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 138 of 267 · 20 per page

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  There’s something resigned about the way that sounds to him, and Milton wants to press her on it, but before he can, Abe and Nolan have made their way over. “You can’t sit around here talking all night. We gotta get you high,” Nolan says. Then, noticing Edie, he smiles. “Hello, Edie.” “Nolan,” she drawls. “How you been?” “Oh, you know.” She shrugs. “How’s your sister?” Nolan asks, and something mean catches the underside of his words. But Edie sighs, rises from the ground. Abe snickers to himself nearby. Edie turns her head subtly, her eyes ranging over all their faces. They are not alone. They are at the edge of the crowd. The holler and hoop of the others. The music pressing down on them all, percussive, driving in the way Nolan remembers church music to be. So solid in its presence that he had once asked his mother if it was the Holy Spirit, and she had laughed and said, No, boy , that’s just the drums . Edie’s shoulders open and she tilts her chin up stiffly. “Better every day,” she says firmly. “Glad to hear it,” Nolan says. “Praise the Lord.” “On high,” she says, her voice a wavering song. Then, with a glance at Milton, a failing smile, she slides between Nolan and Abe, and then she is gone. “What was that all about?” Milton asks, but Nolan has already turned away from him toward Abe. “You got it?” “Tate.” “Then I need to see Tate. Don’t go anywhere,” Nolan says directly to Milton, who nods. He, too, leaves. Abe leans against the tree and folds his arms behind his head. Milton’s digging in the ground with his shoe. “When are you going to get it over with?” Abe asks. “Get what over with?” Abe smiles. He comes away from the tree toward Milton, and Milton takes a step back, roots himself against the ground, bracing. Abe leans down and whispers, wet against Milton’s ear: “When are you going to suck his dick? It’s getting pathetic.” “Fuck you, Ahab,” Milton says, but he’s shaken by it. For a moment he worries that Abe’s voice has carried to Nolan, who is just a few feet away. “Oh, it’s not me you want to fuck,” he says, licking his lips. “I’m not the fag.” “I didn’t say you were,” Abe says, calmly, evenly. “I said you wanted to suck Nolan’s dick.” “Please shut up.” “There’s no shame,” he says. “I mean, I don’t blame you. It’s nice.” “Oh, and what do you know?” “Plenty,” he says, and then steps backward. There’s a small drop-off, where you slide down until you’re standing under the crest of the hill.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “Glad to hear it,” Nolan says. “Praise the Lord.” “On high,” she says, her voice a wavering song. Then, with a glance at Milton, a failing smile, she slides between Nolan and Abe, and then she is gone. “What was that all about?” Milton asks, but Nolan has already turned away from him toward Abe. “You got it?” “Tate.” “Then I need to see Tate. Don’t go anywhere,” Nolan says directly to Milton, who nods. He, too, leaves. Abe leans against the tree and folds his arms behind his head. Milton’s digging in the ground with his shoe. “When are you going to get it over with?” Abe asks. “Get what over with?” Abe smiles. He comes away from the tree toward Milton, and Milton takes a step back, roots himself against the ground, bracing. Abe leans down and whispers, wet against Milton’s ear: “When are you going to suck his dick? It’s getting pathetic.” “Fuck you, Ahab,” Milton says, but he’s shaken by it. For a moment he worries that Abe’s voice has carried to Nolan, who is just a few feet away. “Oh, it’s not me you want to fuck,” he says, licking his lips. “I’m not the fag.” “I didn’t say you were,” Abe says, calmly, evenly. “I said you wanted to suck Nolan’s dick.” “Please shut up.” “There’s no shame,” he says. “I mean, I don’t blame you. It’s nice.” “Oh, and what do you know?” “Plenty,” he says, and then steps backward. There’s a small drop-off, where you slide down until you’re standing under the crest of the hill. Abe vanishes. Milton follows him through the veil of gray night, down the grassy hill. “What are you talking about?” “You know what I’m talking about,” Abe says, even as he’s reaching for Milton’s pants to undo them. Milton grabs Abe’s thick wrists, stills him. “What is it you think I know?” “Oh, you have to know,” Abe says. “About Nolan and those girls and me. He had to have told you.” “No,” Milton says, his mouth dry. “I don’t know anything about it.” Abe grips him through his pants, and he’s hard, against his will, he’s hard. Abe starts to pump his dick through his jeans, and he smirks. “Well, last week, he says, hey, bud, I got this girl. She and her friend are a couple of freaks, do you want to come over? I say, yes. I come over. They’re already naked, going at it, licking each other all over like a bunch of cats.” “You’re lying,” Milton says. Abe guffaws, soft and deep. He pushes open Milton’s jeans and grips his bare cock. Abe’s hand is warm and rough. “I’m not. One of the girls gets real antsy about it. Nolan’s already poking around inside of her, and she’s like, no, you gotta stop, you gotta stop. And Nolan is like, let me finish, and I’ll stop.”

• From Querelle (1953)

  Querelle did not reply. The smell of the opium packet lying on the bed disgusted him. And there the rod was already, entering. He recalled the Armenian he had strangled in Beirut, his softness, his lizard- or birdlike gentleness. Querelle asked himself whether he should try to please the executioner with caresses. Having no fear of ridicule now, he might as well try out that sweetness the murdered pederast had exuded. "He did call me the fanciest names I ever did hear, that's for sure. One of the softest, he was, too," he thought. But what gestures of affection were appropriate? What caresses? His muscles did not know which way to bend to obtain a curve. Norbert was crushing him. Slowly he penetrated him up to the point where his belly touched Querelle, whom he was holding close, with sudden, fearsome intensity, his hands clasped round the sailor's belly. He was surprised how warm it was inside of Querelle. He pushed in farther, very carefully, the better to savor his pleasure and his strength. Querelle was astonished at suffering so little pain. · QUERELLE "He's not hurting me. Have to admit he knows how to do 't 1 • , \Vhat he felt was a new nature entering into him and establishing itself there, and he was exquisitely aware of his being changed into a catamite. "\Vhat's he going to say to me afterwards? Hope he doesn't want to talk." In a vague way he felt grateful toward Norbert for protecting him, in thus covering him. A sense of some degree of affection for his executioner occurred to him. He turned his head slightly, hoping, after all, and despite his anxiety, that Norbert might kiss him on the mouth; but he couldn't even manage to see his face. The boss had no tender feelings for him whatsoever, nor would it ever have entered his head that a man could kiss another. Silently, his mouth half-open, Norbert was taking care of it, like of any serious and important business. He was holding Querelle with seemingly the same passion -a female animal shows when holding the dead body of her young offspring-the attitude by which we comprehend what love is : consciousness of the division of what previously was one, of what it is to be thus divided, while you yourself are watching yourself. The two men heard nothing but the sound of each other's breathing. Querelle felt like weeping over the skin he had sloughed and abandoned-where? at the foot of the city wall of Brest?-but his eyes, open in one of the deep folds of the velvet bedcover, remained dry. "Here it comes."

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “What a fine fellow he’s grown! He’s not Seryozha now, but quite full-fledged Sergey Alexyevitch!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling, as he looked at the handsome, broad-shouldered lad in blue coat and long trousers, who walked in alertly and confidently. The boy looked healthy and good-humored. He bowed to his uncle as to a stranger, but recognizing him, he blushed and turned hurriedly away from him, as though offended and irritated at something. The boy went up to his father and handed him a note of the marks he had gained in school. “Well, that’s very fair,” said his father, “you can go.” “He’s thinner and taller, and has grown out of being a child into a boy; I like that,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Do you remember me?” The boy looked back quickly at his uncle. “Yes, _mon oncle_,” he answered, glancing at his father, and again he looked downcast. His uncle called him to him, and took his hand. “Well, and how are you getting on?” he said, wanting to talk to him, and not knowing what to say. The boy, blushing and making no answer, cautiously drew his hand away. As soon as Stepan Arkadyevitch let go his hand, he glanced doubtfully at his father, and like a bird set free, he darted out of the room. A year had passed since the last time Seryozha had seen his mother. Since then he had heard nothing more of her. And in the course of that year he had gone to school, and made friends among his schoolfellows. The dreams and memories of his mother, which had made him ill after seeing her, did not occupy his thoughts now. When they came back to him, he studiously drove them away, regarding them as shameful and girlish, below the dignity of a boy and a schoolboy. He knew that his father and mother were separated by some quarrel, he knew that he had to remain with his father, and he tried to get used to that idea. He disliked seeing his uncle, so like his mother, for it called up those memories of which he was ashamed. He disliked it all the more as from some words he had caught as he waited at the study door, and still more from the faces of his father and uncle, he guessed that they must have been talking of his mother. And to avoid condemning the father with whom he lived and on whom he was dependent, and, above all, to avoid giving way to sentimentality, which he considered so degrading, Seryozha tried not to look at his uncle who had come to disturb his peace of mind, and not to think of what he recalled to him. But when Stepan Arkadyevitch, going out after him, saw him on the stairs, and calling to him, asked him how he spent his playtime at school, Seryozha talked more freely to him away from his father’s presence.

• From Querelle (1953)

  I JEAN GENET especially-gives one the right to kill. At that level, killing is done in "the interests of the State." He was a black among the whites, and the more mysterious, monstrous, beyond the laws of this world, as he owed this singularity to a hardly intentional blackface act, being covered in mere coal dust-but he himself, Querelle, was proof that there is more to coal dust than meets the eye: that it has the power to transform, just by being sprinkled over his skin, the soul of a man. He gained strength by being a blaze of light to himself, an incarnation of night to the others; he gained strength from working in the farthest depths of the ship. Lastly, he was experiencing the gentleness of funereal things, their light solemnity. He came, in the end, to veil his face and wear black mourning garb for his victim, secretly, in his own fashion. TI1ough he had dared to do so on former occasions, today he could not bring himself to recapitulate the details of the murder. On his way back to the bunkers all he said to himself was : "He didn't say anything about the watch." Had the Lieutenant not been trying to involve Querelle in that story he was imagining around Vic's murder, perhaps he would have been more surprised at the way his steward contributed to the strange doings of this day by voluntarily joining the work party in the coal bunkers. But the day was proving_ too distracting as it was for him to attempt an interpretation of this additional mystery. And when the two police inspectors charged with the inquiry on board came to interrogate him about the men, he did not mention his idea that Querelle might be the suspect. However, he found himself in more kinds of trouble: if,- to his fellow officers, the Lieutenant's preciosity of speech and gesture, the sometimes overly sensuous tones of his voice, appeared merely as signs of distinction-accustomed as they were to the smooth and unctuous mannerisms of their blessed families-the inspectors made no mistake and instantly saw what they had here, a faggot. Although he still worked on the contrary impression when dealing with crewmen, either by 91 I QUERRLE stressing the hardness of his metallic voice or by giving exceedingly laconic commands-sometimes in sheer telegraphese-the police officers shook his self-confidence. Faced with them, their authority, he immediately felt guilty and slipped into acting like a distracted girl, giving further indications of his guilt feelings. Mario decided to open the proceedings : "I'm sorry to take up your time, Lieutenant . . . " "And so you should be." That remark, apparently accidental, certainly inadvertent, made him appear both cynical and rude. The inspector thought that he was trying to be funny, and this set him on edge. While the Lieutenant's embarrassment grew, Mario, who had been somewhat intimidated at first, started putting his questions more bluntly. To the fairly obvious

• From Querelle (1953)

  102 I JEAN GENET And when the rather shifty laughter this answer had caused to reverberate round each mason's head had died away: "Because there's times it seems you don't mind taking it, and for my part, I ain't saying I wouldn't enjoy giving it to you." Gil stood up. He had only his shirt on. In his stockinged feet he went across to Thea and then, turning to face him squarely, pale, icy, terrifying, he said: "You? Well, let's get on with it, and don't you back out of it now." And in a continuous movement he swiveled round, pulled up his shirt, bent over and held out his backside. The masons were watching. Only yesterday Gilbert had been a workman like the rest of them, neither more nor less than any of them. They felt no hatred for him, rather a faint sense of friendship. They could not see the desperation in the young man's face. They laughed. Gil straightened up again, looked at each and every one of them and said: "Having a good time, eh? You've decided to gang up on me. Well, who wants to take a shot at it?" The words were spoken in a loud, scathing voice. And Gil repeated his. performance in front of the masons, aggravating it by spreading his buttocks apart with both hands, and by shouting, in a pained voice directed down at the floor, as if through heavy fumes: "Come on! As you can see, I've got hemorrhoids! But never mind, get going! Shove it in! Dig into the shit!" He straightened up again. He was red in the face. One big guy walked up to him. "Come off it, man. If you've got something going with Theo, that's none of our damn business." Thea snickered. Gil looked at him and said, coldly: ''I never let you do it to me. And that's what's riling you." He turned on his heels. Clad in shirt and socks, he went back to the bed and put on the rest of his clothes, in silence. Then he left the room. Close by there was a small wooden shed where

• From Querelle (1953)

  l46 I JEAN GENET "You better go and look for him." In his troubled mind Mario had the obscure notion that he could halt that tidal wave of universal scorn we mentioned and he thought he could already feel its spray on his face-by finding the murderer, finding him out and then turning his body into a mausoleum that would contain the great scorn forever. "I'll try some more. But I do think he's left Brest." "There are no indications that he has. And if he's gone, he can't have gone very far. He's a wanted man. You get out there and fucking well keep your mouth shut and your eyes open, and get the wax out of your ears, kid. Like you gotta do it." Somewhat taken aback, Dede stared at the detective, who was now blushing violently. Mario suddenly felt unworthy of using such speech, whose function, primarily, was the transmis sion of practical detail, but whose real beauty lay in its ability to convey, from speaker to listener, an otherwise inexpressible and almost instant feeling of membership in a secret and enigmatic brotherhood-not of blood, or language, but of the incredible range of that speech, its conflicting yet interweaving strains of monstrous obscenity and great modesty. Having tried to use the argot while not being in a state of grace, Mario had ended up saying nothing, in so many basically stilted words. Now he was just a copper again, but lacking a counterpart (or adversary) he felt diminished. He could only be a true police man at his own outer limits, which was where he carried on his war against the criminal world. He was unable to create, within him self, the sense of consistency and profound unity that is the internal battle of contrary desires. Although he was most defi nitely a policeman, Mario knew that he carried in himself a delinquent, perhaps even a criminal-in any case, the shady character he would have become, had he not chosen to be a policeman-but his betrayal of Tony had cut him off from the criminal world, had made it impossible for him to refer himself to it. Now he had to stand outside and be the judge. No longer

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  But when the other virgins gave place to her to speak, uprisen erect on her feet, she answered in hue of fire: “Modicum, et non videbitis me, et iterum, my beloved sisters, modicum, et vos videbitis me.”2 Then she placed them all seven in front of her, and, merely by her nod, motioned behind her, me and the Lady and the Sage who had stayed. Thus she went on, and I believe not that her tenth step was put on the ground, when with her eyes mine eyes she smote; and with tranquil mien did say to me: “Come more quickly so that if I speak with thee, thou be well placed to listen to me.” Soon as I was with her, as ’twas my duty to be, she said to me: “Brother, wherefore coming now with me, venturest thou not to ask of me?” As to those, who in presence of their betters are too lowly in speech so that they bring not their voice whole to the lips, it happened to me and without full utterance I began: “My Lady, my need you know, and that which is good for it.” And she to me: “From fear and from shame I would that now thou unbind thee, so that thou speak no more like one that is dreaming. Know that the vessel which the serpent broke, was, and is not;3 but let him whose fault it is, believe that God’s vengeance fears no sops.4 Not for all time shall be without heir5 the eagle that left the plumage on the car, whereby it became a monster and then a prey;6 For of a surety I see, and therefore do tell it, stars already nigh, secure from all impediment and from all hindrance, that shall bring us times wherein a five hundred ten and five, sent by God, shall slay the thief, with that giant who sins with her.7 And perchance my prophecy, obscure as Themis and Sphinx, doth less persuade thee, because after their fashion it darkens thy mind; but soon the facts shall be the Naiades that will solve this hard riddle without loss of flocks or of corn.8 Note thou; and even as these words from me are borne, so do thou signify them to those who live that life which is a race unto death; and bear in mind when thou writest them, not to conceal how thou hast seen the tree which now twice hath been despoiled here.9 Whoso robs that or that doth rend, with blasphemy in act offendeth God, who alone for his service did create it holy. For eating of that, in torment and in desire, five thousand years and more the first soul did yearn for him who punished the bite in himself.10 Thy wit sleepeth if it judge not that tree to be for special cause thus lofty and thus transposed at the top.11

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O X X V I Dante, after having seen and recognized the five Noble Thieves, addresses his native city in bitter concentrated sorrow and shame, mingled with heartfelt longings and affection. The calamities which misgovernment, faction, and crime had been preparing for many years before the date of his mystic Vision, and which he himself as Chief Magistrate in 1300 had done his utmost to prevent, are notified in form of prophecy. His own exile, though not directly alluded to, and his hopes of “morning”—of deliverance for Florence and himself, and of justice on their enemies—were nearly connected with those calamities. And when he sees the fate of Evil Counsellors in the Eighth Chasm, to which his Guide now leads him, he “curbs his genius,” and deeply feels he has not to seek that deliverance and justice by fraud. The arts of the fox, on however great a scale, are extremely hateful to him. To employ that superior wisdom, which is the good gift of the Almighty, in deceiving others, for any purpose, is a Spiritual Theft of the most fearful kind; and the sinners, who have been guilty of it, are running along the narrow chasm, each “stolen” from view, wrapt in the Flame of his own Consciousness, and tormented by its burning. Ulysses and Diomed are also here united in punishment. The former, speaking through the Flame, relates the manner and place of his death. JOY, FLORENCE, since thou art so great that over sea and land thou beatest thy wings, and thy name through Hell expands itself! Among the thieves I found five such, thy citizens; whereat shame comes on me, and thou to great honour mountest not thereby. But if the truth is dreamed of near the morning, thou shalt feel ere long what Prato, 1 not to speak of others, craves for thee. And if it were already come, it would not be too early; so were it! since indeed it must be: for it will weigh the heavier on me as I grow older. We departed thence; and, by the stairs which the curbstones had made for us to descend before, my Guide remounted and drew me up; and pursuing our solitary way among the jags and branches of the cliff, the foot without the hand sped not. I sorrowed then, and sorrow now again when I direct my memory to what I saw; and curb my genius more than I am wont, lest it run where Virtue guides it not; so that, if kindly star or something better have given to me the good, I may not grudge myself that gift.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  If you wrote poems about the weather. If you hadn’t belted your dress so tight. If you could talk more intelligently. So what if I thanked my objectifier? So what if so much of my day involves de-escalation? I’ll take my lumps to avoid worse. I should be grateful that I can. I should be grateful that this is what I’m complaining about. I should be grateful that I don’t currently fear for my life. Grateful Grateful Grateful “You’ll miss it when it’s gone.” I was invisible for years. I was quiet, shell-shocked; I didn’t want the attention but maybe would have liked it. In fourth grade, about halfway through the school year, I accidentally went to the wrong classroom and sat there, and no one realized, except me, who burned hot until the end of the day. I didn’t even know which would have been better, being found out or not being found out, it was all too much. This was just before I hit puberty; by sixth grade I was a B-cup and growing fast. It was confusing but exhilarating, because suddenly I was seen. At home it was something we didn’t speak about, and I was afraid to ask for a bra, to admit my burgeoning sexual self, so I just bounced around the school to the delight of the boys who had known me since kindergarten, a good six years before I mattered. At lunchtime I’d go behind the cafeteria with one boy or another and let them fondle me in exchange for cigarettes, which I didn’t smoke (yet) but stored away in a box my grandmother had bought me, but, let’s face it, the attention was its own payment. By seventh grade, I learned to give blow jobs in exchange for wine coolers; the semen and the alcohol slid down my throat with such certainty I didn’t know how to start saying no. By eighth grade I depended on the alcohol and by ninth grade, when I was kicked out of school for drugs, I had no doubt that the only thing I had to offer the world was my body, and the world pretty much confirmed that for a long time. Hey, sexy, why you walking away? Come sit on my lap and tell me why you look so sad. Looking fine, mama! (I was walking home from a day at the emergency room.) Eventually—and not long from now, as my oldest is ten—my daughters will be publicly harassed on the street and I will be powerless to stop it. It is very likely that we could be harassed on the same day, that we will find ourselves back in our safe, charmingly untidy apartment, still tender from the words hurled by strangers. I am incompetent, a failure. For the first time since my oldest was a newborn, I feel unequal to the task of parenting.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Bestial life, not human, pleased me, mule that I was; I am Vanni Fucci, 7 savage beast; and Pistoia was a fitting den for me. And I to the Guide: “Tell him not to budge; and ask what crime thrust him down here, for I saw him once a man of blood and rage.” And the sinner who heard, feigned not; but directed towards me his mind and face, with a look of dismal shame; then he said: “It pains me more that thou hast caught me in the misery wherein thou seest me, than when I was taken from the other life. I cannot deny thee what thou askest: I am put down so far, because I robbed the sacristy of its goodly furniture; and falsely once it was imputed to others. But that thou mayest not joy in this sight, if ever thou escape the dark abodes, open thy ears and hear what I announce: Pistoia first is thinned of Neri; then Florence renovates her people and her laws. Mars brings from Valdimagra a fiery vapour, which is wrapt in turbid clouds, and with impetuous and angry storm a battle shall be fought on Piceno’s field; whence it suddenly shall rend the mist, so that every Bianco shall be wounded by it. 8 And I have said this so that it may grieve thee.” 1. When the sun is in Aquarius, i.e. between January 21 and February 21, he is more in evidence in proportion as the days and nights become more and more equal. This is the usual explanation of these verses. But there is much to be said for Butler’s interpretation (based on the Ottimo): when “the nights are already passing away to the south,” the sun is, of course, proceeding northwards. 2. Hoar-frost melts sooner than snow. 3. The serpents in these verses were suggested by Lucan (Phars. ix). The country by the Red Sea is Arabia. 4. The heliotrope (a stone) was credited with the power of making its wearer invisible. 5. The peculiarities of the phœnix are alluded to by many classical and medieval writers; Dante’s immediate source was evidently Ovid, Metam. xv. 6. Dante would appear to be describing an epileptic fit. 7. In 1293 Vanni Fucci, a Black of Pistoia, robbed the treasure of San Jacopo in the Church of San Zeno, together with two accomplices. The real culprits remained undetected for a year; but in the meantime, a certain Rampino de’ Foresi was suspected of the theft and detained in prison. 8. The Bianchi, having assisted in the expulsion of the Neri from Pistoia (May, 1301), were themselves driven from Florence in November, 1301, when Charles of Valois entered the city. For some time Pistoia remained the stronghold of the Whites. The last lines probably refer to the capture, in 1302, of Serravalle (near Pistoia. Campo Piceno is the tract between Serravalle and Montecatini) by the Florentine and Lucchese Guelfs, under Moroello Malaspina, Marquis of Giovagallo in Valdimagra (the extremity of Lunigiana). For Moroello see Purg. viii, note 5.

• From Querelle (1953)

  44 I JEAN GENET opening the door, most probably on his way to the same place. Gil stayed where he was. Theo closed the door behind him. He went out into the night and fog, dressed in a khaki shirt and blue pants patched with various faded bits of blue, very pleasing to look at; Gil had a similar pair, and valued them highly. He began to undress. He peeled off his shirt, revealing an under shirt from which his muscles bulged through the wide armholes. With his pants round his ankles, bending down, he saw his thighs: they were thick and solid, well developed by bicycling and playing soccer, smooth as marble and just as hard. In his thoughts Gil let his eyes travel up from his thighs to. his belly, to his muscular back, to his arms. He felt ashamed of his strength. Had he taken up the challenge to fight, "on the level" perhaps (no punching, just wrestling) or "no holds barred" (boot and fist), he could certainly have beaten Thea; but that one had a reputation for extreme vindictiveness. Out of sheer rage Thea would have been capable of getting up at night to pad over to Gil's bed and cut his throat. It was thanks to this reputation that he was able to go on insulting others as blithely as he did. Gil refused to run the risk of having his throat cut. He stepped out of his pants. Standing for a moment in front of his bed in his red shorts and white undershirt, he· gently scratched his thighs. He hoped that his buddies would observe his muscles and understand that he had only refused to fight out of generosity, so as not to make an older man look like a fool. He got into bed. His cheek on the bolster, Gil thought of Thea with disgust, that feeling growing more intense as he realized that in days past, as a young man, Thea surely had been a very handsome man. He was still pretty vigorous. Sometimes, at work, he would make awkward, punning references to what he thought was the proverbial virility of the men of the build ing trade. His face, with its hard, manly, still unspoilt features, was covered as with a net of minuscule wrinkles. His dark eyes, sn1all but brilliant, mostly expressed sarcasm, but on certain days Gil had caught them looking at him, overflowing with an

• From Querelle (1953)

  86 I JEAN GENET of trimming. One would have to make up ail kinds of things about them, secret messages, meetings, embraces, stolen kisses." Querelle gave him the same answer he had given to the Captain at Arms: "Well ... " That glance, quick as it was, Querelle caught it. His smile broadened, and in shifting his feet, he performed a quick, seductive "bump." ccso you don't really like working here, eh?" Ha y ing found himself unable to resist such a trite explanation and wording, the officer experienced yet another surge of self loathing and blushed to observe Querelle's black nostrils quiver delicately and the pretty middle part of his upper lip join in with more rapid and more subtle tremors-clearly a most de lightful outward sign of great eff _ orts to restrain a smile. "But no, I do like it. But I was down there to help out a buddy. Colas, in fa ct. " "He could have picked someone else to replace him. You're in a pretty incredible state. Do you really like breathing coal dust all that much?" "No, but ... But then, well, for me ... " "What's that? What do you want to say?" Querelle let his smile shine bright. He said: "Oh, nothing." That nailed the officer's feet to the floor. It only needed a word, a simple order, to send Querelle to the showers. For a few moments they remained very ill at ease, both of them in a state of suspense. It was Querelle who brought matters to a close. "Is that all, sir?" "Yes, that's all. Why ask?" "Oh, no reason." The Lieutenant thought he detected a hint of impertinence in the sailor's question, and in his answer as well, both delivered

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  IN THE BUNK ON SHASTA LAKE, KURT HAD PUT A PILLOW over my face so no one would hear me scream, but now I wonder: Who would have heard me? And if someone had heard, on that boat anchored to an island I didn’t know until today was named for an actual meat market and slaughterhouse, who would have acted? Who would have helped me? From the distance of nearly thirty years, my heart made vulnerable by motherhood and my fierce desire to protect my children, I wonder, How many other women were raped that night on Slaughterhouse Island? I feel certain I was not the only one. In Savannah the summer after the rape, I had sex with more different men in three months than in all the years before and all the years after combined. My unarticulated logic went like this: if I give my body away, over and over, I can prove to myself that sex is my choice—even though, and this seems significant now, I always let the men choose me. Until I was nineteen years old, it never occurred to me that I could do the choosing. Not you, not you, not you. Yes, okay. You. The morning I wrote this essay, I went to my bookshelf and hooked a finger over the red spine of a paperback: I Never Called It Rape. The cover is designed to look as if part of the book has been ripped away, and the pages of my copy are browning on the edges. Published in 1988, the very year I went to Shasta with Kurt, reporter Robin Warshaw’s book revealed the results of Mary Koss’s Ms./NIMH-funded survey. Theirs was the first nationwide study of campus sexual assault ever, and the statistics rattled us all: Twenty-five percent of women in college have been the victims of rape or attempted rape. Eighty-four percent of these victims were acquainted with their assailants. Only 27 percent of women raped identified themselves as rape victims. I bought the book as a senior, when it was a required text for a class called “Self-Defense from the Inside Out.” Holy shit, I thought then. Why didn’t anybody tell me this before?

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  I had found my voice and it was resonating with people who didn’t even know me. For someone who never thought she would ever have a real career doing anything she actually liked, the possibilities started to seem endless. For once, after decades of bad grades, aimless career ambitions, and rejection from jobs, schools, and boys alike, I felt worthy. But I was also going through a nasty breakup from a toxic relationship fueled by the coke and Ecstasy we’d get nearly every weekend at raves, on top of drinking and experimenting with God knows what else. And after the breakup, I had started to spiral out: my friend Jessica called it my “trampage,” and I spent it going to parties alone, staying out until 4 a.m. on weeknights, getting drunk, ending up in random beds and having lots of casual—often mediocre—sex. I justified my lifestyle with my politics: I was independent, and independent women could fuck random men without remorse or judgment. I didn’t get attached either because I was a “cool girl.” I am literally fighting heteronormativity, I told my feminist self—my political identity carefully constructed around defying the norms of what was expected of a straightish single woman. I knew better than to get myself raped. But it happened anyway. I met him at a club, and we were dancing and kissing. His name started with a “K” but I can’t really tell you what it was anymore; I definitely knew at the time. He was tall and handsome. Really tall. And I remember telling him I didn’t want to have sex. “Should we go to your place?” he asked. “Not tonight,” I responded, tipsy. We kept dancing. And kissing. It wasn’t bad, but I was tired and I had an early morning. “I just want to smoke a blunt and massage your feet,” he asked sweetly. I giggled, because I always fucking giggle when I get nervous. “Sure.” I conceded. At that point, I was pretty drunk. We went back to my place, and we smoked weed; I was still drunk. Normally, I just get the spins; that time, I passed out. I woke up to him penetrating me in my own bed, unclear how we had gotten to that point or when we had gone upstairs to my room. I passed out again. I was in and out of consciousness the rest of the night; in the morning, I fully woke up and he was trying again. I said no and forcefully pushed him off me. I looked away, trying not to cry, and noticed that the fucker had even been considerate enough to use condoms.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  As she sat in a corner of the comfortable carriage, that hardly swayed on its supple springs, while the grays trotted swiftly, in the midst of the unceasing rattle of wheels and the changing impressions in the pure air, Anna ran over the events of the last days, and she saw her position quite differently from how it had seemed at home. Now the thought of death seemed no longer so terrible and so clear to her, and death itself no longer seemed so inevitable. Now she blamed herself for the humiliation to which she had lowered herself. “I entreat him to forgive me. I have given in to him. I have owned myself in fault. What for? Can’t I live without him?” And leaving unanswered the question how she was going to live without him, she fell to reading the signs on the shops. “Office and warehouse. Dental surgeon. Yes, I’ll tell Dolly all about it. She doesn’t like Vronsky. I shall be sick and ashamed, but I’ll tell her. She loves me, and I’ll follow her advice. I won’t give in to him; I won’t let him train me as he pleases. Filippov, bun shop. They say they send their dough to Petersburg. The Moscow water is so good for it. Ah, the springs at Mitishtchen, and the pancakes!”

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "I had no dignity tonight," Beauty protested. "O yes, you did, you had a great deal of it," Alexi smiled. "But to continue, at this time, I had yielded only to my stable boy Lord and to the Queen. And once I was in her hands, I forgot my stable boy Lord completely. I was the Queen's property. I thought of my limbs, my buttocks, my penis, as hers. But I to truly yield, I had to experience much greater exposure and discipline..." PRINCE ALEXI'S EDUCATION CONTINUES I WON'T tell you the details of my training with the Queen, how I learned to be her valet, my struggles with her annoyance. All this you'll learn in your training with the Prince for in his love for you he intends to make you his maidservant clearly. But these things are nothing when one is devoted to the master or mistress. "I had to learn serenity in facing humiliations that brought others into play, and this was not easy. "My first days with the Queen were mostly training in her bed chamber. I found myself rushing as diligently as Prince Gerald had to obey her slightest whim, and, proving very clumsy with her clothes, was often severely punished. "But the Queen did not want me merely for these servile tasks which other slaves had been trained to perform to perfection. She wanted to study me, to break me down and make of me a toy for her complete amusement." "A toy," Beauty whispered. She had felt like a toy in the Queen's hands exactly. "And it amused her greatly in the first weeks to see me serve other Princes and Princesses for her pleasure. The first I had to serve was Prince Gerald. He was now nearing the end of his service, but he did not know that, and he was in a paroxysm of jealousy at my reformation. The Queen, however, had splendid ideas for rewarding him and soothing him, and at the same time developing me according to her wishes. "Daily he was brought to her chambers and bound with his hands over his head against the wall so that he might watch me struggling with my tasks, and this was a torment to him until he realized that one of my tasks would be to give him pleasure. "I was being driven to distraction then by the Queen's paddle, the flat of her hand, and the struggle to learn grace and accomplishment. All day I fetched, laced shoes, bound girdles, brushed hair, polished jewels, and performed any other menial tasks the Queen wished, my buttocks forever sore, my thighs and calves marked from the paddle, my face stained with tears as any other slave in the castle.

• From Querelle (1953)

  204 I JEAN GENET this narrow path, but he was amazed at his own cunning, in going along with it, yet being so successful in concealing his own secret desire. At least he felt a slight sense of shame at performing with a real be-man, without recourse to the pretext of superior strength, an act which he might have dared to try out with, or on, a pederast without letting himself down, or with any man but then only with the aid of some irresistible pretext. (4So you don't believe me?" Now Querelle could have simply replied ''Yes, I do," thus stopping the game right there. He smiled: (4Horseshit! Tell that to the Marines." ''I swear, it's true." "You're nuts. I don't believe you. It 's too cold." "Why don't you see for yourself. Put your hand there." "No ... I'm telling you, no. You don't even have one, it must've frozen off." They had stopped again. They looked at each other, smiling, defying their smiles. Mario raised his eyebrows in an exagger ated fashion, wrinkling his forehead, attempting the expression of a young boy totally astonished by the fact of having an erection at such an hour, in such a spot, and for so little reason. (4T h 't '11 " ouc 1 , you see . . . Querelle did not move. By slowly relaxing his smile, which made his upper lip tremble, he caused it to appear more subtle, more mocking than before. "No, I won't. I'm telling you, it's impossible." Querelle stretched out his hand, extended his fingers and hesitantly touched Mario's crotch, but only the material of his trousers. (That hesitation made both of them shiver with anticipation.) Although both of them knew the game they were playing, they still kept it within the bounds of innocence. They were afraid of abandoning themselves to the truth too precipitately, to rend its veil too soon. Slowly, still smiling, to allow Mario to

• From Querelle (1953)

  Mario swallowed a curse. If he chose to go out alone, unaccompanied by his habitual companion (that young policeman who had once said to the admiring Dede : "What a handsome pair· you two are"-and had thus managed to make the boy see both of them together a-s a mightY sexual entity) , he did so to erase the shame of his first fright and to exorcise it by audacity. Mario decided to hit the streets at night, in the fog, the best time and place for a quick murder. He strode along purposefully, hands in pockets of his gaberdine coat, or else smoothing and puiling tight the fingers of his brown leather gloves-a gesture connecting him straight back to the invincible machinery of the police. The first time out he didn't even pack his revolver, hoping, by such extreme candor and innocence, to disarm the hypothetical dockers who were after his ass, but the following day he did take it along; it was, after all, a necessary adjunct to what he himself thought of as his courage-his belief in a system of order symbolized by the gun. When he wanted to arrange a meeting with Dede, he traced a street name on the steamy windowpane of his office in the police station, and when 157 I QUERELLE the street kid ( who naively persisted in his efforts to ferret out the place where the bad guys were sitting in judgment of the detective) walked past, he could simply read the letters backwards and thus be informed. As for Gil, he was busy rerunning the movie of his life, starting out from the murder and cranking it backwards, in order to justify his deed and make it appear inevitable. By reasoning in this fashion : "If I had never run into Roger . . . if I hadn't come to Brest . . . if . . . ," etc., he arrived at the conclusion that although the crime had taken its course through his arm, his body, his life, its true source lay outside of himself. This method of understanding his deed forced Gil into fatalism, which was a further obstacle to his desire to transcend the crime by sheer, deliberate force of will. At last, one night, he left the penitentiary. He managed to reach Roger's house. The darkness was total, further intensified by the fog. Brest lay sleeping. Without making any mistakes, using a couple of cunning detours, Gil arrived in Recouvrance without having encountered a soul. Standing in &ont of the house he realized, with some apprehension, that he had not yet thought of a way to make his presence known to Roger. Then, suddenly, eager to know if this trick would work, he smiled for the first time in three days, a quiet smile, and then started whistling, quietly: I-I e was a happy bandit, Nothing did he fear, His voice in the maquis Made the gendarmes weep . . .

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “I heard a rumor,” he said. “About you and . . . well, I heard a rumor that you’re a dyke now. Is that true?” Marta flinched. It was such a hard word. “Don’t be a dog, Peter. Don’t be ugly.” “Wow,” he said. “I can’t believe it. No wonder. Wow.” He looked at her with pity and shock. He looked at her in a way that she did not deserve to be looked at, she thought. She swallowed thickly. She set her jaw. She turned to him. “You do not get to talk to me that way,” she said. “You do not get to treat me like that.” “I’m just saying, I had no idea. That whole time we were together, you just. Wow.” “It was not about you,” she said. “It was never about you.” Peter put his hand on the door and pushed it open. He shook his head sadly, ruefully. “This will break Irina’s heart,” he said. “This will just break her heart.” When Peter left, Marta sat in her car for a long time. Her eyes stung. Her lip trembled. Her elbows ached. Her head hurt. She got out of the car and went into the house. She ran a tub full of water and got into it with her clothes still on. She was like that when Sigrid got home and found her. “Baby, what’s wrong?” Sigrid asked from the doorway. “What’s happened here?” It was not chastising. It was not harsh. It was a gentle question. “Peter came by,” she said. “His mother is dying.” “Oh, that’s awful,” Sigrid said. She kneeled next to the tub and ran her hands through Marta’s hair. Her expression was concerned. Marta looked at her. “He found out about me,” she said. “I don’t know how, but he found out.” “Found out what?” Sigrid asked. “About me. About us. He found out.” “Oh,” Sigrid said. She looked a little surprised and a little perplexed. “I’m sorry, baby. I don’t understand.” “He didn’t know. He didn’t know about us, and now he does. And he . . . well, he didn’t know.” “That’s okay,” she said. “I didn’t want him to know,” Marta said. The water had gone cold and her clothes were scratching up her skin. “Well, now he does. But it’s okay.” “It’s not okay,” Marta said, and she shivered. “He’s going to tell everyone.” “Who is this everyone? Who?” Sigrid asked, kissing Marta’s cheek and her forehead. But Marta felt like a part of herself was streaming into the world, spreading all over without her permission. She felt something important was escaping. “Everyone,” she said wildly, and she just kept saying that while Sigrid held her hand under the water.