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 The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  Grandma in her wheelchair would have said she wasn’t surprised at all. Lecia was at the game, probably at the top of the bleachers combing down her bangs with a rattail comb and laughing when this boy came climbing toward her. He didn’t even have to threaten me to keep quiet. I knew what I would be if I told.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  George fingered his flask, and asked me, rather nervously, whether I had won the sweep-stakes. Only Rhoda and my brother seemed really pleased with their gifts. For Davy I had bought a pair of shoes, hand-sewn and soft as butter: now he rapped on their soles with his knuckles, then stepped over the discarded paper and strings to kiss my cheek. ‘What a little star you are,’ he said. ‘I shall save these for my wedding-day and be the best-shod bloke in Kent.’ His words seemed to remind everybody of their manners, and suddenly they all rose to kiss and thank me, and there was a general, embarrassed shuffling. I looked over their shoulders to where Alice still sat. She had taken the lid from the hat-box, but had not removed the hat, only held it, listlessly, in her fingers. Davy saw me looking. ‘What’ve you got, Sis?’ he called. When she reluctantly tipped up the box for him to see, he whistled: ‘What a stunner! With an ostrich feather and a diamond on the brim. Aren’t you going to try it on?’ ‘I will, later,’ she said. Now everyone turned to look at her. ‘Oh, what a beautiful hat!’ said Rhoda. ‘And what a lovely shade of red. What shade of red do they call that, Nancy?’ ‘“Buffalo Red”,’ I said miserably; I could not have felt more of a fool if I had given them all a pile of trash - cotton-reels and candle-stubs, toothpicks and pebbles - wrapped up in tissue and ribbons and silks. Rhoda did not notice. “‘Buffalo Red”!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Alice, do be a sport and give us a look at it on you.’ ‘Yes, go on, Alice.’ This was Rosina. ‘Nancy’ll think you don’t like it, otherwise.’ ‘It’s all right,’ I said quickly. ‘Let her try it later.’ But George had jumped over to Alice’s chair, taken the hat from her, and now tried to set it on her head. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I want to see if you look like a buffalo in it.’ ‘Leave off!’ said Alice. There was a scuffle. I closed my eyes, heard the rip of stitches, and when next I looked my sister had the bonnet in her lap, and George had half the ostrich feather in his fingers. The chip of diamante had flown off, and been lost. Poor George began to gulp and cough; Rosina said sternly that she hoped that he was satisfied. Liza took the hat and the feather and tried awkwardly to reunite them: ‘Such a pretty bonnet,’ she said. Alice started to sniff, then placed her hands before her eyes and hurried from the room. Father said, ‘Well, now!’; he still held his gleaming watch-guard. Mother looked at me and shook her head. ‘What a shame,’ she said. ‘Oh Nancy, what a shame!’ In time Rosina and the cousins left, and Alice, still rather swollen-eyed, went out to call on a friend.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  RF. Zizi, we would like to talk about shame, do you ever feel that? Or do you even know what it means? We are trying to cleanse ourselves from it; it’s hard, very hard. We shave our heads, grow our bodily hair, show our big asses and big thighs. We also have sex with each other and with others; we have many loves, our definitions of commitment are very diluted, we don’t believe in the one, we feel deep pleasure in all these practices, and this is how we learned to resist and survive. But we want to go deeper and feel no shame at all; do you think we are doomed? We strive for a shameless existence, Zizi, but we carry the burden of holding the name of our families, our histories, a certain existence that we were born with; how do we change that? Zizi. Zizi never ever feels shame. What a shame is shame, anyway? However, interacting with the earthly two-leggeds, I get the idea. Deep and silly like snot. It starts with the body, and for many it stays there. How can the two-leggeds fight shame or cope with it if the foundation is shame? If the body they carry is shame, the body they are—blood, veins, flesh and skin, bone and snot and inherited trauma—embodies shame. (Shame/fear/modernity.) Fighting body odor, calling sex sleep, storing farts, black plastic bags for monthly period secrets, childbirth is called beautiful, soaps, perfumes, haircuts, Brazilians, perpetual stunned arches for eyebrows, baby pussies gaping cold at the world, waxing is getting clean, bras, corsets, tight shoes, high heels, smaller noses, bigger boobs, sharper ass curves. Perpetually faking it. Shame, shame, shame. [image file=image_rsrc3KY.jpg] 95. Beauty is in hiding behind shame. Beauty in bad lies and poor imagination. A cosmetic surgery industry, and no one buys horns or antlers or hooves or zebra stripes or roaring climaxes! (Tongue-splitting absolute maximum ceiling! Rolling my eyes.) Starting from there—steep uphill to freedom. Lightness. How can the two-legged really understand nature if they are so far from it within and without? Zizi’s mantra for this one is (everyone sings after me): [image file=image_rsrc3KZ.jpg] 96 again: [image file=image_rsrc3M0.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc3M1.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc3M2.jpg] Rub the bellies. Love the bellies. Reveal the bellies. Scratch the bellies. (Do this twice a day for the rest of your life and you may have a chance to cope with shame.)

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  What are you focused on? What do you see, hear, or otherwise sense that makes you feel flushed and quick? What produces a physical response of desire? Keep a desire journal, write down what you feel, and if you notice a of lack of desire, track that as well. It’s all data. Once you’ve started tuning into what you desire, check it against your values. Again, this is a time for curiosity, not judgment. Be tender with yourself, tender with your history. See Yourself Get honest with yourself. You may learn that you’re right where you want to be sexually! You may find that you’re engaging in practices that compromise your values. Noticing and knowing are the first steps. Hot and Heavy Homework What’s your next step? A period of celibacy? A shift in your sensual focus? There may be healing work to do. Or it may be that in the next phase of your sexual life it’s time to turn to fantasy and erotica and pornography to awaken new threads of desire in your system. 58 This essay first appeared as adrienne maree brown, “Strategic Celibacy: Liberating Your Desire, Part 1,” February 7, 2018, Bitch Media (blog), https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/strategic-celibacy/liberating-your-desire-part-1.59 See Lili Loofbourow’s article examining the Aziz Ansari scandal: Lili Loofbourow, “The Female Price of Male Pleasure,” The Week, January 25, 2018, https://theweek.com/articles/749978/female-price-male-pleasure.Liberating Your FantasiesWhat are your go-to fantasies?60 What do you imagine that arouses you? Have you shared it with anyone? The brain, home of the sensual imagination, is such a private place. There’s a ton of mystery, controversy, scholarship, and questions about how the brain works, what lights it up, what generates desire. Somewhere along the journey, through attraction we feel for others, media images, and healthy and/or unhealthy interactions with those older than us, visuals and story lines groove a pathway for desire in our brains. We begin to have certain scenarios that turn us on, fantasies of what we want to do or have done to us or witness. Fantasy is defined by the Oxford Living Dictionary as “the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable.”61 Fantasy, then, becomes a safe space to desire things that we might never do or allow in real life. But because the realm of imagination is also where culture begins—we imagine things that in turn shape our real life desires and practices. Where did capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy come from? Some imagining of scarcity and power that isn’t true. This is where things can get tricky, because, for most of us, this desire-setting happens early, and if we aren’t both careful and creative we can get stuck in fantasies that don’t mature and politicize with us. We can get caught in fantasies that perpetuate things so counter to our beliefs and values that we feel ashamed of what we want, even as we find ways to get it.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  The summer your mother finally has the police remove your father from your home and files for divorce is the summer he beats her and threatens her life on a daily basis, is the summer you are as usual away, is the summer you get your first kiss. His name is Derek, and he is a white boy from Parma Heights, Ohio, a west-side suburb of Cleveland where your grandmother lives. Your summertime best friend Marlena is dating Derek’s cousin—she’s been dating a string of boys since you were in middle school. She thinks you’re getting a bit old to have never been kissed, and you agree. You hate being left behind. Soon after, you can’t remember what Derek looked like, but you do know you weren’t attracted to him, and you remember how smug he was because he was a very experienced kisser. You clearly recall how satisfying it felt to give him honest feedback when he asked, “How was it?” and you answered, “I didn’t like it: too wet, and you shoved your tongue at me. I don’t think you know what you’re doing.” You are fifteen years old. The next summer, your grandmother helps your mother pay for an ostentatious sweet sixteen party. (When you think about it now, it seems modest, but at the time it was more than you’ve ever spent on a party, ever.) Your mother rents the local Lions Club hall with wood paneling and orders catered food and a two-tiered custom-made birthday cake. She even hires a DJ, some dude from the local Indian community who does weddings and birthdays and anniversary parties. There are table cloths and balloons and centerpieces and a disco ball and metallic streamers dangling from the ceiling. You get your hair cut into a bob, buy a short black dress from the post-prom discount rack, and dance all night in stockinged feet. You smell like rose oil from the Body Shop. While doing the Electric Slide in this room full of fifty people who have come to celebrate you, you feel a flash of what might be genuine happiness. It is fleeting. But it is there.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  We also learn that love is a limited resource and that the love we want and need is too much, that we are too much. We learn to shrink, to lie about the whole love we need, settling with not quite good enough in order to not be alone. We have to engage in an intentional practice of honesty to counter this socialization. We need radical honesty—learning to speak from our root systems about how we feel and what we want. Speak our needs and listen to others’ needs. To say, “I need to hear that you miss me.” “When you’re high all the time it’s hard for me to feel your presence.” “I lied.” “The way you talked to that man made me feel unseen.” “Your jealousy makes me feel like an object and not a partner.” The result of this kind of speech is that our lives begin to align with our longings, and our lives become a building block for authentic community and ultimately a society that is built around true need and real people, not fake news and bullshit norms. Healing Trauma is the common experience of most humans on this planet. Love too often perpetuates trauma, repeating the patterns of intimacy and pain so many of us experienced growing up in racist and/or hetero-patriarchal environments. Shame might be the only thing more prevalent, which leads to trauma being hidden, silenced, or relegated to a certain body of people. If we can’t carry our trauma and act normal, if we have a breakdown or lose our jobs/homes/children, there is something wrong with us. What we need is a culture where the common experience of trauma leads to a normalization of healing. Being able to say: I have good reasons to be scared of the dark, of raised voices, of being swallowed up by love, of being alone. And being able to offer each other: “I know a healer for you.” “I’ll hold your hand in the dark.” “Let’s begin a meditation practice.” “Perhaps talk therapy is not enough.” We should celebrate love in our community as a measure of healing. The expectation should be: I know we are all in need of healing, so how are we doing our healing work? Learn How to Change Most of us resist changes we didn’t spark. We feel victimized, so we try to hold tight to whatever we figure out as a way to survive. We spend too much time watching change happen with our jaws dropped, writing “what the fuck?” over and over. It is time to learn Octavia Butler’s lessons—both that “the only lasting truth is Change” and that we can, and must, “shape change.”53 So we need to observe how we respond to change—does it excite us so much that we struggle with stability? Or do we ignore changes until it’s too late? Or fight changes that are bigger than us? It takes time and assistance to feel into and find the most strategic adaptation.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Your grandmother is a social worker who works with children who have survived sexual abuse and other forms of trauma. She never picked up on your own survivorship, never knew until all was said and done. Your shame is outweighed only by your mother’s shame, that of your mother who does not disclose the violence to her mother or sister until your father is removed from the house by the police. When social workers, prosecutors, and police officers intervene in your life in ninth grade, your mother pleads with you not to tell your grandmother or aunt. It’s easy for you to agree: like most Hollywood celebrities, childhood trauma has made you a great actor. But your rage catches up with you the summer before your junior year, the summer you finally gain a home without a terrorist father lurking in every corner. Your story comes spilling out of you, and you tell whoever will listen. When she finally learns the truth, your grandmother is full of despair and rage, a heap of guilt. You desperately want to travel, to leave your suffocating suburban life behind, so you accept the guilt-money trip with gratitude. Traveling feels like running, and you, after all, win medals in the 400-meter race. In Europe, you get drunk with other teenagers for the first time. You skip curfew with the other recent high-school grads and climb out the window and down the trellis on the side of the building. By now you are familiar with the high of thrill seeking. Mixed with alcohol, it is intoxicatingly irresistible. And then, just a few weeks later, it is time for college. Once you arrive, there is no premade goal about where you’re going next. You do not know how to function without a goal. You are forced to confront the uncomfortable truth: you do not know much about who you really are. Without this authentic self-knowledge, it’s hard to create life goals. There is only trial and error. Pleasure emerges in the form of enjoyable and consensual sex with a boyfriend you are madly in love with. Heartbreak follows, a year or so later. It is in the post-heartbreak period that you can access authentic information about who you are and what you like. This truth will prevail for decades to come. You learn to cherish emotional intimacy with your friends. Eventually life will teach you to value that love as sacrosanct and perhaps even paramount. With your platonic and even romantic (but not sexual) friends, you learn how to play in safe environments and relationships for the first time in your life. You and your friends throw yourselves an un-birthday party, complete with party hats, noisemakers, and a chocolate cake. You discover the joy of hot tubs. You discover your queerness. You drink too much. Again and again. You make mistakes. You mistake mutual attraction for love. You make poor romantic and sexual relationship choices. You break your heart open. Again and again.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "The guard appeared at the door, and not only ordered, but ignominously turned me out of that carriage, just as if I had been a second Col. Baker. "I was so ashamed of myself, so mortified, that my stomach—which had always been delicate—was actually quite upset by the shock I had received, therefore no sooner had the train started than I began to be, first uncomfortable, then to feel a rumbling pain, and at last a pressing want, so much so that I could hardly sit down on my seat, squeeze as much as I could, and I dared not move for fear of the consequences. "After some time the train stopped for a few minutes, no guard came to open the carriage door, I managed to get up, no guard was to be seen, no place where I could ease myself. I was debating what to do when the train started off. "The only occupant of the carriage was an old gentleman, who—having told me to make myself comfortable, or rather to put myself at my ease—went off to sleep and snored like a top; I might as well have been alone. "I formed several plans for unburdening my stomach, which was growing more unruly every moment, but only one or two seemed to answer; and yet I could not put them into execution, for my lady-love only a few carriages off was every now and then looking out of the window, so it would never have done if, instead of my face, she all at once saw—my full moon. I could not for the same reason use my hat as what the Italians call—a comodina, especially as the wind was blowing strongly towards her. "The train stopped again, but only for three minutes. What could one do in three minutes, especially with a stomach-ache like mine? Another stoppage; two minutes. By dint of squeezing I now felt that I could wait a little longer. The train moved and then once more came to a standstill. Six minutes. Now was my chance, or never. I jumped out. "It was a kind of country station, apparently a junction, and everybody was getting out. "The guard bawled out: 'Les voyageurs pour——en voiture.' "Where is the lavatory?' I enquired of him. "He wished to shove me into the train. I broke loose, and asked the same question of another official, "'There,' said he, pointing to the water-closet, 'but be quick.' "I ran towards it, I rushed into it without looking where I went. I violently pushed open the door. "I heard first a groan of ease and of comfort, followed by a splash and a waterfall, then a screech, and I saw my English damsel, not sitting, but perched upon the closet seat. "The engine whistled, the bell rang, the guard blew his horn, the train was moving.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The conviction came to me in a flash: I was ugly with irregular features, sharp eyes and short squat figure: the certainty overpowered me: I had learned before that I was too small to be a great athlete, now I saw that I was ugly to boot: my heart sank: I can not describe my disappointment and disgust. Jessie asked; what was the matter and at length I told her. She wouldn’t have it: “You’ve a lovely white skin”, she cried, “and you’re quick and strong: no one would call you ugly!—the idea!” But the knowledge was in me indisputable, never to leave me again for long. It even led me to some erroneous inferences then and there: for example, it seemed clear to me that if I had been tall and handsome like Paris, Jessie would have given herself to me in spite of her sister; but further knowledge of women makes me inclined to doubt this: they have a luscious eye for good looks in the male, naturally; but other qualities, such as strength and dominant self-confidence have an even greater attraction for the majority, especially for those who are richly endowed sexually and I am inclined to think that it was her sister’s warnings and her own matter-of-fact hesitation before the irrevocable that induced Jessie to withhold her sex from complete abandonment. But the pleasure I had experienced with her, made me keener than ever, and more enterprising. The conviction of my ugliness, too, made me resolve to develop my mind and all other faculties as much as I could. Finally, I saw Jessie home and had a great hug and long kiss and was told she had had a bully afternoon and we made another appointment. I worked at boot-blacking every morning and soon got some regular customers, notably a young, well-dressed man who seemed to like me. Either Allison, or he himself, told me his name was Kendrick and he came from Chicago. One morning he was very silent and absorbed. At length I said, “Finished” and “Finished”, he repeated after me: “I was thinking of something else”, he explained. “Intent”, I said smiling. “A business deal”, he explained, “but why do you say intent?” “The Latin phrase came into my head”, I replied without thinking, “‘Intentique ore tenebant’, Vergil says.” “Good God!” he cried, “fancy a bootblack quoting Vergil. You’re a strange lad, what age are you?” “Sixteen”, I replied. “You don’t look it”, he said, “but now I must hurry; one of these days we’ll have a talk.” I smiled, “Thank you, Sir”, and away he hastened.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  In the dark, I pretend it is Jie’s voice saying my husband’s name. It’s her salt in the sweat we make. I am the mattress, the moon, below and above myself. It’s only at the moment of pain that my sister and I individuate. That I’m brought back to my body, reminded it is mine. _ During the week, Ma sews wholesale skirts in the downtown garment district, which I once imagined was an actual city made of garments. Giant scarves for crosswalks, sweaters on all the trees. But no trees here. In Arkansas, I saw rows of cows rigged to machines, their milk pumped like gasoline. We miss the fields fizzing with our piss, the taro we raised behind the church, the rain fucking our mouths full of a sky’s salt. Ma says the factories are worse than farms, where at least a cow could shit whenever it wanted. No bathroom breaks for the ladies. One time Ma pissed herself and got yelled at, so she started bringing jars to keep under the table. It’s hard to aim and run the needle at the same time, but Ma’s always been coordinated. She can drum my sister and me at the same time, each hand keeping a different beat. Ma says we have to learn quick in this city. Jie got robbed at gunpoint her first week here, working the cashier at the electronics store. It was a Chinese boy with half a beard, the left side. The boy spoke a dialect we’d heard only in movies. We wondered what part he was playing. Jie thought about playing dead, splaying on the vinyl floor until he left. Kept wondering why the boy only had the left side of his beard. When the bullet spent itself into the wall behind her, it burrowed there like some nest bird. Ma says, God took a big breath and blew the bullet around your head. Jie says the boy was so stupid, he wouldn’t have been able to shoot the sky. Still, I saw Jie pray that night. She got off the bed and onto her knees, her hair curtaining the bright theater of her teeth. I asked if she was crying. She wiped her nose on my arm and punched me off the bed. On weekends, Ma cleans houses. You’ve never even cleaned your own room. You blame your brother for the stains on the mattress, but I see you pissing in your sleep too, both of you born with so many leaks, a lineage of them. I was washing Ma’s pants in the sink and found notes in the pockets, notes she must have stolen from the houses. Some were written on receipts, on napkins, on pink perfumed cards, on orange peels. I wondered why she took what was worth nothing to us, notes we couldn’t read, addressed to anyone but us. If I asked, I knew she’d strike me into silence. Say I shouldn’t go through other people’s pockets.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  This is what Jie taught me, but please don’t ever learn it: It’s a trick where you hug the hose nozzle in your throat and shotgun the water straight into your belly without swallowing. She said that’s how the people here drink, without needing a mouth, without a way to stop. _ Deeper into my life, I meet a man who says he drove from Texas to LA by himself, back when he’d been in the country for a year and stole a car from outside a Cracker Barrel. He later drove back for his mother, but he couldn’t remember the route he first took, the one where he passed a casino with two stone dragons by the door. He’d won two hands of blackjack and spent it on his first room in the city: a floor above the butcher’s, a building between a church and the restaurant where Ba fried every genre of meat. When the man says he undressed me in the parking lot of a motel, I try to recall myself, the girl I prayed inside, the boy I mistook for an engine. I have no alibi for that night, no other body I could have been in. You know the man. I’m sorry for not saying he’s your father: I wanted you to meet him as I did. I knew his touch before his name. He marries me, but it’s Jie who’s been in my bed the longest: When we shared the mattress, I heard her saddle her wrists every night. Her breath belonging to the back of my neck. She moaned a moat around us both. On our honeymoon in the suburb south of our city, I see my husband’s face in the dark and remember. Jie and I once learned to sound the same. In Arkansas, we used to test Ma by walking to her bedside in the dark, asking, Who am I? Ma always guessed wrong, always named the absent one. We laughed and said she’d never learn to floss apart our voices, tell her daughters apart. One night, when I/Jie went to her bedside and asked who I/she was, Ma took out her fist from under the pillow and punched me/her in the throat, that tender cage where our thirsts perch. She said, You sound different in pain. It’s true: Jie wails like some wounded animal. I go silent, as if the wound is an ear that will eavesdrop on me. In the dark, I pretend it is Jie’s voice saying my husband’s name. It’s her salt in the sweat we make. I am the mattress, the moon, below and above myself.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Suguey. I felt so insecure. I grew up with a Mexican mother who constantly judged me, fat-shamed me, and told me that I would be much more beautiful if I just lost some weight. I constantly struggled with my weight and how I looked in the mirror. I knew that I used food and specifically sugar as a way to cope with my emotional issues, to cope with stress from work. I became codependent on that nurturing feeling. Often I would look into the mirror and experience dysphoria between two people: one who loved my curves, my thighs, and booty, and the other, who was constantly on a mission to lose my belly fat or arm jiggle. It was very hard for me to imagine myself dancing on a pole next to all those women who were very thin and so damn strong! I was like, you want me to do what with what now? Trippin’ … little did I know that I was going to embark on a journey that would teach me how to love and trust myself. amb. What has changed? Suguey. I AM A MOTHERFUCKING QUEEN! And I remembered that that’s always been who I am! Okay, sorry … in all seriousness, I am so completely grateful for this art form. I found so much within myself. A renewed sense of self. A deep appreciation for my body because thick thighs save lives! Am I right? Literally in pole, thick thighs are a plus. I also realized that I was going to need to love my body so hard, harder than I could imagine, so that I could trust it enough to hold myself up in the air. I mean holding your entire body weight while you’re upside down is not an easy feat physically, and it’s an even harder feat mentally, so I had to find this deep synchronicity between my mind, heart, and body for them to all say in unison, “Suguey, we can do this shit.” Also, it would be remiss of me to not mention that I found a sexy beast deep within me! I was able to become acquainted with my most sensual self who loves to booty-shake and dance it out. This was something that I had been in touch with before but hadn’t tapped it in a way that pole helped me to. Constantly I was battling that societal teaching that I was a ho or promiscuous or all the bullshit that womyn are taught to believe when they tap into their sexual beings. I even found myself being, like, I will purposefully post this video of me being my most sensual self so that my tias and cousins and friends will see how many fucks I give.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  From #MeToo to #WeConsentIn 2004, Tarana Burke started a Me Too movement, centered around Black women and girls telling their stories of sexual harassment and assault at the hands of men.51 With the recent exposure of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behaviors and the infrastructure that supported him, #metoo became a hashtag used by Alyssa Milano and other actors and people in the Hollywood realm who have been hurt by Weinstein. Then millions of other people from other walks of life began to come forward. For months now, I have been reading the stories of childhood sexual abuse, molestation, sexual harassment, disrespect, sexual assault, rape. Stories where boundaries were transgressed, where power was abused, where secrecy was demanded, where protection was given to the perpetrators of harm. On the heels of this hashtag have come other angles on rape culture, including that while it is rooted in toxic masculinity it is not limited by gender, it’s not just men hurting women. People of all genders have been harmed and have caused harm. Men are assaulted and raped in astounding numbers, which get swallowed by the shame and homophobia of masculine culture. The dynamics repeat in same-sex relationships and communities. Sexual aggression is a malfunction of masculinity that is not bound by genitalia. Some have questioned why we are sharing survivor stories when the people who need to step forward and take responsibility are those who have caused harm. I’m sure fear and shame are major factors here, but I also think we are still in such early stages of learning to practice transformative justice.52 I am not interested in exposing names, in exposing the most harmful moments of people’s lives. I am interested in how we transform the underlying conditions that generated the harm in the first place. I think the truth will continue to shake loose in these kind of waves, stories that map our pain and show where we are as a species in terms of being able and ready to face rape culture and end it. It is humbling to realize that the majority of us are trying to reach pleasure through the complex trauma of transgression. In the onslaught of unveiling, I thought it would be useful to take a step back and address something crucial: the pleasure of consent. Consent means saying yes on your own terms. Giving permission or agreement for something to happen. Many of us have/had our boundaries crossed before we learned anything about saying yes and no. Crossed when we are young, by adults we trust. Crossed when we are coming into the realm of desire. Many of us are truncated in our sexual liberation by these transgressions. We are taught to act cool, even when others were doing things to us that diminished our power and safety. We were taught in sex education programs that sex is scary, that sex means babies and disease.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  CHAPTER 7 Grandma wound up leaving Mother a big pile of money, which didn’t do us a lick of good, though Lord knows we needed it. Daddy’s strike had dragged on till mid-March, pulling us way down in our bill-paying. He managed to keep up with the mortgage and utilities okay, but the grocery and drug bills and other sundries got out from under him. When he picked up his check at the paymaster’s window on Fridays, he cashed it right there. Then he’d drive to Leechfield Pharmacy and go straight up to the pill counter in back to tell Mr. Juarez—kids called him Bugsy, after the cartoon bunny—that he’d come to pay at his bill. I can still see Daddy winking while he said it, at. He’d squint down at his billfold and lick his thumb and make a show of picking out a single crisp five-dollar bill and squaring it up on the counter between them. But that little “at” held back a whole tide of shame. It implied the bill weighed more than Daddy, superseded him in a way. In Jasper County, where he’d been raised, buying on credit was a sure sign of a man overreaching what he was. Even car loans were unheard-of, and folks were known to set down whole laundry sacks stuffed with one-dollar bills when it came time to pick up a new Jeep or tractor. Bugsy knew these things. They mattered to him. He was a kind guy, prone to giving me comic books for free because it tickled him that I read so well. He always acted like he hated to take Daddy’s money when it slid his way. “Heck, Pete. Put that back. We weren’t a-waiting on this,” he’d say, and Daddy would slide the bill closer and tell him to go on and take it. Then Bugsy would shrug out an okay. He’d ring some zeros up on the cash register and slip the bill into the right stack. He kept his accounts in a green book under the counter. He’d haul that out, find Daddy’s name with his thick nicotine-stained finger, and note down the payment. Before we left, Bugsy usually led me to the back office, where he’d draw out his pocket knife to cut the binding cord on the new stack of funny books invariably standing in the corner. I’d sit on his desk and read out loud an entire issue of Superman or Archie , which skill caused him to smile into his coffee mug. Daddy would shake his head at this and say that I didn’t need egging on because I had already gotten too big for my britches as it was. That was the dance we went through with Bugsy on payday. The movements of it were both so exact and so fiercely casual that I never for a minute doubted that this whole money thing was, in fact, not casual at all, but serious as a stone.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  The zhongyi says loose anal sphincter says it’s age but I suspect it’s because your father liked to do dirty things to me. He must have knocked loose a beam in my bowels I let him put it in wherever I couldn’t grow another daughter the zhongyi says I’m beginning to lose motor skills I say I never knew how to drive anyway. He laughs says the body is the motor in this situation says I am the driver in this situation I remember how you learned to drive from that ghostboy whose balls you licked you think I didn’t know heard you joking to your sister about planting his balls in the yard to grow us a son but could you find someone to teach me how to drive? I may shit the seat but I won’t hit anything living Remember the time you threw a knife to me no at me it perched on your sister let that be a lesson about intention.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Had any one, but a few instants before, told me that I should have ever known any man but Charles, I would have spit in his face or had I been offered infinitely a greater sum of money than that I saw paid for me, I had spurned the proposal in cold blood. But our virtues and our vices depend too much on our circumstances; unexpectedly beset as I was, betrayed by a mind weakened by a long severe affliction, and stunned with the terrors of a goal, my defeat will appear the more excusable, since I certainly was not present at, or a party in any sense to it. However, as the first enjoyment is decisive, and he was now over the bar, I thought I had no longer a right to refuse the caresses of one that had got that advantage over me, no matter how obtained; conforming myself then to this maxim, I considered myself as so much in his power, that I endured his kisses and embraces without affecting struggles or anger; not that he, as yet, gave me any pleasure, or prevailed over the aversion of my soul, to give myself up to any sensation of that sort; what I suffered, I suffered out of a kind of gratitude, and as a matter of course what had passed. He was, however, so regardful as not to attempt the renewal of those extremities which had thrown me, just before, into such violent agitations; but, now secure of possession, contented himself with bringing me to temper by degrees, and waiting at the hand of time for those fruits of generosity and courtship, which he since often reproached himself with having gathered much too green, when, yielding to the inability to resist him, and overborne by desires, he had wreaked his passion on a mere lifeless, spiritless body, dead to all purpose of joy, since taking none, it ought to be supposed incapable of giving any. This is, however, certain; my heart never thoroughly forgave him the manner in which I had fallen to him, although, in point of interest, I had fallen to him, I had reason to be pleased that he found, in my person, wherewithal to keep him from leaving me as easily as he had had me. The evening was, in the mean time, so far advanced, that the maid came in to lay the cloth for supper, when I understood, with joy, that my landlady, whose sight was present poison to me, was not to be with us. Presently a neat and elegant supper was introduced, and a bottle of Burgundy, with the other necessaries, were set on a dumb-waiter.

• From The Art of Memoir

  him. This whole herd of poets—all but Dickinson classically educated —operates on elision and emotional reserve. By contrast, I was a feral American half aborigine, drinking and pogoing around rock clubs while hotly suffering my disintegrating, hard-drinking, well-armed family. During this time, my idea of fessing up was to obscure any actual memory and siphon all feeling off till there was naught but sawdust on the page. “Tell the truth but tell it slant,” Dickinson had said, not “Drape gauze all over it so it can’t be seen.” There’s a difference between mystery and obscurity, poet Donald Justice once said. About real mystery—Hilary Mantel’s run-ins with ghosts, say—a writer can say every dang thing she knows without lessening the enigma’s power; obscurity is just hiding out of cowardice what fundamentally needs unveiling. Here’s an execrable excerpt from my 1978 poem “Civilization and Its Discontents”—a pretentious reference to Freud’s masterpiece. It was my way of writing about Mother’s breakdown, during which she’d set fire to our toys and menaced us with butcher knife raised. In 1959 some doctors sedated a Texas housewife, fastened electrodes to her temples and flipped on the current. Her hair, singed, curled loosely around her eyes which are pale green and dumb in the photo of her release. This is where the story ends for the housewife who had once danced flamenco in a bowling alley. It’s hard to say how much of her daughter burned away. She evaporated into puberty and gin and became a victim of rumor. I won’t bother to say what all is wrong with this—the snotty, devil-may-care tone, which would better fit a jokester fool like Letterman; or the crap line breaks—violent enjambments and uneven syllabic pattern chosen for no reason. There’s no data about who the woman is or why you should care. Plus it’s in no way true. Mother never danced flamenco in a bowling alley. Nobody ever did or would—a fine example of my limited fictional imagination. Puberty

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I ran my fingers through my flat, shorn locks; the action - and the cigarette that I had just smoked - made me feel wonderfully calm.I said: ‘You can’t tell, can you, that it’s a false one?’Now Alice sat up with the blankets gripped before her. ‘You needn’t look so horrified,’ I said. ‘I told you all, I wrote and told you: I’ve joined the act; I’m not Kitty’s dresser any more. I’m on the stage myself, now, doing what she does. Singing, dancing...’She said, ‘You never wrote it like it was really true. If it was true we would have heard! I don’t believe you.’‘I don’t care whether you believe me or not.’She shook her head. ‘Singing,’ she said. ‘Dancing. That’s a tart’s life. You couldn’t. You wouldn’t...’I said, ‘I do’; and just to show her that I meant it, I lifted my nightie and did a little shuffle across the rug.The dance seemed, like the hair, to frighten her. When she spoke next it was with a show of bitterness - but her voice was thick with rising tears. ‘I suppose you lift your skirts like that, do you? and show your legs, on stage, for all the world to look at!’‘My skirts?’ I laughed. ‘Good heavens, Alice, I don’t wear skirts! I didn’t get my hair cut off to wear a frock. It’s trousers I wear: I wear gentlemen’s suits -!’‘Oh!’ Now she had begun to cry. ‘What a thing to do! What a thing to do, in front of strangers!’I said. ‘You thought it good enough when Kitty did it.’‘Nothing she did was ever good! She took you off, and has made you strange. I don’t know you at all. I wish you’d never gone with her - or never come back!’She lay down, pulled the blankets to her chin, and wept; and since I don’t know a girl who is not moved to tears by the sight of her own sister weeping, I climbed in beside her, and my own eyes began to sting.But when she felt me close she gave a jerk. ‘Get off me!’ she cried, and wriggled away. She said it with such real passion, such horror and grief, I could do nothing but what she asked, and let her lie at the cold edge of the bed. Soon she ceased her shaking, and fell silent; and my own eyes dried, and my face grew hard again. I reached for the lamp, and put it out; then lay on my back and said nothing.The bed, that had been chill, grew warmer. I began at last to wish that Alice would turn, and talk to me. Then I began to wish that Alice was Kitty. Then I began - I couldn’t help it! - to think of all that I would do with her, if she was. The sudden force of my desire unnerved me.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Sonya. I think everyone is exposed to it in different ways. The Taylor women have big boobs, big butts, all that. It was celebrated and regulated. You can be that, but be on a diet so you don’t get too thick. I didn’t develop early, but when I developed, I developed. D cups all of the sudden. I learned then about the body as currency; there is an attention that gets paid to me. While also getting the message that I was inherently flawed as a Black girl, a bald girl—I got traction alopecia in the third grade, bald spots. I got teased mercilessly. I posted the selfie, and that same year I felt like, I am a liar. I tell people to love themselves and then slap on this wig that I don’t dare to be seen without. amb. And how did you learn it was not an apology? Somehow you knew it was true before you could embody it … how? Sonya. My mother, who passed four years ago, was an excellent embodiment of contradiction. She always affirmed this notion that we were phenomenal and beautiful. There were ways she would be in her body that let us know it was okay to be in your body. I have a poem about my mom unbuttoning her pants, and she’d had two C-sections by the time she was seventeen. She had a jiggly, scarred belly, and it taught me it was okay. There was a seed there, and even though other things were sprinkled on top of it, that seed was going to break through eventually. amb. What do you want the legacy of your work to be? Sonya. I want people to see that what we create in the world is a reflection of what is inside of us. We cannot make that in the world that we have not made inside of us. Radical self-love is how we get to a just, equitable, and compassionate world. 102 “Mission, Vision, and History,” The Body Is Not an Apology: Radical Self-Love for Everybody and Every Body, 2018, https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/about-tbinaa/history-mission-and-vision.103 The choir sang out here!On the Pleasures of WardrobeA Conversation with Maori Karmael Holmes Maori Karmael Holmes is a curator, filmmaker, designer, and cultural worker. She is the founder and artistic director of BlackStar Film Festival. In addition to BlackStar, her curatorial projects include Flaherty NYC (2017), KinoWatt (2011–2012), Black Lily Film and Music Festival (2007–2010), among others. As a filmmaker, her work has screened internationally and been broadcast throughout the United States. As a designer, she has collaborated with film and theater directors, including James Avery and Carol Mitchell-Leon. Her previous professional positions include the Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Leeway Foundation, and Washington City Paper. Maori studied costume design at the graduate level at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and earned an MFA in film from Temple University. amb. Maori, tell me about your relationship to clothing.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  Flipping her onto her back, we licked her face awake. She stood up, her lips pared back from her teeth. I thought she would spit at the both of us, breaking her own rule to dirty us. Taking my hand, she looked at the dirt loitering under my nails, the soil packed into the lines of my palm. She said I’d gone too deep: Digging was surgery and I’d forgotten to numb the body. Never bury anything, she said, unless you want the dead to spend it. She began to tell me a story about the time her father buried gold in their yard in Arkansas, but I told her this was different: We weren’t burying anything. We were doing the opposite: birthing. She stared out at the yard, the soup of our labor, the holes gulping water and breeding more of their mouths. I knew what she was reaching for before I could rename it: My brother and I had seen our father make the same movement, the Snake’s throat necklaced by his hands. My mother swung the Snake. I dodged its tin mouth, hot and hissing. She was the only one who could bring the Snake to life, loaning it her blood. The Snake missed my buttocks and rang against my shoulder-bone. My father liked to begin softly until our skins adjusted, and then he flung the Snake around like light, aiming to land on everything. If our father treated pain like a plural, our mother was singular. Where is she? my brother and I used to ask when she beached inside herself and didn’t speak for hours, shoring somewhere she didn’t know us. In a memory, I said. In another life, something had warned her away from water, and we had disbelieved her, filling the yard and reminding her lungs of their holes. When the Snake reared its head and bit my lower back, above the crack of my ass, I went down on my knees. My brother was somewhere in the mud playing dead, pretending to be a belly-up fish. She whipped the Snake through the air, lassoing it around the sun before lashing my back. Hunching to make a bunker of my bones, I prayed to swap skins with the water I stood in. She called me by her own name, beat herself out of me. I knew the words to arrest her hands: When I called her Ama, the Snake stopped flexing its spine. Its silver mouth had flung off and become the sun somewhere. Ama, I said again. My mother dropped the Snake and said, That isn’t me.