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 Henry and June (1986)

  There was an amusing incident on the train, going to Switzerland. To reassure Hugo, I had not painted my eyes, barely powdered, barely rouged my lips, and had not touched my nails. I was so happy in my negligence. I had dressed carelessly in an old black velvet dress I love, which is torn at the elbows. I felt like June. My dog Ruby sat at my side, and so my black coat and velvet jacket were covered with his white hair. An Italian who had tried all during the trip to catch my attention finally, in desperation, came up and offered me a brush. This amused me, and I laughed. When I was through brushing (and his brush was full of white hairs), I thanked him. He said very nervously, “Will you come and have coffee with me?” I said no, as I thought, what would it have been like if I had painted my eyes? Hugo says my letter to Henry is the slipperiest thing he has ever seen. I begin so honestly and frankly. I seem to be June’s opposite, but in the end I am just as slippery. He thinks I will disturb Henry and upset his style for a while—his raw strength, his “pisses and fucks,” in which he was so secure. When I wrote to Henry, I was so grateful for his fullness and richness that I wanted to give him everything that was in my mind. I began with great impetus, I was frank, but as I approached the final gift, the gift of my June and my thoughts about her, I felt reticent. I employed much craft and elusiveness to interest him, while keeping what was precious to me. I sit down before a letter or my journal with a desire for honesty, but perhaps in the end I am the biggest liar of them all, bigger than June, bigger than Albertine, because of the semblance of sincerity. His real name was Heinrich—how I prefer that. He is German. To me he seems like a Slav, but he has the German sentimentality and romanticism about women. Sex is love to him. His morbid imagination is German. He has a love of ugliness. He doesn’t mind the smell of urine and of cabbage. He loves cursing, and slang, prostitutes, apache quarters, squalor, toughness. He writes his letters to me on the back of discarded “Notes”—fifty ways of saying “drunk,” information on poisons, names of books, bits of conversation. Or lists like this: “Visit Café des Mariniers on river bank near Exposition Bridge off Champs Elysées—sort of boarding house for fishermen. Eat ‘Bouillabaisse,’ Caveau des Oubliettes Rouges. Le Paradis, rue Pigalle—rough point, pickpockets, apaches, etc. Fred Payne’s Bar, 14 rue Pigalle (see the Art Galerie downstairs, rendezvous of English and American show girls). Café de la Régence, 261 rue St. Honoré (Napoleon and Robespierre played chess here. See their table).”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Desperately I searched my conscience and discovered several grave sins, but I was still afraid that some terrible and odious crime might rise to the surface of my memory. It did indeed come to the surface, and I felt no sense of relief at all when she said to me: “I’ve just seen little Fraji’s mother...” She hadn’t raised her voice, she didn’t promise me any spanking to be administered by my father, she didn’t even strike me, hurting her own hands, as she generally did, and suffering more than I. She was a primitive and unsophisticated woman who had never learned to count or to speak a word that was foreign to her native dialect; but she knew quite miraculously that she had to make me understand a drama of which I too was destined to be a victim — the very drama of Fraji’s life. My wickedness was caused by my ignorance: instead of scolding me, she explained my mistake to me. “There’s nothing degrading about wearing someone else’s old clothes. Nearly all your shirts and pants belonged to the son of Uncle Binhas before belonging to you. Look at this one, for instance: I made it out of an old one that came from Uncle Elias. You too, Kalla, and even I, we all wear old clothes.” Unhappy and estranged, I tried for a while to find my footing again: “But the son of Uncle Binhas is my cousin, and...” Why didn’t she stop at that? Instead, she grew impatient, felt that too much kindness might fail to have the right effect, and added: “Would you be pleased if, one day, in front of everybody, Uncle Elias asked you to give back his pants that you’re wearing? Or if Uncle Binhas pointed out to all the urchins in the street that you’re wearing his son’s shirt?” “He’ll never say it, they’ll never say it,” I stammered. “They’re my uncle and my cousin...” “But it’s the same thing,” she concluded, “We’re poor too, we’re all like Fraji Choulam!” So I was poor, like Fraji Choulam! But Mother already regretted what she said and wanted to draw a moral conclusion. She now added, clumsily and contradicting herself: “There’s no reason to be ashamed of being poor and it’s a sin to make fun of the poor.” Oh yes, poverty is something to be ashamed of, and this was clear to me from the mutterings of my own parents, from their remarks about the Oukala of the Birds and their pity for the Choulam family.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  My tutoring brought me into a number of middle-class homes where badly raised and shamefully spoiled children would be begged by their mothers, with a great display of hypocritical tears, to submit themselves to education. I was almost always treated, if not actually in words, like a kind of intellectual servant; and the worst of it was, despite my revolts or perhaps because of them, that I felt as if I were actually wearing livery. Half smiling, I waited patiently for the poor little rich kid to reach the end of his tantrum. No one was in a rush to pay me, and it sometimes happened that I wasn’t paid at all. The richer my pupils were, the worse they paid, and the longer I had to wait, and I never dared press them for fear of seeming to be mercenary or dependent on their money. Middle-class people, who spent so much money on their own amusements and vanity, often felt that what they paid me was excessive and that I was obligated to them. Still, if I managed, however barely, to cover my expenses, I was always left with what I “might have earned.” How stupid it is to take seriously this “might have earned,” I mean the money one might earn had one preferred to work rather than study or travel or live, had one remained behind a counter or at a desk. A boy of my age ought to be earning a certain sum of money. Agreed. Admitted by all. This sum glittered in my father’s eyes, a stopgap, in his imagination, for the holes in his budget; and it grew more important as I grew older. His voice was full of regret if he told us how much money the sons of his colleagues were already earning for their families. Makil’s son was in charge of his father’s shop; the son of Sebah, the forger, was doing twice the work of an average workman; Bouirou, Aunt Menna’s oldest boy, had been taken on by Uncle Simon and was now earning three hundred francs; everyone marveled at the courage of Georges, the youngest of the Abbous, who was now able to assume all the responsibility of tailoring a jacket. He and his mother, a buttonhole-and-lining specialist, formed an indefatigable team and were bringing prosperity into the Abbou home. A good, good boy! But I felt only contempt for the zeal of Georges Abbou whose whole ambition consisted in tailoring jackets. “He’s exactly your age,” insisted my father. “Ex-act-ly.” “More-or-less,” my mother corrected and began reckoning aloud. “You were born on the third day of the feast of the Maccabees and Georges was born the eighth.” My father threw her a wary, provoked look and continued. What luck it was for my aunt and my poor blind uncle to have such a son! And their other children seemed to be choosing the same path.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I even envied them their being able to refer without any hesitation to their parents and their social background. I, on the contrary, always had to be careful and watch my step when it came to admitting anything about myself or my family. If anyone asked me about it, I always said that my father was “in the leather business.” Yes, up to his elbows in leather, I would add mentally. In the same manner, I blew up to unnatural proportions my Uncle Aroun’s business and, in spite of my distaste for him, often boasted about it. About my mother, I avoided speaking as there was nothing much I could find to say about her. Without ever admitting it, I would have been ready to pay dearly for the privilege of being a middle-class boy, born and bred in the leather or grocery business. In spite of the friendships that I made in school, I never really managed to penetrate the social life of my schoolmates. They probably felt that I was too sarcastic and too severe in my judgments, perhaps even rather unpleasant. I was proud and easily hurt, so that I took no steps at all to suggest that they might invite me. I would have had to return any invitations, and it was impossible for me to entertain any guests at home. So it was Henry, who was not one of my classmates in high school, who brought me out socially. He introduced me to a group of scout leaders who were looking for an instructor for the Jewish part of their educational program. As I was still quite undiscriminating in my intellectual appetites and ready for anything, I happened also to attend some Hebrew night classes that had been organized by the Zionists. In an audience from the ghetto, I was thus one of the few high-school boys to have acquired both kinds of culture. The middle-class boys in secondary school were sarcastic about such an amateurish and hit-and-miss manner of teaching, being quite blind to its historical significance. Although their position made it clear that they would one day be the leaders of the community, they had lost all interest in the social problems of its daily life. Because their own future seemed to pose them no problems, they could only be flippant on every political issue, which shocked me deeply. I was fond of Henry, but even he was but charmingly whimsical when it came to any matter that deserved serious attention. He was the son of a French mother and of an Italian-Jewish father; himself a British subject because his father came originally from Malta, he belonged nowhere.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  And I — well, I am my city’s illegitimate son, the child of a whore of a city whose heart has been divided among all those to whom she has been a slave. And the list of her masters, when I came to know some history, made me giddy: Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantine Greeks, Berbers, Arabs, Spaniards, Turks, Italians, French — but I must be forgetting some and confusing others. Walk five hundred steps in my city, and you change civilizations: here is an Arab town, its houses like expressionless faces, its long, silent, shadowed passages leading suddenly to packed crowds. Then, the busy Jewish alleys, so sordid and familiar, lined with deep stalls, shops and eating houses, all shapeless houses piled as best they can fit together. Further on, little Sicily, where abject poverty waits on the doorstep, and then the fondouks, the collective tenements of the Maltese, those strange Europeans with an Arab tongue and a British nationality. The Russian Orthodox church too, its illuminations and domes surely conceived in a night of Muscovite dreams; and the clean little electric streetcar line from Belgium, as neat as a Flemish interior. We have Standard Oil buildings too, and an American airport and cemetery, with improved U.S. equipment, jeeps and trucks at the exclusive disposal of the dead; the Shell Company or British Petrol; the residence of Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassadors, and finally the little homes of retired French rentiers, cottages with red-tiled roofs and gardens, cabbages — all in a row, just as in French songs. And within this great variety, where everyone feels at home but no one at ease, each man is shut up in his own neighborhood, in fear, hate, and contempt of his neighbor. Like the filth and untidiness of this stinking city, we’ve known fear and scorn since the first awakening of our consciousness. To defend or avenge ourselves, we scorned and sneered among ourselves and hoped we would be feared as much as we ourselves experienced fear. This was the atmosphere in which we lived at mealtimes, in school and in the streets. If any youthful ingenuousness or skepticism allowed us still to hope, we were promised nothing but treachery and blood-red dawns. Slowly, as if a poison administered drop by drop had at last had its effect, my sensibility, my sentiments, my entire soul was permeated with it and reshaped; I learned to check the odious inventory of it all. Beyond a ceremonious politeness, everyone remained secretly hostile and was finally horrified by the image of himself that he discovered in the minds of others. One can make a mess of one’s childhood or of one’s whole life. Slowly, painfully, I understood that I had made a mess of my own birth by choosing the wrong city.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Oh yes, poverty is something to be ashamed of, and this was clear to me from the mutterings of my own parents, from their remarks about the Oukala of the Birds and their pity for the Choulam family. As for me, I despised the poor. Fraji had to pay with shame the price of his poverty and I too, if we were poor, would have to pay with my own shame. In the disorder of my awareness, I made that day a great and unhappy step forward. I noted that I too wore new clothes only rarely and was forced to receive, like Fraji, bundles that stank of mildew and dirty linen and from which all the expensive buttons had been removed. I now understood his suffering fully, the shame that I had poured forth upon him in the presence of Chouchane and the other kids. His suffering and shame were my own too; on my own shoulders I now felt the burden of the same contempt, as if I had his hair, all clammy with filth, and his eyes like the headlights of a car. I felt that I had become Fraji. Since that day, I have slowly acquired the uneasiness about my clothes that characterizes the poor who are ashamed. I was no longer at my ease in any suit: I felt that I was badly dressed and that I attracted the attention of all. I feared, even when wearing a new suit, the mockery of others at my unsuccessful attempts. That is how I became what is known as careful of my clothes. Before going to bed, I folded my suit with care and set it tidily on the back of a chair. To avoid dirt-stains, I examined each chair before sitting on it, and I often preferred to keep my annual new suit in the closet rather than face the wearisome responsibility of wearing it with the respect that it deserved. ~ 4. THE TWO PENNIES ~

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  As for the middle-class boys who were now my classmates, they had become my equals and my everyday companions. In spite of myself, I respected their new suits that were so elegantly cut, their high-quality school equipment, and their healthy appearance. I even envied them their being able to refer without any hesitation to their parents and their social background. I, on the contrary, always had to be careful and watch my step when it came to admitting anything about myself or my family. If anyone asked me about it, I always said that my father was “in the leather business.” Yes, up to his elbows in leather, I would add mentally. In the same manner, I blew up to unnatural proportions my Uncle Aroun’s business and, in spite of my distaste for him, often boasted about it. About my mother, I avoided speaking as there was nothing much I could find to say about her. Without ever admitting it, I would have been ready to pay dearly for the privilege of being a middle-class boy, born and bred in the leather or grocery business. In spite of the friendships that I made in school, I never really managed to penetrate the social life of my schoolmates. They probably felt that I was too sarcastic and too severe in my judgments, perhaps even rather unpleasant. I was proud and easily hurt, so that I took no steps at all to suggest that they might invite me. I would have had to return any invitations, and it was impossible for me to entertain any guests at home. So it was Henry, who was not one of my classmates in high school, who brought me out socially. He introduced me to a group of scout leaders who were looking for an instructor for the Jewish part of their educational program. As I was still quite undiscriminating in my intellectual appetites and ready for anything, I happened also to attend some Hebrew night classes that had been organized by the Zionists. In an audience from the ghetto, I was thus one of the few high-school boys to have acquired both kinds of culture. The middle-class boys in secondary school were sarcastic about such an amateurish and hit-and-miss manner of teaching, being quite blind to its historical significance. Although their position made it clear that they would one day be the leaders of the community, they had lost all interest in the social problems of its daily life. Because their own future seemed to pose them no problems, they could only be flippant on every political issue, which shocked me deeply.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Toward the beginning of the afternoon, I had to go through the great ritual of washing and dressing. To avoid the expense of the public bath, to which I would have had to invite as my guests all the neighborhood boys, Aunt Noucha had allowed us to use her own bathroom. As none of our families had a private bathroom and none of us had ever seen one before, the mere use of this one gave the occasion a peculiar solemnity. But, to my great disappointment, it was on Aunt Rbiqua that the sacred honor of washing me was conferred, to compensate her never having had any children. I had never stood naked before anybody and now tied a towel securely around my loins while she went down on her knees because her sore back made it difficult for her to bend forward. Then she proceeded to rub my back and chest up and down and down and up with big sweeps of the sponge, as if she were a machine. Finally, she ordered me to remove the towel. I shook my head, without uttering an answer. She failed to understand me at once, lost her temper, mumbled that I was a fool to want to hide such a silly little sliver of meat (which offended me because of her lack of respect for my treasure); she was old enough to be my mother and, if she had been, she would anyhow have brought me up better. The mere idea that she might have been my mother struck me as weird. I held the towel tightly with both hands and stared obstinately at the washbasin, waiting for her to reach the end of her sermon. But she went on mumbling and, retreating from my loins, proceeded to scrub my feet. I had won the battle, relaxed my vigilance, and began to inspect, with admiration, the splendid nickel-plated and enameled gadgets of the bathroom, when her hand suddenly slipped in between my thighs and began to scrub energetically, but at random. Wild with anger and shame, I pushed her away so hard that she fell over backwards against the wall, balanced as she was somewhat precariously on her pointed old knees. She stood up again with difficulty, cursing and reviling me, threw the sponge on the floor, stalked out of the bathroom, screaming that she was going to complain to my father. She never returned, so that I was left to finish my bath by myself.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Late in the night he tells me about a book I have not read, Arthur Machen’s Hill of Dreams. And I am listening with my soul. He says softly, “I’m talking almost paternally to you.” At that moment I know I am half woman, half child. That a portion of me conceals a child who loves to be amazed, to be taught, to be directed. When I listen, I am a child, and Henry becomes paternal. The haunting image of an erudite, literary father reasserts itself, and the woman becomes small again. I remember other phrases, like “I would not hurt you—not you,” his unusual delicacy with me, his protectiveness. I feel myself betrayed. Overwhelmed with the wonder of Henry’s work, I have become a child. I can imagine another man saying to me, “I cannot make love to you. You are not a woman. You are a child.” I awake from dreams of utter sensuality. And then in anger I want to dominate, to work like a man, support Henry, get his book published. I want more than ever to fuck and to be fucked, to assert the sensual woman. Henry says one day, “Listen, I believe you could have ten lovers and handle them all. You’re insatiable.” And another day, “Your sensuality doesn’t convince me.” He has seen the child! Hateful, infuriating. I run away from Clichy and think I carry my secret away with me. I have the hope that Henry has not grasped it too well. I fear the uncanny analysis of his eyes. I slip out of his bed and run away while he sleeps. I rush home and fall asleep, deeply, for many hours. I must choke the child. Tomorrow I can meet Henry, face him, be woman. This would have remained a vague, meaningless incident. Now, because of psychoanalysis, it is heavy with significance. Analysis makes me feel as if I were masturbating instead of fucking. Being with Henry is to live, to flow, to suffer, even. I do not like to be with Allendy and to press dry fingers on the secrets of my body. When I talk just a little about the fear of cruelty to Eduardo, he says what I say, “But one uses one’s weaknesses. One can make something of them.” And I have done that. Yet I can see no good in my childish admiration of older men, my adoration of John and Henry. I can see nothing in it but interference with the progress of maturity, the abdication of my own personality. As Henry says, “It is beautiful to see you sleep. You lie like a doll, where one has put you. Even in sleep you do not sprawl and take too much room.” Allendy’s questions crackle at me. “What did you feel about our first talk?” “I felt that I needed you, that I didn’t want to be left alone to think my life over.”

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  He rapped out his order, frowning, and Lea felt embarrassed by the rekindled gleam in his eyes. It was as if someone had switched on the light. She shrugged her shoulders and kissed the forehead so close to her lips. He drew his arms tighter around her neck, and pulled her^down towards him. She shook her head only at the very instant that their lips touched, then she remained absolutely motionless, and held her breath like someone listening. When he released his hold, she broke away from him, rose to her feet, took a deep breath, and put a hand up to tidy her unruffled hair. She turned to him, rather pale and with rueful eyes, and said, teasingly: ‘ That was a bright idea 1 * He lay far back in the rocking-chair, speechless, and scrutinized her with a suspicious, questioning gaze, so that she asked: ‘What is it? ’ ‘Nothing,* Cheri said. ‘I know what X wanted to know.* She blushed with humiliation, then skilfully defended herself. ‘ What do you know? That I like your mouth? My poor child, I*ve kissed uglier. What does that prove? D*you think I’m going to fling myself at your feet and cry, “Take me!” You talk as if you’ve known only nice young girls! D’you imagine I’m going to lose my head because of a kiss?’ She grew calmer while speaking and wished to prove her selfcontrol. * Listen, child,’ she persisted, as she leaned over him, * d’you think a handsome mouth means anything to me?’ She smiled down at Id™ completely sure of herself, but unaware that there remained on her tace a sort of very faint quiver, an appealing sadness, and that her smile was like a rainbow after a sudden storm. ‘I’m perfectly calm. Even if I were to kiss you again, or even if we She stopped and pouted with scorn. ‘No, no, I really can’t see you and me doing that.* ‘Nor could you see us doing what we did just now,* Cheri said, taking Hme over his words. ‘And yet you don’t mind doing it, and not in a hurry, either. So now you’re thinking of going further, are you? I never suggested such a thing.’ They faced each other like enemies. Lea was afraid to reveal a desire she had not yet had time to develop or to disguise; she resented this .child, so suddenly cold and perhaps derisive. ‘You’re right,’ she conceded lightly. ‘Let’s say no more about it. Shall we say instead that I’m offering to put you out to grass! And the food will be good ... my food, in other words.* 4 We’!! see,* Ch£ri answered. ‘ Shall I bring the Renouhard tourer? * * Of course; you're not going to leave it behind with Charlotte.’ c I’ll pay for the petrol, but you’ll feed the chauffeur.’

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  This very evening, at home, when dinner was over, Edmee had deftly steered the conversation round to the pathetic little tale, put together with such studied clumsiness. Cheri had it off by heart and it ended with the words: ‘And then Pierquin said to me, “I had a dream about cats, old lad; and then I'd another dream about our river at home and it looked fair mucky. ... The meaning of that's pretty clear. ...” It was at this very moment he was picked off, by the smallest scrap of shrapnel. I wanted to carry him back. They found the two of us, him on the top of me, not a hundred yards from the spot. I tell you about him because he was a rare good sort... and he had quite a lot to do with my being given this.' And, as he ended on this modest note, Cheri had lowered his eyes to his green-and-red riband and knocked the ash off his cigarette, as though to keep himself in countenance. He considered it nobody's business that a chance explosion had thrown one of them across the other's shoulders, leaving Cheri alive and Pierquin dead. The truth — more ambiguous than falsehood — was that the terrific weight of a Pierquin, suddenly struck dead, had kept Cheri alive and halfsuffocated, indignant and resentful. Cheri still bore a grudge against Pierquin. And, further, he had come to scorn the truth ever since the day when, years ago, it had suddenly fallen from his mouth like a belch, to spatter and wound one whom he had loved. But at home this evening, the Americans — Majors Marsh-Meyer and Atkins, and Lieutenant Wood — had not appeared to listen to him. With the vacant faces of athletic first communicants, with fixed and expressionless eyes, they had simply been waiting to go to a night club, waiting with almost painful anxiety. As for Filipesco! “Needs watching,” Chdri decided laconically. The lake in the Bois was encircled with a fragrant mist that rose rather from the scythed slopes of its banks than from the stagnant water. Cheri was about to lean against a tree, when, from the shadows, a woman boldly brushed against him. ‘Good evening, kid ...' The last word made him start; it was uttered in a low parched voice, the very voice of thirst, of dusty roads, of this dry hot night. ... He made no answer, and the dim figure came a step nearer on soft-soled shoes. But he caught a whiff of black woollens, soiled linen, dank hair, and turned back with long springy strides towards his own home.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  The photographs were taken by one of her West Hartford cousins, Tony Dunne, who had arrived on leave from Williams to spend a few months in Malibu. He had been in Malibu only a day or two when she began to lose her first baby tooth. She had noticed the tooth loosening, she had wiggled the tooth, the tooth loosened further. I tried to remember how this situation had been handled in my own childhood. My most coherent memory involved my mother tying a piece of thread around the loose tooth, attaching the thread to a doorknob, and slamming the door. I tried this. The tooth stayed fixed in place. She cried. I grabbed the car keys and screamed for Tony: tying the thread to the doorknob had so exhausted my aptitude for improvisational caretaking that my sole remaining thought was to get her to the emergency room at UCLA Medical Center, thirty-some miles into town. Tony, who grew up with three siblings and many cousins, tried without success to convince me that UCLA Medical Center might be overkill. “Just let me try just this one thing first,” he said finally, and pulled the tooth. The next time a tooth got loose she pulled it herself. I had lost my authority. Was I the problem? Was I always the problem? In the note Tony included when he sent the photographs a few months ago he said that each image represented something he had seen in her. In some she is melancholy, large eyes staring directly into the lens. In others she is bold, daring the camera. She covers her mouth with her hand. She obscures her eyes with a polka-dotted cotton sun hat. She marches through the wash at the edge of the sea. She bites her lip as she swings from an oleander branch. A few of these photographs are familiar to me. A copy of one of them, one in which she is wearing the cashmere turtleneck sweater I bought her in London, is framed on my desk in New York.

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

  It’s my fault. There must be something wrong with me. I’m bad. These are common beliefs buried in the shameful wounds of trauma. For me, abandonment played out in countless familiar ways. As an adult, I often chose romantic partners who were emotionally cut off, were unaffectionate, or had a difficult time seeing me. I constantly made negative assumptions about what others thought of me (mirroring what I thought of myself). When my discomfort felt too big to cope with, I swiftly cut people out of my life, amputation style. And like many of us, I also self-abandoned. Not long after I was diagnosed with cancer in my early 30s, BD visited me. We’d stayed in touch over the years—a visit here, a dinner there—but we struggled to form a solid relationship. After a few pleasantries, I learned why he had come in the first place. “You need to get your affairs in order. You also need to figure out who’s going to pull the plug if it comes to that.” I was stunned. We hadn’t created the kind of relationship that allowed for deeply personal and difficult talks like this, one that took an incredible amount of trust and tenderness—not to mention sensitivity. Maybe in his own awkward way he was only trying to be helpful. But it still hurt. “Pull the plug”? Who says that? After his attempt at fatherly advice, he got up to leave. This visit lasted all of an hour. “Right-oh,” he said, nodding my way as he stood at the door. And with that, he was gone. I sat there frozen, not knowing how to process what had just happened. BD and I had barely talked about the basics, like where he was for most of my life or why he’d refused to acknowledge me. When we did connect, he preferred light banter. Throughout my 20s, the pain stacked up, and no matter how many drugs, cocktails, or boys I devoured, I couldn’t numb the truth: I wasn’t wanted. His disconnected tone about DNRs and end-of-life planning did nothing to dispel this feeling. Even with the parent who did want me, I sometimes felt like I was a burden. Growing up, I watched my mom work herself to the bone to make ends meet. Despite her efforts to hide her stress and show me love, the weight of caring for me and her two aging parents wrung her out. I witnessed the worry that came from not knowing how she would have enough money to pay the heating bill or make sure we had enough food to eat. Maybe if I’d never been born, she’d be better off was a thought that played on a loop in my childhood . . . that is, until Ken showed up, making our family—and me—feel whole.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  “To be converted to God” came to mean entering a monastery. Even Chrysostom, the sensible, pictures the model husband as the one who lives almost like a monk. Now, marriage is the fundamental social relation. The family is the social cell. It is society in miniature. If this was the attitude of ascetic Christianity toward the most natural and most loving of all social institutions, what chance of proper treatment did the other social relations have? Of course for the majority of men the common sense of nature was fortunately stronger than any ideal motives which religion could marshal to thwart nature. They continued to marry and to beget children and be happy. But with such views of the perfect Christian life, it would be with a feeling either of actual sin or at least of falling short of the highest life. It is true the Church in many ways took the family life under its special care. It made marriage a religious ceremony and declared it a sacrament. And yet marriage continued to be a second-best condition, and in that atmosphere a true Christianizing of even that simplest social relation was hardly possible. It was one of the greatest social services of the Reformation that it broke with the ascetic ideal so far as marriage was concerned, and ranked the married life as higher than the unmarried. The Catholic Church still theoretically views voluntary celibacy as the flower of virtue, but practically Catholics have shared with Protestants in the emancipation from the ascetic ideal, which was originally due to non-Christian influences, but which has so long been able to pose as almost the essence of Christian morality. The attractiveness of this present world reaches us mainly through two channels,—the family and property. The family comprises the people who are dear to us, and property the things that are dear to us. Asceticism turned its vigor against both. If we are to be emancipated from the world, the hold of the property instinct must be broken. Under the pressure of the monastic movement men left their property altogether, and dedicated themselves to a life of poverty. The more absolute the poverty, the holier the monk or the order. For those who remained in their family and calling, the ideal was fundamentally the same. Let them at least limit their needs and give away the surplus saved. Under the stimulus of this ascetic distrust of property very large amounts were set free for charity. In fact, the charitable activity of the Church was amazing. For sheet willingness to give, modern Christianity cannot match its beneficence with ascetic Christianity. But this giving was not essentially a social conflict with the moral evils of pauperism, but a religious conflict with the moral evil of the love of property. The aim was not primarily to lift the poor recipient to social health, but to discipline the soul of the giver.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  She was no longer at the stage where, hands over her ears, she besought him, ‘No, nol say nothing! Don’t tell me!’ But, faster than his wife, Cheri was leaving behind that childishly malicious period when, amidst floods of tears and stormy scenes which ended by her throwing herself into his arms in the early hours of the morning, he would draw her down with him into the deep sleep of reconciled antagonists. No more little games of that sort. ... No more betrayals.... Nothing, now, but this enforced and unavowable chastity. He chucked his dusty shoes to the other end of the room, and sat down on the soft lace-frilled sheets, offering his wife a pallid face accustomed to dissemble everything except his will to dissemble, ‘Smell me!’ he said. ‘ Come on! I’ve been drinking whisky.’ She brought her charming mouth to his, putting a hand on her husband’s shoulder. ‘Whisky ...’ she repeated wonderingly. ‘Whisky... why?’ A less sophisticated woman would have asked ‘With whom?’ and her cunning did not pass unnoticed. Cheri showed that two could play at that game by answering, ‘With an old pal. Do you want to hear the whole truth? ’ She smiled, now caught in the dawning light which, with growing boldness, touched the edge of the bed, the looking-glass, a picture frame, and then the golden scales of a fish swimming round and round in a crystal bowl. ‘No, Fred, not the whole truth. Only a half-veiled truth, suitable for the small hours/ At the same time, her thoughts were busy. She was certain — or nearly so — that Ch<£ri had not been drawn away from her either by love or by lust. She let her acquiescent body fall helplessly into his arms, yet he felt on his shoulder a thin, hard hand, unrelaxed in its guarded prudence. ‘ The truth is,’ he went on, * that I don’t know her name. But I gave her ... wait a moment... I gave her eighty-three francs/ ‘ Just like that, all at once I The first time you met her? It’s princely! ’ She pretended to yawn, and slipped softly back into the depths of the bed, as though not expecting an answer. He gave her a moment’s pity; then a brilliant horizontal ray brought into sharper relief the almost naked body lying beside him, and his pity vanished. “She’s ... she has kept her good looks. It’s not fair.”

• From Henry and June (1986)

  He sits up and uncovers his penis. I don’t understand what he wants. He makes me get down on my knees. He offers it to my mouth. I get up as if struck by a whip. He is furious. I say to him, “I told you we have different ways of doing things. I warned you I was inexperienced.” “I never believed it. I don’t yet believe it. You can’t be, with your sophisticated face and your passionateness. You’re playing a trick on me.” I listen to him; the analyst in me is uppermost, still on the job. He pours out stories to show me that I don’t appreciate what other women do. In my head I answer, “ You don’t know what sensuality is. Hugo and I do. It’s in us, not in your devious practices; it’s in feeling, in passion, in love.” He goes on talking. I watch him with my “sophisticated face.” He does not hate me because, however repulsed, however angry I am, I have a facility for forgiveness. When I see that I have let him be aroused, it seems natural to let him release his desire between my legs. I just let him, out of pity. That, he senses. Other women, he says, would have insulted him. He understands my pity for his ridiculous, humiliating physical necessity. I owed him that; he had revealed a new world to me. I had understood for the first time the abnormal experiences Eduardo had warned me against. Exoticism and sensuality now had another meaning for me. Nothing was spared my eyes, so that I might always remember: Drake looking down at his wet handkerchief, offering me a towel, heating water on the gas stove. I tell Hugo the story partially, leaving out my activity, extracting the meaning for him and for me. As something forever finished, he accepts it. We efface an hour by passionate love, without twists, without aftertaste. When it is finished, it is not finished, we lie still in each other’s arms, lulled by our love, by tenderness—sensuality in which the whole being can participate. Henry has imagination, an animal feeling for life, the greatest power of expression, and the truest genius I have ever known. “Our age has need of violence,” he writes. And he is violence. Hugo admires him. At the same time he worries. He says justly, “You fall in love with people’s minds. I’m going to lose you to Henry.” “No, no, you won’t lose me.” I know how incendiary my imagination is. I am already devoted to Henry’s work, but I separate my body from my mind.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  A cared-for girl, someone’s daughter. I held it for her as she went to the 7-Eleven to call her mother. Fifteen minutes later, an attractive older woman showed up in a butter-yellow Mercedes, black linen slacks, suede moccasins with horse bit buckles. I helped the girl into the dress again, and the woman gave me the hundred, a single crisp bill. They were going to a cousin’s wedding in New York. The dress would be perfect. I could tell from the mother’s expression that she knew exactly what it was worth. We went on until five, then started breaking it down, loading up the van and Niki’s pickup truck. All my things had sold. I sat on the fender of the van and counted my money. I’d made over four hundred dollars. “See, not so bad,” Rena said, balancing a box of plates on her hip. “How much you get?” I mumbled it, ashamed, but also a little proud. It was the first money I’d ever earned. “Good. Give me hundred.” She held out her hand. “What for?” She snapped her fingers, extended her hand again. “No way.” I held the money behind my back. Her black eyes sparkled with bad temper. “What, you think you sell all by yourself on streetcorner? You pay me, I pay Natalia, Natalia pays landlord, what you think? Everybody pay somebody.” “You said I could keep it.” “After pay me.” “For Christ’s sake,” Niki said, looking up from where she was arranging cheap clothes on a blanket on the ground. “Go ahead and pay her. You have to.” I shook my head no. Rena shifted the box to the other hip, and when she spoke, her voice was harsh. “Listen to me, devushka. I pay, you pay. Just business. When was last time you had three hundred dollars in your hand? So how I hurt you?” How could I tell her? What about my feelings, I wanted to say, except what was the point? With her it was all just money, and things that could be traded for money. She’d stolen something from me, and even got me to do the selling for her. I couldn’t help wondering what you would do, Mother. It didn’t apply. I couldn’t imagine you at the mercy of Rena Grushenka, in the parking lot of Natalia’s Nails, selling your clothes, crying over a dress. I didn’t know what else to do, so I held out the hundred, the red dress hundred, and she snatched it from my hand like a dog bite. But as I sat in bed, listening to the noise and laughter and occasional crash from the living room, I knew that even you had to pay someone now, for your pot and your inks and the good kind of tampons, dental floss and vitamin C.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The lady, hearing this, was all aghast and answered, 'Alack, father mine, what is this you ask? Methought you were a saint. Doth it beseem holy men to require women, who come to them for counsel, of such things?' 'Fair my soul,' rejoined the abbot, 'marvel not, for that sanctity nowise abateth by this, seeing it hath its seat in the soul and that which I ask of you is a sin of the body. But, be that as it may, your ravishing beauty hath had such might that love constraineth me to do thus; and I tell you that you may glory in your charms over all other women, considering that they please holy men, who are used to look upon the beauties of heaven. Moreover, abbot though I be, I am a man like another and am, as you see, not yet old. Nor should this that I ask be grievous to you to do; nay, you should rather desire it, for that, what while Ferondo sojourneth in purgatory, I will bear you company by night and render you that solacement which he should give you; nor shall any ever come to know of this, for that every one believeth of me that, and more than that, which you but now believed of me. Reject not the grace that God sendeth you, for there be women enough who covet that which you may have and shall have, if, like a wise woman, you hearken to my counsel. Moreover, I have fair and precious jewels, which I purpose shall belong to none other than yourself. Do, then, for me, sweet my hope, that which I willingly do for you.' The lady hung her head, knowing not how to deny him, whilst herseemed it were ill done to grant him what he asked; but the abbot, seeing that she hearkened and hesitated to reply and himseeming he had already half converted her, followed up his first words with many others and stayed not till he had persuaded her that she would do well to comply with him. Accordingly, she said, blushing, that she was ready to do his every commandment, but might not avail thereto till such time as Ferondo should be gone to purgatory; whereupon quoth the abbot, exceeding well pleased, 'And we will make shift to send him thither incontinent; do you but contrive that he come hither to-morrow or next day to sojourn with me.' So saying, he privily put a very handsome ring into her hand and dismissed her. The lady rejoiced at the gift and looking to have others, rejoined her companions, to whom she fell to relating marvellous things of the abbot's sanctity, and presently returned home with them.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  I wondered, though: If teens didn’t consider oral sex to be “sex,” how did they perceive it? What did it mean to girls to give or receive oral sex? Did they enjoy it? Tolerate it? Expect it? One evening, shortly after her graduation from a suburban Chicago high school, a young woman named Ruby allowed me to join her and four of her friends for a chat. We met in Ruby’s bedroom, one wall of which she’d painted midnight blue. Leggings, T-shirts, and skirts tumbled out of half-open dresser drawers. The girls sprawled on the floor, across the bed, on a beanbag chair. When I asked about oral sex, a girl named Devon shook her head. “That’s not a thing anymore,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “So what is it, then?” I asked. Devon shrugged. “It’s nothing.” “Well, it’s not that it’s nothing,” added Rachel. “It’s not sex,” Devon countered. “It’s like a step past making out with someone,” said Ruby. “It’s a way of hooking up. A way to have gone farther without it being seen as any big deal.” “And it doesn’t have the repercussions that vaginal sex does,” Rachel added. “You’re not losing your virginity, you can’t get pregnant, you can’t get STDs. So it’s safer.” That, unfortunately, is not entirely true—though, again, because oral sex is ignored by parents and educators, there is a widespread belief among teens that it is risk free. The result is that while their rates of intercourse and pregnancy have dropped over the past thirty years, their rates of sexually transmitted diseases have not. Teens and young adults account for half of all new STD diagnoses annually and the majority among women. The new popularity of oral sex has been linked to rising rates of Type 1 herpes and gonorrhea (a disease that, about a decade ago, researchers thought was on the verge of eradication). Avoiding STDs, though, isn’t really why girls engage in oral sex. The number one reason they do it, according to a study of high schoolers, is to improve their relationships. (Nearly a quarter of girls said this, compared to about 5 percent of boys.) What, though, did “improving a relationship” mean exactly, especially since so many also told me that oral sex, at least where fellatio was concerned, was a way to emotionally distance themselves from their partners, protect against the overinvestment they feared would come with intercourse. For years, psychologists have warned that girls learn to suppress their own feelings in order to avoid conflict, to preserve the peace in friendships and romantic partnerships. Was performing fellatio another version of that? Whether they hoped to attract a boy’s interest, sustain it, or placate him, it seemed their partner’s happiness was their main concern. Boys, incidentally, far and away, said that the number one reason they engaged in oral sex was for physical pleasure.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  She blushed: and, though her face was dark with the chronic red of sufferers from arthritis, the blush could not be concealed. Ch£ri, after the first caddish satisfaction of having said something outrageous, was seized with shame and remorse at the sight of this maidenly reaction. ‘I was only joking,5 he said, in some confusion. ‘Have I gone too far. Of course not. But you know very well I have never cared for certain kinds of impropriety or for jokes that are not really funny/ She strove to control her voice, but her face revealed that she was hurt, and every coarsened feature gave signs of a distress that could perhaps be outraged modesty. “Dear God, if she takes it into her head to cry!55 and he imagined *the catastrophic effect of tears coursing down each cheek into the single deep ravine near the mouth, and of her eyelids reddened by the salt of tears. He hastened to intercept: ‘No, no, you mustn’t think that! How could you! I never meant... Please, Lea. From her quick reaction he realized suddenly that this was the first time he had spoken her name. Proud, as in the old days, of her selfcontrol, she gently stopped him. * Don’t worry, child. I’m not offended. But I’ve only got you here for a few minutes, so don’t spoil them by saying anything I shouldn’t care to remember.’ Her gentle tone left him cold, and her actual words seemed offensively tactful to him. “Either she’s lying, or she really has become the sort of person she pretends. Peace, purity, and the Lord knows what! She might as well wear a ring in her nose! Peace of heart, guzzling, and the cinema.... Lies, lies, all lies! She wants to make me think that women find growing old comfortable, positively enjoyable. How can she expect me to swallow that? Let her bore anyone else she likes with her fine talk about how cosy life is, and the little restaurants with the most delicious country dishes- I’m not having any! Before I could toddle, I knewr all there is to know about reducing. I was born among ageing beauties! All my life I’ve watched them, my painted pixies, squabbling about their wrinkles, and, well into their fifties, scratching each other’s eyes out over some wretched gigolo!” ‘You sit there saying nothing, and I’m not used to it any more. I keep on thinking that there’s something you want to say to me.’