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.

Page 136 of 267 · 20 per page

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  She was in a delirium as she was lifted to stand at the foot of the bed. She obeyed pliantly as the girl told her to spread her legs. She felt the satin go tight around her right ankle and then it firmly bound her left ankle, and then the girl, standing before her on the bed, bound the Princess's hands high on either side of her. She was spread-eagled, looking down at the bed, and with terror, she realized that the Prince must see how she suffered; he must see the shame of the dampness between her legs, those fluids she could neither check or conceal, and, turning her face into her arm, she whimpered softly. But the worst of it was that he did not mean to take her. He had tied her here out of reach of himself so that as he slept she must look down on him. Now the girl was dismissed, secretly depositing a little kiss on Beauty's thigh before she left. And Beauty, crying softly, realized she was alone with the Prince. She did not dare to look at him. "My beautiful obedient one," he sighed. And to her horror she felt, as he drew near, the hard handle of that dreadful wooden paddle nudging her moist and secret place, so cruelly exposed by her open legs. She struggled to pretend this was not happening. But she could feel that revealing fluid, and she knew the Prince knew of her tormenting pleasure. "I have taught you much, and I am so very pleased with you," he said, "and so now you know a new suffering, a new sacrifice for you Lord and master. I could soothe the burning craving between your legs but I shall let you suffer it and know the meaning of it, and that only your Prince can give you that relief that you long for." She couldn't control her moan, even though she muffled it against her arm. She feared that any moment she might move her hips in helpless, humiliating entreaty. He had snuffed the candles. The room was dark. Beneath her feet she felt the mattress give with his weight. She leaned her head against her arm and felt secure in the satin bonds as she let herself hang there. But this torment, this torment...and there was nothing she could do to alleviate it. She prayed the swelling between her legs would die away, as the throbbing in her buttocks was cooling and dying away. And then falling to sleep, she thought calmly, dreamily almost, of the crowds awaiting her on the roads to the Prince's castle.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  “Men don’t attach as easily. They’re more rational,” my father corrected her. After a long pause, he said, “We just want you to be careful.” “He means use a rubber.” “And take these.” My father gave me a small, pink, shell-shaped compact of birth control pills. “Gross,” was all I could say. “And your father has cancer,” my mother said. I said nothing. “Prostate isn’t like breast,” my father said, turning away. “They do surgery, and you move on.” “The man always dies first,” my mother whispered. My dad’s chair screeched on the floor as he pushed himself away from the table. “I was only teasing,” my mom said, batting the smoke of her own cigarette away from her face. “About the cancer?” “No.” That was the end of the conversation. Later, while I packed up to move into the dorm, my mother came and stood in the doorway of my bedroom, holding her cigarette out behind her in the hall as if it would make any difference. The whole house always smelled like stale smoke. “You know I don’t like it when you cry,” she said. “I wasn’t crying,” I said. “And I hope you’re not packing any shorts. Nobody wears shorts in Manhattan. And they’ll shoot you in the street if you go around in those disgusting tennis shoes. You’ll look ridiculous. Your father isn’t paying this much for you to go look ridiculous in New York City.” I wanted her to think that I was crying over my father’s cancer, but that wasn’t quite it. “Well, Goddamnit, if you insist on getting weepy,” my mother said, turning to leave. “You know, when you were a baby, I crushed Valium into your bottle? You had colic and cried for hours and hours, inconsolable and for no good reason. And change your shirt. I can see the sweat under your arms. I’m going to bed.” A realty company managed my parents’ property after they were dead. The house got rented out to a history professor and his family. I never had to meet them. The company handled the maintenance and gardening and made any repairs necessary. When something broke or wore out, they sent me a letter with a photo and an estimate. When I got lonely or bored or nostalgic, I’d go through the photos and try to disgust myself with the banality of the place—a cracked step, a leak in the basement, a peeling ceiling, a broken cabinet. And I’d feel sorry for myself, not because I missed my parents, but because there was nothing they could have given me if they’d lived. They weren’t my friends. They didn’t comfort me or give me good advice. They weren’t people I wanted to talk to. They barely even knew me. They were too busy to want to imagine my life in Manhattan. My father was busy dying—within a year of his diagnosis, the cancer had

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Shaken, sore, she sat shivering on the Queen's thighs, the silk of the Queen's gown cool under her burning buttocks, the Queen's left arm cradling her. The Queen's right hand examined her nipples, and Beauty looked down through her tears to see those white fingers again pulling the nipples. "I had not thought to find you so obedient," said the Queen, pressing Beauty to her ample breasts, Beauty's hip against the Queen's smooth stomach. Beauty felt tiny as well as helpless, as if she were nothing in this woman's arms, nothing but something small, a child perhaps, no, not even a child. The Queen's voice grew caressing. "You are sweet, sweet as Lady Juliana told me you were," she said softly in Beauty's ear. Beauty bit her lip. "Your Highness..." she whispered, but she did not know what to say. "My son has trained you well, and you show great perception." The Queen's hand plunged down between Beauty's legs and felt the sex which had never grown cold or dry during all of the worst of the spanking, and Beauty shut her eyes. "Ah, now why are you so afraid of my hand when it touches you gently?" And the Queen bent and kissed Beauty's tears, tasting them on Beauty's cheeks and on her eyelids. "Sugar and salt," she said. Beauty broke into a fresh shower of sobs. The hand between her legs massaged the most moist portion of her, and she knew that her face was flushed, and the pain and the pleasure mingled. She felt overpowered. Her head fell back against the Queen's shoulder, and her mouth went slack, and she realized the Queen was kissing her throat, and she murmured some strange words that were not words to the Queen, some plea. "Poor little slave," said the Queen, "poor little obedient slave. I wanted to send you home to get rid of you, to rid my son of his passion for you, my son who is now as enchanted as you were before, under the spell of the one whom he released from the spell, as if all life were a series of enchantments. But you are as perfect in temperament as he said you were, as perfect as more trained slaves, and yet you are fresher, sweeter." Beauty gasped as the pleasure between her legs washed through her, mounting and mounting. She felt her swollen breasts might burst, and her buttocks, as always, throbbed so that she felt every inch of the abraded flesh relentlessly. "Now, come, did I spank you so very hard, tell me?" She took Beauty by the chin and turned her so that Beauty looked into her eyes. They were huge and black and fathomless. The lashes curled upwards, and there seemed a great casing of glass over the eyes, so deep they were, so brilliant. "Well, answer me," said the Queen with her red lips, and she placed her finger in Beauty's mouth and tugged on her lower lip. "Answer me."

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  To make good her words she came out of the wood and made to throw her arms round the neck she loved: but he fled from her, crying as he did so, "Away with these embraces! I would die before I would have you touch me!" . . . Thus scorned, she concealed herself in the woods, hiding her shamed face in the shelter of the leaves, and ever since that day she dwells in lonely caves. Yet still her love remained firmly rooted in her heart, and was increased by the pain of having been rejected. . . . • Narcissus had played with her affections, treating her as he had previously treated other spirits of the waters and the woods, and his male admirers too. Then one of those he had scorned raised up his hands to heaven and prayed: "May he himself fall in love with another, as we have done with him! May he too be unable to gain his loved one!" Nemesis heard and granted his righteous prayer. ...• Narcissus, wearied with hunting in the heat of the day, lay down here [by a clear pool]: for he was attracted by the beauty of the place, and by the spring. While he sought to quench his thirst, another thirst grew The Coquette • 73 Early on in life, Andy Warhol was plagued by conflicting emotions: he des- perately wanted fame, but he was naturally passive and shy "I've always had a conflict," he later said, "because I'm shy and yet I like to take up a lot of personal space. Mom always said, 'Don't be pushy, but let everyone know you're around.' " At first Warhol tried to make himself more aggressive, straining to please and court. It didn't work. After ten futile years he stopped trying and gave in to his own passivity—only to discover the power that withdrawal commands. Warhol began this process in his artwork, which changed dramatically in the early 1960s. His new paintings of soup cans, green stamps, and other widely known images did not assault you with meaning; in fact their mean- ing was totally elusive, which only heightened their fascination. They drew you in by their immediacy, their visual power, their coldness. Having trans- formed his art, Warhol also transformed himself: like his paintings, he be- came pure surface. He trained himself to hold himself back, to stop talking. The world is full of people who try, people who impose themselves ag- gressively. They may gain temporary victories, but the longer they are around, the more people want to confound them. They leave no space around themselves, and without space there can be no seduction.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "Now Felix commanded me to show to the crowd all my private parts that were in the service of the Queen, and that I was her slave, and her animal. I did not understand these words, which were spoken ceremoniously. So he told me politely enough that I must part the cheeks of my buttocks as I bent over and display for them my open anus. Of course this was a symbolic gesture. It meant I was ever to be violated. And nothing more than that which could be violated. "But my face was aflame, my hands trembling, I obeyed. A great cheer went up from the crowd. Tears slipped down my face. With a long cane, Felix lifted my balls for them to see, and pushed my penis this way and that to display its defenselessness, and all the while I had to hold my buttocks apart and display my anus. Whenever I relaxed my hands, he commanded me sharply to pull the flesh wider apart and threatened me with chastisement. 'That will infuriate her Highness,' he said, 'and amuse the crowd immensely.' Then to a loud approving cry, the phallus was shoved securely back into my anus. I was made to press my lips to the wood of the turntable. And I was led back to my position beside the Queen's coach, Felix pulling my bridle over his shoulder as I trotted with my head lifted behind him. "By the last village I was no more used to it than at the first. But by this time Felix had assured the Queen that I displayed all conceivable humility. My beauty was unrivaled by that of any past Prince. Half the village youth of both sexes was in love with me. The Queen kissed my eyelids when I received those compliments. "There was a grand banquet that night at the castle. You've seen such a banquet as there was one held for you at your presentation. I had not seen it before. And I had my first experience of serving wine for the Queen and for the others to whom she sent me ceremoniously as a gift now and then. When my eyes caught those of Princess Lynette I smiled at her without thinking about it. "I felt I could do anything I was commanded to do. I had no fear of anything. And so I can say by then I had yielded. But the truest indication of my yielding was that both Leon and Lord Gregory -- when they had the chance -- told me I was obdurate and rebellious. They said I mocked everything. I said this was not true when I had the opportunity to answer, but I seldom had such an opportunity. "Many other things have happened to me since then, but the lessons learned in those early months were the most important.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  John Harvey Kellogg, Anthony Comstock, and Sylvester Graham (inventor of Graham crackers—like corn flakes, a food specifically designed to discourage masturbation) were extreme in their grim campaigns against eroticism, but they weren’t considered particularly eccentric at the time.16 Recall that Darwin probably had had little or no personal sexual experience when he married his first cousin a month before his thirtieth birthday, and that Sigmund Freud—the other towering giant of nineteenth-century sexual theory—was a self-proclaimed thirty-year-old virgin when he married in 1886. No wonder Freud was hesitant sexually. According to biographer Ernest Jones, Freud’s father had threatened to cut off young Sigmund’s penis if he didn’t stop his obsessive masturbating.17 The Curse of Calvin Coolidge Last time I tried to make love to my wife nothing was happening. So I said to her, “What’s the matter, you can’t think of anybody either?” RODNEY DANGERFIELD Men don’t care what’s on TV. They only care what else is on TV. JERRY SEINFELD There’s a story about President Calvin Coolidge and a chicken farm every evolutionary psychologist knows by heart. It goes like this: The president and his wife were visiting a commercial chicken farm in the 1920s. During the tour, the first lady asked the farmer how he managed to produce so many fertile eggs with only a few roosters. The farmer proudly explained that his roosters happily performed their duty dozens of times each day. “Perhaps you could mention that to the president,” replied the first lady. Overhearing the remark, President Coolidge asked the farmer, “Does each cock service the same hen each time?” “Oh no,” replied the farmer, “he always changes from one hen to another.” “I see,” replied the president. “Perhaps you could point that out to Mrs. Coolidge.” Whether the story is historically factual or not, the invigorating effect of a variety of sexual partners has become known as “the Coolidge effect.” While there’s little doubt that the females of some primate species (including our own) are also intrigued by sexual novelty, the underlying mechanism appears to be different for them. Thus the Coolidge effect generally refers to male mammals, where it’s been documented in many species.18 But that doesn’t mean women’s only motivation for sex is relational, as is often argued. Psychologists Joey Sprague and David Quadagno surveyed women from twenty-two to fifty-seven years of age and found that among those under thirty-five, 61 percent of the women said their primary motivation for sex was emotional, rather than physical. But among those over thirty-five, only 38 percent claimed their emotional motivations were stronger than the physical hunger for contact.19 At face value, such results suggest women’s motivations change with age. Or one could also argue that this effect could simply reflect women becoming less apologetic as they mature.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Even more remarkably, dogs follow each other’s gaze to get information about the world. When Rowdy wants to know what’s going on, he spontaneously looks to his “sister,” Biscuit, a Golden Retriever, and follows her gaze. The two of them freeze as they reference each other, and then . . . they both suddenly leap into action. It’s like watching a silent movie. 3 4 But being the skeptic that I am, I have my doubts that dogs are making goal-based mental inferences. They could be just really good at perceiving human actions, because, let’s be honest, we’ve bred them to be sensitive to our every whim. Dogs do appear to understand that humans use symbols to communicate intent. For example, in one study, an experimenter put dog toys in different rooms and then used miniature replicas of the toys as symbols. Her test subjects (Border Collies) understood she was asking them, via the miniature, to retrieve the matching toy from the other room. This is rather more sophisticated than playing fetch. Studies also show that dogs use different growls and barks to communicate with each other, although they might just be communicating arousal (affect) in the acoustic signal. One study even shows that a dog named Sofia, like our chimp friends, could be trained to press symbols on a keyboard to communicate a few basic concepts: a walk, toy, water, play, food, and her crate. 3 5 Clearly, dogs have something nontrivial going on upstairs, but even so, scientists have no indication yet that dogs have emotion concepts. In fact, there’s pretty good evidence that they don’t, though many dog behav iors look emotional. Dog owners, for example, infer guilt when they believe their dog is hiding something (for example, avoiding eye contact) or is being submissive (such as drooping the ears, lying down and showing the belly, or holding the tail low). But do dogs have a concept of guilt? A clever study investigated this question. In each trial, a dog owner offered his or her dog a desirable biscuit, then explicitly instructed the dog not to eat it and promptly left the room. Unbeknownst to the owner, however, an experimenter then entered the room and influenced the dog’s behavior, either handing the treat to the dog (who ate it) or removing the treat from the room. Afterward, the experimenter either told the owner the truth or lied. Half the owners were told that their dog had obeyed and to greet their dog in a warm and friendly manner; the rest heard that the dog had eaten the biscuit and should be scolded. This created four different scenarios: obedient dog with a friendly owner, obedient dog being scolded, disobedient dog with a friendly owner, and disobedient dog being scolded. What happened? The scolded dogs performed more behaviors that people perceive as stereotypically guilty, regardless of whether or not the dogs had disobeyed.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  So, returning to our original question: Why did a brain like yours evolve? That question is not answerable because evolution does not act with purpose ​— ​there is no “why.” But we can say what is your brain’s most important job. It’s not rationality. Not emotion. Not imagination, or creativity, or empathy. Your brain’s most important job is to control your body​— ​to manage allostasis​—​ by predicting energy needs before they arise so you can efficiently make worthwhile movements and survive. Your brain continually invests your energy in the hopes of earning a good return, such as food, shelter, affection, or physical protection, so you can perform nature’s most vital task: passing your genes to the next generation. In short, your brain’s most important job is not thinking. It’s running a little worm body that has become very, very complicated. Of course, your brain does think and feel and imagine and create hundreds of other experiences, such as letting you read and understand this book. But all of these mental capacities are consequences of a central mission to keep you alive and well by managing your body budget. Everything your brain creates, from memories to hallucinations, from ecstasy to shame, is part of this mission. Sometimes your brain budgets for the short term, like when you drink coffee to stay up late and finish a project, knowing that you are borrowing energy that you’ll pay for tomorrow. Other times, your brain budgets for the long term, like when you spend years to learn a difficult skill, such as math or carpentry, that requires a sustained investment but ultimately helps you survive and prosper. You and I do not experience our every thought, every feeling of happiness or anger or awe, every hug we give or receive, every kindness we extend, and every insult we bear as a deposit or withdrawal in our metabolic budgets, but under the hood, that is what’s happening. This idea is key to understanding how your brain works and, in turn, how to stay healthy and live a longer and more meaningful life.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  He had the vague sensation of having been used, but the pleasures he remembered outweighed his doubts. Interpretation. Madame de T is a character in the eighteenth-century libertine short story "No Tomorrow," by Vivant Denon. The young man is the story's narrator. Although fictional, Madame's techniques were clearly based on those of several well-known libertines of the time, masters of the game of seduction. And the most dangerous of their weapons was insinuation—the means by which Madame cast her spell on the young man, making him seem the aggressor, giving her the night of pleasure she desired, A few short years ago, in our native city, where fraud and cunning prosper more than love or loyalty, there was a noblewoman of striking beauty and impeccable breeding, who was endowed by Nature with as lofty a temperament and shrewd an intellect as could be found in any other woman of her time. . . . • This lady, being of gentle birth and finding herself married off to a master woollen- draper because he happened to be very rich, was unable to stifle her heartfelt contempt, for she was firmly of the opinion that no man of low condition, however wealthy, was deserving of a noble wife. And on discovering that all he was capable of despite his massive wealth, was distinguishing wool from cotton, supervising the setting up of a loom, or debating the virtues of a particular yarn with a spinner-woman, she resolved that as far as it lay within her power she would have nothing whatsoever to do with his beastly caresses. Moreover she was determined to seek her pleasure elsewhere, in the company of one who seemed more worthy of her affection, and so it was that she fell deeply in love with an extremely eligible man in his middle thirties. And whenever a day passed without her having set eyes upon him, she was restless for the whole of the following night. • However, the gentleman suspected nothing of all this, and took no notice of her; and for her part, being very cautious, she would not venture to declare her love by dispatching a maidservant or writing him Master the Art of Insinuation • 215 and safeguarding her guiltless reputation, all in one stroke. After all, he was the one who initiated physical contact, or so it seemed. In truth, she was the one in control, planting precisely the ideas in his mind that she wanted. That first physical encounter in the carriage, for instance, that she had set up by inviting him closer: she later rebuked him for being forward, but what lin- gered in his mind was the excitement of the moment.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  While sexual activity in chimps and other primates appears to be primarily reproductive, bonobos and humans utilize sexuality for social purposes (tension reduction, bonding, conflict resolution, entertainment, etc.). PART II Lust in Paradise (Solitary?) CHAPTER FIVE Who Lost What in Paradise? [Man] has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights, the one ecstasy that stands first and foremost in the heart of every individual of his race…sexual intercourse! It is as if a lost and perishing person in a roasting desert should be told by a rescuer he might choose and have all longed-for things but one, and he should elect to leave out water! MARK TWAIN, Letters from the Earth Turns out, the Garden of Eden wasn’t really a garden at all. It was anything but a garden: jungle, forest, wild seashore, open savanna, wind-blown tundra. Adam and Eve weren’t kicked out of a garden. They were kicked into one. Think about it. What’s a garden? Land under cultivation. Tended. Arranged. Organized. Intentional. Weeds are pulled or poisoned without mercy; seeds are selected and sown. There’s nothing free or spontaneous about such a place. Accidents are unwelcome. But the story says that before their fall from grace, Adam and Eve lived carefree, naked, and innocent—lacking nothing. Their world provided what they needed: food, shelter, and companionship. But after the Fall, the good times were over. Food, previously the gift of a generous world, now had to be earned through hard work. Women suffered in giving birth. And sexual pleasure—formerly guilt-free—became a source of humiliation and shame. Although the biblical story has it that the first humans were expelled from the garden, the narrative clearly got reversed somewhere along the line. The curse suffered by Adam and Eve centers around the exchange of the arguably low-stress, high-pleasure life of foragers (or bonobos) for the dawn-to-dusk toil of a farmer in his garden. Original sin represents the attempt to explain why on Earth our ancestors ever accepted such a raw deal.1 The story of the Fall gives narrative structure to the traumatic transition from the take-it-where-you-find-it hunter-gatherer existence to the arduous struggle of agriculturalists. Contending with insects, rodents, weather, and the reluctant Earth itself, farmers were forced to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow rather than just finding the now-forbidden fruit and eating it hand to mouth, as their ancestors had done forever. No wonder foragers have almost never shown any interest in learning farming techniques from Europeans. As one forager put it, “Why should we plant, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?” Books like this one, concerning human nature, are beacons for trouble. On one hand, everybody’s an expert. Being human, we all have opinions about human nature. Such an understanding seems to require little more than a modicum of common sense and some attention to our own incessant cravings and aversions. Simple enough.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  If we’re “above” nature, it’s only in the sense that a shaky-legged surfer is “above” the ocean. Even if we never slip (and we all do), our inner nature can pull us under at any moment. Those of us raised in the West have been assured that we humans are special, unique among living things, above and beyond the world around us, exempt from the humilities and humiliations that pervade and define animal life. The natural world lies below and beneath us, a cause for shame, disgust, or alarm; something smelly and messy to be hidden behind closed doors, drawn curtains, and minty freshness. Or we overcompensate and imagine nature floating angelically in soft focus up above, innocent, noble, balanced, and wise. Like bonobos and chimps, we are the randy descendents of hypersexual ancestors. At first blush, this may seem an overstatement, but it’s a truth that should have become common knowledge long ago. Conventional notions of monogamous, till-death-do-us-part marriage strain under the dead weight of a false narrative that insists we’re something else. What is the essence of human sexuality and how did it get to be that way? In the following pages, we’ll explain how seismic cultural shifts that began about ten thousand years ago rendered the true story of human sexuality so subversive and threatening that for centuries it has been silenced by religious authorities, pathologized by physicians, studiously ignored by scientists, and covered up by moralizing therapists. Deep conflicts rage at the heart of modern sexuality. Our cultivated ignorance is devastating. The campaign to obscure the true nature of our species’ sexuality leaves half our marriages collapsing under an unstoppable tide of swirling sexual frustration, libido-killing boredom, impulsive betrayal, dysfunction, confusion, and shame. Serial monogamy stretches before (and behind) many of us like an archipelago of failure: isolated islands of transitory happiness in a cold, dark sea of disappointment. And how many of the couples who manage to stay together for the long haul have done so by resigning themselves to sacrificing their eroticism on the altar of three of life’s irreplaceable joys: family stability, companionship, and emotional, if not sexual, intimacy? Are those who innocently aspire to these joys cursed by nature to preside over the slow strangulation of their partner’s libido? The Spanish word esposas means both “wives” and “handcuffs.” In English, some men ruefully joke about the ball and chain. There’s good reason marriage is often depicted and mourned as the beginning of the end of a man’s sexual life. And women fare no better. Who wants to share her life with a man who feels trapped and diminished by his love for her, whose honor marks the limits of his freedom? Who wants to spend her life apologizing for being just one woman?

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Its author’s bizarre cognomen is his own invention; and, of course, this mask—through which two hypnotic eyes seem to glow—had to remain unlifted in accordance with its wearer’s wish. While “Haze” only rhymes with the heroine’s real surname, her first name is too closely interwound with the inmost fiber of the book to allow one to alter it; nor (as the reader will perceive for himself) is there any practical necessity to do so. References to “H.H.” ’s crime may be looked up by the inquisitive in the daily papers for September–October 1952; its cause and purpose would have continued to remain a complete mystery, had not this memoir been permitted to come under my reading lamp. For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of the “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” of “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadow of this sorry and sordid business” should not reach the community to which he is proud to belong. His daughter, “Louise,” is by now a college sophomore. “Mona Dahl” is a student in Paris. “Rita” has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida. Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest. “Vivian Darkbloom” has written a biography, “My Cue,” to be published shortly, and critics who have perused the manuscript call it her best book. The caretakers of the various cemeteries involved report that no ghosts walk. Viewed simply as a novel, “Lolita” deals with situations and emotions that would remain exasperatingly vague to the reader had their expression been etiolated by means of platitudinous evasions. True, not a single obscene term is to be found in the whole work; indeed, the robust philistine who is conditioned by modern conventions into accepting without qualms a lavish array of four-letter words in a banal novel, will be quite shocked by their absence here. If, however, for this paradoxical prude’s comfort, an editor attempted to dilute or omit scenes that a certain type of mind might call “aphrodisiac” (see in this respect the monumental decision rendered December 6, 1933, by Hon. John M.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "It was...hard...hard, my Queen..." Beauty said meekly. "Well, yes, perhaps for such fresh little buttocks. But you make Prince Alexi smile with your innocence." Beauty turned as if bidden to do so but when she gazed at Prince Alexi she did not see him smiling. Rather he was merely looking at her with the strangest expression. It was both remote and loving. And then he looked to the Queen without haste or fear and let his lips lengthen in a smile as she seemed to wish of him. But the Queen had tipped back Beauty's head again. She kissed Beauty. The Queen's rippling hair fell down around her, full of perfume, and for the first time, Beauty felt the velvety white skin of the Queen's face, and she realized the Queen's breasts were pressed against her. Beauty's hips moved forward, she started to gasp, but just before it became too much for her, this shock penetrating to her wet, throbbing sex, the Queen suddenly pushed her down and drew back smiling. She held Beauty's thighs. Beauty's legs were open. And the hungry little sex wanted for all the world for the legs to be crushed closed against it. The pleasure subsided slightly, back into that great never ending rhythm of craving. Beauty moaned, her brows knit in a frown, and the Queen suddenly pushed her off, slapping Beauty's face so hard that Beauty cried out before she could stop herself. "My Queen, she is so young and tender," said Prince Alexi. "Don't try my patience," the Queen answered. Beauty lay facedown on the bed crying. "Rather ring for Felix and have him bring Lady Juliana. I know how young and tender is my little slave, and how much she has to learn, and that she must be punished for small disobedience. But that is not what concerns me. I should see more of her, more of her spirit, her efforts to please, and...well, I have promised Lady Juliana." It did not make any difference how hard Beauty cried, they would proceed, and Prince Alexi could not stop them. Beauty heard Felix come, she heard the Queen walking about the room, and finally when Beauty's tears were now a steady silent flow, the Queen said, "Get down from the bed, and prepare yourself to greet Lady Juliana." LADY JULIANA IN THE QUEEN'S CHAMBER LADY JULIANA came into the room exactly as she had come into the Hall of Punishments, her steps light and springing, her round face full of prettiness and animation. She wore a rose pink gown, and there were pink roses threaded through her long thick braids with pink ribbon.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Author Andrew Sullivan described his experience growing up both gay and Catholic as “difficult to the point of agony. I saw in my own life and those of countless others,” Sullivan recalled, “that the suppression of these core emotions and the denial of their resolution in love always always leads to personal distortion and compulsion and loss of perspective. Forcing…people into molds they do not fit helps no one,” Sullivan wrote. “It robs them of dignity and self-worth and the capacity for healthy relationships. It wrecks family, twists Christianity, violates humanity. It must end.”11 Sullivan’s comments were provoked by the twisted collapse of the publicly homophobic but privately homosexual televangelist Ted Haggard, but he could have been speaking for anyone who doesn’t fit the socially sanctioned mold of his or her day. And who does fit this mold? Yes, self-hating gay televangelists and politicians need to come out of the closet, but so does everyone else. It won’t be easy. It’s never easy to stand up to shame-fueled anger. Historian Robert S. McElvaine previews some of the shrill denunciation awaiting those who may dare to wander from the monogamous fold, declaring, “Free love is likely to degenerate into ‘free hate.’ Since loving everybody is a biological impossibility, the attempt to do so [becomes] ‘otherization,’ and the hatred that goes with it.”12 Like McElvaine, many relationship counselors seem both terrified by and ignorant of nonstandard marital relationships of any kind. Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity, quotes a family therapist she knows (and respects) stating unequivocally, “Open marriage doesn’t work. Thinking you can do it is totally naïve. We tried it in the seventies and it was a disaster.”13 Maybe, but such therapists might want to delve a little deeper before reflexively dismissing alternatives to conventional marriage. Asked to imagine the first swingers in modern American history, most people probably picture hairy hippies in headbands lolling about on waterbeds in free-love communes under posters of Che Guevara and Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane on the hi-fi. But be cool, Daddy-O, ’cause the truth is gonna blow your mind. It seems that the original modern American swingers were crew-cut World War II air force pilots and their wives. Like elite warriors everywhere, these “top guns” often developed strong bonds with one another, perhaps because they suffered the highest casualty rate of any branch of the military. According to journalist Terry Gould, “key parties,” like those later dramatized in the 1997 film The Ice Storm, originated on these military bases in the 1940s, where elite pilots and their wives intermingled sexually with one another before the men flew off toward Japanese antiaircraft fire.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  What did I do?” “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” “You just left without saying anything.” “There was shit all over my dick, okay?” he said angrily. But that was impossible. He hadn’t even penetrated me. I knew he was lying. But I still apologized. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Are you mad?” “I can’t have this conversation with you right now. I’m tired and I’m not in the mood to deal with your drama.” He was nearly yelling. “I just want to get some sleep. Jesus!” I called him the next day and asked if he was free that weekend, but he said he’d already found a woman who wasn’t going to “pull pranks for attention.” A few nights later, I got drunk and called up Rite Aid and ordered a case of sexual lubricant to be delivered to him at his office the next morning. He sent me a note at the gallery by messenger in response. “Don’t ever do that again,” it said. We got back together a few weeks later. “Ma’am?” the pharmacist called out, snapping me out of my reverie. I put the DVD back on the rack and went to the pharmacy counter to get my pills. The pharmacist’s nails made an annoying clicking sound as she tapped her computer screen. I thought she seemed smug; she sighed as she ran each stapled paper bag under the scanner, as though it exhausted her to deal with me and all my mental health issues. “Check that box to say you’re waiving the consultation.” “But I haven’t waived it. You’re consulting me now, aren’t you?” “Did you have a question about your medications, ma’am?” She was judging me. I could feel it. She was modulating her voice a certain way so as not to sound patronizing. “Of course I want a consultation,” I said. “I’m ill, and this is my medicine, and I want to know you’ve done your job correctly. Look at all these pills. They could be dangerous. Wouldn’t you want a consultation, if you were as sick as I am?” I pushed my sunglasses back down over my eyes. She unfolded the papers stapled to the bags and pointed out the potential side effects of each drug and the potential interactions with other medications I was taking. “Don’t drink with this,” she said. “If you take this one and it doesn’t put you to sleep, you might throw up. You might get a migraine. If you start to feel hot, call an ambulance. You could have seizures or a stroke. If you get blisters all over your hands, stop taking it and go to the emergency room.”

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Use tears sparingly, and save them for the right moment. Perhaps this might be a time when the target seems suspicious of your motives, or when you are worrying about having no effect on him or her. Tears are a sure barometer of how deeply the other person is falling for you. If they seem annoyed, or resist the bait, your case is probably hopeless. In social and political situations, seeming too ambitious, or too con- trolled, will make people fear you; it is crucial to show your soft side. The display of a single weakness will hide a multitude of manipulations. Emo- tion or even tears will work here too. Most seductive of all is playing the victim. For his first speech in Parliament, Benjamin Disraeli prepared an elaborate oration, but when he delivered it the opposition yelled and laughed so loudly that hardly any of it could be heard. He plowed ahead and gave the whole speech, but by the time he sat down he felt he had failed miserably. Much to his amazement, his colleagues told him the speech was a marvelous success. It would have been a failure if he had com- plained or given up; but by going ahead as he did, he positioned himself as the victim of a cruel and unreasonable faction. Almost everyone sympa- thized with him now, which would serve him well in the future. Attacking your mean-spirited opponents can make you seem ugly as well; instead, soak up their blows, and play the victim. The public will rally to your side, in an emotional response that will lay the groundwork for a grand political seduction. Symbol: The Blemish. A beautiful face is a delight to look at, but if it is too perfect it leaves us cold, and even slightly intimidated. It is the little mole, the beauty mark, that makes the face human and lovable. So do not conceal all of your blemishes. You need them to soften your features and elicit tender feelings. inconvenience, nor any surprise or discovery at all.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Symbol: The Raft. Floating out to sea, drifting with the current. Soon the shore-line disappears from sight, and the two of you are alone. The water invites you to forget all cares and worries, to submerge yourself. Without anchor or direction, cut off from the past, you give in to the drifting sensation and slowly lose all restraint. Reversal Some people panic when they sense they are falling into the moment. Often, using spiritual lures will help disguise the increasingly physical nature of the seduction. That is how the lesbian seductress Natalie Barney operated. In her heyday, at the turn of the twentieth century, lesbian sex was immensely transgressive, and women new to it often felt a sense of shame or dirtiness. Barney led them into the physical, but so enveloped it in poetry and mysticism that they relaxed and felt purified by the experience. Today, few people feel repulsed by their sexual nature, but many are uncomfortable with their bodies. A purely physical approach will frighten and disturb them. Instead, make it seem a spiritual, mystical union, and they will take less notice of your physical manipulations. Master the Art of the Bold Move A moment has arrived: your victim clearly desires you, but is not ready to admit it openly, let alone act on it. This is the time to throw aside chivalry, kindness, and coquetry and to overwhelm with a bold move. Don't give the victim time to consider the consequences; create conflict, stir up tension, so that the bold move comes as a great release. Showing hesitation or awkwardness means you are thinking of yourself, as opposed to being overwhelmed by the victim's charms. Never hold back or meet the target halfway, under the belief that you are being correct and considerate; you must be seductive now, not political. One person must go on the offensive, and it is you. The Perfect Climax Through a campaign of deception—the misleading appearance of a transformation into goodness—the rake Valmont laid siege to the virtuous young Présidente de Tourvel until the day came when, disturbed by his confession of love for her, she insisted he leave the château where both of them were staying as guests. He complied. From Paris, however, he flooded her with letters, describing his love for her in the most intense terms; she begged him to stop, and once again he complied. Then, several It afforded, moreover, another advantage: that of weeks later, he paid a surprise visit to the château. In his company Tourvel observing at my leisure her was flushed and jumpy, and kept her eyes averted—all signs of his effect on charming face, more her. Again she asked him to leave. What have you to fear? he replied, I have beautiful than ever, as it proffered the powerful

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  greatly suffered, the love efforts. I shall always deny that I feel any gratitude toward him." Lancelot that had made him get so was mortified but he did not complain. Much later, after undergoing innu-quickly into the bed, made merable further trials, she finally relented and they became lovers. One day him rise from it still more quickly. And in anger he asked her: when she had been abducted by Meleagant, had she heard the equally with mistress and story of the cart, and how he had disgraced knighthood? Was that why she damsel, he said— "Neither had treated him so coldly that day? The queen replied, "By delaying for your folly nor the malice of her who put you there can two steps you showed your unwillingness to climb into it. That, to tell the make me other than I am. truth, is why I didn't wish to see you or speak with you." But do you try to be an honest woman, for you shall never lose that good name through me. " • So Interpretation. The opportunity to do your selfless deed often comes upon saying he rushed out of the you suddenly. You have to show your worth in an instant, right there on room in the greatest wrath the spot. It could be a rescue situation, a gift you could make or a favor you imaginable, and it was long before he returned to see his could do, a sudden request to drop everything and come to their aid. What mistress. However love, matters most is not whether you act rashly, make a mistake, and do some-which is never without thing foolish, but that you seem to act on their behalf without thought for hope, assured him that the greater and more manifest yourself or the consequences. his constancy was proved to At moments like these, hesitation, even for a few seconds, can ruin all be by all these trials, the the hard work of your seduction, revealing you as self-absorbed, unchival-longer and more delightful would be his bliss. • The rous, and cowardly. This, at any rate, is the moral of Chrétien de Troyes's lady, who had seen and twelfth-century version of the story of Lancelot. Remember: not only heard all that passed, was what you do matters, but how you do it. If you are naturally self-absorbed, so delighted and amazed at learn to disguise it. React as spontaneously as possible, exaggerating the ef-beholding the depth and constancy of his love, that fect by seeming flustered, overexcited, even foolish—love has driven you to she was impatient to sec that point. If you have to jump into the cart for Guinevere's sake, make sure him again in order to ask she sees that you do it without the slightest hesitation. h is fo rgiven ess for the sorrow that she had caused him to endure. And as soon as she could meet

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Many economists have forgotten (or never understood) that their central organizing principle, Homo economicus (a.k.a. economic man), is a myth rooted in assumptions about human nature, not a bedrock truth upon which to base a durable economic philosophy. When John Stuart Mill proposed what he admitted to be “an arbitrary definition of man, as a being who inevitably does that by which he may obtain the greatest amount of necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries, with the smallest quantity of labour and physical self-denial,”3 it’s doubtful he expected his “arbitrary definition” to delimit economic thought for centuries. Recall Rousseau’s words: “If I had had to choose my place of birth, I would have chosen a state in which everyone knew everyone else, so that neither the obscure tactics of vice nor the modesty of virtue could have escaped public scrutiny and judgment.” Those who proclaim that greed is simply part of human nature too often leave context unmentioned. Yes, greed is part of human nature. But so is shame. And so is generosity (and not just toward genetic relatives). When economists base their models on their fantasies of an “economic man” motivated only by self-interest, they forget community—the all-important web of meaning we spin around each other—the inescapable context within which anything truly human has taken place. One of the most cited thought experiments in game theory and economics is called The Prisoner’s Dilemma. It presents such an elegant and simple model of reciprocity, some scientists refer to it as “the E. coli of social psychology.” Here’s how it works: Imagine that two suspects are arrested, but the police don’t have enough evidence for a conviction. After the prisoners are separated, each gets the same offer: If you testify against your partner and he remains silent, you’ll go free and he’ll get the full ten-year sentence. If he fesses up but you don’t, you’ll do the time while he walks free. If neither of you talks, you’ll both get six months. If you both talk, you’ll both do five years. Each prisoner must choose to snitch or remain silent. Each is told the other won’t know about his decision. How will the prisoners respond?

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Yes, something is seriously wrong. The American Medical Association reports that some 42 percent of American women suffer from sexual dysfunction, while Viagra breaks sales records year after year. Worldwide, pornography is reported to rake in anywhere from fifty-seven billion to a hundred billion dollars annually. In the United States, it generates more revenue than CBS, NBC, and ABC combined and more than all professional football, baseball, and basketball franchises. According to U.S. News and World Report, “Americans spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, off-Broadway, regional and nonprofit theaters, the opera, the ballet and jazz and classical music performances—combined.”3 There’s no denying that we’re a species with a sweet tooth for sex. Meanwhile, so-called traditional marriage appears to be under assault from all sides—as it collapses from within. Even the most ardent defenders of normal sexuality buckle under its weight, as never-ending bipartisan perp-walks of politicians (Clinton, Vitter, Gingrich, Craig, Foley, Spitzer, Sanford) and religious figures (Haggard, Swaggert, Bakker) trumpet their support of family values before slinking off to private assignations with lovers, prostitutes, and interns. Denial hasn’t worked. Hundreds of Catholic priests have confessed to thousands of sex crimes against children in the past few decades alone. In 2008, the Catholic Church paid $436 million in compensation for sexual abuse. More than a fifth of the victims were under ten years old. This we know. Dare we even imagine the suffering such crimes have caused in the seventeen centuries since a sexual life was perversely forbidden to priests in the earliest known papal decree: the Decreta and Cum in unum of Pope Siricius (c. 385)? What is the moral debt owed to the forgotten victims of this misguided rejection of basic human sexuality? On threat of torture, in 1633, the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church forced Galileo to state publicly what he knew to be false: that the Earth sat immobile at the center of the universe. Three and a half centuries later, in 1992, Pope John Paul II admitted that the scientist had been right all along, but that the Inquisition had been “well-intentioned.” Well, there’s no Inquisition like a well-intentioned Inquisition! Like those childishly intransigent visions of an entire universe spinning around an all-important Earth, the standard narrative of prehistory offers an immediate, primitive sort of comfort. Just as pope after pope dismissed any cosmology that removed humankind from the exalted center of the endless expanse of space, just as Darwin was (and, in some crowds, still is) ridiculed for recognizing that human beings are the creation of natural laws, many scientists are blinded by their emotional resistance to any account of human sexual evolution that doesn’t revolve around the monogamous nuclear family unit.