Shame

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 Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Over the course of therapy, I am repeatedly struck by the force of Joni’s aversion to any expression of need. There’s something extreme about how humiliated and subjugated the need for care leaves her feeling, and I can see how her fantasies of cowboys tap right into this core emotional issue. In her colorful erotic tales, she’s able to be at the mercy of others with none of the debilitating powerlessness she dreads. This particular script (and indeed each of her other fantasies) allows her to circumvent the dangers of dependence: the helplessness, the fury, the humiliations. Moreover—and this is important—she is desired for the very qualities that she most loathes about herself in reality. In the refuge of her mind she transforms passivity into erotic delight; power becomes an expression of care, and risk is reunited with safety. Joni is overcome by the consequences of dependence on all fronts: her own neediness is abject, and the emotional needs of others are likewise overwhelming. She resolves this by peopling her fantasies with caricatures of machismo. These are forceful men who have no weaknesses and need no care. These men don’t ask; they take. Joni is thus relieved of the social imperative of female caretaking, and her own carefree sexual greed is liberated. Behind the Cowboy’s Mask Erotic fantasies have an uncanny ability to resolve more than one issue at a time. While Joni’s fantasies certainly speak to her individual conflicts, they also answer a cultural taboo against women’s sexuality in general. Massive investments have been made throughout history to ensure that female sexual desire is kept in check. To their credit, women have consistently risen to the challenge of overcoming this taboo. With every new injunction, their imagination has grown more resistant. Consciously, Joni identifies with the women in her stories. But she also created the men, and she has every detail in place. In effect, she plays all the parts. She knows what it means to be a sexual predator: she knows about lust and ruthlessness. Vicariously, through her cowboys, she gets to feel aggression, selfishness, and power—all attributes so wrapped up with masculinity in her mind that they can be expressed only through male characters. For many women, simulations of forced seduction provide a safe outlet for sexual aggression. Female sexual aggression so contradicts our cultural notions of femininity that we can unleash it only in these imaginary transpositions. Let him, the invented assailant, express the aggression so many women are reluctant to express themselves. The widespread sexual abuse of women is a chilling backdrop to the now pedestrian rape fantasy, but in these imaginary plots the assault is not real. Few women incorporate a black eye or a split lip into their erotic reveries. The sex therapist Jack Morin makes the point that fantasy rapists are notably nonviolent. In fantasy, violence is subverted by gentleness. Through the gentle man, women can safely experience the joys of “healthy dominance and powerful surrender.” Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  It is notable, in my opinion, that Paul’s statements about himself as a person who obviously was Ioudaios did not include any claim to social power on the basis of that identity.37 He does not register, for example, any obvious sense of identification with any of the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem. (This is an image of Paul provided only 36 If, however, we can only imagine “flesh” as the framework for a human existence; and if, moreover, we continue to maintain the very modern assumption that the proper identity of this fleshly body final y can only be one thing, to wit, a singular whole; then I think that we will never find ourselves in a position to grasp how Paul could claim to be what he said that he was: namely, both indubitably a “Jew” and yet equal y a citizen of a world no longer trading in these terms. 37 At least not beyond the kind of power that comes with belonging to a given social group; in Paul’s case, this group was those who claimed to be Abraham’s inheritors. 57 Paul’s Earthly Identity 57 by the book of Acts.) It is, moreover, hardly clear ( pace Acts) that Paul’s earlier life en Ioudaismô had anything to do with those same powers. At most, Paul admits to a previous “zealotry” on behalf of “my ancestral traditions” (Gal 1:14). And when Paul eventual y came to speak “in Christ,” it was from a body that, though still “natural y” Jewish, patently was not in control of very much else, including its own possible mistreatment by “the unpersuaded” in Jerusalem (Rom 15:31). What, then, does this mean? Simply stated, Paul was a weak Jew. Not weakly Jewish but a social y weak Jew, evidently without a lot of power to begin with, and then increasingly less and less. In other words, a subaltern Jew: hardly among those who “called the shots.” In fact, Paul was not very “successful” at al , at least not in any conventional sense of the term, and certainly not if we take seriously what he sometimes claimed to be: namely, another working stiff, toiling “night and day” with his hands, and thus situated at the lowest end of the ancient social spectrum.38 Said otherwise, Paul was a poor Jew, whose ostensible “freedom” meant only that no one else was involved in procuring his daily bread.

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

  Reply to Objection 7: According to the decree, De Consecr., dist. ii, quoting a decree of Pope Pius I, “If from neglect any of the blood falls upon a board which is fixed to the ground, let it be taken up with the tongue, and let the board be scraped. But if it be not a board, let the ground be scraped, and the scrapings burned, and the ashes buried inside the altar and let the priest do penance for forty days. But if a drop fall from the chalice on to the altar, let the minister suck up the drop, and do penance during three days; if it falls upon the altar cloth and penetrates to the second altar cloth, let him do four days’ penance; if it penetrates to the third, let him do nine days’ penance; if to the fourth, let him do twenty days’ penance; and let the altar linens which the drop touched be washed three times by the priest, holding the chalice below, then let the water be taken and put away nigh to the altar.” It might even be drunk by the minister, unless it might be rejected from nausea. Some persons go further, and cut out that part of the linen, which they burn, putting the ashes in the altar or down the sacrarium. And the Decretal continues with a quotation from the Penitential of Bede the Priest: “If, owing to drunkenness or gluttony, anyone vomits up the Eucharist, let him do forty days’ penance, if he be a layman; but let clerics or monks, deacons and priests, do seventy days’ penance; and let a bishop do ninety days.’ But if they vomit from sickness, let them do penance for seven days.” And in the same distinction, we read a decree of the (Fourth) Council of Arles: “They who do not keep proper custody over the sacrament, if a mouse or other animal consume it, must do forty days’ penance: he who loses it in a church, or if a part fall and be not found, shall do thirty days’ penance.” And the priest seems to deserve the same penance, who from neglect allows the hosts to putrefy. And on those days the one doing penance ought to fast, and abstain from Communion. However, after weighing the circumstances of the fact and of the person, the said penances may be lessened or increased. But it must be observed that wherever the species are found to be entire, they must be preserved reverently, or consumed; because Christ’s body is there so long as the species last, as stated above ([4713]Q[77], AA[4],5). But if it can be done conveniently, the things in which they are found are to be burned, and the ashes put in the sacrarium, as was said of the scrapings of the altar-table, here above.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  He studies her, to see what language can do—but she doesn’t flinch. Only halfway turns her head. The cigarette, its ember bead, rises to her lips, then flutters near her chin. “I don’t want you to be my mom anymore.” His voice strangely deeper, more full. “You hear me? You’re a monster—” And with that her head is lopped off its shoulders. No, she’s bending over, examining something between her feet. The cigarette hangs in the air. He reaches for it. The burn he expects doesn’t come. Instead, his hand crawls. Opening his palm, he discovers the firefly’s severed torso, the green blood darkening on his skin. He looks up—it’s just him and the radio standing beside a flat basketball in the middle of summer. The dogs now silent. And full. “Ma,” he says to no one, his eyes filling, “I didn’t mean it.” “Ma!” he calls out, taking a few clipped steps. He drops the radio, it falls mouth-down in the dirt, and turns toward the house. “Ma!” He runs back inside, his hand still wet with a single-use life, looking for her. Then I told you the truth. It was a greyish Sunday. All morning the sky had threatened downpour. The kind of day, I had hoped, where the bond between two people might be decided on easily—the weather being so bleak we would see each other, you and I, with relief, a familiar face made more luminous than we had remembered in the backdrop of dreary light. Inside the bright Dunkin’ Donuts, two cups of black coffee steamed between us. You stared out the window. Rain slashed down the road as the cars came back from church service on Main St. “People seem to like those SUV things these days.” You noted the caravan of cars at the drive-thru. “Everybody wants to sit higher and higher.” Your fingers thrummed the table. “You want sugar, Ma?” I asked. “What about cream, or actually, maybe a doughnut? Oh no, you like the croissants—” “Say what you have to say, Little Dog.” Your tone subdued, watery. The steam from the cup gave your face a shifting expression. “I don’t like girls.” I didn’t want to use the Vietnamese word for it—pê-đê—from the French pédé, short for pedophile. Before the French occupation, our Vietnamese did not have a name for queer bodies—because they were seen, like all bodies, fleshed and of one source—and I didn’t want to introduce this part of me using the epithet for criminals. You blinked a few times. “You don’t like girls,” you repeated, nodding absently. I could see the words moving through you, pressing you into your chair. “Then what do you like? You’re seventeen. You don’t like anything. You don’t know anything,” you said, scratching the table. “Boys,” I said, controlling my voice. But the word felt dead in my mouth. The chair creaked as you leaned forward.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  When she learned that her parents had come under the sway of Joseph Smith, Marinda later told a journalist, she initially felt “indignation and shame” that they had been duped by such a “ridiculous fake.” But that was before she met Joseph herself, and was exposed to the direct radiance of his charm. Later, upon encountering him for the first time, she reported, the prophet looked her full in the eye. With the greatest feeling of shame ever experienced, she felt her very soul laid bare before this man as she realized her thoughts concerning him. He smiled and her anger melted as snow before the sunshine. She knew he was what he claimed to be and never doubted him thereafter. In the summer of 1831 the Johnson family took Joseph and Emma Smith into their home as boarders, and soon thereafter the prophet purportedly bedded young Marinda. Unfortunately, the liaison apparently did not go unnoticed, and a gang of indignant Ohioans—including a number of Mormons—resolved to castrate Joseph so that he would be disinclined to commit such acts of depravity in the future. According to Luke Johnson, Marinda’s older brother, on March 24, 1832, “a mob of forty or fifty” came to the Johnson house, forced their way into Joseph’s room in the middle of the night, and Carnot Mason dragged Joseph out of bed by the hair of the head; he was then seized by as many as could get hold of him and taken about forty rods from the house, stretched on a board, and tantalized in the most insulting and brutal manner; they tore off the night clothes that he had on, for the purpose of emasculating him, and had Dr. Dennison there to perform the operation; but when the Dr. saw the Prophet stripped and stretched on the plank, his heart failed him and he refused to operate. Having lost the nerve to follow through with their castration plans, the mob severely beat Joseph, covered his naked body with tar, plastered him with feathers from a down pillow, and then abandoned him in the woods.

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  [Kelly] Jness was a curriculum that was very much geared toward women, to help them become more empowered, more, uh, measurable, to help them understand who they were as a woman. When men find out really how... how awful we are, it is... it's humbling, it is scary, it is... We don't know what to do. And what you come to realize with Jness is the dance that we all do. And ideally, people start to divest themselves from that dance. But you have to see the dance before you can divest yourself from it. [Allison] It's incredible. When I came and I found out about Jness, the curriculum for women that you had developed, I felt very relieved because I felt like I knew what I didn't to be. [Robin] Jness, though, oddly, was really not about women's success. It was about more how to be subservient, and it conveyed a lot of very negative messages. It was extremely misogynistic, at the end of the day. Often you'll have a person who, um, was... we'll call it "abused" by a-a father. There's one instance I know in particular. And the girl really loved it, enjoyed it. There wasn't a single part of it she didn't like until she recognized by society that it was abuse. [Dr. Lauch] Keith says during one of the Jness sessions rape isn't rape unless you decide that you're a victim. So she became frigid in later life. She didn't enjoy sex, didn't want sex, didn't-- didn't like anything to do with men in particular. It's their fault if you think you're a victim. Why don't you just lay back and enjoy it? And if it were in a different culture, if it were in Rome or Greece, it would've been totally okay and the person wouldn't have been frigid, and would have had a perfectly fine adult life. [Rick] In a sense, it gives him permission to do anything, because there are no victims. So do you feel that you're being victimized by me? That's an example of your negative mindset of you being a suppressive person. And so he could abuse people. He could exploit people. But they could not be his victims. Working for Jness is grounding and satisfying and humbling. And it's...wonderful, wonderful. We're all working together, and no one is ever punished, and no one is ever, um, told that they're wrong or they're bad. The most important thing in working on Jness is relationships in Jness. [Narrator] In 2015, Raniere creates an offshoot of Jness called DOS, an acronym for the Latin phrase Dominus Obsequious Sororium. Dominus Obsequious Sororium, DOS, roughly translated, means Lord Master of the Obedient Female Compainions. DOS is an organization of entirely female members, with one exception, whose presence in the group is kept secret to most of the women entering it. And he's the leader of the group--Keith Raniere. [Dr.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Far from being the last word on free love, all this bravado belies an underlying unease. I wonder to what extent this kind of hit-and-run sex is actually a defense against sexual discomfort, in much the same way that taboo-ridden avoidance is a defense. It’s the flip side of the coin: same anxiety, different response. They get drunk, have sex, then pretend it never happened. It’s a way of doing it without being in it. It all just happens; no one has to own it. Perhaps these pretend libertines are not nearly as removed from the Puritan legacy as their Saturday night romps would lead us to believe. Their furtive encounters are not exactly a celebration of the pleasures of the flesh. If there wasn’t at least a shred of moral dissonance in their desire for sex, they might not need to get hammered in order to have it. If they were more comfortable with sex, they would actually place themselves in the heart of it and would want to remember it. For Ratu, the excitement born of spontaneity is ensured as long as she changes partners frequently enough. But what will happen to her when she’s left with only one? I may never meet Ratu again, but many of the people who come to see me remind me of her. They have found that their history of sexual nomadism is no help in meeting the challenge of sustaining sexual vitality with one person over time. They view sex before marriage and sex after marriage as entirely different realities. Single sex isn’t supposed to prepare you for committed sex. If anything, it’s seen as the last hurrah before a lifetime of sexual decline. How Important Is Sex Anyway? A healthy sense of erotic entitlement is built on a relaxed, generous, and unencumbered attitude toward the pleasures of the body—something our puritan culture continues to grapple with. I witness the fallout of this ambivalence in my practice every day. Much of my work with couples involves addressing the shame and anxiety that surround people’s sexuality, causing them to want to withdraw from their lovers for fear of being judged and rejected. I give permission, reduce anxiety, normalize fantasies and desires, and challenge the distortions of poor body image. Together we excavate the secrets and the silence that accompanied their sexual upbringing, and confront the cultural and familial messages that block erotic expression. Therapy is a process of expanding sexuality by shedding inhibitions, encouraging physicality, and negotiating boundaries. Couples learn to dance step by step, and it takes as long as it takes.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  The women onstage struck a pose as the song ended, and then the music shifted, became even more frenetic, a song I didn’t know, though there was another shout of recognition from the crowd. N. and Z. had always claimed they didn’t like chalga but they shouted too, a little hurrah, and started to dance with more enthusiasm, lifting their arms in the air. I stepped away to give Z. more room, but he hooked one of his arms around my shoulder and pulled me close again, making me dance alongside him, his flank hot against mine, his arm hot against my back, and I felt myself swept by a wave of happiness, my face stretched stupidly in a grin. I must look foolish, I thought, but there was so much pleasure in being a fool, why had I spent so much of my life guarding against it? I looked at Z. and N. and saw my feeling mirrored back at me, their faces shone in the dark, or that’s how I remember it, as though they were caught in the flare of a camera’s flash. But no one was taking pictures, it’s only my imagination that casts such light on them. On the stage, Andrea was pacing back and forth, like a cat in a cage. And then Z. stumbled beside me, he lost his footing and fell, or almost fell, gripping my shoulder so I was pulled forward with him, and I reached around with my other arm to catch him around the waist. Whoa, I said, struggling to hold him up as just for a second he was a dead weight in my arms. Then he found his footing, and as he unfolded himself to stand up again I saw that my hand had fallen to his crotch. I don’t think I willed it, not exactly, I think it was almost an accident but I didn’t remove it either, I looked at it as if it were something disconnected from me, with its own impulses and acts, its own culpability, and though it wasn’t groping him or moving at all it was culpable, it was a violation, I knew this even as I looked at it in a kind of shock. I glanced at Z.’s face and saw he was looking too, not with any response I could read, and then he looked up, not at me or at the stage but straight ahead, his face clouded with an expression not of anger or dismay but of bewilderment, I thought, and coming to myself suddenly I snatched away my hand. I looked over at N., who seemed not to have noticed anything, he was still dancing, watching the show, absorbed in the music or in Andrea. Z. stood motionless beside me, his arm around my shoulder, his face not clouded anymore but blank. I looked away from him back to the stage, feeling a heat in my gut that I recognized as shame, but it wasn’t sharp yet, it was distant or dulled, and though I knew in the next days I would be miserable with it I turned away from it now. Tomorrow you will feel it, I said to myself, feel it then, don’t feel it now. I started dancing again, and when I moved Z. began to move too, he let his arm fall from my shoulder but began shifting side to side with the music, and soon he was smiling again. Maybe he thinks it was an accident, I thought, maybe it was an accident, maybe there’s no need for shame, even though I knew that wasn’t the case, or maybe he was so drunk he would forget it and then the only shame would be a private shame, the shame I was accustomed to, the shame that felt like home.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  “You have to find a way, Little Dog,” you said into my hair. “You have to because I don’t have the English to help you. I can’t say nothing to stop them. You find a way. You find a way or you don’t tell me about this ever again, you hear?” You pulled back. “You have to be a real boy and be strong. You have to step up or they’ll keep going. You have a bellyful of English.” You placed your palm on my stomach, almost whispering, “You have to use it, okay?” “Yes, Ma.” You brushed my hair to one side, kissed my forehead. You studied me, a bit too long, before falling back on the sofa waving your hand. “Get me another cigarette.” When I came back with the Marlboro and a Zippo lighter, the TV was off. You just sat there staring out the blue window. — The next morning, in the kitchen, I watched as you poured the milk into a glass tall as my head. “Drink,” you said, your lips pouted with pride. “This is American milk so you’re gonna grow a lot. No doubt about it.” I drank so much of that cold milk it grew tasteless on my numbed tongue. Each morning after that, we’d repeat this ritual: the milk poured with a thick white braid, I’d drink it down, gulping, making sure you could see, both of us hoping the whiteness vanishing into me would make more of a yellow boy. I’m drinking light, I thought. I’m filling myself with light. The milk would erase all the dark inside me with a flood of brightness. “A little more,” you said, rapping the counter. “I know it’s a lot. But it’s worth it.” I clanked the glass down on the counter, beaming. “See?” you said, arms crossed. “You already look like Superman!” I grinned, milk bubbling between my lips. — Some people say history moves in a spiral, not the line we have come to expect. We travel through time in a circular trajectory, our distance increasing from an epicenter only to return again, one circle removed. Lan, through her stories, was also traveling in a spiral. As I listened, there would be moments when the story would change—not much, just a minuscule detail, the time of day, the color of someone’s shirt, two air raids instead of three, an AK-47 instead of a 9mm, the daughter laughing, not crying. Shifts in the narrative would occur—the past never a fixed and dormant landscape but one that is re-seen. Whether we want to or not, we are traveling in a spiral, we are creating something new from what is gone. “Make me young again,” Lan said. “Make me black again, not snow like this, Little Dog. Not snow.”

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I thought I’d left it back in Florida, together with my fear of fighting and my shyness with girls, but here it was, come to meet me. Sister James had nothing to do with it. She hated talking about sin, and was plainly bored by our obsessive questions about Hell and Purgatory and Limbo. The business with the arrow probably meant nothing to her. To her I was just another boy doing some dumb boyish thing. But I began to feel that she knew all about me, and that a good part of her life was now given over to considering how bad I was. I became furtive around her. I began skipping archery and even some of my catechism classes. There was no immediate way for my mother to find out. We didn’t have a telephone and she never went to church. She thought it was good for me but beside the point for herself, especially now that she was divorced and once again involved with Roy, the man she’d left Florida to get away from. When I could, I ran around with boys from school. But they all came from Mormon families. When they weren’t being instructed in their own faith, which was a lot of the time, their parents liked to have them close by. Most afternoons I wandered around in the trance that habitual solitude induces. I walked downtown and stared at merchandise. I imagined being adopted by different people I saw on the street. Sometimes, seeing a man in a suit come toward me from a distance that blurred his features, I would prepare myself to recognize my father and to be recognized by him. Then we would pass each other and a few minutes later I would pick someone else. I talked to anyone who would talk back. When the need came upon me, I knocked on the door of the nearest house and asked to use the bathroom. No one ever refused. I sat in other people’s yards and played with their dogs. The dogs got to know me—by the end of the year they’d be waiting for me. I also wrote long letters to my pen pal in Phoenix, Arizona. Her name was Alice. My class had been exchanging letters with her class since school began. We were supposed to write once a month but I wrote at least once a week, ten, twelve, fifteen pages at a time. I represented myself to her as the owner of a palomino horse named Smiley who shared my encounters with mountain lions, rattlesnakes, and packs of coyotes on my father’s ranch, the Lazy B. When I wasn’t busy on the ranch I raised German shepherds and played for several athletic teams. Although Alice was a terse and irregular correspondent, I believed that she must be in awe of me, and imagined someday presenting myself at her door to claim her adoration. So I passed the hours after school.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  Du Bois's monumental book, The Souls of Black Folk , he introduces the reader to the concept of double consciousness, a concept that describes the experience African Americans endure when they are pressured to forsake their self-consciousness. African Americans (and I would add all marginalized people) are forced to see themselves as the white world sees them. This leads to the disenfranchised defining themselves through the eyes of the dominant culture via common stereotypes imposed upon them.9 When they begin to read the biblical text, they look toward the dominant culture to set the standards by which the text is normatively read and interpreted. At times, these interpretations are responsible for the maintenance of very oppressive social structures that keep them at the margins of society. Although Du Bois writes about double consciousness, we can expand his work to include triple consciousness or even quadruple consciousness. If a black woman sees herself through the eyes of a white-dominated and male-dominated world, can her self-definition be understood as triple-consciousness? What if she is a black Latina woman? Does this constitute quadruple consciousness? As a Latino male, I know what it is to be a victim of ethnic discrimination, but as a male, I also know what it means to be the beneficiary of sexist structures. Likewise, because I have a lighter skin pigmentation and lack pronounced African or Amerindian features, I also benefit, to some degree, in a social structure that privileges those closest to the white ideal. I am both victim and victimizer. Our culture's present structures of oppression go beyond a black-white dichotomy. Oppressive social structures are fluid, creating different levels and severities of oppression. Rather than enter into a discussion as to who is more oppressed, it will be more productive to view oppressive social structures as a web that can work to our detriment or advantage, depending on our social location. When I see myself the way the dominant culture sees me, I attempt to live up to its constructed stereotype of me. For example, as a poor preteen Latino living in New York City, I knew from a young age that I was different from the Euroamerican kids in my school and neighborhood. No matter how hard my parents tried to protect me from our poverty, they were unsuccessful. All I had to do was compare my life with the so-called typical family on the television show Leave It to Beaver to know that I was not normal. The images on the small screen were not my experience or reality, so something had to be wrong with me and my people. How else could I explain our poverty? Television and movies created a definition for me of what a Latino male is. Bombarded with media images of knife-wielding, oversexed, undereducated gang members, I attempted to live up to this image, obtaining and carrying a switchblade at the age of twelve and accepting poor grades as an inherited character flaw that came with being Hispanic.

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

  Objection 2: Further, confession is necessary in Penance in order that punishment may be enjoined for sin according to the judgment of the priest. Now a sufficient punishment for different sins can be imposed by different priests. Therefore it is not necessary to confess all one’s sins to one priest. Objection 3: Further, it may happen that a man after going to confession and performing his penance, remembers a mortal sin, which escaped his memory while confessing, and that his own priest to whom he confessed first is no longer available, so that he can only confess that sin to another priest, and thus he will confess different sins to different priests. Objection 4: Further, the sole reason for confessing one’s sins to a priest is in order to receive absolution. Now sometimes, the priest who hears a confession can absolve from some of the sins, but not from all. Therefore in such a case at all events the confession need not be entire. On the contrary, Hypocrisy is an obstacle to Penance. But it savors of hypocrisy to divide one’s confession, as Augustine says [*De vera et falsa Poenitentia, work of an unknown author]. Therefore confession should be entire. Further, confession is a part of Penance. But Penance should be entire. Therefore confession also should be entire. I answer that, In prescribing medicine for the body, the physician should know not only the disease for which he is prescribing, but also the general constitution of the sick person, since one disease is aggravated by the addition of another, and a medicine which would be adapted to one disease, would be harmful to another. The same is to be said in regard to sins, for one is aggravated when another is added to it; and a remedy which would be suitable for one sin, might prove an incentive to another, since sometimes a man is guilty of contrary sins, as Gregory says (Pastoral. iii, 3). Hence it is necessary for confession that man confess all the sins that he calls to mind, and if he fails to do this, it is not a confession, but a pretense of confession. Reply to Objection 1: Although a man’s shame is multiplied when he makes a divided confession to different confessors, yet all his different shames together are not so great as that with which he confesses all his sins together: because one sin considered by itself does not prove the evil disposition of the sinner, as when it is considered in conjunction with several others, for a man may fall into one sin through ignorance or weakness, but a number of sins proves the malice of the sinner, or his great corruption.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  Then, about ten minutes in, as Trevor went faster, our skin sucking with humid sweat, something happened. A scent rose up to my head, strong and deep, like soil, but sharp with flaw. I knew right away what it was, and panicked. In the heat of it, I didn’t think, didn’t yet know how to prepare myself. The porn clips I had seen never showed what it took to arrive where we were. They just did it—quick, immediate, sure, and spotless. No one had shown us how this was to be done. No one had taught us how to be this deep—and deeply broken. Ashamed, I pressed my forehead to my wrist and let it throb there. Trevor slowed, then paused. All quiet. Above us the moths flitted between the tobacco. They had come to feed on the plants, but the pesticides left over from the fields killed them soon as they placed their mouths on the leaves. They fell all around us, their wings, in the midst of death throes, buzzed across the barn floor. “Fuck.” Trevor stood up, his face disbelieving. I turned away. “Sorry,” I said instinctually. His cock, touched at the tip with the dark inside me, pulsed under the lamplight as it softened. I was, in that moment, more naked than I was with my clothes off—I was inside out. We had become what we feared most. He breathed hard above me. Trevor being who he was, raised in the fabric and muscle of American masculinity, I feared for what would come. It was my fault. I had tainted him with my faggotry, the filthiness of our act exposed by my body’s failure to contain itself. He stepped toward me. I rose to my knees, half covered my face, bracing. “Lick it up.” I flinched. Sweat shone on his forehead. A moth, suffocating, thrashed against my right knee. Its huge and final death merely a quiver on my skin. A breeze shifted the dark outside. A car hummed down the road across the fields. He gripped my shoulder. How did I already know he would react like this? I twisted my face to meet him. “I said get up.” “What?” I searched his eyes. I had misheard. “C’mon,” he said again. “Get the hell up.”

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  of this gleaming table—I saw her differently. I saw an anxious woman of about my mother’s age who wanted to help me without knowing what kind of help I needed. Her good will worked strongly on me. My eyes burned and my throat swelled up. I would have surrendered to her if only I’d known how. “It probably isn’t as bad as you think it is,” Sister James said. “Whatever it is, someday you’ll look back and you’ll see that it was natural. But you’ve got to bring it to the light. Keeping it in the dark is what makes it feel so bad.” She added, “I’m not asking you to tell me, understand. That’s not my place. I’m just saying that we all go through these things.” Sister James leaned forward over the table. “When I was your age,” she said, “maybe even a little older, I used to go through my father’s wallet while he was taking his bath at night. I didn’t take bills, just pennies and nickels, maybe a dime. Nothing he’d miss. My father would’ve given me the money if I’d asked for it. But I preferred to steal it. Stealing from him made me feel awful, but I did it all the same.” She looked down at the tabletop. “I was a backbiter, too. Whenever I was with one friend I would say terrible things about my other friends, and then turn around and do the same thing to the one I had just been with. I knew what I was doing, too. I hated myself for it, I really did, but that didn’t stop me. I used to wish that my mother and my brothers would die in a car crash so I could grow up with just my father and have everyone feel sorry for me.” Sister James shook her head. “I had all these bad thoughts I didn’t want to let go of. Know what I mean?” I nodded, and presented her with an expression that was meant to register dawning comprehension. “Good!” she said. She slapped her palms down on the table. “Ready to try again? I said that I was. Sister James led me back to the confessional. I knelt and began again: “Bless me Father, for—” “All right,” he said. “We’ve been here before. Just talk plain.” “Yes Father.” Again I closed my eyes over my folded hands.

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  Joseph] It was framed as this sisterhood, this secret sorority, where only a select few people could join. You had to be special. You had to be mentored. However, you know, the mentorship was really... a type of relationship between a slave and a slave owner. [Robert] Again, it's a pyramid-designed organization in which you have masters and slaves. You have eight women who are known as first line masters. Each one of those masters has their own slaves. And then those slaves are masters to lower-ranking slaves. And at the very top of the DOS pyramid is Raniere, who is commanding these women to do things that affect their everyday. Keith Raniere is the quote unquote "grand master" at the top of the pyramid. [Narrator] Entrée into DOS is invitation only, usually at the bequest of Raniere's top recruiter, actress Allison Mack, herself a first line master. Allison even recruits one of NXIVM's only Black members, then 26-year-old nonprofit cofounder Michele Hatchette. The fact that she was able to get African Americans to be a part of this slave/slave master culture shows that she was a deeply cruel person. And, you know, perhaps this individual felt humiliated and ashamed, but the group mentality is just so powerful, that it's hard for people to reject these claims and these notions because they don't wanna be rejected from this group. [Narrator] Michele, for her part, declares that she entered DOS willingly and openly accepts the master/slave roles. To ensure a new slave's loyalty, they must provide what first line masters call collateral. Collateral was things that would be embarrassing or incriminating if they were released publicly. Some people provided letters of embarrassing things they had done. Some of them provided explicit photographs or videos. Jim Jones had his followers write letters basically saying that they had done crimes that he would then hold and threaten to release if they left. Scientology, when they perform auditing, that's you giving them information that they then keep in a file. It's very similar. You're a lot less likely to leave if you know that your collateral could be released. [Narrator] Incredibly, some women have no problem providing the collateral. [Robin] People agree to do things if they think it betters themself, if they feel as if he person speaking to them perhaps has an enlightened sense of understanding of the world that they're lacking. And so they're willing to forfeit something if they feel as if their sacrifice is going to pay off. [Narrator] But collateral is only one aspect of DOS. Slaves in the program must obey all of their master's orders, which soon become sexual. Ultimately, many of these slaves are told that they need to seduce Keith, and that Keith supposedly doesn't know about it. And more and more slaves end up getting this assignment. Then Keith Raniere is sleeping with these women, and he's sleeping with their masters.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “Well, Al would answer the phone and always holler, right across the crowded store, ‘It’s the king! The king is calling! Let the king go buy his own pencils. The king could use a little exercise.’ Al was jealous; his parents gave him nothing. I never paid attention to what he said. But Al was right; I treated you like a king. Any time you called, day or night, I’d leave Daddy with a store full of customers and run down the block to Mensch’s Five & Dime. Stamps, too, you needed. And notebooks, and ink. And then ballpoint pens. All your clothes smeared with ink. Like a king. Not criticism.” “Ma, we’re talking now. And that’s good. Let’s not accuse each other. Let’s understand. Let’s just say I felt criticized. I know you said good things about me to others. You bragged about me. But you never said it to me. To my face.” “Not so easy to talk to you then, Oyvin. And not just for me, for everybody. You knew everything. You read everything. Maybe people were a little afraid of you. Maybe me too. Ver veys? Who knows? But let me tell you something, Oyvin, I had it voise than you. First, you never said anything nice about me either. I kept house; I cooked for you. Twenty years you ate my food. You liked it, I know. How did I know? Because the plates and pots were always empty. But you never told me: Not once in your life. Huh? Once in your life?” Ashamed, I can only bow my head. “Second, I knew that you didn’t say anything nice behind my back—at least you had that, Oyvin, you knew that behind your back I bragged about you to others. But I knew you were ashamed of me. Ashamed all the way through—in front of me and behind my back. Ashamed of my English, my accent. Of everything I didn’t know. And the things I said wrong. I heard the way you and your friends made fun of me—Julie, Shelly, Jerry. I heard everything. Huh?” I bow my head lower. “You never missed anything, Momma.” “How could I know anything that’s in your books? If I had a chance, if I could have gone to school, what I could have done with my head, my saychel! In Russia, in the shtetl, I couldn’t go to school—only the boys.” “I know, Momma, I know. I know you would have done as well as me in school if you’d had the chance.”

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He let go of my hair then, freeing his hand to move down the side of my face, almost stroking it before he cupped it in his palm. It was a tender gesture, and his voice was tender too as he said Kuchko, addressing me as if solicitously and tilting my head so that we gazed at each other face to face; his fingers flexed against my cheek, almost in a caress. I leaned my head into him, resting it on his palm as he spoke again in that tone of tenderness or solicitude, Tell me, kuchko, tell me what you want. And I did tell him, at first slowly and with the usual words, reciting the script that both does and does not express my desires; and then I spoke more quickly and more searchingly, drawn forward by the tone of his voice, what seemed like tenderness although it was not tenderness, until I found myself suddenly in some recess or depth where I had never been. There were things I could say in his language, because I spoke it poorly, without self-consciousness or shame, as if there were something in me unreachable in my own language, something I could reach only with that blunter instrument by which I too was made a blunter instrument, and I found myself at last at the end of my strange litany saying again and again I want to be nothing, I want to be nothing. Good, the man said, good, speaking with the same tenderness and smiling a little as he cupped my face in his palm and bent forward, bringing his own face to mine, as if to kiss me, I thought, which surprised me though I would have welcomed it. Good, he said a third time, his hand letting go of my cheek and taking hold of my hair again, forcing my neck farther back, and then suddenly and with great force he spat into my face.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  When you came home that night, after Lan and I had eaten our share of tea-rice, we all walked the forty minutes it took to get to the C-Town off New Britain Avenue. It was near closing and the aisles were empty. You wanted to buy oxtail, to make bún bò huế for the cold winter week ahead of us. Lan and I stood beside you at the butcher counter, holding hands, as you searched the blocks of marbled flesh in the glass case. Not seeing the tails, you waved to the man behind the counter. When he asked if he could help, you paused for too long before saying, in Vietnamese, “Đuôi bò. Anh có đuôi bò không?” His eyes flicked over each of our faces and asked again, leaning closer. Lan’s hand twitched in my grip. Floundering, you placed your index finger at the small of your back, turned slightly, so the man could see your backside, then wiggled your finger while making mooing sounds. With your other hand, you made a pair of horns above your head. You moved, carefully twisting and gyrating so he could recognize each piece of this performance: horns, tail, ox. But he only laughed, his hand over his mouth at first, then louder, booming. The sweat on your forehead caught the fluorescent light. A middle-aged woman, carrying a box of Lucky Charms, shuffled past us, suppressing a smile. You worried a molar with your tongue, your cheek bulging. You were drowning, it seemed, in air. You tried French, pieces of which remained from your childhood. “Derrière de vache!” you shouted, the veins in your neck showing. By way of reply the man called to the back room, where a shorter man with darker features emerged and spoke to you in Spanish. Lan dropped my hand and joined you—mother and daughter twirling and mooing in circles, Lan giggling the whole time. The men roared, slapping the counter, their teeth showing huge and white. You turned to me, your face wet, pleading. “Tell them. Go ahead and tell them what we need.” I didn’t know that oxtail was called oxtail. I shook my head, shame welling inside me. The men stared, their chortling now reduced to bewildered concern. The store was closing. One of them asked again, head lowered, sincere. But we turned from them. We abandoned the oxtail, the bún bò huế. You grabbed a loaf of Wonder Bread and a jar of mayonnaise. None of us spoke as we checked out, our words suddenly wrong everywhere, even in our mouths. In line, among the candy bars and magazines, was a tray of mood rings. You picked one up between your fingers and, after checking the price, took three—one for each of us. “Đẹp quá,” you said after a while, barely audible. “Đẹp quá.”

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  “Chocolate! I want chocolate!” A group of children in teal oversized T-shirts, just back, judging from their paper bags full of apples, from an apple-picking trip, poured into the shop, filling it with excited shrieks. “I can leave, Ma,” I offered. “If you don’t want me I can go. I won’t be a problem and nobody has to know. . . . Ma say something.” In the cup my reflection rippled under a small black tide. “Please.” “Tell me,” you said from behind the palm on your chin, “are you going to wear a dress now?” “Ma—” “They’ll kill you,” you shook your head, “you know that.” “Who will kill me?” “They kill people for wearing dresses. It’s on the news. You don’t know people. You don’t know them.” “I won’t, Ma. I promise. Look, I never wore one before, have I? Why would I now?” You stared at the two holes in my face. “You don’t have to go anywhere. It’s just you and me, Little Dog. I don’t have anyone else.” Your eyes were red. The children across the shop were singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm,” their voices, their easy elation, piercing. “Tell me,” you sat up, a concerned look on your face, “when did this all start? I gave birth to a healthy, normal boy. I know that. When?” — I was six, in the first grade. The school I was at was a refurbished Lutheran church. With the kitchen forever under renovation, lunch was served in the gymnasium, the basketball court lines arcing beneath our feet as we sat at makeshift lunch tables: classroom desks bunched together in clusters. Each day the staff would wheel in huge crates filled with frozen, single-dish meals: a reddish-brown mass in a white square wrapped in cellophane. The four microwaves we lined up behind hummed throughout the lunch period as one meal after another was melted, then pinged out, blistered and steaming, into our waiting hands. I sat down with my mush square beside a boy with a yellow polo shirt and black comb-over. His name was Gramoz and his family, I learned later, came to Hartford from Albania after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But none of that mattered that day. What mattered was that he did not have a white square with grey mush, but a sleek, turquoise lunch bag with a Velcro strap, from which he presented a tray of pizza bagels, each one the shape of oversized jewels. “Want one?” he said casually, biting into his. I was too shy to touch. Gramoz, seeing this, took my hand, flipped it over, and placed one in my palm. It was heavier than I imagined. And somehow, still warm. Afterward, at recess, I followed Gramoz everywhere he went. Two rungs behind him on the monkey bars, at his heels as he climbed the ladder to the yellow swirly slide, his white Keds flashing with each step.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  “I can’t. I just—I mean . . .” He spoke into the wall. “I dunno. I don’t wanna feel like a girl. Like a bitch. I can’t, man. I’m sorry, it’s not for me—” He paused, wiped his nose. “It’s for you. Right?” I pulled the covers to my chin. I had thought sex was to breach new ground, despite terror, that as long as the world did not see us, its rules did not apply. But I was wrong. The rules, they were already inside us. Soon the Super Nintendo was on. Trevor’s shoulders shook as he hammered away at the controller. “Hey. Hey, Little Dog,” he said after a while. Then, softly, still fixed on the game: “I’m sorry. Okay?” On the screen, a tiny red Mario jumped from platform to platform. If Mario fell off, he would have to start the level over, from the beginning. This was also called dying. — The boy ran away from home one night. He ran with no plans. In his backpack were a bag of Cheerios taken out the box, a pair of socks, and two Goosebumps paperbacks. Although he could not read chapter books yet, he knew how far a story could take him, and holding these books meant there were at least two more worlds he could eventually step into. But because he was ten, he made it only to the playscape behind his elementary school twenty minutes away. After sitting on the swings for a while in the dark, the creaking chain the only sound, he climbed one of the nearby maples. The leafy branches jostled around him as he climbed. Halfway up, he stopped and listened to the neighborhood, a pop song coming from an apartment window across the lot, traffic from the nearby freeway, a woman calling in a dog or a child. Then the boy heard footsteps on dried leaves. He pulled his knees up close and hugged the trunk. He held still and stared down, cautious, through the bows, which were dusty and grey from the city’s smog. It was his grandmother. Motionless, she looked up, one eye open, searching. It was too dark to see him. She seemed so small, a misplaced doll, as she swayed, squinting. “Little Dog,” she said in a whisper-shout. “You up there, Little Dog?” She craned her neck, then looked away, at the freeway in the distance. “Your mom. She not normal okay? She pain. She hurt. But she want you, she need us.” She stirred in place. The leaves crackled. “She love you, Little Dog. But she sick. Sick like me. In the brains.” She examined her hand, as if to make sure it still existed, then dropped it. The boy, hearing this, pressed his lips to the cold bark to keep from crying. She pain, the boy thought, mulling over her words. How can anyone be a feeling? The boy said nothing.