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 This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Dwight disapproved of Bobby, but Norma slipped out of the house at will, and when Dwight bestirred himself to question her she fed him fat lies that he swallowed without a murmur. I knew where she and Bobby went; they went to the village dump, a petting zoo said to be frequented by a one-handed killer who had escaped from the state asylum at Sedro Woolley. Norma told me that one night she heard a noise outside the car and made Bobby lay rubber out of there. When they got back to the house they found a bloody hook hanging on the door handle. This was a true story that Norma made me promise never to tell anyone, ever. And there were bears at the dump, rooting in garbage and rearing up now and then with cans stuck on their noses. As I worked my way through the horse chestnuts I took them up to the attic. This was a dank space where Pearl’s old dolls were strewn, their eyes kindling under the glare of the flashlight, among broken appliances and stacks of Collier’s and the washtub where the beaver lay curing in brine. Skipper and Norma got used to seeing me with the nuts, because it was about the only way they ever saw me; their bus left for Concrete before I woke up in the morning and brought them back just in time for the evening meal. They came to accept the sight as normal. Pearl never got used to it. She passed my station twenty times a night on some pretext or other, lingering nearby until, in spite of myself, I raised my head and saw her looking down at me with hard bright eyes and a little smile. Sometimes Dwight came back to check on my progress. He tried to cheer me on with visions of everyone sitting together, a year or two down the line, eating these very nuts. So I nodded away the nights over boxes of horse chestnuts, while my hands took on the color and glow of well-oiled baseball mitts. The smell grew deadly. The boys I went to school with were naturally obliged to shoot their mouths off, and finally—choosing the one I considered to be the weakest—I got into a fight. But by then the nuts were all husked anyway. AFTER SCHOOL I delivered newspapers. Dwight had bought the route for almost nothing from a boy who was sick of it and couldn’t find any other takers. I delivered the Seattle Times and the Post-Intelligencer to most of the houses in Chinook and to the barracks where the single men lived. The route paid between fifty and sixty dollars a month, money that Dwight took from me as soon as I collected it. He said that I would thank him someday, when I really needed the money. I dawdled along the route, seizing any chance to delay going home.

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

  I kept quiet. So did Chuck. Mr. Bolger waited, but we still said nothing. Then, to spare himself the stupidity of a denial, he told us we’d left a trail anyone could follow. You didn’t even have to follow it—you could see it all the way from here. “How could you do such a thing?” Mrs. Bolger asked. “To the Welches, of all people?” I looked up and saw that Mr. Bolger was studying me. We both looked away when our eyes met. Mrs. Bolger shook with sobs. Mr. Bolger put his hand on her shoulder. “What’s your excuse?” he said to Chuck. Chuck said there wasn’t any excuse. “Jack?” “No excuse, sir.” He looked at each of us. “Were you drinking?” We both admitted we’d been drinking. Mr. Bolger nodded, and I understood that this was in our favor, so great was his faith in the power of alcohol to transform a person. It also worked to our advantage that we ourselves had not suggested drink as a defense but confessed it as a further wrong. That left Mr. Bolger free to make our excuses for us. Chuck and I were ritually abashed, Mr. Bolger ritually angry, but the worst was over and we all knew it. We spent the rest of the morning at the kitchen table, working out a plan of reparation. Chuck and I would return the gasoline, which we had been too tired to pour into his tank. We would apologize to Mr. Welch, and we would give our word not to drink again. No mention was made of the promises we had already broken. We agreed to all of Mr. Bolger’s conditions but one—we would not tell him who had been with us. He harried us for their names, but it was plain to me that this was part of the ceremony, and that he was glad to find us capable at least of loyalty. Anyway, he must have known who the others were. We stood up and shook hands. Mr. Bolger made it clear that he did not want to lord this over us. He wanted to put the whole thing behind him, the sooner the better. Mrs. Bolger did not get up. I could see that she was still feeling the wrong of what we had done, though I did not feel it myself. CHUCK AND I loaded up the cans and drove them over to the Welch farm. It wasn’t that far through the fields, but to get there by car we had to drive up to the main road and then turn off on a winding, unpaved track still muddy from yesterday’s rain. Chuck went fast so we wouldn’t get stuck. The mud pounded against the floor of the car. We passed through scrub pine that opened up here and there to show a house or a clearing with some cows in it. Chuck swore a blue streak the whole way.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  The mark of being Latina/o is a mestizaje that makes U.S. Hispanics heirs to several cultures yet seldom trusted or accepted by any of them—perpetual insiders and outsiders of five continents. The perceived stain of mestizaje makes Latino/as an object of disdain to the race-conscious dominant culture. The process of mestizaje began when the Spaniards conquered the Western Hemisphere. Mestizos , the offspring of the natural miscegenation that followed, became a pejorative term used toward people who fall short of the white ideal. Laws were passed to limit the mixture of races lest it undermine the barriers erected to separate “superior” cultures from “inferior” ones.6 This mixture of cultures is not limited to the European conquest of the Americas. It continues when the mixed products of that violent clash attempt to define themselves within the United States. Jesus’ ethnic purity was also suspect as his contemporaries questioned his “legitimacy.” A controversy within the early Christian church revolved around the mestizaje of Jesus. Jesus was accused of being the bastard child of the Jew Mary and a Roman soldier named Panthera. The title Jesus ben Panthera (Jesus son of Panthera) is not uncommon in rabbinical writings. The third-century theologian Origen makes a reference to this gossip when he writes, Let us return, to the words put into the mouth of the Jew, where the mother of Jesus is described as having been turned out by the carpenter who was betrothed to her, as she had been convicted of adultery and had a child by a certain soldier named Panthera.7 The hint of impurity was sufficient grounds for excluding an individual from the congregation. According to Deuteronomy: “A bastard shall not enter the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the Lord's congregation” (23:2). Religious leaders simply could not be suspected of mestizaje. While I am not questioning the doctrine of the virgin birth, it is clear that many, specifically those who rejected Jesus’ claim of messiahship, also rejected the claim that Mary gave birth to him while still a virgin. The real issue is that the gossip concerning Jesus’ father made Jesus impure in the eyes of the “pure” Jewish race. If racial mixture for them meant impurity, then Jesus knew the pain and humiliation of being seen constantly as less than human because he was rumored to be biracial. AN AMERINDIAN CHRIST As the Amerindians of the Caribbean islands faced extinction, a missionary priest named Bartolomé de Las Casas attempted to defend the indigenous population from the European onslaught. Called to be a witness of Christ to the “godless” Amerindians, he realized that it was he who was living without God. For Las Casas, spiritual salvation was equated with the establishment of social justice, thereby inverting the relationship between the “Christ-bearing” Europeans and the “demonic” Amerindian heathens. It was the Spaniards who risked losing salvation because of their unjust treatment of the native population.

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

  “What do you mean? Hard to talk about or hard to do?” she answered my question with a question. “Hard to own.” I replied. “It’s easier for me to have sex than to talk about it.” “And with Nico?” “With Nico it’s easier not to have sex than to talk about it.” “Tell me.” “Sex is hard. I don’t want it a lot of the time, which is strange because I’ve always thought of myself as a sexual person. I read about women with low desire and I don’t identify with them, even though it sounds like me lately.” “Was it easier with other men?” “Oh, God, no—but in the past I never had to talk about it. It was never something I had to work on. Either it came naturally and we clicked, or the relationship wasn’t going to last anyway, so why bother? Now I’m with a man I love. I think he’s beautiful, he treats me like a queen, and I don’t want to have sex with him. He gets frustrated when I reject him day after day, and I don’t like the fact that I’m so indifferent to sex. I’d like to think it happened when I got pregnant with our daughter, but to be honest I was kind of relieved to have an excuse. ‘I’m pregnant’ turned into ‘I just had a baby’ turned into ‘I’m nursing’ turned into ‘I need my sleep.’ Truthfully, as you know, it’s been a problem from the beginning.” “Shall we take the plunge?” “I’m tired of avoiding it, of waiting for something to change. I can’t swap Nico for a new model. I make it work with him or I shrivel up.” Maria grew up in a working-class family, the daughter of a policeman and a substitute teacher. Religion was central, and she attended all-girl Catholic schools through high school. “We never talked about sex at home. My grandma had ten kids and never knew women could have orgasms. Can you imagine? I haven’t seen my mother naked since I was three. I’ve never seen my father naked. I’m the youngest of five, and each of us rebelled in our own way—though my brothers never had to face the injunctions reserved for the girls.” Maria sheds light on the pervasive all-or-nothing, feast or famine sexual culture in America. “I was seventeen when I lost my virginity; and for Catholic girls, once you’ve slept with one person you might as well sleep with the whole town—and, frankly, most of us did.” she tells me. “I know it sounds archaic, but it really was like that where I grew up. Staten Island is like a nature preserve for endangered Catholics. The message was clear: sex is a sin unless you’re married.” “Right. Like the old adage, ‘Sex is dirty; save it for someone you love,’” I say.

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

  At first I thought she was telling another one of her half-invented tales, but the details grew clearer as her voice stammered into focus on odd yet idiosyncratic moments in the narrative. How the soldiers would smell of a mixture of tar, smoke, and mint Chiclets—the scent of the battle sucked so deep into their flesh it would linger even after their vigorous showers. Leaving Mai in the care of her sister back in the village, Lan rented a windowless room from a fisherman by the river, where she took the soldiers. How the fisherman, living below her, would spy on her through a slot in the wall. How the soldiers’ boots were so heavy, when they kicked them off as they climbed into bed, the thumps sounded like bodies dropping, making her flinch under their searching hands. Lan tensed as she spoke, her tone strained as it dipped into the realm of her second mind. She turned to me afterward, a finger blurred over her lips. “Shhhh. Don’t tell your mom.” Then she gave my nose a flick, her eyes bright as she grinned maniacally. But Paul, shy and sheepish, who often spoke with his hands in his lap, was not her client—which was why they hit it off. According to Lan, they did, in fact, meet at a bar. It was late, nearly midnight, when Lan walked in. She had just finished her work for the day and was getting a nightcap when she saw the “lost boy,” as she called him, sitting alone at the counter. There was a social that night for servicemen in one of the ritzy hotels, and Paul was waiting for a date that would never arrive. They talked over drinks and found a common ground in their shared rural childhoods, both having been brought up in the “sticks” of their respective countries. These two unlikely hillbillies must have found a familiar dialect that fused the gap between their estranged vernaculars. Despite their vastly different paths, they found themselves transplants in a decadent and disorientating city besieged by bombing raids. It was in this familiar happenstance that they found refuge in each other. One night, two months after they met, Lan and Paul would be holed up in a one-room apartment in Saigon. The city was being infiltrated by a massive North Vietnamese advance that would later be known as the infamous Tet Offensive. All night Lan lay fetal, her back against the wall, Paul by her side, his standard-issue 9mm pistol aimed at the door as the city tore open with sirens and mortar fire. —

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  In its truest sense, Christianity is not a religion apart from Judaism but rather a branch grafted onto the vine of Judaism and thus deeply rooted in the Jewish faith. Paul argues that the Gentiles are grafted onto the Jewish olive tree so that the “rich sap” that flows from its holy roots can reach the pagans (Rom. 11:16–24). Even though Paul struggles with the segments of the Jewish community that rejected Jesus’ messiahship, he does not condemn the Jews. Quite the contrary, although upset with their rejection of Jesus, he still affirms their place as “God's chosen people, still beloved by God” (Rom. 11:28). Paul makes it clear that their inheritance in God's reign is still valid, “for the free gifts and choices of God are irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29). JUSTIFYING CLASSISM Every day, along with most adult Americans, I must receive about half a dozen offers for credit cards. It seems as if every bank in the United States wants to provide me with cash at an introductory offer of 3 percent or less. One specific advertisement caught my eye. It boldly proclaimed, Switch to the one credit card that helps spread the Gospel of Christ…. At last—a MasterCard that shares the love of Christ. As a Christian, why would you use any other card? Here is how the card works: every time a purchase is made, a contribution is made, at no cost to the cardholder, to WXHL, a Christian radio station in the Philadelphia region. Fulfilling the capitalist dream of buying on credit for items that I cannot afford and probably do not need has never been easier. The guilt associated with conspicuous consumption is now offset by my commitment to spreading the gospel. Flashing my plastic card, with the dove and cross on it, becomes a witness to the sales clerk of my commitment to Christ! This credit card demonstrates how our society has merged our present economic system with the way the dominant culture does church. Of course, churches need not stop with credit cards. In an era of marketing to increase production (church membership and saved souls), churches are opening Starbucks outlets in their fellowship halls as well as other food court–type restaurants, like McDonalds, complete with drive-through windows. Other churches have transformed their sanctuaries into health clubs, complete with indoor Olympic-size pools, racketball courts, running tracks, and basketball courts. In some churches, for a slight fee of about $300, you can obtain a membership to use the house of God. Many churches, as a testimony to God's blessings, are constructing cathedrals with memberships in the tens of thousands and operating budgets that rival many relief organizations set up to deal with the physical needs of the world's disenfranchised. At times these megachurches, mostly located in middle-class suburbia, contrast with the misery in the urban centers of this nation, where, in most cases, the wealth of these churchgoers is created. Many churches mirror the conspicuous consumption of the overall culture.

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

  I answer that, Confession of sins is twofold. One is made inwardly to God: and such confession of sins is required before Baptism: in other words, man should call his sins to mind and sorrow for them; since “he cannot begin the new life, except he repent of his former life,” as Augustine says in his book on Penance (Serm. cccli). The other is the outward confession of sins, which is made to a priest; and such confession is not required before Baptism. First, because this confession, since it is directed to the person of the minister, belongs to the sacrament of Penance, which is not required before Baptism, which is the door of all the sacraments. Secondly, because the reason why a man makes outward confession to a priest, is that the priest may absolve him from his sins, and bind him to works of satisfaction, which should not be enjoined on the baptized, as stated above [4447](A[5]). Moreover those who are being baptized do not need to be released from their sins by the keys of the Church, since all are forgiven them in Baptism. Thirdly, because the very act of confession made to a man is penal, by reason of the shame it inflicts on the one confessing: whereas no exterior punishment is enjoined on a man who is being baptized. Therefore no special confession of sins is required of those who are being baptized; but that general confession suffices which they make when in accordance with the Church’s ritual they “renounce Satan and all his works.” And in this sense a gloss explains Mat. 3:6, saying that in John’s Baptism “those who are going to be baptized learn that they should confess their sins and promise to amend their life.” If, however, any persons about to be baptized, wish, out of devotion, to confess their sins, their confession should be heard; not for the purpose of enjoining them to do satisfaction, but in order to instruct them in the spiritual life as a remedy against their vicious habits. Reply to Objection 1: Sins were not forgiven in John’s Baptism, which, however, was the Baptism of Penance. Consequently it was fitting that those who went to receive that Baptism, should confess their sins, so that they should receive a penance in proportion to their sins. But Christ’s Baptism is without outward penance, as Ambrose says (on Rom. 11:29); and therefore there is no comparison. Reply to Objection 2: It is enough that the baptized make inward confession to God, and also an outward general confession, for them to “prosper and obtain mercy”: and they need no special outward confession, as stated above. Reply to Objection 3: Confession is a part of sacramental Penance, which is not required before Baptism, as stated above: but the inward virtue of Penance is required.

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

  THEOPHYLACT. For that faith which only remains in the mind is not sufficient, but the Lord requires also the confession of the mouth; for when the soul is sanctified by faith, the body ought also to be sanctified by confession. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Vict. Ant. e Cat. in Marc.) He then who has learned this, is bound zealously to confess Christ without shame. And this generation is called adulterous, because it has left God the true Bridegroom of the soul, and has refused to follow the doctrine of Christ, but has prostrated itself to the devil and taken up the seeds of impiety, for which reason also it is called sinful. Whosoever therefore amongst them has denied the kingdom of Christ, and the words of God revealed in the Gospel, shall receive a reward befitting His impiety, when He hears in the second advent, I know you not. (Matt. 7:23) THEOPHYLACT. Him then who shall have confessed that his God was crucified, Christ Himself also shall confess, not here, where He is esteemed poor and wretched, but in His glory and with a multitude of Angels. GREGORY. (Hom. 32. in Evang.) There are however some, who confess Christ, because they see that all men are Christians; for if the name of Christ were not at this day in such great glory, the Holy Church would not have so many professors. The voice of profession therefore is not sufficient for a trial of faith whilst the profession of the generality defends it from shame. In the time of peace therefore there is another way, by which we may be known to ourselves. We are ever fearful of being despised by our neighbours, we think it shame to bear injurious words; if perchance we have quarrelled with our neighbour, we blush to be the first to give satisfaction; for our carnal heart, in seeking the glory of this life, disdains humility. THEOPHYLACT. But because He had spoken of His glory, in order to shew that His promises were not vain, He subjoins, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here who shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power. As if He said, Some, that is, Peter, James, and John, shall not taste of death, until I shew them, in my transfiguration, with what glory I am to come in my second advent; for the transfiguration was nothing else, but an announcement of the second coming of Christ, in which also Christ Himself and the Saints will shine. BEDE. (in Marc. 3. 36) Truly it was done with a loving foresight, in order that they, having tasted for a brief moment the contemplation of everlasting joy, might with the greater strength bear up under adversity.

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

  passengers, a woman who owned a store in Portland, even offered her a job and a room in her house until we found a place of our own, an offer my mother declined because she had a lucky feeling about Seattle. Now I saw her only when Dwight agreed to drive me down with him. He usually had reasons for leaving me behind, the paper route or schoolwork or something I had done wrong that week. But he had to bring me sometimes, and then he never let me out of his sight. He stuck close by and acted jovial. He smiled at me and put his hand on my shoulder and made frequent reference to fun things we’d done together. And I played along. Watching myself with revulsion, aghast at my own falsity yet somehow helpless to stop it, I simpered back at him and laughed when he invited me to laugh and confirmed all his lying implications that we were pals and our life together a good one. Dwight did this whenever it suited his purpose, and I never let him down. By the time our visits ended and my mother managed to get me alone for a moment, I was always so mired in pretense that I could see no way out. “How’s it going?” she would ask, and I would answer, “Fine.” “For sure?” “For sure.” We would be walking slowly toward the car, Dwight watching our approach. “If there’s anything I should know, you tell me. Okay?” “Yes ma’am.” “Promise.” I would promise. And then I would get in the car with Dwight and he would drive me back to the mountains, smoking, brooding, looking over at me to see if he could catch some expression on my face that would give me away and explain why my mother kept putting off her decision. When we reached Marblemount he would stop at the tavern and drink for a couple of hours, then take me through the turns above the river and tell me some more things that were wrong with me. Dwight’s bill of particulars contained some truth. But it went on and on. It never ended, and before long it lost its power to hurt me. I experienced it as more bad weather to get through, not biting, just close and dim and heavy. I walked my paper route at glacial speed, the news bag swinging against my chest and back. I sat on my customers’ steps, staring off at nothing. I did multiplication tables in my head. I dreamed of doing brave, selfless deeds,

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

  BEDE. Or to tie up money in a napkin is to hide the gifts we have received under the indolence of a sluggish body. But that which he thought to have used as an excuse is turned to his own blame, as it follows, He says unto him, Out of thy own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. He is called a wicked servant, as being slothful in business, and proud in questioning his Lord’s judgment. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow: wherefore then gavest thou not my money into the bank? As though he said, If thou knewest me to be a hard man, and a seeker of what is not mine own, why did not the thought of this strike thee with terror, that thou mightest be sure that I would require mine own with strictness? But money or silver is the preaching of the Gospel and the word of God, for the words of the Lord are pure words as silver tried in the fire. (Ps. 12:6.) And this word of the Lord ought to be given to the bank, that is, put into hearts meet and ready to receive it. AUGUSTINE. (de Quæst. Ev. ubi sup.) Or the bank into which the money was to be given, we take to be the very profession of religion which is publicly put forth as a means necessary to salvation. CHRYSOSTOM. In the payment of earthly riches the debtors are obliged only to strictness. Whatever they receive, so much must they return, nothing more is required of them. But with regard to the words of God, we are not only bound diligently to keep, but we are commanded to increase; and hence it follows, that at my coming I might have required the same with usury. BEDE. For they who by faith receive the riches of the word from a teacher, must by their works pay it back with usury, or be earnestly desirous to know something more than what they have as yet learnt from the mouth of their preachers. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. It is the work of teachers to engraft in their hearers’ minds wholesome and profitable words, but of divine power to win the hearers to obedience, and render their understanding fruitful. Now this servant, so far from being commended or thought worthy of honour, was condemned as slothful, as it follows, And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give to him that hath ten pounds. AUGUSTINE. (de Quæst. Ev. l. ii. qu. 46.) Signifying thereby that both he will lose the gift of God, who having, hath not, that is, useth it not, and that he will have it increased, who having, hath, that is, rightly useth it.

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

  Paul had met Lan in 1967 while stationed in Cam Ranh Bay with the US Navy. They met at a bar in Saigon, dated, fell in love, and, a year later, married right there in the city’s central courthouse. All through my childhood their wedding photo hung on the living room wall. In it, a thin, boyish Virginian farmboy with doe-brown eyes, not yet twenty-three, beams above his new wife, five years his senior—a farmgirl, as it happens, from Go Cong, and a mother to twelve-year-old Mai from her arranged marriage. As I played with my dolls and toy soldiers, that photo hovered over me, an icon from an epicenter that would lead to my own life. In the couple’s hopeful smiles, it’s hard to imagine the photo was snapped during one of the most brutal years of the war. At the time it was taken, with Lan’s hand on Paul’s chest, her pearl wedding ring a bead of light, you were already a year old—waiting in a stroller a few feet behind the cameraman as the bulb flashed. Lan told me one day, while I was plucking her white hairs, that when she first arrived in Saigon, after running away from her doomed first marriage, after failing to find a job, she ended up as a sex worker for American GIs on R&R. She said, with barbed pride, as if she was defending herself before a jury, “I did what any mother would do, I made a way to eat. Who can judge me, huh? Who?” Her chin jutted, her head lifted high at some invisible person across the room. It was only when I heard her slip that I realized she was, in fact, speaking to someone: her mother. “I never wanted to, Ma. I wanted to go home with you—” She lunged forward. The tweezers dropped from my grip, pinged on the hardwood. “I never asked to be a whore,” she sobbed. “A girl who leaves her husband is the rot of a harvest,” she repeated the proverb her mother told her. “A girl who leaves . . .” She rocked from side to side, eyes shut, face lifted toward the ceiling, like she was seventeen again.

• From Post Office (1971)

  14 In the morning I heard her walking around. She walked and she walked and she walked. It was about 10:30 a.m. I was sick. I didn’t want to face her. Fifteen more minutes. Then I’d get out. She shook me. “Listen, I want you to get out of here before my girlfriend shows!” “So what? I’ll screw her too.” “Yeah,” she laughed, “yeah.” I got up. Coughed, gagged. Slowly got into my clothes. “You make me feel like a wash-out,” I told her. “I can’t be that bad! There must be some good in me.” I finally got dressed. I went to the bathroom and threw some water on my face, combed my hair. If I could only comb that face, I thought, but I can’t. I came out. “Vi.” “Yes?” “Don’t be too pissed. It wasn’t you. It was the booze. It has happened before.” “All right, then, you shouldn’t drink so much. No woman likes to come in second to a bottle.” “Why don’t you bet me to place then?” “Oh, stop it!” “Listen, you need any money, babe?” I reached into my wallet and took out a twenty. I handed it to her. “My, you are sweet!” Her hand touched my cheek, she kissed me gently along the side of the mouth. “Drive carefully now.” “Sure, babe.” I drove carefully all the way to the racetrack. 15 They had me in the counselor’s office in one of the back rooms of the second floor. “Let me see how you look, Chinaski.” He looked at me. “Ow! You look bad. I better take a pill.” Sure enough, he opened a bottle and took one. “All right, Mr Chinaski, we’d like to know where you’ve been the last two days?” “Mourning.” “Mourning? Mourning about what?” “Funeral. Old friend. One day to pack in the stiff. One day to mourn.” “But you didn’t phone in, Mr. Chinaski.” “Yeh.” “And I want to tell you something, Chinaski, off the record.” “All right.” “When you don’t phone in, you know what you are saying?” “No.” “Mr. Chinaski, you are saying, ‘Fuck the post office!’” “I am?” “And, Mr. Chinaski, you know what that means?” “No, what does it mean?” “That means, Mr. Chinaski, that the post office is going to fuck you!” Then he leaned back and looked at me. “Mr. Feathers,” I told him, “you can go to hell.” “Don’t get fresh, Henry. I can make it tough on you.” “Please address me by my full name, sir. I ask for a simple bit of respect from you.” “You ask respect from me but ...” “That’s right. We know where you park, Mr. Feathers.” “What? Is that a threat?” “The blacks love me here, Feathers. I have fooled them.” “The blacks love you?”

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  I saw myself the way Euroamericans saw me. I would pray that God would grant me blond hair and blue eyes. I even tried changing my name to Mike. With time, I looked toward the dominant Euroamerican culture in order to establish the standards for perfection in my own life. As to my own Hispanic roots, I viewed them with disdain, defining them in the same way that the dominant culture saw them. By seeing myself through the eyes of the dominant culture, I developed false consciousness, that is, a false way of self-perception, a way that was established early in my childhood. A famous study conducted in 1984 to test racial self-identification illustrates the effects upon people of color who learn, as children, to see themselves through the eyes of the dominant culture. Thirty-five black males and twenty-three black females, ages four through six, were given two infant dolls, identical in every way except for skin color. One doll was white, the other was black. The children were asked which doll looked nice, which looked bad. Not surprisingly, the children preferred the white dolls, with boys more likely than girls wanting to identify with the white doll. The study concluded that because of the socioeconomic disadvantages associated with blackness, children were less willing to identify with that race.10 From an early age, external social structures taught them that white is better. If double or multiple consciousness imposes upon people of color a self-image that is defined by the dominant culture, then how can they be liberated from this false consciousness? The first act toward any form of liberation from oppressive structures is to see oneself through one's own eyes and define oneself through one's own terms. Rejecting how the dominant culture sees and defines people of color becomes in itself a consciousness-raising activity that allows those who are marginalized to define themselves apart from the negative stereotypes usually imposed. Learning to read the Bible from one's social location can become an integral part of this liberating process. Reading biblical texts from the underside of the U.S. culture empowers disenfranchised communities. Within the pages of the Bible, the marginalized discover a God who sides with those who are oppressed, actively leading them toward a promised land. It would be erroneous to assume that the biblical interpretations arising from the margins of society are solely for the consumption of people of color. Because of the hermeneutical privilege of the oppressed, marginalized groups are in a better position to interpret the Bible than the dominant culture. But biblical interpretations that are developed from the margins contain truths that are not restricted solely to the disenfranchised. Within these interpretations the dominant culture can also discover liberation and salvation, because the oppressors, like those oppressed, are locked into a societal structure that prevents both sides from becoming all that God has intended creation to be: saved and liberated. Why then are the biblical interpretations of the disenfranchised so important in fully understanding the Scriptures?

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

  The psychoanalyst Michael Bader (whose incisive book Arousal discusses the undercurrents of fantasy) explains that in the sanctuary of the erotic mind, we find a psychological safe space to undo the inhibitions and fears that roil within us. Our fantasies allow us to negate and undo the limits imposed on us by our conscience, by our culture, and by our self-image. If we feel insecure and unattractive, in our fantasies we are irresistible. If we anticipate a withholding woman, in fantasy she’s insatiable. If we fear our own aggression, in our internal reveries we can feel powerful without worrying that we might hurt another. If we don’t dare ask, in our erotic imaginings the other knows our needs even before we do. If we feel we shouldn’t have sex, in our private theater we can surrender to a lustful other without having to bear the responsibility—we did what he wanted, it wasn’t us. Fantasy expresses the problem and provides the solution. It is a fervid space, where our inhibiting fear is transformed into brazenness. What a relief to find that our shame is now curiosity, our timidity is now assertiveness, and our helplessness is now sovereignty. Fantasy does not, however, always take the form of elaborate, scripted scenarios. Many people think that if they don’t fantasize with carefully orchestrated plots and well-drawn characters, then they’re not fantasizing at all. This is particularly true of women, who seem to have a harder time owning their sexual thoughts in general. My patient Claudia once described to me, in great detail, how she would like her husband to approach her. She envisioned a slow, gradually unfolding dance of seduction throughout the day, with tantalizing conversations, light kisses on the nape, gentle touches, warm smiles, and sidelong glances. “I want him to touch my arm without touching my breast. I want him to tease me, to move in a bit sexually and then pull back, to make me want. I want to ask him to touch my breast,” she explains. “And if he did these things?” I ask. “We would have an entirely different sexual relationship,” she answers. Not twenty minutes later, when I ask her about her fantasy life, she assures me, “I don’t fantasize. Jim does, but I don’t. He’s all into threesomes.” I am stunned. I say, “Are you kidding? Your entire description of foreplay and anticipation is fantasy. It’s certainly not reality, is it?” To my thinking, sexual fantasy includes any mental activity that generates desire and intensifies enthusiasm. These thoughts need not be graphic, or even well-defined. They’re often inarticulate, more feelings than images, more sensuous than sexual.

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

  You spoke carefully, as if the story was a flame in your hands in the wind. The children were finally gone—only an elderly couple was left, two puffs of white hair behind their newspapers. “Unlike your brother,” you said, “you were not born until we knew you’d live.” — Weeks after Gramoz handed me the pizza bagel, you bought me my first bicycle: a hot-pink Schwinn with training wheels and white streamers on the handgrips that rattled, like tiny pom-poms, even when I rode, as I often did, at walking speed. It was pink because that was the cheapest bike in the shop. That afternoon, while riding in the tenement parking lot, the bike jammed to a stop. When I looked down a pair of hands were gripped on the handlebar. They belonged to a boy, maybe ten, his fat wet face wedged atop a towering, meaty torso. Before I could make out what was happening, the bike flipped backward and I landed on my butt on the pavement. You had gone upstairs to check on Lan. Stepping out from behind the boy was a smaller boy with the face of a weasel. The weasel shouted, a spray of spit rainbowed in front of him in the slanted sunlight. The large boy took out a key chain and started scraping the paint off my bike. It came off so easily, in rosy sparks. I sat there, watching the concrete fleck with bits of pink as he gashed the key against the bike’s bones. I wanted to cry but did not yet know how to in English. So I did nothing. That was the day I learned how dangerous a color can be. That a boy could be knocked off that shade and made to reckon his trespass. Even if color is nothing but what the light reveals, that nothing has laws, and a boy on a pink bike must learn, above all else, the law of gravity. That night, in the bare-bulb kitchen, I knelt beside you and watched as you painted, in long strokes that swooped, with expert precision, over the cobalt scars along the bike, the bottle of pink nail polish steady and sure in your hand. — “At the hospital, they gave me a bottle of pills. I took them for a month. To be sure. After a month, I was supposed to release it—him, I mean.” I wanted to leave, to say stop. But the price of confessing, I learned, was that you get an answer. A month into the pills, when he should have already been gone, you felt a jab inside you. They rushed you back to the hospital, this time to the ER. “I felt him kick as they whirled me through the grey rooms, the chipped paint on the walls. The hospital still smelled of smoke and gasoline from the war.”

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Bulgaria had a storied history in opera, it had produced some of the best singers I had listened to in my bedroom as a teenager, my hoarded recordings; but musicians too were fleeing westward, now that they could, leaving behind them anyone whose talents couldn’t buy them a ticket out. It was a cruel thought, I was ashamed of it even as I cringed at the poorly tuned strings and splattered brass, the wooden movements of chorus and dancers. Most of the singers were past whatever prime they had had, though the oldest were the most impressive, I thought, an almost elderly bass and especially a mezzo whose voices, however they wobbled or frayed, had retained some ambered texture of accomplishment. I wondered if any recordings of their younger voices had survived; I could only guess, from the moments of resonance, the few ringing tones, at the mastery they had once possessed. That mastery must grow feebler by the day, I thought, it must be painful to feel it go. But it was Lakmé herself who mattered most, she had almost the only music in the opera worth hearing: the flower duet, which everyone knows and which has gone dull with repetition, and the bell song, when her father forces her to sing to the point of collapse, the music demanding the athleticism and suffering opera has always expected of its heroines. The soprano in the role was the only singer who was very young, in her twenties, a woman at the start of her career; she was a pleasure to watch, lovely and thin and with a pretty voice that was affectingly pure, maybe too untested for the role, so that the line between character and singer blurred and I was worried for her in the final bars of her big scene. I remembered every note of the music, though I hadn’t heard it for years. I must have been fourteen when I bought the CD, a London double set I picked out because of a single name, a soprano I knew my teacher adored, already I wanted to imitate him in everything. I remember falling asleep to the soldier’s arias as sung by a tenor whose voice, which I’ve never found on another recording, was beautiful and light-bodied and pure, embodying my every ambition; as I listened to him I imagined the life my own voice would lead me to, scrubbed of shame. It didn’t matter that the performance in Veliko Turnovo was poor; as I sat beside R. I felt that hope again.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I’m not interested in that, he said, and I realized from his tone that he had misunderstood me, that he thought I was suggesting hookup sites, when in fact I had something altogether different in mind, forums and chat rooms of which there are so many in America. But he seemed exasperated by this, too, making a little motion of dismissal with his hands. What good would that do, he said, I live here, not in America, and it’s impossible to live here. Besides, and here he leaned away from me again, resting his weight on the padded back of our booth, I’ve seen some of those sites, he said, I’ve seen what they talk about, television and pop songs and sex, do you think I have anything to say to them? There’s nothing for me there, he said, that’s not the life I want, that’s not what I want to be. And then, after a pause, Is that what all of them are like, he asked, leaning forward again, is that what it means to be this way? My confidence faltered at this; I had said the wrong thing, and now I felt myself under attack, or anyway drawn more decisively within the compass of his scorn. He knew nothing about me, about those aspects of my life there’s no reason for my students to guess at, even though I’m more open than is usual for my vocation, or for my trade, rather, though maybe it was a vocation once. He knew nothing about me, nothing about the appetites that sometimes shame me, and yet still I felt indicted, so that Of course not, I said much more sharply than I should have, and then clamped down on myself before I could say anything more. He drew back when I spoke, and I was sorry for what I had done. I put both of my hands around the cup in front of me, taking a deep breath as I pressed my palms against what warmth was left, and then, when I could speak more calmly, What is the life you want, I asked. He hunched his shoulders a little, as if to say I don’t know or maybe what does it matter, and then he started talking about something else, or what seemed like something else, making me feel again that I was on the wrong tack, that I had failed to sense or say what I should.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  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. Z. stumbled again, this time falling toward N., who caught him and kept him on his feet. N. looked at me and laughed as Z. stood up again, closing his eyes and swaying; both of us put our hands on his shoulders to keep him upright. I looked at N. and tilted my head toward the entrance. We should go, I shouted, and he weaved his head from left to right. We each took one of Z.’s arms.

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

  “Hey.” The jowlboy leaned in, his vinegar mouth on the side of my cheek. “Don’t you ever say nothin’? Don’t you speak English?” He grabbed my shoulder and spun me to face him. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.” He was only nine but had already mastered the dialect of damaged American fathers. The boys crowded around me, sensing entertainment. I could smell their fresh-laundered clothes, the lavender and lilac in the softeners. They waited to see what would happen. When I did nothing but close my eyes, the boy slapped me. “Say something.” He shoved his fleshy nose against my blazed cheek. “Can’t you say even one thing?” The second slap came from above, from another boy. Bowlcut cupped my chin and steered my head toward him. “Say my name then.” He blinked, his eyelashes, long and blond, nearly nothing, quivered. “Like your mom did last night.” Outside, the leaves fell, fat and wet as dirty money, across the windows. I willed myself into a severe obedience and said his name. I let their laughter enter me. “Again,” he said. “Kyle.” “Louder.” “Kyle.” My eyes still shut. “That’s a good little bitch.” Then, like a break in weather, a song came on the radio. “Hey, my cousin just went to their concert!” And like that it was over. Their shadows cleared above me. I let my nose drip with snot. I stared at my feet, at the shoes you bought me, the ones with red lights that flashed on the soles when I walked. My forehead pressed to the seat in front of me, I kicked my shoes, gently at first, then faster. My sneakers erupted with silent flares: the world’s smallest ambulances, going nowhere. — That night you were sitting on the couch with a towel wrapped around your head after your shower, a Marlboro Red smoldering in your hand. I stood there, holding myself. “Why?” You stared hard at the TV. You stabbed the cigarette into your teacup and I immediately regretted saying anything. “Why’d you let them do that? Don’t close your eyes. You’re not sleepy.” You put your eyes on me, blue smoke swirling between us. “What kind of boy would let them do that?” Smoke leaked from the corners of your mouth. “You did nothing.” You shrugged. “Just let them.” I thought of the window again, how everything seemed like a window, even the air between us. You grabbed my shoulders, your forehead pressed fast to my own. “Stop crying. You’re always crying!” You were so close I could smell the ash and toothpaste between your teeth. “Nobody touched you yet. Stop crying—I said stop, dammit!” The third slap that day flung my gaze to one side, the TV screen flashed before my head snapped back to face you. Your eyes darted back and forth across my face. Then you pulled me into you, my chin pressed hard to your shoulder.

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  1049 00:51:51,441 --> 00:51:53,310 She was a on a long-running TV show 1050 00:51:53,410 --> 00:51:55,312 in a main series role. 1051 00:51:55,412 --> 00:51:58,014 She's very good looking. 1052 00:51:58,115 --> 00:52:00,684 She's visible. People know her name. 1053 00:52:00,784 --> 00:52:04,154 She's kind of the perfect person that they would want 1054 00:52:04,254 --> 00:52:06,323 for a group like this. 1055 00:52:06,423 --> 00:52:09,092 [Narrator] Mack is not only one of Raniere's many lovers, 1056 00:52:09,192 --> 00:52:11,928 but one of his most devoted followers 1057 00:52:12,028 --> 00:52:14,831 and a top NXIVM recruiter. 1058 00:52:14,931 --> 00:52:17,134 [Dr. Lauch] The recruiters are very good at what they do, 1059 00:52:17,234 --> 00:52:19,102 what we call love bombing. 1060 00:52:19,202 --> 00:52:21,505 They will make you feel very special. 1061 00:52:21,605 --> 00:52:23,740 You'll think you've just met the greatest group of people. 1062 00:52:23,840 --> 00:52:27,511 You'll see other people there that you know and respect. 1063 00:52:27,611 --> 00:52:30,380 And so then they'll ask you to come back. 1064 00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:32,115 And because you had such a great time, 1065 00:52:32,215 --> 00:52:34,351 and because they made you feel so good, 1066 00:52:34,451 --> 00:52:36,920 you feel a little obligated, as well as curious, 1067 00:52:37,020 --> 00:52:39,556 to come back again. 1068 00:52:39,656 --> 00:52:42,159 [Narrator] Mack first joins NXIVM nine years earlier 1069 00:52:42,259 --> 00:52:45,262 in 2006 after attending a two-day session of 1070 00:52:45,362 --> 00:52:48,532 a program called Jness. 1071 00:52:48,632 --> 00:52:50,467 [Allison] Jness, the women's organization that I work with, 1072 00:52:50,567 --> 00:52:52,302 we use these tools and these structures 1073 00:52:52,402 --> 00:52:55,605 in order to organize, uh, situations and circumstances 1074 00:52:55,705 --> 00:53:00,710 for women to come together and create incredible relationships. 1075 00:53:00,810 --> 00:53:02,913 [Kelly] Jness was a curriculum that was 1076 00:53:03,013 --> 00:53:04,748 very much geared toward women, 1077 00:53:04,848 --> 00:53:07,250 to help them become more empowered, 1078 00:53:07,350 --> 00:53:09,586 more, uh, measurable, 1079 00:53:09,686 --> 00:53:12,923 to help them understand who they were as a woman. 1080 00:53:13,990 --> 00:53:17,394 When men find out really how... 1081 00:53:17,494 --> 00:53:22,265 how awful we are, it is... 1082 00:53:22,365 --> 00:53:26,736 it's humbling, it is scary, it is... 1083 00:53:26,836 --> 00:53:27,771 We don't know what to do. 1084 00:53:27,871 --> 00:53:29,973 And what you come to realize with Jness 1085 00:53:30,073 --> 00:53:33,076 is the dance that we all do. 1086 00:53:33,176 --> 00:53:35,478 And ideally, people start to 1087 00:53:35,579 --> 00:53:38,315 divest themselves from that dance. 1088 00:53:38,415 --> 00:53:40,217 But you have to see the dance 1089 00:53:40,317 --> 00:53:43,153 before you can divest yourself from it. 1090 00:53:43,253 --> 00:53:44,487 [Allison] It's incredible. 1091 00:53:44,588 --> 00:53:46,690 When I came and I found out about Jness, 1092 00:53:46,790 --> 00:53:49,025 the curriculum for women that you had developed, 1093 00:53:49,125 --> 00:53:52,195 I felt very relieved because