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

  The most common were the spaza shops and the shebeens. The spaza shops were informal grocery stores. People would build a kiosk in their garage, buy wholesale bread and eggs, and then resell them piecemeal. Everyone in the township bought things in minute quantities because nobody had any money. You couldn’t afford to buy a dozen eggs at a time, but you could buy two eggs because that’s all you needed that morning. You could buy a quarter loaf of bread, a cup of sugar. The shebeens were unlawful bars in the back of someone’s house. They’d put chairs in their backyard and hang out an awning and run a speakeasy. The shebeens were where men would go to drink after work and during prayer meetings and most any other time of day as well. People built homes the way they bought eggs: a little at a time. Every family in the township was allocated a piece of land by the government. You’d first build a shanty on your plot, a makeshift structure of plywood and corrugated iron. Over time, you’d save up money and build a brick wall. One wall. Then you’d save up and build another wall. Then, years later, a third wall and eventually a fourth. Now you had a room, one room for everyone in your family to sleep, eat, do everything. Then you’d save up for a roof. Then windows. Then you’d plaster the thing. Then your daughter would start a family. There was nowhere for them to go, so they’d move in with you. You’d add another corrugated-iron structure onto your brick room and slowly, over years, turn that into a proper room for them as well. Now your house had two rooms. Then three. Maybe four. Slowly, over generations, you’d keep trying to get to the point where you had a home. My grandmother lived in Orlando East. She had a two-room house. Not a two-bedroom house. A two-room house. There was a bedroom, and then there was basically a living room/kitchen/everything-else room. Some might say we lived like poor people. I prefer “open plan.” My mom and I would stay there during school holidays. My aunt and cousins would be there whenever she was on the outs with Dinky. We all slept on the floor in one room, my mom and me, my aunt and my cousins, my uncle and my grandmother and my great-grandmother. The adults each had their own foam mattresses, and there was one big one that we’d roll out into the middle, and the kids slept on that.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Virginia tried to get Jarold to be nicer to Lily. “She’s got a special kind of charm,” she said. “She’s gentle and low-key. She listens, and she has fresh insights.” Sometimes Jarold looked as though he were listening to this. But Lily wouldn’t or couldn’t show Jarold her charm. To him, she displayed only her most annoying aspects. And they really were annoying. She almost never said anything at family meals; she either kept her head down and chewed, or stared at people. She ignored Jarold, and sometimes she ignored Virginia too. She was judgmental; she was always talking about what was wrong with the world. She never helped with the dishes or anything else. She was always going into the refrigerator and eating the last piece of pie or cheesecake or whatever dessert was there. She’d say weird things, and when you’d ask her to explain what she meant, she’d say, “Oh, never mind.” She’d sit around looking as if somebody had been beating her with a stick. She’d droop on the wall. She was depressing. — In September, Lily would sit with her books on the floor of the den at night, reading and underlining sentences with fat turquoise lines. Virginia would be on the couch reading the paper, her square brown glasses on the end of her nose. The TV would be on, usually a talk show neither of them wanted to see. On the coffee table there’d be a fat economy-size jar of olives, which they both ate from. They’d talk intermittently, and Virginia liked to think that her silent presence was an encouragement to Lily’s studying. — In September, Lily got good grades on her quizzes. Her art teacher said nice things about her drawings. She got an A-plus on a humanities paper, and the teacher read it aloud to the class. Virginia called Anne and read it to her. During October, Lily stopped studying on the floor of the den. She left her broken-backed books on the couch and went upstairs to her room and shut the door. Virginia could hear the radio playing behind the door for hours. She wondered irritably what Lily was doing in there. On weekends her long-haired friends would come to the door and she’d disappear for the entire day. At night they’d hear the screen door slam, and Lily would pat through the den, her bell-bottoms swishing, her face distantly warm and airy. She’d float down the hall without a word. The second week in October, Mr. Shin, the school disciplinarian, called Virginia. He told her that Lily was rude in the classroom and that she used obscene language. Two weeks later he called again, this time to say that he thought Lily was taking drugs.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “He didn’t beat me up. He was just a fat slob who got a thrill out of putting a twelve-year-old in a half nelson and then asking how it felt.” “He beat you up.” They were in a small, dark bar. It had floors and tables made of old creaking wood, and a half-moon window of heavy stained glass in one wall. The tables were clawed with knifemarks, the french fries were large and damp. The waitresses carried themselves like dinosaurs with ungainly little hands and had purple veins on their legs, even though they were young. They were friendly though, and they looked right at you. Daisy and Joey came here for lunch and sat in the deep, high-backed booths. Joey didn’t eat, and by now Daisy knew why. He drank and watched her eat her hamburger with measured bites. “I still can’t understand why she married that repulsive pig. I ask her and she says ‘because he makes me feel stable and secure.’ ” “He doesn’t sound stable to me.” “I guess he was, compared to my father. But then Dad was usually too drunk to make it down the stairs without falling, let alone hold a job. I mean, you’re talking about a guy who died in the nut ward singing ‘Joey, Foey, Bo-Poey, Bananarama Oh-Boey.’ Any asshole is stable compared to that. But Tom? At least my father had style. He wouldn’t have been caught dead in those ugly Dacron things Tom wears.” Daisy leaned into the corner of the booth and looked at him solemnly. “When she first told me over the phone that she was getting married to Uncle Tom, I was happy. At least I’d get to come home instead of staying with my Christian Scientist relatives who made me wear those retarded plaid pants to school.” “She never should have sent you away like that,” said Daisy. She sat up and pulled her drink closer, latching on to the straw with a jerking motion of her lip. “She thought it was the right thing to do after my father died. Only she never knew how much my relatives hated me.” “I don’t know how she could’ve thought it was the right thing to let him throw you out of the house when you were sixteen.” “He didn’t throw me out. I just knew the constant fighting over whether or not I was a faggot was hurting my mother. I realized that I was more of an adult than they were and that it was up to me to change the situation.”

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  We passed the whole day together and when he heard how I spent my days in casual reading and occasional speaking and my Topsy-turvey nights, he urged me to throw up the law and go to Europe to make myself a real scholar and thinker. But I could not give up Sophy and my ultra-pleasant life. So I resisted, told him he overrated me: I’d easily be the best advocate in the State, I said, and make a lot of money and then I’d go back and do Europe and study as well. He warned me that I must choose between God and Mammon; I retorted lightly that Mammon and my senses gave me much that God denied: “I’ll serve both”, I cried, but he shook his head. “I’m finished, Frank”, he declared at length, “but I’d regret life less if I knew that you would take up the work I once hoped to accomplish, won’t you?” I couldn’t resist his appeal: “All right”, I said, after choking down my tears, “give me a few months and I’ll go, round the world first and then to Germany to study.” He drew me to him and kissed me on the forehead: I felt it as a sort of consecration. A day or so afterwards he took train for Denver and I felt as if the sun had gone out of my life. I had little to do in Lawrence at this time except read at large and I began to spend a couple of hours every day in the town library. Mrs. Trask, the librarian, was the widow of one of the early settlers who had been brutally murdered during the Quantrell raid when Missourian bandits “shot up” the little town of Lawrence in a last attempt to turn Kansas into a slave-owning state. Mrs. Trask was a rather pretty little woman who had been made librarian to compensate her in some sort for the loss of her husband. She was well-read in American literature and I often took her advice as to my choice of books. She liked me, I think, for she was invariably kind to me and I owe her many pleasant hours and some instruction. After Smith had gone West I spent more and more time in the library for my law-work was becoming easier to me every hour. One day about a month after Smith had left, I went into the library and could find nothing enticing to read. Mrs. Trask happened to be passing and I asked her: “What am I to read?” “Have you read any of that?” she replied pointing to Bohn’s edition of Emerson in two volumes. “He’s good!” “I saw him in Concord”, I said, “but he was deaf and made little impression on me.” “He’s the greatest American thinker”, she retorted, “and you ought to read him.”

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  We argued for hours: I couldn’t convince him any more than he could persuade me; he tried his best to get me to stay two years at any rate and then go with full pockets: “you can easily spare two years”, he cried, but I retorted, “not even two days: I’m frightened of myself.” When he found that I wanted the money to go round the world with first, he saw a chance of delay and said I must give him some time to find out what was coming to me; I told him I trusted him utterly (as indeed I did) and could only give him the Saturday and Sunday, for I’d go on the Monday at the latest. He gave in at last and was very kind. I got a dress and little hat for Lily and lots of books beside a chinchilla cape for Rose and broke the news to Lily next morning, keeping the afternoon for Rose. To my astonishment I had most trouble with Lily: she would not hear any reason: “There is no reason in it”, she cried again and again, and then she broke down in a storm of tears: “What will become of me?” she sobbed, “I always hoped you’d marry me!” she confessed at last, “and now you go away for nothing, nothing—on a wild-goose chase—to study”, she added in a tone of absolute disdain, “just as if you couldn’t study here!” “I’m too young to marry, Lily,” I said, “and—” “You were not too young to make me love you”, she broke in, “and now what shall I do? Even Mamma said that we ought to be engaged and I want you so,—oh! oh!” and again the tears fell in a shower. I could not help saying at last that I would think it all over and let her know and away I went to Rose. Rose heard me out in complete silence and then with her eyes on mine in lingering affection, she said: “Do you know, I’ve been afraid often of some decision like this. I said to myself a dozen times, ‘why should he stay here? the wider world calls him’ and if I feel inclined to hate my work because it prevents my studying, what must it be for him in that horrible court, fighting day after day? I always knew I should lose you, dear!” she added, “but you were the first to help me to think and read, so I must not complain. Do you go soon?”

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  The days that followed seemed to fly. It seemed to turn cold overnight. The tourists in their thousands disappeared, conjured away by timetables. When one walked through the gardens, leaves fell about one's head and sighed and crashed beneath one's feet. The stone of the city, which had been luminous and chang- ing, faded slowly, but with no hesitation, into simple grey stone again. It was apparent that the stone was hard. Daily, fishermen disap- peared from the river until, one day, the river banks were clear. The bodies of young boys and girls began to be compromised by heavy under- wear, by sweaters and mufflers, hoods and capes. Old men seemed older, old women slower. The colors on the river faded, the rain began, and the river began to rise. It was appar- ent that the sun would soon give up the tre- mendous struggle it cost her to get to Paris for a few hours every day. *But it will be warm in the south,' I said. The money had come. Hella and I were busy every day, on the track of a house in Eze, in Cagnes-sur-Mer, in Vence, in Monte Carlo, in Antibes, in Grasse. We were scarcely ever seen GIOVANNI'S ROOM 195 in the quarter. We stayed in her room, we made love a lot, we went to the movies and had long, frequently rather melancholy dinners in strange restaurants on the right bank. It is hard to say what produced this melancholy, which some- times settled over us like the shadow of some vast, some predatory, waiting bird. I do not think that Hella was unhappy, for I had never before clung to her as I clung to her during that time. But perhaps she sensed, from time to time, that my clutch was too insistent to be trusted, certainly too insistent to last. And from time to time, around the quarter, I ran into Giovanni. I dreaded seeing him, not only because he was almost always with Jacques, but also because, though he was often rather better dressed, he did not look well. I could not endure something at once abject and vicious which I began to see in his eyes, nor the way he giggled at Jacques' jokes, nor the mannerisms, a fairy's mannerisms, which he was beginning, sometimes, to affect. I did not want to know what his status was with Jacques; yet the day came when it was revealed to me in Jacques' spiteful and triumphant eyes. And Giovanni, during this short encounter, in the middle of the boulevard as dusk fell, with people hurrying all about us, was really amazingly giddy and girlish, and very drunk— it was as though he were forcing me to taste the cup of his humiliation. And I hated him for this. The next time I saw him it was in the mom-

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  Til never understand it/ she said at last, and she raised her eyes to mine as though I could help her to understand. That sordid httle gang- ster has wrecked your hfe. I think he's wrecked mine, too. Americans should never come to Europe,' she said, and tried to laugh and began to cry. It means they never can be happy again. What's the good of an American who isn't happy? Happiness was all we had.' And she fell forward into my arms, into my arms for the last time, sobbing. T)on't beheve it,' I muttered, 'don't believe it. We've got much more than that, we've always had much more than that. Only—only—it's sometimes hard to bear.' 'Oh, God, I wanted you,' she said. 'Every man I come across will make me think of you.' She tried to laugh again. Toor man I Poor men I Poor mer 'Hella. Hella. One day, when you're happy, try to forgive me.' She moved away. 'Ah. I don't know anything about happiness anymore. I don't know any- thing about forgiveness. But if women are sup- posed to be led by men and there aren't any men to lead them, what happens then? What happens then?' She went to the closet and got her coat; dug in her handbag and found her compact and, looking into the tiny mirror, care- GIOVANNrS ROOM 219 fully dried her eyes and began to apply her lip- stick. There's a difference between little boys and little girls, just like they say in those httle blue books. Little girls want little boys. But little boys— r She snapped her compact shut. *T11 never again, as long as I live, know what they want. And now I know they'll never tell me. I don't think they know how.' She ran her fingers through her hair, brushing it back from her forehead, and, now, with the lipstick, and in the heavy, black coat, she looked again cold, bril- liant, and bitterly helpless, a terrifying woman. *Mix me a drink,' she said, 'we can drink to old time's sake before the taxi comes. No, I don't want you to come to the station with me. I wish I could drink all the way to Paris and all the way across that criminal ocean.' We drank in silence, waiting to hear the sound of tires on gravel. Then we heard it, saw the lights, and the driver began honking his horn. Hella put down her drink and wrapped her coat around her and started for the door. I picked up her bags and followed. The driver and I arranged the baggage in the car; all the time I was trying to think of some last thing to say to Hella, something to help wipe away the bitterness. But I could not think of anything. She said nothing to me. She stood very erect beneath the dark winter sky, looking far out. And when all was ready, I turned to her.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  My legs, lips, and shyness. Seeing myself in him and him in me made me feel happy and sad at the same time. Happy I finally had answers. Sad I’d spent nearly two decades wondering what his deal was and taking his rejection personally. Keep it together, you can do this. “Hi, I’m Crispin,” he said, raising his hand to shake mine. “Hi, I’m Kristin,” I replied, raising my hand to meet his. I remember only snippets from the rest of that weekend. Sailing on his boat. A walk in the woods. Finding a clamshell on the beach (that sits in my bathroom with a candle in it to this day). Telling him I wanted to be an actress. Him telling me I should be a writer instead. Noticing how we crossed our legs the same way and had a similar sense of humor. Moments that made me understand that I am a product of both BD and Ken, of nature and nurture. BD and I had another thing in common: he first met his father when he was a teenager, too. Being born into absence was our shared DNA, and so was the trauma that came with it. BD wasn’t a villain, after all. He was a victim of rejection, just like me. And as such, he did what he was taught to do. There’s a growing body of scientific literature to support that grief and trauma can be passed down from generation to generation. In epigenetics, researchers study how gene expression is modified based on behavior and environment. In terms of trauma, that means that people who’ve experienced war, famine, or other forms of extreme stress can pass down genetic modifications to their offspring. Dr. Rachel Yehuda, professor of psychiatry and director of Traumatic Stress Studies Division at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, has been at the forefront of this research. She and her team conducted a study of 32 Jewish men and women who had endured or observed torture, been interned at concentration camps, or went into hiding during the war. They also examined the genes of their adult children, finding that both parents and offspring had lowered cortisol levels compared to Jewish families who resided outside of Europe during the war. This is significant, as cortisol is the stress hormone that helps to counter adrenaline and calm the system. Yehuda concludes, “The gene changes in the children could only be attributed to Holocaust exposure in the parents.” Research like Yehuda’s suggests that our ancestors’ life experiences have the power to leave lasting imprints for generations.

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

  For dinner there might be one chicken to feed fourteen children. My mom would have to fight with the bigger kids to get a handful of meat or a sip of the gravy or even a bone from which to suck out some marrow. And that’s when there was food for dinner at all. When there wasn’t, she’d steal food from the pigs. She’d steal food from the dogs. The farmers would put out scraps for the animals, and she’d jump for it. She was hungry; let the animals fend for themselves. There were times when she literally ate dirt. She would go down to the river, take the clay from the riverbank, and mix it with the water to make a grayish kind of milk. She’d drink that to feel full. But my mother was blessed that her village was one of the places where a mission school had contrived to stay open in spite of the government’s Bantu education policies. There she had a white pastor who taught her English. She didn’t have food or shoes or even a pair of underwear, but she had English. She could read and write. When she was old enough she stopped working on the farm and got a job at a factory in a nearby town. She worked on a sewing machine making school uniforms. Her pay at the end of each day was a plate of food. She used to say it was the best food she’d ever eaten, because it was something she had earned on her own. She wasn’t a burden to anyone and didn’t owe anything to anyone. When my mom turned twenty-one, her aunt fell ill and that family could no longer keep her in Transkei. My mom wrote to my gran, asking her to send the price of a train ticket, about thirty rand, to bring her home. Back in Soweto, my mom enrolled in the secretarial course that allowed her to grab hold of the bottom rung of the white-collar world. She worked and worked and worked but, living under my grandmother’s roof, she wasn’t allowed to keep her own wages. As a secretary, my mom was bringing home more money than anyone else, and my grandmother insisted it all go to the family. The family needed a radio, an oven, a refrigerator, and it was now my mom’s job to provide it.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Half of them will have to be turned away —not that we don’t need them, but that even under the worst conditions they just won’t do. The man in front of my desk, standing at the rail with palsied hands and bleary eyes, is an ex-mayor of New York City. He’s seventy now and would be glad to take anything. He has wonderful letters of recommendation, but we can’t take any one over forty-five years of age. Forty-five in New York is the deadline. The telephone rings and it’s a smooth secretary from the Y.M.C.A. Wouldn’t I make an exception for a boy who has just walked into his office—a boy who was in the reformatory for a year or so. What did he do? He tried to rape his sister. An Italian, of course. O’Mara, my assistant, is putting an applicant through the third degree. He suspects him of being an epileptic. Finally he succeeds and for good measure the boy throws a fit right there in the office. One of the women faints. A beautiful looking young woman with a handsome fur around her neck is trying to persuade me to take her on. She’s a whore clean through and I know if I put her on there’ll be hell to pay. She wants to work in a certain building uptown—because it is near home, she says. Nearing lunch time and a few cronies are beginning to drop in. They sit around watching me work, as if it were a vaudeville performance. Kronski, the medical student, arrives; he says one of the boys I’ve just hired has Parkinson’s disease. I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to go to the toilet. All the telegraph operators, all the managers, suffer from hemorrhoids, so O’Rourke tells me. He’s been having electrical massages for the last two years, but nothing works. Lunch time and there are six of us at the table. Some one will have to pay for me, as usual. We gulp it down and rush back. More calls to make, more applicants to interview. The vice-president is raising hell because we can’t keep the force up to normal. Every paper in New York and for twenty miles outside New York carries long ads demanding help. All the schools have been canvassed for part-time messengers. All the charity bureaus and relief societies have been invoked. They drop out like flies. Some of them don’t even last an hour. It’s a human flour mill. And the saddest thing about it is that it’s totally unnecessary. But that’s not my concern.

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

  Nevertheless we must know that the passions were in Christ otherwise than in us, in three ways. First, as regards the object, since in us these passions very often tend towards what is unlawful, but not so in Christ. Secondly, as regards the principle, since these passions in us frequently forestall the judgment of reason; but in Christ all movements of the sensitive appetite sprang from the disposition of the reason. Hence Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiv, 9), that “Christ assumed these movements, in His human soul, by an unfailing dispensation, when He willed; even as He became man when He willed.” Thirdly, as regards the effect, because in us these movements, at times, do not remain in the sensitive appetite, but deflect the reason; but not so in Christ, since by His disposition the movements that are naturally becoming to human flesh so remained in the sensitive appetite that the reason was nowise hindered in doing what was right. Hence Jerome says (on Mat. 26:37) that “Our Lord, in order to prove the reality of the assumed manhood, ‘was sorrowful’ in very deed; yet lest a passion should hold sway over His soul, it is by a propassion that He is said to have ‘begun to grow sorrowful and to be sad’”; so that it is a perfect “passion” when it dominates the soul, i.e. the reason; and a “propassion” when it has its beginning in the sensitive appetite, but goes no further. Reply to Objection 1: The soul of Christ could have prevented these passions from coming upon it, and especially by the Divine power; yet of His own will He subjected Himself to these corporeal and animal passions. Reply to Objection 2: Tully is speaking there according to the opinions of the Stoics, who did not give the name of passions to all, but only to the disorderly movements of the sensitive appetite. Now, it is manifest that passions like these were not in Christ. Reply to Objection 3: The “passions of sins” are movements of the sensitive appetite that tend to unlawful things; and these were not in Christ, as neither was the “fomes” of sin. Whether there was sensible pain in Christ?Objection 1: It would seem that there was no true sensible pain in Christ. For Hilary says (De Trin. x): “Since with Christ to die was life, what pain may He be supposed to have suffered in the mystery of His death, Who bestows life on such as die for Him?” And further on he says: “The Only-begotten assumed human nature, not ceasing to be God; and although blows struck Him and wounds were inflicted on Him, and scourges fell upon Him, and the cross lifted Him up, yet these wrought in deed the vehemence of the passion, but brought no pain; as a dart piercing the water.” Hence there was no true pain in Christ.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Virginia left the conversation feeling cheated. Camille had told her about Magdalen at the end of the conversation, after all the good things. That seemed strange to Virginia. She sat for a long time on the stool under the phone with her legs tightly crossed and her elbows on the knee of one leg. She thought about how awful the kitchen was. There were balls of dust and tiny crumbs around the edges of the floor. Pans full of greasy water ranged across the counter. The top of the refrigerator was black. Everything in the room seemed disconnected from its purpose. — In the fall, Daniel decided that he didn’t like engineering school and dropped out. Jarold argued with him over the phone for a long time. When he hung up, Jarold went out into the garage and sat in the car with a scarf around his neck. He sat there for over an hour. Virginia could hear the car’s engine start, chug awkwardly, and then shut off. This happened several times. She couldn’t tell whether Jarold was repeatedly deciding to drive somewhere and then changing his mind, or if he was just keeping warm. — Camille divorced Kevin two months later. She put her things in bags and boxes and moved into a girlfriend’s apartment. She tried to make it sound like fun. Virginia pictured her sitting on the couch with her friend, both of them bundled in blankets, drinking mugs of tea, being supportive. It was a nice picture, but it seemed adolescent. — Everybody came home for the holidays. Magdalen and Camille hugged each other constantly during the visit. On Christmas they wore their pajamas and slippers all day. They sat close together and squeezed each other’s hands. They had confidential conversations, which Virginia only half heard. When they talked to anyone else, their faces stiffened slightly. Magdalen had a hard time finishing a sentence. No one else seemed to notice. “Magdalen’s always been flighty,” said Jarold. Charles was very pale. He picked at the Christmas meal, eating very little. His dinner plate was a mass of picked-apart food. Daniel ate a lot. He ate while he talked or walked through the room. There were often light brown crumbs on his plaid shirt. Virginia took only one group picture. It came out ugly. Magdalen’s eyes were a dazed green slur. Camille’s neck was rigid and stretched, her eyes bulged. Daniel’s eyes were rolled up and his nostrils were flared. Charles hung back on the couch, his hand covering the face of a malignant elf. Jarold, half in the picture and seen from the side, was frozen in the middle of a senseless gesture. — Virginia and Jarold were in the den watching the late movie when Magdalen called. Virginia tried to ignore the phone. It rang eight times. “Are you going to get that, honey?” said Jarold.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  They talked a little more; Steve said the quality of a text depended largely on the frame of reference you imposed on it. Connie disagreed. They made a few jokes and Connie went back to her cubicle. She sat quietly as her jaw woke up, and watched the coarsely sweatered back of an assistant move from side to side at her desk. Another assistant, a young, pretty woman who believed in what she was doing, distracted her by walking from one spot in the office to another, and Connie reflected that in a better state of mind she would be comforted by the slow, predictable sight of people engaged in meaningful activity. Now it induced ragged reverberations of her nitrous oxide experience, and she had an exhausting flashback of her haggard self carrying large chunks of her life, compressed into brightly colored packages that were marked “Constance the writer,” “Constance the social being,” “Constance as part of a couple”—all layering plain Constance alone in her apartment, waiting for Deana in the dark, under a blanket, arms wrapped around herself. She saw each marked package as a weight she carried back and forth, setting one down in a random spot so she could pick up another and stagger off in a new direction. She put her head down on her desk. On her way home from work she decided that she would go to Franklin’s party. “Why?” asked Deana. “After all this talk?” “Because I feel like I need to end a cycle or something. Maybe I can get drunk and sock Alice.” “You’re not serious, I hope.” “No. But I might stare her down.” “Well, I’m afraid I can’t go with you if it’s tomorrow. I have to have dinner with my mother at nine and after that I won’t be fit for human society.” — The party had apparently reached its peak an hour or two before she came. People looked as though they were bunched according to who grabbed whose arm on their way to the bathroom, and were leaning against walls, the women nodding their heads a lot. Some of them turned toward her and smiled with vague goodwill as she walked to the center of the room. She thought she recognized the lone couple dancing in a corner, eyes lowered in benign concentration as they shifted their weight from hip to hip and jogged their hands around their waists. She did recognize the man with hysterically bright blue eyes who was aggressively pacing around with a handful of greasy peanuts, and looked the other way. “Connie, yo!”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Each one was surrounded by a distinguishing aura, by a well-defined identity which was preserved inviolate. With the entrance into life these traits of difference fell away and we all became more or less alike and, of course, most unlike our own selves. And it is this loss of the peculiar self, of the perhaps unimportant individuality, which saddens me and makes the rye bread stand out glowingly. The wonderful sour rye went into the making of our individual selves; it was like the communion loaf in which all participate but from which each one receives only according to his peculiar state of grace. Now we are eating of the same bread, but without benefit of communion, without grace. We are eating to fill our bellies and our hearts are cold and empty. We are separate but not individual. There was another thing about the sour rye and that was that we often ate a raw onion with it. I remember standing with Stanley in the late afternoons, a sandwich in hand, in front of the veterinary’s which was just opposite my home. It always seemed to be late afternoon when Dr. McKinney elected to castrate a stallion, an operation which was done in public and which always gathered a small crowd. I remember the smell of the hot iron and the quivering of the horse’s legs, Dr. McKinney’s goatee, the taste of the raw onion and the smell of the sewer gas just behind us where they were laying in a new gas main. It was an olfactory performance through and through and, as Abélard so well describes it, practically painless. Not knowing the reason for the operation we used to hold long discussions afterwards which usually ended in a brawl. Nobody liked Dr. McKinney either; there was a smell of iodoform about him and of stale horse piss. Sometimes the gutter in front of his office was filled with blood and in the wintertime the blood froze into the ice and gave a strange look to his sidewalk. Now and then the big two-wheeled cart came, an open cart which smelled like the devil, and they whisked a dead horse into it. Rather it was hoisted in, the carcass, by a long chain which made a creaking noise like the dropping of an anchor. The smell of a bloated dead horse is a foul smell and our street was full of foul smells. On the corner was Paul Sauer’s place where raw hides and trimmed hides were stacked up in the street; they stank frightfully too. And then the acrid odor coming from the tin factory behind the house—like the smell of modern progress. The smell of a dead horse, which is almost unbearable, is still a thousand times better than the smell of burning chemicals.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  Some destructive groups essentially make addicts out of their members. With alcoholism and substance abuse treatment so much in the national spotlight today, it is important that mental health professionals pay attention to this former cult member population. People indoctrinated to perform excessive (hours-long) meditation or chanting techniques every day can become psychologically and physiologically addicted to the mind control technique. Such mind-stilling generates strong releases of brain chemicals which cause not only a dissociated mental state but also a “high” similar to that created by drugs and other addictions. Some former members who have used these techniques for several years report a wide variety of deleterious side effects, including severe headaches, involuntary muscle spasms and diminution of cognitive faculties like memory, concentration, and decision-making ability. Of course, some pimps get their victims hooked on heroin or meth or other drugs to control their minds, make them dependent so there are serious health effects and long rehabilitation is needed. Cult members tend to spend all their time either recruiting more people, fundraising, or working on public relations projects. When people are fully hooked, they donate large amounts of their own money and assets to the group—sometimes everything they own. In exchange, they are promised care and meaning for the rest of their lives. This transaction leaves the person dependent on the group for everything: food, clothing, shelter and health care. In many groups, however, this care is less than adequate. Medical neglect is rampant. People are made to feel that any medical problem is the result of some personal or spiritual weakness. All they need to do is repent and work harder, and the problem will go away. Few cults carry health insurance for their devotees, so when a person becomes critically ill, they are often sent as an indigent to a hospital or free clinic. People who worked devotedly for years, sometimes making hundreds of thousands of dollars for the group, are told that the group can’t afford to pay their medical bills. Often they are asked to leave the group until they have healed. A person who requires expensive treatment will often be asked to go back to their family, so that the family will pay the bills. If the person doesn’t have a family who will help, they may be driven to a hospital and abandoned. Some cults, like the Followers of Christ,71 advocate faith healing as the sole treatment for medical problems. The outcome can be great suffering, or even death. People are told that their illness has a spiritual cause, and are made to feel guilty for not totally devoting themselves to the group. Some cults tell members that going to a doctor would show their faithlessness. A few will even threaten to excommunicate members if they seek medical attention.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Every time one of them swallowed, it was obvious that she was trying to do it quietly. Virginia’s nightgown was hot and her feet were dry. She felt as if she couldn’t close her eyes. She remembered the afternoon conversations they had shared and their walks in the mountains. They seemed meaningless now—like bits of color glimpsed through a kaleidoscope. She felt an unhappy chill. Virginia turned, and the blankets rasped in the long silence. In a fiercely sudden move, she put her body against Lily’s, and her arm around her. She waited, almost frightened. For several seconds there was no reaction. Then Virginia could feel every muscle in Lily’s body slowly tightening. Lily’s body became rigid. Her back began to sweat. They lay like that, uncomfortably, for a long time. Having moved, it was hard for Virginia to turn away again. — The next day they ate birthday cake from paper plates on their laps as they watched TV. Jarold said, “Well, do you feel fifteen?” “I don’t know,” said Lily. It seemed like she really didn’t know. She looked badly shaken. Jarold didn’t say anything else. Charles stopped eating his cake and looked at Lily for a long moment. He looked puzzled and disturbed; for one thing, Lily loved cake and she hadn’t eaten any of the cake in her lap. — Virginia didn’t tell Jarold about the drugs, but he got rid of Lily anyway. She had stayed out with her friends one night, and he had her things packed when she came back the next morning. They drove her to the airport within the hour and left her waiting for a standby flight with her clothes in a big white shopping bag. Virginia kissed her good-bye, but it didn’t feel like anything. That night Anne called. Lily had not gone home. She had taken a plane to Canada instead. “I don’t think we’ll send anybody after her this time,” said Anne. “It wouldn’t do any good. Nothing we ever did was any good.” “Don’t blame yourself,” said Virginia. For a few days afterward, Jarold talked about how awful it had been to have Lily there. Then he forgot about it. Charles was the last person to mention her. It was shortly after Virginia got a call from Magdalen. He said, “You and Dad were always acting like Lily and Magdalen were alike. But they weren’t anything alike at all.” — For a while after that, life was okay. Magdalen was still acting like an idiot, but seemed to have stabilized in a harmless way; she had a steady job as a waitress in a health-food restaurant in South Carolina, and talked about astral travel and crystal healing when they called her. Camille was in law school at Harvard.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She sometimes sat on the couch with a pile of vinyl photo albums. One album opened on her lap to show a glanceful of red snowsuits, Christmas trees, armloads of grinning dolls, and beautiful tall children who smiled, drew pictures and were happy. Holding Easter baskets full of grass and chocolate. Raking the leaves. Winning trophies. The weddings and the graduations. The long-ribboned corsages. She had to remind herself that Anne and Betty had families that were nice in other ways, that one of Betty’s daughters was a certified genius and went to a school for advanced children. — She wrote to Anne and told her, “We’re getting fat and sassy.” — It was winter when Camille called. She asked how Virginia was doing and waited while Virginia told her. She asked about Magdalen and the boys. Then she said, “Mother, I’m having an abortion.” Virginia stifled a choking noise. “Were you raped?” she managed to ask. Camille began to cry. “No,” she said. Virginia waited as Camille controlled her voice. “No,” said Camille. “Kevin doesn’t want to have children. I let myself get pregnant without telling him. I thought he would change his mind, but he didn’t. He’s really mad. He says if I don’t have an abortion, he’ll divorce me.” Virginia left the phone feeling very unlike herself. She made a cup of tea and went into the den with it. She sat on the couch with one gray-socked foot propped up on the coffee table. She wondered why Kevin didn’t want to have children. She did not tell Jarold about the abortion. — Camille came home to visit. She walked around the house in her old snakeskin jumpsuit, her little hips twitching briskly. She told stories about being a corporate lawyer and teased “Daddy.” Virginia admired her. But she noticed the stiff grinning lines around her mouth. Camille visited Magdalen too. She stayed with her for two days before flying back to New York. She wrote Virginia a letter shortly afterward and told her that she felt something strange was happening between John and Magdalen. Magdalen was brittle, she said. John ordered her around a lot, in a very nasty way. She said that late one night she woke up and heard the sound of someone being rhythmically and repeatedly slapped. It went on for about five minutes. Magdalen looked fine the next day, and Camille had been too embarrassed to say anything. Virginia called Magdalen late that night, when Jarold was in bed. She didn’t hear anything strange in her voice. When Virginia got off the phone, she put on an old gray sweater and walked from room to room. The rooms were dark and hollow. They seemed unfamiliar and eerie, but that didn’t make her go upstairs or turn on the light.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Another assistant, a young, pretty woman who believed in what she was doing, distracted her by walking from one spot in the office to another, and Connie reflected that in a better state of mind she would be comforted by the slow, predictable sight of people engaged in meaningful activity. Now it induced ragged reverberations of her nitrous oxide experience, and she had an exhausting flashback of her haggard self carrying large chunks of her life, compressed into brightly colored packages that were marked “Constance the writer,” “Constance the social being,” “Constance as part of a couple”—all layering plain Constance alone in her apartment, waiting for Deana in the dark, under a blanket, arms wrapped around herself. She saw each marked package as a weight she carried back and forth, setting one down in a random spot so she could pick up another and stagger off in a new direction. She put her head down on her desk. On her way home from work she decided that she would go to Franklin’s party. “Why?” asked Deana. “After all this talk?” “Because I feel like I need to end a cycle or something. Maybe I can get drunk and sock Alice.” “You’re not serious, I hope.” “No. But I might stare her down.” “Well, I’m afraid I can’t go with you if it’s tomorrow. I have to have dinner with my mother at nine and after that I won’t be fit for human society.” — The party had apparently reached its peak an hour or two before she came. People looked as though they were bunched according to who grabbed whose arm on their way to the bathroom, and were leaning against walls, the women nodding their heads a lot. Some of them turned toward her and smiled with vague goodwill as she walked to the center of the room. She thought she recognized the lone couple dancing in a corner, eyes lowered in benign concentration as they shifted their weight from hip to hip and jogged their hands around their waists. She did recognize the man with hysterically bright blue eyes who was aggressively pacing around with a handful of greasy peanuts, and looked the other way. “Connie, yo!” Franklin appeared with his hair in his eyes and his pores flowering magnanimously. “You came!” They groped for each other’s hands and darted at each other’s cheeks with a lot of “mm!” sounds. “Where’s your girlfriend?” “Oh, she had a family obligation.” They stood close, Connie quickly scanning the back of the room while Franklin’s eyes wandered over her head. “Yo, Dave, I’ve gotta talk to you before you leave! Connie, the hooch is over there, there’s some cake and stuff in the kitchen.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I walked home in the snow. The deep drifts muffled all the sounds of the city. I felt pretty low. Immediately after the holiday Pd have to begin job- hunting all over again. When I got home I hoped the phone would ring. It didn’t. I had nothing to look forward to except watching the “Perry Como 84 = Leslie Feinberg Christmas Special.” That made me feel much worse. Drinking didn’t help either, not that it ever did. I was thinking about going out to the Malibou when I heard footsteps thumping up the stairs. I opened the door. There was Muriel, Yvonne, and some of the other Native women from the plant. They brought me food and a few wrapped presents. They were on their way to a social. I was invited. Muriel watched my face with mock solemnity as she said, “Now you learn to dance.” “YOU MADE GRADE FIVE?” A butch cheer went up in the plant cafeteria. “Alright! Way to go!” All the butches clapped me on the back and shook my hand. I felt euphoric. Butch Jan put an arm around me. “You done good, kid,” she said. I blushed. “How'd you do it?” Frankie wanted to know. Actually, I didn’t know why Pd been selected for the job. Maybe it was for the same reason a lot of factory jobs were opening to us: all the young guys were getting drafted left and right. Td been at this bindery for six months. It was a huge factory. Grant and I both got jobs around the same time. Two months later, when the educational materials division opened, seven more butches had been among those hired. Nine of us. Almost the whole team Id played softball with last summer. Nine of us—it was heaven. Since [’d been in the plant for a while, I knew the ropes and was already in the union. So occasionally the other butches came to me for advice about problems on their floor or about the union. I enjoyed the unprecedented reversal of roles. I worked with Jan in the trimming and folding division. Giant machines folded huge pieces of paper stock that were then trimmed into pages. Stacks of pages were loaded on skids near the massive collating machine. Women ran from the skids to feed fresh pages into the pockets of the collator. The pages dropped onto a moving belt. The women at the end added cover sheets and stapled them. I stacked the finished booklets onto skids. Every once in a while I got pulled from this work to help unload the trucks bringing in skids of fresh paper. I looked forward to it because it meant driving a forklift. The only part I didn’t like was feeling a little distanced from the other women. Not one of my co-workers was ever taken off the line for any other task.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Frankie gestured with her thumb toward the Duchess. “You don’t know if they'll let you in there? Well, in our day I was afraid if I showed who turned me on my own people would shut the door in my face. That’s a terrible way to feel. ’m sorry that’s happening to you now. Shit, Jess, what hurt the most is I respected you. I wanted you to respect me.” I rubbed the sadness out of my eyes. “Well, you deserved it. C’mon,” I took her by the shoulder. “Let’s go to the piers.” We walked slowly down Christopher Street toward the Hudson River. “You know, Frankie, when we wete younger, I thought I had it figured out: I’m a butch because I love femmes. That was something beautiful. Nobody ever honored our love. You scared me. I felt like you were taking that away from me.” Frankie shook her head. “I wasn’t taking anything from you. But how do you think I felt when you told me I wasn’t a real butch because I sleep with other butches? You were taking away who I am. Jesus, Jess, when I walk down the street guys fuck with me. I don’t have to prove I’m butch to them. How come I got to prove it to you?” I shook my head. “You don’t.” I put my arm around her shoulder. We crossed the West Side Highway and walked to the end of the pier. The full moon illuminated the clouds. Light shimmered on the dark water. Frankie’s voice dropped low. “Jess, which old bull really brought you out?” I smiled at her memory. “Butch Al, from Niagara Falls.” “For me it was Grant,” Frankie said. “Grant?” I remembered Grant as a mean drunk who could offend everyone. Frankie watched my face. “Grant meant the world to me. She taught me that Iam what I am, that I got nothing to prove. It was a very liberating concept for a baby butch.” I smiled gently. “I never thought of Grant as very liberated—not that any of us were.” Frankie nodded. “Grant never took her own wisdom to heart. She’s a prisoner of her shame, but she didn’t want us young ones to end up like her. She only seduced baby butches when she got real drunk. But I never felt like we made her happy. I think she has some secret passion that scares the shit out of her” I frowned. “Like what?” Frankie shrugged. “I think she’s horrified by something inside of her she thinks is twisted, like maybe she fantasizes about being with strong old bulls, or men or something. Poor Grant. I wish she’d let me in. I love that old bulldagger so much.” We sat in silence, listening to the waves lapping against the pilings beneath us. Frankie sighed. “You know, Jess, I never learned to love myself until I gave in to loving other butches.”