-be admirers. There was that guy in my chemistry class who liked me, but no one has ever sparked my interest—no one except Christian Damn Grey. Maybe I should be kinder to the likes of Paul Clayton and José Rodriguez, though I’m sure neither of them has been found sobbing alone in dark places. Perhaps I just need a good cry. Stop! Stop now! my subconscious metaphorically screams at me, arms folded, leaning on one leg and tapping her foot in frustration. Get in the car, go home, do your studying. Forget about him…now! Stop all this self-pitying, wallowing crap. I take a deep, steadying breath and stand up. Get it together, Steele. I head for Kate’s car, wiping the tears off my face as I do. I will not think of him again. I’ll just chalk this incident up to experience and concentrate on my exams. Kate is sitting at the dining table at her laptop when I arrive. Her welcoming smile fades when she sees me. “Ana, what’s wrong?” Oh no…not the Katherine Kavanagh Inquisition. I shake my head in a back-off-now-Kavanagh way—but I might as well be dealing with a runaway freight train. “You’ve been crying.” She has an exceptional gift for stating the damned obvious sometimes. “What did that bastard do to you?” she growls, and her face—jeez, she’s scary. “Nothing, Kate.” That’s actually the problem. The thought brings a wry smile to my face. “Then why have you been crying? You never cry,” she says, her voice softening. She stands, her green eyes brimming with concern and pulls me into a hug. I need to say something just to get her to back off. “I was nearly knocked over by a cyclist.” It’s the best I can do, but it distracts her momentarily from…him. “Jeez, Ana, are you okay? Were you hurt?” She holds me at arm’s length and does a quick visual checkup. “No. Christian saved me. But I was quite shaken.” “I’m not surprised. How was coffee? I know you hate coffee.” “I had tea. It was fine; nothing to report really. I don’t know why he asked me.” “He likes you, Ana.” She drops her arms. “Not anymore. I won’t be seeing him again.” Yes, I manage to sound matter-of-fact. “Oh?” Damn it. She’s intrigued. I head into the kitchen so she can’t see my face. “Yeah…he’s a little out of my league, Kate,” I say as dryly as I can manage. “What do you mean?” “Oh, Kate, it’s obvious.” I whirl around and face her as she stands in the kitchen doorway. “Not to me,” she says. “Okay, he’s got more money than you, but then he has more money than most people in America!” I shrug. “Kate, he’s—”

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  he started growing sad and contemplative about how trans women treat each other—he came up with a private, not-particularly-catchy term for the trans women of his cohort, the ones who began transition in the early 2010s. He called them juvenile elephants. Nowadays, Ames didn’t really feel that he had the right to say anything much about trans women, but if you had asked him that year, he would have told you about juvenile elephants. In 2002, park rangers in the Hluhluwe Imfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa hunted down and shot a gang of three juvenile elephants that had made a sport of chasing, raping, and killing rhinoceroses. The elephant gang raped and murdered sixty-three rhinos before the park rangers caught up with them. In Sierra Leone, another herd of elephants razed a village of three hundred, flattening the mud-and-wattle homes, and killing an elderly woman who attempted to chase them away. A young elephant in that pack, barely full-grown, pinned the woman to the ground with a knee, and slowly gored his tusk through her chest with malicious precision. Toward the end of the civil war in Northern Uganda, Karamojong villagers began to leave out poison-laced elephant snacks, to retaliate against raids by the legally protected elephants of nearby Kidepo Park, who smashed the homes in the adjacent villages to get drunk on the fermenting fruit the Karamojong used to brew wine. Perhaps the villagers needn’t have bothered. Since the midnineties, ninety percent of male elephant deaths in South African game parks could be attributed to murder by other roving gangs of pachydermicidal elephants, a fifteen hundred percent increase in elephant-on- elephant violence over previous decades. Ames learned all this in an essay titled “Elephant Breakdown,” published in the science journal Nature, in which a group of leading elephant behaviorists argued that the abnormal quality and frequency of elephant attacks and violence could no longer be understood through the long-standing reasoning that suggested high levels of testosterone in young males or competition for scant land and resources. No, the behaviorists argued, the younger generation of elephants suffered from a form of chronic stress, a species-wide trauma that has led to a total and ongoing breakdown of elephant culture. The cause is simple: Throughout their long history, elephants have lived in intricately ordered social structures. Young elephants learned their place and healthy behavior in concentric societal rings of caregivers—birth mother, aunts, grandmothers, friends— relationships that might last a lifetime: seventy years or more. Unless orphaned, young elephants stay within fifteen feet of their mothers for the first eight years of their lives. When an elephant dies, her family members grieve and ritually mourn. The bereaved conduct weeklong vigils by the body, covering it with brush and rubbing their trunks along the teeth of the lower jaw of the carcass, a gesture of greeting among live elephants.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Reese asks if Ames wants some water. She’s wearing a camisole and a pair of cotton sleep shorts. Without waiting for a response she walks past him, trailing a hand on his lightly, then pulls two glasses from a shabby doorless cabinet and fills them in the sink. “You’re in trouble with Ir-is,” she sing-whispers, drawing out Iris’s name. “Same as always.” “T think you interrupted her mid-fuck.” Some sort of slow, bass- heavy darkwave cranks up from behind Iris’s door, sex music for goths. “Well, next time answer your phone. Katrina’s flipping out. I wanted to hear from you what’s really going on.” Reese hands him a glass of water. “I didn’t answer my phone because I finally fell asleep.” Reese takes him back into her tiny room, where there isn’t any place for Ames to sit except on the bed beside her. He notes the floral bedspread. It’s very girly, and it depresses him. This little room, the hopeful nod to girlishness from a woman he’s known for so long. On a makeup table, he sees the same jewelry chest in the shape of a book, the same chest that she had when they shared an apartment, and the little makeup mirror from Costco. He’d had an identical mirror—they had bought them together. Reese hands him a pillow, puffs one up for herself and puts it against the wall to lean on. The pillow has little centipede footprints of mascara from her eyelashes. Like always. “So?” Reese says. “She’s really upset. Can you at least tell me your side of the story?” “Are you upset too?” “Yeah. I stormed out, I was furious. With both of you.” But he doesn’t feel furious. He feels nauseated, needy. He wants to put his face in Reese’s lap. For a woman to run her fingers through his hair and say that he has tried so, so hard, that she sees how hard he’s tried. Ames can’t find a place to set down the water she gave him, so he drinks it all, then leans over and puts the glass on the floor. Just then, from through the wall, comes a series of cracks, and then the burst of Iris’s laughter. “Oh wow,” Ames says. “Is she being flogged?” Reese shrugs. “I can’t see Iris bothering to buy a flogger when guys have perfectly serviceable hands to wear out first.” “Can we take a walk or something?” Ames asks. “This is the exact wrong soundtrack” “Where to?” Reese answers her own question, “But oh, we could go down to the river? There was a work-stoppage order where they’re building the skyscraper, and they have been leaving the fence around it wide open. You can wander right up to the water to get a view of the Midtown skyline.”

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  She’d been blowing him since the first date, but only took her panties off in front of him at a motel outside Wall, home of Wall Drug, because she had already convinced herself that she was in love with him, and so she had to do it sooner or later. He did not go down on her in return. In the darkness afterward, his arms wrapped around her, big spoon style, she allowed herself one quiet sob at her own weakness when listening to the boring older transsexuals in her support group. They’d advised her to wait on surgery at a time when she had half planned a trip to Thailand to buy herself a pussy with the money her grandma had left her for college—to which she had also not gone. Listening to Sebastian’s slow breathing near her ear, with his one inert hand coming from beneath her body to softly hold her breast and the other resting on the widest part of her hips, she would have so much rather had a pussy than the slowly dwindling balance in her bank account. By the time they'd seen California and headed back East, overshooting Wisconsin to arrive in New York City, she’d put aside her doubts and cultivated the fantasy of life with him. She would be his wife. In Norway, a man could marry a transgender woman, who would be recognized as a woman as long as she had been, as the website Sebastian showed her had translated it, “irreversibly sterilized.” But Reese had also almost run out of money, and news that Sebastian’s swimming stipend had been canceled arrived by email when they were somewhere in Pennsylvania. In New York, they crashed in Astoria with some trans girls she knew from LiveJournal. Their second day in New York, Sebastian sold the LeBaron on Craigslist to pay for a ticket back to Norway. His plans were vague. He’d sort out his military-service problem then send money for her to fly to Oslo. “It won’t be more than three months,” he calculated. He told her to get a job as a waitress again. She got a job nine days and twenty-six applications later, in the East Village, an hour’s commute by subway from the couch in Astoria for which she had begun to pay rent to the other trans girls to sleep upon. The restaurant wanted her for one shift a week. But a waitress there knew the manager at a gym opening up in Chelsea that needed people to run the in-gym daycare.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  The Colonel spent every not-in-class moment sitting on the couch, reading the almanac and playing video games, and I wasn’t sure whether he wanted to talk or whether he just wanted to sit on the white foam and drink his ambrosia in peace. After the disaster that was our “date,” I felt it best not to speak to Lara under any circumstances, lest I suffer a concussion and/or an attack of puking, even though she’d told me in precalc the next day that it was “no beeg deal.” And I saw Alaska only in class and could never talk to her, because she came to every class late and left the moment the bell rang, before I could even cap my pen and close my notebook. On the fifth evening of the rain, I walked into the cafeteria fully prepared to go back to my room and eat a reheated bufriedo for dinner if Alaska and/or Takumi weren’t eating (I knew full well the Colonel was in Room 43, dining on milk ’n’ vodka). But I stayed, because I saw Alaska sitting alone, her back to a rain-streaked window. I grabbed a heaping plate of fried okra and sat down next to her. “God, it’s like it’ll never end,” I said, referring to the rain. “Indeed,” she said. Her wet hair hung from her head and mostly covered her face. I ate some. She ate some. “How’ve you been?” I finally asked. “I’m really not up for answering any questions that start with how, when, where, why, or what.” “What’s wrong?” I asked. “That’s a what. I’m not doing what’s right now. All right, I should go.” She pursed her lips and exhaled slowly, like the way the Colonel blew out smoke. “What—” Then I stopped myself and reworded. “Did I do something?” I asked. She gathered her tray and stood up before answering. “Of course not, sweetie.” Her “sweetie” felt condescending, not romantic, like a boy enduring his first biblical rainstorm couldn’t possibly understand her problems—whatever they were. It took a sincere effort not to roll my eyes at her, though she wouldn’t have even noticed as she walked out of the cafeteria with her hair dripping over her face. seventy-six days before “I FEEL BETTER,” the Colonel told me on the ninth day of the rainstorm as he sat down next to me in religion class. “I had an epiphany. Do you remember that night when she came to the room and was a complete and total bitch?” “Yeah. The opera. The flamingo tie.” “Right.” “What about it?” I asked. The Colonel pulled out a spiral notebook, the top half of which was soaking wet, and slowly pulled the pages apart until he found his place. “That was the epiphany. She’s a complete and total bitch.”

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  Was she asleep?” the Colonel asked. “That I cain’t tell ya. I didn’t see ’er. There wa’n’t much time.” “I understand. She was dead when you got to the car?” he asked. “I—I did everything I could. Ah run right up to her, but the steerin’ wheel— well, ah reached in there, thought if ah could git that steerin’ wheel loose, but there weren’t no gettin’ her outta that car alive. It fairly well crushed her chest, see.” I winced at the image. “Did she say anything?” I asked. “She was passed on, son,” he said, shaking his head, and my last hope of last words faded. “Do you think it was an accident?” the Colonel asked as I stood beside him, my shoulders slouching, wanting a cigarette but nervous to be as audacious as him. “Ah been an officer here twenty-six years, and ah’ve seen more drunks than you’n count, and ah ain’t never seen someone so drunk they cain’t swerve. But ah don’t know. The coroner said it was an accident, and maybe it was. That ain’t my field, y’know. I s’pose that’s ’tween her and the Lord now.” “How drunk was she?” I asked. “Like, did they test her?” “Yeah. Her BAL was point twenty-four. That’s drunk, certainly. That’s a powerful drunk.” “Was there anything in the car?” the Colonel asked. “Anything, like, unusual that you remember?” “I remember them brochures from colleges—places in Maine and Ohia and Texas—I thought t’ myself that girl must be from Culver Crick and that was mighty sad, see a girl like that lookin’ t’ go t’ college. That’s a goddamned shame. And they’s flowers. They was flowers in her backseat. Like, from a florist. Tulips.” Tulips? I thought immediately of the tulips Jake had sent her. “Were they white?” I asked. “They sure was,” the cop answered. Why would she have taken his tulips with her? But the cop wouldn’t have an answer for that one. “Ah hope y’all find out whatever y’all’s lookin’ for. I have thought it over some, ’cause I never seen nothing like that before. Ah’ve thought hard on it, wondered if I’da started up the cruiser real quick and drove it off, if she’da been all right. There mightn’t’ve been time. No knowing now. But it don’t matter, t’ my mind, whether it were an accident or it weren’t. It’s a goddamned shame either way.” “There was nothing you could have done,” the Colonel said softly. “You did your job, and we appreciate it.” “Well. Thanks. Y’all go ’long now, and take care, and let me know if ya have any other questions. This is mah card if you need anything.” The Colonel put the card in his fake leather wallet, and we walked toward home. “White tulips,” I said. “Jake’s tulips.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Katrina gets up to make some tea. The kettle boils, and she pours out three cups and returns with them. The three of them sip in silence as the clock ticks. They are together, and miles from each other, their thoughts turning to themselves, then turning to the baby, each in her own way contemplating how her tenuous rendition of womanhood has become dependent upon the existence of this little person, who is not yet, and yet may not be. To divorced cis women, who, like me, had to face starting their life over without either reinvesting in the illusions from the past, or growing bitter about the future. AcKNOWLEDGM ENTS THIS BOOK IS a story of trans feminine culture in the new millennium. As a result, I am indebted to the trans women everywhere who have changed their whole lives to create our cultures. I want to thank every trans girl I have met in the years that I wrote this book, but especially those who lived in New York, Seattle, the Bay Area, rural Tennessee, and Chicago. Thank you to the specific trans people who made this book possible: Theda Hammel, Harron Walker, January Hunt, T. Clutch Fleischmann, Cecilia Gentili (in a book about trans moms, she is trans mom to so many girls in NYC), Morgan M. Page, A.J. Lewis, Sophie Searcy, Crissy Bell (to whom goes credit for the “four funerals and a funeral” joke), Casey Plett, Sybil Lamb, Davey Davis, Aubrey Schuster, Jordy Rosenberg, Cyd Nova, Ambrose Stacey-Fleischmann, Ceyenne Doroshow, Gaines Blasdel, Dean Spade, Calvin, Hilt, Beau, Lex, and Sophie. May Emma, Bryn, and the other trans women lost during the writing of this book rest in power. There have been so many other women (especially moms!) who have taught me so much. Pike Long, Charlie Starr, Rebecca Novack, Julia Reagan, Florence Menard, Julia Moses, Courtney Lyons, Rachel Lewallen, Siobahn Flood, Allie Grump, Alice Eisenberg, Kendra Grant, Elan, Yvonne Woon, Sarah Schulman, and Katie Liederman all made a difference in the shape of this book. Thinking about the relationship of sex to sex work was also a part of my writing, and to that end, I want to thank the sex workers and sex work activists in NYC in general, but specifically Chloe Mercury, The Villainelle, and Mistress Blunt. I suppose the boys can get some love too: Dan Pacheco, Mike Casarella, Akiva Friedlin, Jon Philipsborn, and Jacob Brown.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  I narrow my eyes as I slip the pants on because I think he’s laughing at me. My hair is a mess, and I know I’ll have to face the Katherine Kavanagh Inquisition after he’s gone. Grabbing a hair tie, I walk to my bedroom door, opening it to check for Kate. She is not in the living room. I think I hear her on the phone in her room. Christian follows me out. During the short walk from bedroom to front door, my thoughts and feelings ebb and flow, transforming. I’m no longer angry with him; I suddenly feel unbearably shy. I don’t want him to go. For the first time, I’m wishing he was normal—wanting a normal relationship that doesn’t need a ten-page agreement, a flogger, and carabiners in his playroom ceiling. I open the door for him and stare down at my hands. This is the first time I have ever had sex in my home, and as sex goes, I think it was pretty damn fine. But now I feel like a receptacle, an empty vessel to be filled at his whim. My subconscious shakes her head. You wanted to run to The Heathman for sex—you had it express delivered. She crosses her arms and taps her foot with a what-are-you-complaining-about look on her face. Christian stops in the doorway and clasps my chin, forcing my eyes to meet his. His brow creases. “You okay?” he asks tenderly as his thumb lightly caresses my bottom lip. “Yes,” I reply, though in all honesty I’m just not sure. I feel a paradigm shift. I know that if I do this thing with him, I will get hurt. He’s not capable, interested, or willing to offer me any more…and I want more. Much more. The surge of jealousy I felt only moments ago tells me that I have deeper feelings for him than I have admitted to myself. “Wednesday,” he confirms, and he leans forward and kisses me softly. Something changes while he’s kissing me; his lips grow more urgent against mine, his hand moves up from my chin and he’s holding the side of my head, his other hand on the other side. His breathing accelerates. He deepens the kiss, leaning into me. I put my hands on his arms. I want to run them through his hair, but I resist, knowing he won’t like it. He leans his forehead against mine, his eyes closed, his voice strained. “Anastasia, what are you doing to me?” “I could say the same to you.”

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  Taking a deep breath, he kisses my forehead and leaves. He strolls purposefully down the path toward his car as he runs his hand through his hair. Glancing up as he opens his door, he smiles his breathtaking smile. My answering smile is weak, completely dazzled by him, and I’m reminded once more of Icarus soaring too close to the sun. I close the front door as he climbs into his sports car. I have an overwhelming urge to cry; a sad and lonely melancholy grips and tightens around my heart. Dashing back to my bedroom, I close the door and lean against it, trying to rationalize my feelings. I can’t. Sliding to the floor, I put my head in my hands as my tears begin to flow. Kate knocks gently. “Ana?” I open the door. She takes one look at me and throws her arms around me. “What’s wrong? What did that creepy, good-looking bastard do?” “Oh, Kate, nothing I didn’t want him to.” She pulls me to my bed and we sit. “You have dreadful sex hair.” In spite of my poignant sadness, I laugh. “It was good sex, not dreadful at all.” Kate smiles. “That’s better. Why are you crying? You never cry.” She retrieves my brush from the side table and, sitting behind me, very slowly starts brushing out the knots. “I just don’t think our relationship is going to go anywhere.” I stare down at my fingers. “I thought you said you were going to see him on Wednesday?” “I am. That was our original plan.” “So, why did he turn up here today?” “I sent him an email.” “Asking him to drop by?” “No, saying I didn’t want to see him anymore.” “And he turns up? Ana, that’s genius.” “Actually, it was a joke.” “Oh. Now I’m really confused.” Patiently, I explain the essence of my email without giving anything away. “So you thought he’d reply by email.” “Yes.” “But instead he turns up here.” “Yes.” “I’d say he’s completely smitten with you.” I frown. Christian smitten with me? Hardly. He’s just looking for a new toy—a convenient new toy that he can bed and do unspeakable things to. My heart tightens painfully. This is the reality. “He came here to fuck me, that’s all.” “Who said romance is dead?” she whispers, horrified. I’ve shocked Kate. I didn’t think that was possible. I shrug apologetically. “He uses sex as a weapon.” “Fuck you into submission?” She shakes her head disapprovingly. I blink rapidly at her, and I feel the blush as it spreads across my face. Oh…spot on, Katherine Kavanagh, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist. “Ana, I don’t understand. You just let him make love to you?” “No, Kate, we don’t make love, we fuck—Christian’s terminology. He doesn’t do the love thing.” “I knew there was something weird about him. He has commitment issues.”

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  The admission was so intimate, so unprofessional, so inappropriate, that Amy almost came, but abruptly Kaya held Amy to her large soft breasts, called her baby girl, told her that mommy was going to take care of her. Afterward, as Amy gathered her things and discreetly placed a tip on a pillow, Kaya told Amy to come back next week. “We can work out a deal, maybe not even money. I just like this.” They saw each other twice more, but to her surprise, Amy enjoyed herself more when she paid. She had never before felt so entitled to the sex she wanted, and the entitlement came as a revelation. Most of her life, she had expressed her desires only with the maximum exertion of will and fortitude, straining to keep playing whatever creep show was happening in her head to keep herself turned on, while putting on an external veneer of interest in her partner. Only with Reese had the two ever merged, but still, she rarely managed to talk dirty with any kind of abandon, terrified at what might tumble out of her mouth if she opened the sluice gates more than a crack. At four hundred dollars an hour, however, the compunction to hold back crumbled, and so there Amy was, sucking on Kaya’s tits, calling her mommy, while Kaya wiggled a finger in her and asked if she was old enough to be such a dirty slut. But at the price Kaya asked for the second and third time—a hundred dollars and some takeout Thai— Amy once again found herself shy. A hundred dollars and some Thai food didn’t offer enough value for Amy to feel entitled to her own desires. Instead, Amy found herself needing to be reassured that Kaya would say what Kaya wanted, if Kaya didn’t really find Amy kind of burdensome, if Amy didn’t ask for too much emotional labor? Then alone, packed into commuters on the train, returning home from Kaya’s place, came the sadness: Why couldn’t Amy just ask the women in her life for what she needed? Why did she need to pay to feel like she deserved what she liked? Even Kaya just wanted to give it away to her! What kind of fucked-up trans-misogyny or late- capitalist angst or trauma had colonized her? She had never been able to ask her mom for validation as a girl, had never been able to ask her girlfriends for the pleasure she needed when she was a boy, and even now, with a girlfriend who obviously needed sex with her, it was easier to just jerk off to the thought of Kaya, to knowingly leave Reese lonely, than for Amy to make herself vulnerable to Reese. No wonder Reese went back to Stanley. Tiny raindrops pricked the windshield of the BMW as it pulled up to McCarren Park. Even after nearly a decade in New York, Amy had still not bothered to learn how to decipher eastern weather. In the

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  The crease on his brow deepens. “Well, naturally I am all those things, and now you’ve got me really intrigued. What are you hiding from me, Miss Steele?” I blink at him innocently. “I’m not hiding anything.” “Anastasia, you are a hopeless liar.” “I thought you were going to make me giggle after sex; this isn’t doing it for me.” His lips quirk up. “I can’t tell jokes.” “Mr. Grey! Something you can’t do?” I grin at him, and he grins back. “No, hopeless joke teller.” He looks so proud of himself that I start to giggle. “I’m a hopeless joke teller, too.” “That is such a lovely sound,” he murmurs, and he leans forward and kisses me. “And you are hiding something, Anastasia. I may have to torture it out of you.” Chapter Twenty-SixI wake with a jolt. I think I’ve just fallen down some stairs in a dream, and I bolt upright, momentarily disoriented. It is dark, and I’m in Christian’s bed alone. Something has woken me, some nagging thought. I glance over at the alarm clock on his bedside. It is five in the morning, but I feel rested. Why is that? Oh, it’s the time difference. It would be eight a.m. in Georgia. Holy crap, I need to take my pill. I clamber out of bed, grateful for whatever it is that has woken me. I can hear faint notes from the piano. Christian is playing. This I must see. I love watching him play. Naked, I grab my bathrobe from the chair and wander quietly down the corridor, slipping on my robe and listening to the magical sound of the melodic lament that’s coming from the great room. Shrouded in darkness, Christian sits in a bubble of light as he plays, and his hair glints with burnished copper highlights. He looks naked, though I know he’s wearing his PJ bottoms. He’s concentrating, playing beautifully, lost in the melancholy of the music. I hesitate, watching from the shadows, not wanting to interrupt him. I want to hold him. He looks lost, sad even, and achingly lonely—or maybe it’s just the music that’s so full of poignant sorrow. He finishes the piece, pauses for a split second, then starts to play it again. I move cautiously toward him, drawn as the moth to the flame. The idea makes me smile. He glances up at me and frowns before his gaze returns to his hands. Oh crap, is he pissed off that I am disturbing him? “You should be asleep,” he scolds mildly. I can tell he’s preoccupied with something. “So should you,” I retort, not quite as mildly. He glances up again, his lips twitching with a trace of a smile. “Are you scolding me, Miss Steele?” “Yes, Mr. Grey, I am.” “Well, I can’t sleep.” He frowns once more as a trace of irritation or anger flashes across his face. With me? Surely not.