Shame

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  How ‘Religion’ became a False Universal It is well known that the concept of ‘religion’ varies from one historical and cultural context to another. Some historical examples highlight the problems in assuming that the term ‘religion’ is an unproblematically valid universal category. Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican inscriptions do not contain any words that can plausibly be translated as ‘religion’. 10 Yet following the Spanish colonisation of this region, the Spanish term religión seems to have been used by early modern ethnographers working in seventeenth-century Mesoamerica as a self-evidently appropriate term to refer to a variety of indigenous cultural practices, which were then assimilated into this western cultural phenomenon. A European template was thus imposed on indigenous Mesoamerican ways of thinking. 11 A century later, Britain established a commercial base in India, which eventually led to the colonisation of the region. Once more, western observers, noting certain Indian cultural beliefs and practices that did not easily fit into existing categories (such as ‘philosophy’), designated these as forms of ‘religion’, and created the English term ‘Hinduism’ to enfold the variegated phenomena they witnessed in the Indian religious landscape. 12 Many have argued that the very idea of Hinduism was a construct of the colonial enterprise, ‘fabricated in the service of foreign interests, whether by European Orientalists or the British colonial regime.’ 13 Others have argued that colonialism gave a new significance to indigenous Indian religions as a means of preserving Indian cultural identity during the colonial period, thus encouraging the idea that Hinduism was a multi-dimensional unitary faith. To this day, Hindu scholars regularly (and rightly) complain that a group of Asian cultural beliefs and practices are still being assimilated to European categories. The same pattern can be seen in the western construction of ‘Confucianism’ as a religion, when it is better seen as a philosophy of life than as a religion . 14 Yet again, an indigenous cultural movement was forced into the preconceived ethnocentric framework of a colonial power, which misrepresents its historical particularities (above all, its own understanding and experience of the nature and social function of ‘religion’) as normative and universal. The universal concept of ‘religion’ is ultimately an outdated remnant of a colonial past, and needs to be recalibrated and rehabilitated, if not set aside as unhelpful and unreliable. Defining Religion: The Problem of Platonism It is often assumed that the recognition of a supernatural realm or transcendent dimension to life (such as belief in God) is a distinct characteristic of religion, and that the term ‘religious’ can be applied to anyone holding such a view. In conversation with Gary Wolf (the journalist who introduced the phrase ‘New Atheism’ in 2006), Richard Dawkins identified the key issue with religious believers as ‘supernaturalism’ – belief in something that lies beyond the empirical world. Yet Dawkins’ use of the word ‘supernatural’ is puzzling.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  that women had a greater moral seriousness than men because of their constant consciousness of death in childbirth. [128] Right or not, Mather was expressing a radical turnaround in the ancient Christian stereotype of women as naturally more disordered than men and more open to Satan’s temptations. Back in England, the Oxford don Richard Allestree anticipated Mather’s remarks by observing in 1673 that, amid his devotional publishing (he was the anonymous author of the wildly successful Whole Duty of Man ), he considered that women had hearkened to his message far more than men, and that ‘the reputation of Religion is more kept up by women than men’. Like Astell a few decades later, Allestree regretted Protestantism’s rejection of the ‘angelical’ state of celibacy – as a result some suspected that, behind the anonymity of his prolific works, a female author was concealed. [129] By the seventeenth century, even Counter-Reformation clergy began to look past the misogynistic clichés of the past and notice that women were easier to teach than men – and might even shame men into behaving better. [130] As women appeared to show themselves more devout than their menfolk (and, gratifyingly to ministers and priests, often more appreciative of the clergy’s toil), centuries of disparaging theological comments based on medical discussion of humours and a continuous spectrum of gender began to look less convincing. So, in quiet ways, a radical reconstruction of the relationship of the sexes was unfolding, although in the process it opened up a more precise divide between male and female identity. The joint story of Reformation and Counter-Reformation embraces successful female subversions of patriarchy and discreet adaptations of public ideals to reality. It is a dialogue between theology and circumstance: sometimes Christian theory transformed situations, while sometimes theologians found ways of dealing with and explaining situations in danger of escaping their control. At the end of it, around 1700, Western Christianity was becoming a worldwide religion in both its confessional forms, thanks to the expansion of colonial empires. It was discovering how disconcertingly different other long-successful societies might be throughout the world. Christianity was also about to find itself much less able to set agendas in matters of sexuality, gender and marriage. Part Five NEW STORIES

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Catholic priests faced a new reality of celibacy, leaving many struggling to cope with the emotional consequences in their own lives. Some took out their frustrations and anguish on vulnerable young people. Piarist expansion of schools for the poor offered the opportunities – far more than ever before. Power over the young was there for clergy to misuse, filling emotional chasms. In the background was the ongoing din of the Reformation struggle between Catholics and Protestants. Catholic layfolk were being taught anew to revere priests as a caste apart, marked out by celibacy; when some clergy misused this special status, Catholic Church authorities naturally felt defensive under Protestant attacks. They had little sense of their own structural problem, and no developed procedure to deal with it. So the poisonous silence of unintended consequences persisted through embarrassment and shame, but also for lack of any right analysis. It was easy to blame just a few bad apples, and so it has long remained. COMMON CONCERNS : THE REFORMATION OF

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  6 While Coyne concedes that mātauranga Māori ‘contains “practical knowledge,” like how to catch eels, that could conceivably be inserted into science courses,’ the natural sciences are universal, and not limited to or determined by any national or tribal identity. It made no sense to Coyne that contemporary scientific understandings of the origins of the universe were being depicted as a western ‘creation myth’ and placed on an equal level with its ‘indigenous’ alternatives in New Zealand. Mātauranga Māori is important to an understanding of the cultural history of New Zealand and ought therefore to be taught in anthropology or sociology courses – but not in science. Coyne makes an entirely fair point in stressing that the fundamental method of the natural sciences is universal. In one sense, ‘scientific’ knowledge is defined by the manner of its acquisition and validation, not the social, tribal, religious, cultural or gendered identity of scientific practitioners. To be a natural scientist is to step inside this specific understanding of human knowledge production. Yet there is a deeply problematic historical dimension to this matter which seems to have been overlooked here – namely, the role of the natural sciences in the British colonial endeavour. To appreciate the problem, let us consider a lecture delivered to the Anthropological Society in London on 1 March 1864 by Charles Darwin’s colleague (and occasional rival) Alfred Russel Wallace. Alluding to the subtitle of Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), 7 Wallace made the following statement: It is the same great law of ‘the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life,’ which leads to the inevitable extinction of all those low and mentally undeveloped populations with which Europeans come in contact. The red Indian in North America, and in Brazil; the Tasmanian, Australian and New Zealander in the southern hemisphere, die out, not from any one special cause, but from the inevitable effects of an unequal mental and physical struggle. The intellectual and moral, as well as the physical qualities of the European are superior; the same powers and capacities which have made him rise in a few centuries from the condition of the wandering savage with a scanty and stationary population to his present state of culture and advancement, with a greater average longevity, a greater average strength, and a capacity of more rapid increase, – enable him when in contact with the savage man, to conquer in the struggle for existence, and to increase at his expense. 8 This statement raises difficult and disturbing questions about how Darwin’s evolutionary ideas were interpreted within British colonial thinking and practice concerning the role of ‘favoured races’ in Australia and New Zealand.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  He did the best he could to look like he believed it, then slunk off to Rob's office to sulk with a cocktail. "Chef de Cuisine: Paul Kelly" was what it said on the bottom of every menu— right below the words "Executive Chef: Rob Holland." Rob, he knew, had put that there as a way of acknowledging that it was Paul who did all the work, that it was Paul who was likely to be there should a customer ask to see the chef, Paul who did the ordering, the expediting, the scheduling, the setting of specials, and, increasingly, the dirty work of screwing people over when circumstances required. He lied to purveyors, telling them that the check was on its way; lied to customers who asked if Rob was around, replying "He just stepped out a few minutes ago" when, of course, he hadn't seen Rob in days. He lied to the food mags and VIPs, loyally insisting that "the chef designs every facet of the menu" and that he "supervises every detail"; and, increasingly, he lied to the cooks. He lied every time he told them that things were okay, that they were "just having a few slow weeks." This was what a chef de cuisine did, after all, wasn't it? When he found himself bridling at the prospect of committing some new outrage on behalf of Rob Holland Incorporated, Paul liked to picture himself as loyal underboss, with Rob as capo. You did what you had to do. Once in, never out. Semper fi, Cosa Nostra forever. Someday, he'd have his own chef de cuisine and would leave the scrounging, the hustling, the lying, the bloodletting, and the bulk of the cooking, to him. That was the way it was. That was the way it would always be. He didn't mind toiling in obscurity. That wasn't the hard part. He didn't need his name on the damn menu. When he and Rob had started out at Red House, a thirty-five-seat storefront with no liquor license on the Lower East Side, it had been just the two of them and a dishwasher. Rob had worked saute, Paul was at the grill. When things got jammed, the dishwasher would step in and help plate the veggies. The kitchen had been cramped, swelteringly hot, and caked with ancient dirt. Roaches had streamed through every crack in the grease-browned walls and the floor behind the ranges, and the dishwasher hadn't been cleaned in thirty years. But Paul had never felt so pure. Merry Motherfucking Christmas, thought Paul, squeezing his temples between thumb and forefinger. Poor bastards, he thought. Poor me. Poor Rob, even. Rob, who only wanted to be loved. Paul didn't—just couldn't—hold Rob's rather meteoric rise against him. Okay, maybe he wasn't the greatest chef in the world. But he was a good cook. And to Paul, that was what mattered.

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  Old moth-eaten tigress shit sure turn into a fag eater.... So this citizen, being an arty and crafty fag, begins making costume jewelry and jewelry sets. Every rich old gash in Greater New York wants he should do her sets, and he is making money, 21, El Morocco, Stork, but no time for sex, and all the time worrying about his rep..., He begins playing the horses, supposed to be something manly about gambling God knows why, and he figures it will build him up to be seen at the track. Not many fags play the horses, and those that play lose more than the others, they are lousy gamblers plunge in a losing streak and hedge when they win... which being the pattern of their lives.... Now every child knows there is one law of gambling: winning and losing come in streaks. Plunge when you win, fold when you lose. (I once knew a fag dip into the till -- not the whole two thousand at once on the nose win or Sing Sing. Not our Gertie... Oh no a deuce at a time...) "So he loses and loses and lose some more. One day he is about to put a rock in a set when the obvious occur. 'Of course, I'll replace it later.' Famous last words. So all that winter, one after the other, the diamonds, emeralds, pearls, rubies and star sapphires of the haut monde go in hock and replaced by queer replicas.... "So the opening night of the Met this old hag appear as she thinks resplendent in her diamond tiara. So this other old whore approach and say, 'Oh, Miggles, you're so smart... to leave the real ones at home.... I mean we're simply mad to go around tempting fate.' " 'You're mistaken, my dear. These are real.' " 'Oh but Miggles dahling, they're not.... I mean ask your jeweler.... Well just ask anybody . Haaaaaa.' "So a Sabbath is hastily called. (Lucy Bradshinkel, look to thy emeralds. ) All these old witches examining their rocks like a citizen find leprosy on himself. " 'My chicken blood ruby!' " 'My black oopalls!' Old bitch marry so many times so many gooks and spics she don't know her accent from her ass.... " 'My stah sahphire!' shriek a poule de luxe . 'Oh it's all so awfull' " 'I mean they are strictly from Woolworth's....' " 'There's only one thing to do. I'm going to call the police,' says a strong-minded, outspoken old thing; and she clump across the floor on her low heels and calls the fuzz." "Well, the faggot draws a deuce; and in the box he meets this cat who is some species of cheap hustler, and love sets in or at least a facsimile thereof convince the parties inna first and second parts.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Across the Catholic world, the outwardly celibate, claustrophobically single-sex world of the clergy had become a haven for gay men terrified of their sexuality: a ready-made alibi with the bonus of traditional prestige. In the absence of any moral code to make sense of their contradictions, their activities were liable to be full of self-hatred and devoid of anything resembling a moral compass. [16] Trujillo’s story is put in the shade by Pope John Paul’s protégé, the priest Marcial Maciel Degollado, who had grown up while Mexico was riven by violent confrontation between an anti-clerical government and defiant popular Catholicism; he was the founder of the militantly proselytizing and fervently orthodox Legion of Christ, which spread far beyond his native country. Persistent accusations of Maciel’s sexual abuse, ranging from paedophilia to adult sexual assault to the fathering of children, were ignored in Rome up to the very end of John Paul II’s long pontificate. Not so under his successor Benedict

• From The Girls (2016)

  The Ritz crackers, earnest groups crammed around bowls of watery ice. Talking SDS and comparing reading lists. I half shrugged, the barest shift of a shoulder. He seemed to understand this gesture for the falsehood it was. “Maybe I should write down my number for you,” Tom said. “It’s the hall phone, but you can just ask for me.” I could hear the stark billow of Suzanne’s laughter carrying in the air. “That’s okay,” I said. “There’s no phone here, anyway.” “They aren’t nice,” Tom said, catching my eyes. He looked like a rural preacher after a baptism, the wet pants clinging to his legs, his earnest stare. “What do you know?” I said, an alarming heat rising in my cheeks. “You don’t even know them.” Tom made an abortive gesture with his hands. “It’s a trash heap,” he said, sputtering, “can’t you see that?” He indicated the crumbling house, the tangle of overgrown vegetation. All the junked-out cars and oil drums and picnic blankets abandoned to the mold and the termites. I saw it all, but I didn’t absorb anything: I’d already hardened myself to him and there was nothing else to say. —Tom’s departure allowed the girls to deepen into their natures without the fracture of an outsider’s gaze. No more peaceful, sleepy chatter, no balmy stretches of easy silence. “Where’s your special friend?” Suzanne said. “Your old pal?” Her hollow affect, her leg jiggling even though her expression was blank. I tried to laugh like they did, but I didn’t know why I got unnerved at the thought of Tom returning to Berkeley. He was right about the junk in the yard, there was more of it, and maybe Nico really could have been hurt, and what then? I noticed all of them had gotten skinnier, not just Donna, a brittle quality to their hair, a dull drain behind the eyes. When they smiled, I glimpsed the coated tongues seen on the starving. Without consciously doing so, I pinned a lot of hope on Russell’s return. Wanting him to weigh down the flapping corners of my thoughts. “Heartbreaker,” Russell catcalled when he caught sight of me. “You run off all the time,” he said, “and it breaks our hearts when you leave us behind.” I tried to convince myself, seeing the familiarity of Russell’s face, that the ranch was the same, though when he hugged me, I saw something smeared at his jawline. It was his sideburns. They were not stippled, like hair, but flat. I looked closer. They were drawn on, I saw, with some kind of charcoal or eyeliner. The thought disturbed me; the perverseness, the fragility of the deception. Like a boy I’d known in Petaluma who shoplifted makeup to cover his pimples. Russell’s hand worked my neck, passing along a fritter of energy. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or not. And how immediately the group jolted to attention at his arrival, trooping in his wake like ragged ducklings.

• From The Girls (2016)

  Awake all night, as if my labored vigil would protect us, my hours of suffering a one-to-one offering. It seemed unbelievable that Tamar or my father didn’t notice how pale I was, how suddenly desperate for their company. They expected life would march on. Things had to be done, and I got shunted along their logistics with the numbness that had taken the place of whatever had made me Evie. My love of cinnamon hard candies, what I dreamed—that had all been exchanged for this new self, the changeling who nodded when spoken to and rinsed and dried the dinner plates, hands reddening in the hot water. I had to pack up my room at my mother’s house before I went to boarding school. My mother had ordered me the Catalina uniform—I found two navy skirts and a middy blouse folded on my bed, the fabric stinking of industrial cleaner, like rental tablecloths. I didn’t bother to try on the clothes, shoving them into a suitcase on top of tennis shoes. I didn’t know what else to pack, and it didn’t seem to matter. I stared at the room in a trance. All my once beloved things—a vinyl diary, a birthstone charm, a book of pencil drawings—seemed valueless and defunct, drained of an animating force. It was impossible to picture what type of girl would ever have liked those things. Ever worn a charm around her wrist or written accounts of her day. “You need a bigger suitcase?” my mother said from my doorway, startling me. Her face looked rumpled, and I could smell how much she’d been smoking. “You can take my red one, if you want.” I thought that she’d notice the change in me even if Tamar or my father couldn’t. The baby fat in my face disappeared, a hard scrape to my features. But she hadn’t mentioned anything. “This is fine,” I said. My mother paused, surveying my room. The mostly empty suitcase. “The uniform fits?” she asked. I hadn’t even tried it on, but I nodded, wrung into a new acquiescence. “Good, good.” When she smiled, her lips cracked and I was suddenly overcome. —I was shoving books into the closet when I found two milky Polaroids, hidden under a stack of old magazines. The sudden presence of Suzanne in my room: her hot feral smile, the pudge of her breasts. I could call up disgust for her, hopped up on Dexedrine and sweating from the effort of butchery, and at the same time be pulled in by a helpless drift—here was Suzanne. I should get rid of the photo, I knew, the image already charged with the guilty air of evidence. But I couldn’t. I turned the picture over, burying it in a book I’d never read again. The second photo was of the smeary back of someone’s head, turning away, and I stared at the image for a long moment before I realized the person was me.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  147 o In Constantinople, he studied biblical exegesis with the great theologian Gregory of Nazianzus. o Jerome spent three years as the secretary and counselor to Pope Damasus I, one of the most powerful of the early bishops of Rome. Damasus assigned him the task of translating the entire bible into Latin in order to provide a standard text (the Vulgate) to replace the many “Old Latin” versions. o Jerome moved to Bethlehem in 389, where he lived as a hermit until his death in 419/20. Among his many writings, his Lives of Eminent Men is an indispensable biographical source for early Christian history. His commentaries on biblical books also show careful attention to historical realities and linguistic accuracy. o Jerome’s towering achievement was undoubtedly the Vulgate translation of the Old Testament (from Hebrew) and the New Testament (from Greek), which provided the standard text for medieval Latin Christianity. • The final doctor, Augustine of Hippo (354–430), is by far the best known man of late antiquity because of his autobiographical Confessions (composed in 397/98). It is a remarkable composition, both as the first truly introspective analysis of a personal life in antiquity and as a sustained song of praise to God. o Born in North Africa of a pagan father and a devout Christian mother (Monica), Augustine was educated in rhetoric and lived what he later considered a dissolute life, siring an illegitimate son. o He converted to the dualistic religion called Manichaeism (a combination of Persian and Christian Gnostic systems), attracted by its ascetical appeal. He embraced its radical dualism between matter and spirit, which seemed to offer Augustine’s intellectual soul some liberation from his passion- driven body.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  When I walked into the house I could hear voices coming from upstairs. I climbed to the top of the steps where my mom’s bedroom was. Her door was open and immediately I realized that was where the voices were coming from. There was my moms, and she had left her bedroom door open not thinking that her little teenager would be home early, and I watched her. I stood there and watched her. At that particular time she just happened to be tricking with two men at the same time. If one was in her mouth, the other was in her cunt. If one was in her cunt, the other was in her ass, or some type of sexual combination. One would have thought my moms was made out of rubber the way they had her stretched and positioned all over the place. The shit looked like it hurt the way they were blowin’ her back out. I don’t know why, but I just continued to stand there watching. I couldn’t move. Then all of a sudden my mother turned around and faced the door. I guess she just had a feeling that someone was watching her. Someone was watching her. That someone was me, her daughter. I’ll never—I mean, never—forget the look in her eyes when they locked with mine. By then I think the tears that had welded in my eyes were running down my cheeks. Without saying a word, I curved around to the left, where my bedroom was, went into my room, and slammed the door behind me. I made it over to my trash can just in time to throw up. I had already thrown up twice at school. But then it was because my stomach was sick, this time it was because my heart was. Of course, Naomi continued fucking those two men. She had to. Everybody knows if dem niggas don’t bust a nut, a ho don’t get paid. Once the two trick niggas finally left, I heard the front door close, and then I heard Naomi come back upstairs. Please don’t come in my room, I remember thinking. Please don’t come in my room. I was embarrassed for her. I knew my moms was a whore, everybody knew she was a whore, but to see it with my own eyes was just too much for me to take. My moms didn’t come into my room, but I could have sworn I heard her standing outside my door. She never came in, though.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “I just don’t get it,” Zav went on, addressing Sasha, “why you stay with Julian. You’re too hot for him.” Sasha giggled, though I glanced back and saw her labor to calculate a response. “I mean, she’s a babe,” Zav said to Julian, “am I right?” Julian smiled what I thought of as the smile of an only son, someone who believed he would always get what he wanted. He probably always had. The three of them were lit like a scene from a movie I was too old to watch. “But Sasha and I know each other, don’t we?” Zav smiled at her. “I like Sasha.” Sasha held a basic smile on her face, her fingers tidying the pile of torn label. “She doesn’t like her tits,” Julian said, pulsing the back of her neck, “but I tell her they’re nice.” “Sasha!” Zav affected upset. “You have great tits.” I flushed, hurrying to finish the dishes. “Yeah,” Julian said, his hand still on her neck. “Zav would tell you if you didn’t.” “I always tell the truth,” Zav said. “He does,” Julian said. “That’s true.” “Show me,” Zav said. “They’re too small,” Sasha said. Her mouth was tight like she was making fun of herself, and she shifted in her seat. “They’ll never sag, so that’s good,” Julian said. Tickling her shoulder. “Let Zav see.” Sasha’s face reddened. “Do it, babe,” Julian said, a harshness in his voice making me glance over. I caught Sasha’s eye—I told myself the look in her face was pleading. “Come on, you guys,” I said. The boys turned with amused surprise. Though I think they were tracking where I was all along. That my presence was a part of the game. “What?” Julian said, his face snapping into innocence. “Just cool it,” I told him. “Oh, it’s fine,” Sasha said. Laughing a little, her eyes on Julian. “What exactly are we doing?” Julian said. “What exactly should we ‘cool’?” He and Zav snorted—how quickly all the old feelings came back, the humiliating interior fumble. I crossed my arms, looking to Sasha. “You’re bothering her.” “Sasha’s fine,” Julian said. He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear—she smiled faintly and with effort. “Besides,” he went on, “are you really someone who should be lecturing us?” My heart tightened. “Didn’t you, like, kill someone?” Julian said. Zav sucked his teeth, then let loose a nervous laugh. My voice sounded strangled. “Of course not.” “But you knew what they were going to do,” Julian said. Grinning with the thrill of capture. “You were there with Russell Hadrick and shit.” “Hadrick?” Zav said. “Are you shitting me?” I tried to rein in the hysterical lean coming into my voice. “I was barely around.” Julian shrugged. “That’s not what it sounded like.” “You don’t really believe that.” But there was no entry point in any of their faces. “Sasha said you told her so,” Julian went on.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “It’s not broken,” I said inanely. “You’re a fucking nutcase,” he muttered. He ran his hands along the body of the bike and held a shard of orange metal up to Peter. “You believe this shit?” When Peter looked at me, his face solidified with pity, which was somehow worse than anger. I was like a child, warranting only abbreviated emotions. Connie appeared in the doorway. “Knock knock,” she called, the keys hanging from a crooked finger. She took in the scene: Henry squatting by the motorcycle; Peter’s arms crossed. Henry let out a harsh laugh. “Your friend’s a real bitch,” he said, shooting me a look. “Evie knocked it over,” Peter said. “You fucking kids,” Henry said. “Get a babysitter next time, don’t hang around with us. Fuck.” “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice small, but nobody was listening. Even after Peter helped Henry right the motorcycle, peering closely at the break—“It’s just cosmetic,” he announced, “we can fix it pretty easy”—I understood that other things had broken. Connie studied me with cold wonder, like I’d betrayed her, and maybe I had. I’d done what we were not supposed to do. Illuminated a slice of private weakness, exposed the twitchy rabbit heart. 3The owner of the Flying A was a fat man, the counter cutting into his belly, and he leaned on his elbows to track my movements around the aisles, my purse banging against my thighs. There was a newspaper open in front of him, though he never seemed to turn the page. He had a weary air of responsibility about him, both bureaucratic and mythological, like someone doomed to guard a cave for all eternity. I was alone that afternoon. Connie probably fuming in her small bedroom, playing “Positively 4th Street” with wounded, righteous indulgence. The thought of Peter was gutting—I wanted to skim over that night, calcifying my shame into something blurry and manageable, like a rumor about a stranger. I’d tried to apologize to Connie, the boys still worrying over the motorcycle like field medics. I even offered to pay for repairs, giving Henry everything I had in my purse. Eight dollars, which he’d accepted with a stiff jaw. After a while, Connie said it was best if I just went home. —I’d gone back a few days later—Connie’s father answered the door almost instantly, like he’d been waiting for me. He usually worked at the dairy plant past midnight, so it was odd to see him at home. “Connie’s upstairs,” he said. On the counter behind him, I saw a glass of whiskey, watery and catching the sunlight. I was so focused on my own plans that I didn’t pick up the air of crisis in the house, the unusual information of his presence. Connie was lying on her bed, her skirt hitched so I could see the crotch of her white underwear, the entirety of her stippled thighs. She sat up when I entered, blinking. “Nice makeup,” she said.

• From The Girls (2016)

  She’s a nice lady.” “I’m not stealing.” My voice was high and false. “Borrowing, let’s say. I’m not gonna tell. I get it. But you should stop. She loves you a lot, you know?” No more noise from the shower, which meant my mother would appear soon. I tried to gauge whether Frank really wouldn’t say anything—he was trying to be nice, I understood, not getting me in trouble. But I didn’t want to be grateful. Imagine him trying to be fatherly with me. “The town party is still happening,” Frank said. “Today and tomorrow, too. Maybe you could go on down there, have some fun. I’m sure that would make your mother happy. You staying busy.” When my mother entered, toweling the ends of her hair, I immediately brightened, arranging my face like I was listening to Frank. “Don’t you think so, Jeanie?” Frank said, gazing at my mother. “Think what?” she said. “Shouldn’t Evie go check out that carnival?” Frank said. “That centennial thing? Keep busy?” My mother took up this pet notion like it was a flash of brilliance. “I don’t know if it’s the centennial, exactly—” she said. “Well, town party,” Frank broke in, “centennial, whatever it is.” “But it’s a good idea,” she said. “You’ll have a great time.” I could feel Frank watching me. “Yeah,” I said, “sure.” “Nice to see you two having a good talk,” my mother added shyly. I made a face, collecting my mug and crackers, but my mother didn’t notice: she had already bent to kiss Frank. Her robe falling open so I saw a triangle of shadowy, sun-spotted chest and had to look away. —The town was celebrating 110 years, after all, not 100, the awkward number setting the tone for the meager affair. To even call it a carnival seemed overly generous, though most of the town was there. There had been a box social in the park and a play about the town’s founding in the high school amphitheater, the student council members sweating in theater department costumes. They’d closed the road to street traffic, so I found myself in a bobbing press of people, pushing and grabbing at the promise of leisure and fun. Husbands whose faces were tight with aggrieved duty, flanked by kids and wives who needed stuffed animals. Who needed pale, sour lemonade and hot dogs and grilled corn. All the proof of a good time. The river was already clotted with litter, the slow drift of popcorn bags and beer cans and paper fans. My mother had been impressed by Frank’s miraculous ability to get me to leave the house. Just as Frank wanted her to be. So she could imagine the neat way he’d slot into a father shape. I was having exactly as much fun as I’d expected to have. I ate a snow cone, the paper cup weakening until the syrup leaked out over my hands.

• From The Girls (2016)

  Donna could tell I was distracted and catted her eyes over at me. “Did he show you the fountain in the backyard?” she said. “He got it from Rome. Mitch’s place has high vibes,” she went on, “all the ions, ’cause of the ocean.” I reddened, trying to concentrate on separating the garlic from its woody husks. The buzz of the radio suddenly seemed nasty, polluting, the announcer talking too fast. They’d all been there, I understood, to Mitch’s strange house by the sea. I’d enacted some pattern, been defined, neatly, as a girl, providing a known value. There was something almost comforting about it, the clarity of purpose, even as it shamed me. I didn’t understand that you could hope for more. I hadn’t seen the fountain. I did not say so. Donna’s eyes were bright. “You know,” she said, “Suzanne’s parents are actually real rich. Propane or something. She never was homeless or anything, either.” She was working the dough on the counter as she spoke. “Didn’t end up in any hospital. Any of that shit she says. Just scratched herself up with a paper clip, on some freaky jag.” I was queasy from the stench of food scraps softening in the sink. I shrugged like I didn’t much care either way. Donna went on. “You don’t believe me,” she said. “But it’s true. We were up in Mendocino. Crashing with an apple farmer. She’d done too much acid, just started working away at herself with that clip until we made her quit. She didn’t even bleed, though.” When I didn’t respond, Donna slammed the dough into a bowl. Punching it down. “Think whatever you want,” she said. —Suzanne came into her bedroom later, while I was changing. I hunched myself protectively over my naked chest: Suzanne noticed and seemed ready to mock me but stopped herself. I saw the scars on her wrist but didn’t indulge the uneasy questions—Donna was just jealous. Never mind Donna and her stiff Vaseline hair, shanky and foul as a muskrat’s. “Last night was a trip,” Suzanne said. I pulled away when she tried to sling her arm around me. “Oh, come on, you were into it,” she said. “I saw.” I made a sick face—she laughed. I occupied myself with tidying the sheets, as if the bed could ever be anything but a dank nest. “Aw, it’s fine,” Suzanne said. “I got something to cheer you up.” I thought she was going to apologize. But then it occurred to me—she was going to kiss me again. The dim room got airless. I almost felt it happen, an imperceptible lean—but Suzanne just hefted her bag onto the bed, the fringe pooling on the mattress. The bag was full of a strange weight. She gave me a triumphant look. “Go on,” she said. “Look inside.” Suzanne huffed at my stubbornness and opened it herself. I didn’t understand what was inside, the odd metallic flash. The sharp corners. “Take it out,” Suzanne said, impatient.

• From The Girls (2016)

  Packing herself with particulars: the autopsy reports, the testimony the girls gave of that night, like the transcript of a bad dream. “It’s nothing to be proud of,” I said. Recounting the usual things—it was awful. Not glamorous, not enviable. “There wasn’t anything about you,” Sasha said. “Not that I could find.” I felt a lurch. I wanted to tell her something valuable, my existence traced with enough care that I would become visible. “It’s better that way,” I said. “So the lunatics don’t search me out.” “But you were there?” “I lived there. Basically. For a while. I didn’t kill anyone or anything.” My laugh came out flat. “Obviously.” She was huddling into her sweatshirt. “You just left your parents?” Her voice was admiring. “It was a different time,” I said. “Everyone ran around. My parents were divorced.” “So are mine,” Sasha said, forgetting to be shy. “And you were my age?” “A little younger.” “I bet you were really pretty. I mean, duh, you’re pretty now, too,” she said. I could see her puff up with her own generosity. “How’d you even meet them?” Sasha asked. It took me a moment to gather myself, to remember the sequence of things. “Revisit” is the word they always used in anniversary articles about the murder. “Revisiting the horror of Edgewater Road,” as if the event existed singularly, a box you could close a lid on. As if I hadn’t been stopped by hundreds of ghosted Suzannes on the streets or in the background of movies. I fielded Sasha’s questions about what they had been like in real life, those people who had become totems of themselves. Guy had been less interesting to the media, just a man doing what men had always done, but the girls were made mythic. Donna was the unattractive one, slow and rough, often cast as a pity case. The hungry harshness in her face. Helen, the former Camp Fire Girl, tan and pigtailed and pretty—she was the fetish object, the pinup murderess. But Suzanne got the worst of it. Depraved. Evil. Her sneaky beauty didn’t photograph well. She looked feral and meager, like she might have existed only to kill. Talking about Suzanne raised a rev in my chest that I was sure Sasha could see. It seemed shameful. To feel that helpless excitement, considering what had happened. The caretaker on the couch, the coiled casing of his guts exposed to the air. The mother’s hair soaked with gore. The boy so disfigured the police weren’t sure of his gender. Surely Sasha had read about those things, too. “Did you ever think you could have done what they did?” she asked. “Of course not,” I said reflexively. In all the times I had ever told anyone about the ranch, few had ever asked me that question. Whether I could have done it, too. Whether I almost had. Most assumed a base level of morality separated me, as if the girls had been a different species.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  In Constantinople, he studied biblical exegesis with the great o theologian Gregory of Nazianzus. Jerome spent three years as the secretary and counselor to Pope o Damasus I, one of the most powerful of the early bishops of Rome. Damasus assigned him the task of translating the entire bible into Latin in order to provide a standard text (the Vulgate) to replace the many “Old Latin” versions. Jerome moved to Bethlehem in 389, where he lived as a o hermit until his death in 419/20. Among his many writings, his Lives of Eminent Men is an indispensable biographical source for early Christian history. His commentaries on biblical books also show careful attention to historical realities and linguistic accuracy. Jerome’s towering achievement was undoubtedly the Vulgate o translation of the Old Testament (from Hebrew) and the New Testament (from Greek), which provided the standard text for medieval Latin Christianity. • The final doctor, Augustine of Hippo (354–430), is by far the best known man of late antiquity because of his autobiographical Confessions (composed in 397/98). It is a remarkable composition, both as the first truly introspective analysis of a personal life in antiquity and as a sustained song of praise to God. Born in North Africa of a pagan father and a devout Christian o mother (Monica), Augustine was educated in rhetoric and lived what he later considered a dissolute life, siring an illegitimate son. He converted to the dualistic religion called Manichaeism o (a combination of Persian and Christian Gnostic systems), attracted by its ascetical appeal. He embraced its radical dualism between matter and spirit, which seemed to offer Augustine’s intellectual soul some liberation from his passion- driven body. 147

• From The Girls (2016)

  “Like you could have done it, too.” I inhaled sharply. The pathetic betrayal: Sasha had told Julian everything I’d said. “So show us,” Zav said, turning back to Sasha. I was already invisible again. “Show us the famous tits.” “You don’t have to,” I said to her. Sasha flicked her eyes in my direction. “It isn’t a big deal or anything,” she said, her tone dripping with cool, obvious disdain. She plucked her neckline away from her chest and looked pensively down her shirt. “See?” Julian said, smiling hard at me. “Listen to Sasha.” —I had gone to one of Julian’s recitals when Dan and I were still close. Julian must have been nine years old or so. He was good at the cello, I remembered, his tiny arms going about their mournful adult work. His nostrils rimed with snot, the instrument in careful balance. It didn’t seem possible that the boy who had called forth those sounds of longing and beauty was the same almost-man who watched Sasha now, a cold varnish on his eyes. She pulled her shirt down, her face flushed but mostly dreamy. The impatient, professional tug she gave when the neckline caught on her bra. Then both pale breasts were exposed, her skin marked by the line of her bra. Zav exclaimed approvingly. Reaching to thumb a rosy nipple while Julian looked on. I had long outlived whatever usefulness I had here. 196911I got caught; of course I did. Mrs. Dutton on her kitchen floor, calling my name like a right answer. And I hesitated for just a moment—a stunned, bovine reaction to my own name, the knowledge that I should help the fallen Mrs. Dutton—but Suzanne and Donna were far ahead, and by the time I jarred back into that realization, they had almost disappeared. Suzanne turned back just long enough to see Mrs. Dutton clamp a trembling hand on my arm. —My mother’s pained and baffled declarations: I was a failure. I was pathological. She wore the air of crisis like a flattering new coat, the stream of her anger performed for an invisible jury. She wanted to know who had broken into the Dutton house with me. “Judy saw two girls with you,” she said. “Maybe three. Who were they?” “Nobody.” I tended my rigid silence like a suitor, full of honorable feelings. Before she and Donna disappeared, I tried to flash Suzanne a message: I would take responsibility. She didn’t have to worry. I understood why they’d left me behind. “It was just me,” I said. Anger made her words garbled. “You can’t stay in this house and spout lies.” I could see how rattled she was by this confusing new situation. Her daughter had never been a problem before, had always zipped along without resistance, as tidy and self-contained as those fish that clean their own tanks. And why would she bother to expect otherwise or even prepare herself for the possibility?

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  In his exhaustive search for some conceivable good to be found in his bad act, Augustine finally comes up with a psychological clue: Whatever his motive for acting with the gang, he would not have done the same thing all by himself. Does that suggest some good hidden in the bad? He finds a psychological parallel that may help him toward an explanation. People normally laugh when together, not when alone—or, as Bergson put it, anyone who laughs alone is imagining the company of others (Le Rire 1). There is something essentially social about laughter. Companionship (consortium) is the good in the morally indifferent act of laughing. Could that have been the good paradoxically prompting him to the bad act of theft? Yes, he concludes: “The mutual provocation of my partners in crime provided the friction that ignited my desire to act thus” (T 2.16). He began his discussion with the observation that theft is obviously wrong, since even thieves do not want to be stolen from. He will later dwell on the bonds of good that unite even robber bands; they insist on just distribution of the “take” from their robberies (CG 19.12). Consortium and amicitia (friendship) are key values in Augustine’s eyes. His later companionship with heretics will prolong his own adherence to error. He will make amicitia the base of all Christian communities. He will even dispute Cicero’s definition of the state, saying that “things loved in common” are the basis of all politics, not mere abstract justice. So a persistent love of fellowship was the falsely conceived good behind his motiveless act in the pear orchard. Augustine has solved his own psychological mystery without having to resort to the Manichean heresy, which holds that evil is a positive (choosable) substance. But more. People notice that there is a parallel between this “first sin” of The Testimony and Adam’s fall in the garden of Eden. Though the gang hauls off a “huge load” (onera ingentia) of pears from the orchard, Augustine talks of only one tree—like the tree of the apple in Eden. He goes out of his way to say the pears were not beautiful, marking a contrast with the fruit in Eden, where the tree “was pleasant to the eyes” (Genesis 3.6). But a further parallel, the key one, has not been noticed, I think. Eve falls for the serpent’s lies in Genesis; but Saint Paul’s First Letter to Timothy (which Augustine thought was authentically Pauline) says that “Adam was not deceived” (2.14). Why did Adam commit the original sin if he was neither desirous of the fruit in itself nor deceived about any power it might give him? The problem is exactly Augustine’s in his own little orchard.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  When I walked into the house I could hear voices coming from upstairs. I climbed to the top of the steps where my mom’s bedroom was. Her door was open and immediately I realized that was where the voices were coming from. There was my moms, and she had left her bedroom door open not thinking that her little teenager would be home early, and I watched her. I stood there and watched her. At that particular time she just happened to be tricking with two men at the same time. If one was in her mouth, the other was in her cunt. If one was in her cunt, the other was in her ass, or some type of sexual combination. One would have thought my moms was made out of rubber the way they had her stretched and positioned all over the place. The shit looked like it hurt the way they were blowin’ her back out. I don’t know why, but I just continued to stand there watching. I couldn’t move. Then all of a sudden my mother turned around and faced the door. I guess she just had a feeling that someone was watching her. Someone was watching her. That someone was me, her daughter. I’ll never—I mean, never—forget the look in her eyes when they locked with mine. By then I think the tears that had welded in my eyes were running down my cheeks. Without saying a word, I curved around to the left, where my bedroom was, went into my room, and slammed the door behind me. I made it over to my trash can just in time to throw up. I had already thrown up twice at school. But then it was because my stomach was sick, this time it was because my heart was. Of course, Naomi continued fucking those two men. She had to. Everybody knows if dem niggas don’t bust a nut, a ho don’t get paid. Once the two trick niggas finally left, I heard the front door close, and then I heard Naomi come back upstairs. Please don’t come in my room, I remember thinking. Please don’t come in my room. I was embarrassed for her. I knew my moms was a whore, everybody knew she was a whore, but to see it with my own eyes was just too much for me to take. My moms didn’t come into my room, but I could have sworn I heard her standing outside my door. She never came in, though.