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 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  You didn't buy soda last month, you'll probably be needing some.” Momma always directed her statements to the adults, but sometimes, Oh painful sometimes, the grimy, snotty-nosed girls would answer her. “Naw, Annie …”—to Momma? Who owned the land they lived on? Who forgot more than they would ever learn? If there was any justice in the world, God should strike them dumb at once!—“Just give us some extry sody crackers, and some more mackerel.” At least they never looked in her face, or I never caught them doing so. Nobody with a smidgen of training, not even the worst roustabout, would look right in a grown person's face. It meant the person was trying to take the words out before they were formed. The dirty little children didn't do that, but they threw their orders around the Store like lashes from a cat-o'-nine-tails. When I was around ten years old, those scruffy children caused me the most painful and confusing experience I had ever had with my grandmother. One summer morning, after I had swept the dirt yard of leaves, spearmint-gum wrappers and Vienna-sausage labels, I raked the yellow-red dirt, and made half-moons carefully so that the design stood out clearly and masklike. I put the rake behind the Store and came through the back of the house to find Grandmother on the front porch in her big, wide white apron. The apron was so stiff by virtue of the starch that it could have stood alone. Momma was admiring the yard, so I joined her. It truly looked like a flat redhead that had been raked with a big-toothed comb. Momma didn't say anything but I knew she liked it. She looked over toward the school principal's house and to the right at Mr. McElroy's. She was hoping one of those community pillars would see the design before the day's business wiped it out. Then she looked upward to the school. My head had swung with hers, so at just about the same time we saw a troop of the powhitetrash kids marching over the hill and down by the side of the school. I looked to Momma for direction. She did an excellent job of sagging from her waist down, but from the waist up she seemed to be pulling for the top of the oak tree across the road. Then she began to moan a hymn. Maybe not to moan, but the tune was so slow and the meter so strange that she could have been moaning. She didn't look at me again. When the children reached halfway down the hill, halfway to the Store, she said without turning, “Sister, go on inside.” I wanted to beg her, “Momma, don't wait for them. Come on inside with me. If they come in the Store, you go to the bedroom and let me wait on them. They only frighten me if you're around.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  In my twenties, I discovered role-playing relationships: placing personal ads in the “wild side” sections of weekly papers, conducting phone interviews with potential tops who got off on the idea of dominating a small and “passable” crossdresser. For them, I wore skimpy outfits and four-inch heels, not because I thought it made me more of a woman, but because I spent so much of my life guarded and making myself invisible that it was a thrill to be so exhibitionistic and vulnerable. I pretended to be their secretaries or call girls, roles that had as much to do with class as they did with gender and sex. We were creating fantasy worlds out of real-life meanings and symbols, turning ourselves into caricatures of a culture that denies its own infatuation with hierarchies and pecking orders. Sometimes the line between fantasy and reality would blur, like the time I had a top who refused to stop for safe words.1 When I finally thwarted his advances, he guilt-tripped me with fucked-up lines about how I had led him on and how it was all my fault for being such a tease. When I got home, I sat in the shower for almost an hour, but I still felt dirty and diseased. And I didn’t dare tell a soul because, on a subconscious level, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had deserved what happened to me. At some point, all of us who identify as female have to come face-to-face with our own internalized misogyny. And when people ask me what has been the hardest part of being a transsexual, expecting me to say that it was coming out to my family or the growing pains of going through a second puberty, I tell them that the hardest part, by far, has been unlearning lessons that were etched into my psyche before I ever set foot in kindergarten. The hardest part has been learning how to take myself seriously when the entire world is constantly telling me that femininity is always inferior to masculinity. These days, I am an outspoken feminist and transgender activist. And most days, I dress like a tomboy in striped shirts, jeans, and Chuck Taylors. To most people, I probably seem pretty selfconfident, but that’s only because they can’t see my submissive streak. It’s like a scar I keep hidden up my sleeve, a scar that still sometimes opens up and bleeds. Like a shark bite, it literally tore me apart when it was first happening to me. But these days, my submissive streak is just another reminder of how I survived. 16 Love Rant

• From The Pisces (2018)

  51.I got into the bathtub and ran the water, soaking and scrubbing away Chase’s semen, which had formed a crust on my thigh. I could see it leaking out of me too in the bathwater, like passing clouds. Really, what was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I be a person who was content to just lie around and watch the clouds, without trying to consume anything? Was there something wrong with just being alive? Why was I so defective? Then again, it wasn’t my fault we were put on the planet and left to make our own meaning. I was making mine and doing the best I could. Drying off, I put on one of my sister’s silk kimonos, then went downstairs and got a glass of white wine. Was I cool? Was I glamorous? Was I living a life that others would crave, or was I out of my mind, fucking some strange driver? Part of me felt glamorous and part of me felt insane, the two feelings rotating over and over. I lay down on the floor and noticed that I felt better. I was relaxed, somewhat high even. The bad sex had served as some kind of methadone. Dominic came over and licked my face, whimpering. I would take him out later, so what if he shit in the pantry. I could just go to sleep, I thought. Now I felt certain that it would be sleep, and not death. I knew that it would just be sleep. But as I was drifting off, my phone rang. It was a Phoenix number and I answered it quickly, thinking that it might be Rochelle calling from her office to say that Megan had miscarried, or another piece of news involving Jamie. But it was the advisory committee, both the English and classics chairs, on the line. They were calling to let me know that they had read the outline and sample from my new thesis. Their voices sounded enthusiastic. Well, this was good! They were responding much more quickly than I expected. And having both of them on the call definitely signaled something big. Maybe they were so impressed that they were going to offer me more money? It was strange but I was so worn out that I couldn’t visualize either of their faces, only the rosacea nose of the classics chair and the hatching chick from the Easter sweater of the English chair. When they spoke, I imagined it was the nose itself speaking, with the chick chiming in as it emerged from its egg. “There’s an unorthodox fluidity about the new work that’s very refreshing,” said the nose. “Yes, the decreased omniscience, the infusion of romanticism. This new iteration is very powerful,” said the chick.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  During the winter, we had collected a bowl of snow and poured Pet milk over it, and sprinkled it with sugar and called it ice cream. Momma beamed and Uncle Willie was proud when Bailey regaled the customers with our exploits. We were drawing cards for the Store and objects of the town's adoration. Our journey to magical places alone was a spot of color on the town's drab canvas, and our return made us even more the most enviable of people. High spots in Stamps were usually negative: droughts, floods, lynchings and deaths. Bailey played on the country folks' need for diversion. Just after our return he had taken to sarcasm, picked it up as one might pick up a stone, and put it snufflike under his lip. The double entendres, the two-pronged sentences, slid over his tongue to dart rapier-like into anything that happened to be in the way. Our customers, though, generally were so straight thinking and speaking that they were never hurt by his attacks. They didn't comprehend them. “Bailey Junior sound just like Big Bailey. Got a silver tongue. Just like his daddy.” “I hear tell they don't pick cotton up there. How the people live then?” Bailey said that the cotton up North was so tall, if ordinary people tried to pick it they'd have to get up on ladders, so the cotton farmers had their cotton picked by machines. For a while I was the only recipient of Bailey's kindness. It was not that he pitied me but that he felt we were in the same boat for different reasons, and that I could understand his frustration just as he could countenance my withdrawal. I never knew if Uncle Willie had been told about the incident in St. Louis, but sometimes I caught him watching me with a far-off look in his big eyes. Then he would quickly send me on some errand that would take me out of his presence. When that happened I was both relieved and ashamed. I certainly didn't want a cripple's sympathy (that would have been a case of the blind leading the blind), nor did I want Uncle Willie, whom I loved in my fashion, to think of me as being sinful and dirty. If he thought so, at least I didn't want to know it. Sounds came to me dully, as if people were speaking through their handkerchiefs or with their hands over their mouths. Colors weren't true either, but rather a vague assortment of shaded pastels that indicated not so much color as faded familiarities. People's names escaped me and I began to worry over my sanity. After all, we had been away less than a year, and customers whose accounts I had formerly remembered without consulting the ledger were now complete strangers. People, except Momma and Uncle Willie, accepted my unwillingness to talk as a natural outgrowth of a reluctant return to the South.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  My gown was too snug for her and much too long, and when she wanted to laugh at her ridiculous image I found that humor had left me without a promise to return. Had I been older I might have thought that I was moved by both an esthetic sense of beauty and the pure emotion of envy. But those possibilities did not occur to me when I needed them. All I knew was that I had been moved by looking at a woman's breasts. So all the calm and casual words of Mother's explanation a few weeks earlier and the clinical terms of Noah Webster did not alter the fact that in a fundamental way there was something queer about me. I somersaulted deeper into my snuggery of misery. After a thorough self-examination, in the light of all I had read and heard about dykes and bulldaggers, I reasoned that I had none of the obvious traits—I didn't wear trousers, or have big shoulders or go in for sports, or walk like a man or even want to touch a woman. I wanted to be a woman, but that seemed to me to be a world to which I was to be eternally refused entrance. What I needed was a boyfriend. A boyfriend would clarify my position to the world and, even more important, to myself. A boyfriend's acceptance of me would guide me into that strange and exotic land of frills and femininity. Among my associates, there were no takers. Understandably the boys of my age and social group were captivated by the yellow-or light-brown-skinned girls, with hairy legs and smooth little lips, and whose hair “hung down like horses' manes.” And even those sought-after girls were asked to “give it up or tell where it is.” They were reminded in a popular song of the times, “If you can't smile and say yes, please don't cry and say no.” If the pretties were expected to make the supreme sacrifice in order to “belong,” what could the unattractive female do? She who had been skimming along on life's turning but never-changing periphery had to be ready to be a “buddy” by day and maybe by night. She was called upon to be generous only if the pretty girls were unavailable. I believe most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise. They shield themselves with an aura of unavailableness (for which after a time they begin to take credit) largely as a defense tactic. In my particular case, I could not hide behind the curtain of voluntary goodness. I was being crushed by two unrelenting forces: the uneasy suspicion that I might not be a normal female and my newly awakening sexual appetite. I decided to take matters into my own hands. (An unfortunate but apt phrase.) Up the hill from our house, and on the same side of the street, lived two handsome brothers.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  Two days later a monitor came into my classroom. She spoke quietly to Miss Williams, our teacher. Miss Williams said, “Class, I believe you remember that tomorrow is Valentine's Day, so named for St. Valentine, the martyr, who died around A.D. 270 in Rome. The day is observed by exchanging tokens of affection, and cards. The eighth-grade children have completed theirs and the monitor is acting as mailman. You will be given cardboard, ribbon and red tissue paper during the last period today so that you may make your gifts. Glue and scissors are here at the work table. Now, stand when your name is called.” She had been shuffling the colored envelopes and calling names for some time before I noticed. I had been thinking of yesterday's plain invitation and the expeditious way Louise and I took care of it. We who were being called to receive valentines were only slightly more embarrassed than those who sat and watched as Miss Williams opened each envelope. “Helen Gray.” Helen Gray, a tall, dull girl from Louisville, flinched. “Dear Valentine”—Miss Williams began reading the badly rhymed childish drivel. I seethed with shame and anticipation and yet had time to be offended at the silly poetry that I could have bettered in my sleep. “Margue-you-reete Ann Johnson. My goodness, this looks more like a letter than a valentine. ‘Dear Friend, I wrote you a letter and saw you tear it up with your friend Miss L. I don't believe you meant to hurt my feelings so whether you answer or not you will always be my valentine. T.V.’” “Class”—Miss Williams smirked and continued lazily without giving us permission to sit down—“although you are only in the seventh grade, I'm sure you wouldn't be so presumptuous as to sign a letter with an initial. But here is a boy in the eighth grade, about to graduate-blah, blah, blooey, blah. You may collect your valentines and these letters on your way out.” It was a nice letter and Tommy had beautiful penmanship. I was sorry I tore up the first. His statement that whether I answered him or not would not influence his affection reassured me. He couldn't be after you-know-what if he talked like that. I told Louise that the next time he came to the Store I was going to say something extra nice to him. Unfortunately the situation was so wonderful to me that each time I saw Tommy I melted in delicious giggles and was unable to form a coherent sentence. After a while he stopped including me in his general glances.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  And maybe I was born transgender—my brain preprogrammed to see myself as female despite the male body I was given at birth—but like every child, I turned to the rest of the world to figure out who I was and what I was worth. And like a good little boy, I picked up on all of the not-so-subliminal messages that surrounded me. TV shows where Father knows best and a woman’s place is in the home; fairy tales where helpless girls await their handsome princes; cartoon supermen who always save the damsel in distress; plus schoolyard taunts like “sissy” and “fairy” and “pussy” all taught me to see “feminine” as a synonym for “weakness.” And nobody needed to tell me that I should hate myself for wanting to be what was so obviously the lesser sex. When I hit puberty, my newly found attraction to women spilled into my dreams of becoming a girl. For me, sexuality became a strange combination of jealousy, self-loathing, and lust. Because when you isolate an impressionable transgender teen and bombard her with billboard ads baring bikini-clad women and boys’ locker room trash talk about this girl’s tits and that girl’s ass, then she will learn to turn her gender identity into a fetish. So without ever having seen pulp fiction or hardcore porn, my thirteen-year-old brain started concocting scenarios straight out of SM handbooks. Most of my fantasies began with my abduction: I’d turn to putty in the hands of some twisted man who would turn me into a woman as part of his evil plan. It’s called forced feminization, and it’s not really about sex. It is about turning the humiliation you feel into pleasure, transforming the loss of male privilege into the best fuck ever. While I never really believed the cliché about women being good for only one thing, I found that that sentiment kept creeping into my fantasies. In my late teens, I would imagine myself being sold into sex slavery and having strange men take advantage of me. It wasn’t so much that I was attracted to men, but that movies and magazines made it seem that being feminine meant allowing yourself to be dominated by men. In my mind, I’ve been pinned down by bodies so large that they dwarfed me, felt the ghost pains that accompanied the unwanted groping of body parts that did not yet belong to me, experienced the helplessness of having some faceless john stick his cock into the cunt that I hated myself for wishing that I had. And with each make-believe thrust, I felt simultaneous ecstasy and shame. My rape fantasies were bastard Catholic sacraments, as I absolved myself of guilt by combining my desire to be female with self-inflicted penance and punishment.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Hence he hailed a change of government which occurred in 602 by a violent revolution. When Phocas, an ignorant, red-haired, beardless, vulgar, cruel and deformed upstart, after the most atrocious murder of Maurice and his whole family (a wife, six sons and three daughters), ascended the throne, Gregory hastened to congratulate him and his wife Leontia (who was not much better) in most enthusiastic terms, calling on heaven and earth to rejoice at their accession, and vilifying the memory of the dead emperor as a tyrant, from whose yoke the church was now fortunately freed.221 This is a dark spot, but the only really dark and inexcusable spot in the life of this pontiff. He seemed to have acted in this case on the infamous maxim that the end justifies the means.222 His motive was no doubt to secure the protection and aggrandizement of the Roman see. He did not forget to remind the empress of the papal proof-text: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church," and to add: "I do not doubt that you will take care to oblige and bind him to you, by whom you desire to be loosed from your sins." The murderer and usurper repaid the favor by taking side with the pope against his patriarch (Cyriacus), who had shown sympathy with the unfortunate emperor. He acknowledged the Roman church to be "the head of all churches."223 But if he ever made such a decree at the instance of Boniface III., who at that time was papal nuntius at Constantinople, he must have meant merely such a primacy of honor as had been before conceded to Rome by the Council of Chalcedon and the emperor Justinian. At all events the disputed title continued to be used by the patriarchs and emperors of Constantinople. Phocas, after a disgraceful reign (602–610), was stripped of the diadem and purple, loaded with chains, insulted, tortured, beheaded and cast into the flames. He was succeeded by Heraclius. In this whole controversy the pope’s jealousy of the patriarch is very manifest, and suggests the suspicion that it inspired the protest. Gregory displays in his correspondence with his rival a singular combination of pride and humility. He was too proud to concede to him the title of a universal bishop, and yet too humble or too inconsistent to claim it for himself. His arguments imply that he would have the best right to the title, if it were not wrong in itself. His real opinion is perhaps best expressed in a letter to Eulogius of Alexandria. He accepts all the compliments which Eulogius paid to him as the successor of Peter, whose very name signifies firmness and solidity; but he ranks Antioch and Alexandria likewise as sees of Peter, which are nearly, if not quite, on a par with that of Rome, so that the three, as it were, constitute but one see. He ignores Jerusalem.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  In my own conversations with trans women, I’ve found that such expectations are still quite prevalent. On a transwoman-focused email list that I was a member of in the early 2000s, a new member posted that she had just scheduled her first therapy appointment and she asked if anyone had any advice for her. Sadly, there were about twenty responses, mostly from trans women who’d had the experience of being turned down because they had worn “male” or unisex clothing to their visits, and then later being approved after showing up to their appointments wearing dresses and makeup. While such standards are clearly traditionally sexist, it should once again be pointed out that they are also cissexist, as they require transsexual women to meet a more rigid standard of femininity than cissexual women in order to be considered female. In chapter 2, “Skirt Chasers,” I discussed the ways in which trans women are often required to prove their femaleness through superficial means—particularly by wearing dresses, heels, makeup, etc.—and then are dismissed as being “fake” women or “female impersonators” because of the perceived artifice involved. The same criticism can be applied to the gatekeepers who complained or commented on trans women’s “exaggeration” of their femininity without ever considering that their own criteria virtually required trans women to maintain a hyperfeminine appearance in order to gain access to the means of transitioning. In 1969, Money (and coauthors) discussed the results of tests they had administered to transsexuals to measure their feminine and masculine tendencies.47 The authors praised trans men for giving answers that were “masculine,” but not any more “masculine” than those of the average cissexual man. At no time did the authors consider the possibility that the trans men’s unexaggerated masculine responses were made possible by the fact that most gatekeepers, being male themselves, understood that there was more than one way to be a man. In contrast, trans women were derided for having scores that were higher on the feminine range than that of the average woman. Yet trans women were required to act more feminine than the average woman in order to be taken seriously as transsexuals. Evidence to support the idea that trans women’s hyperfeminine test scores were merely an attempt to appease the traditionally sexist biases of the gatekeepers can be found in Anne Bolin’s 1988 work In Search of Eve. When Bolin—who is not a gatekeeper and whose interactions with trans women occurred entirely outside of a clinical setting—administered a similar test, she found that trans women’s scores were a lot more varied and closer to the norm of cissexual women. She commented, “The importance of fulfilling caretaker expectations ... may be the single most important factor responsible for the prevalent medicalmental health conceptions of transsexualism.”48

• From The Pisces (2018)

  He really was cute. I waited for him to comment on me lying supine in his backseat, but he didn’t ask if I was okay. I suppose this was normal behavior in California. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing. I wasn’t dead. I was breathing in the back of this cute idiot’s car. When we pulled up at Annika’s house, he stopped and said, “Okay, we’re here. Wish me luck with Samsung!” I opened my eyes and squinted at him. I wanted to tell him that I hoped he never got a part. “Wanna fuck?” I said instead. I was shocked when the words came out. He must have been too, because he turned around to look at me for the first time. “Are you serious?” “Totally.” “Here? In the car?” “Sure, why not.” “Someone might see us.” “I don’t care if you don’t care,” I said. “Man. I’ve been driving for three years and this has never happened. Yeah, why not? YOLO, right? Hold on,” he said, and put the car in reverse. This was not really the response I was looking for. I wanted more of an “I’m floored by this request, because you’re so beautiful” and less of a “Well, since you asked, carpe diem!” But he pulled into a side alley and shut off the car. “Come up here,” he said. “Come around to the front.” I got out of the car, walked around to the driver’s side, and crawled onto this mustached man-boy’s lap. I was facing him, straddling him. He put his seat all the way back and I took off his FML baseball cap. His hairline was receding. We began kissing and he put his hands up my shirt. He sort of grabbed at my breasts and twisted them, like they were handles on a door. I felt like he was feeling for there to be more, trying to stretch them into being bigger, but they would only stretch so far. I wanted to say, Be gentler , but instead I said, “Yesss.” He slid his dick out of his jeans but left them on. He didn’t put on a condom, or ask if he should wear one. His dick was small, but firm, like a dill pickle. I lifted up my skirt and slid my underwear over to the side, sat on the dick. I moved up and down saying, “Yeah, fuck me,” even though I was the one doing the fucking. A few of my pubic hairs got caught in his zipper. I kept hitting my head on the roof of the car with every few humps.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Claudius was not disturbed in his seat; but, as he says himself, he found no sympathy with the people, and became "an object of scorn to his neighbors," who pointed at him as "a frightful spectre." He was censured by Pope Paschalis I. (817–824), and opposed by his old friend, the Abbot Theodemir of the diocese of Nismes, to whom he had dedicated his lost commentary on Leviticus (823), by Dungal (of Scotland or Ireland, about 827), and by Bishop Jonas of Orleans (840), who unjustly charged him with the Adoptionist and even the Arian heresy. Some writers have endeavored, without proof, to trace a connection between him and the Waldenses in Piedmont, who are of much later date.568

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  At the Council of Constance, where Gerson spoke as the delegate of the French king, he advocated these positions again and again with his voice, as in his address March 23, 1415, and in a second address July 21, when he defended the decree which the synod had passed at its fifth session. He reasserted that the pope may be forced to abdicate, that general councils are above the popes and that infallibility only belongs to the Church as a body or its highest representative, a general council.386 A blot rests upon Gerson’s name for the active part he took in the condemnation of John Huss. He was not above his age, and using the language of Innocent III. called heresy a cancer.387 He declares that he was as zealous in the proceedings against Huss and Wyclif as any one could be.388 He pronounced the nineteen errors drawn from Huss’ work on the Church "notoriously heretical." Heresy, he declared, if it is obstinate, must be destroyed even by the death of its professors.389 He denied Huss’ fundamental position that nothing is to be accepted as divine truth which is not found in Scripture. Gerson also condemned the appeal to conscience, explicitly assuming the old position of Church authority and canon law as final. The opinions of an individual, however learned he may be in the Scriptures, have no weight before the judgment of a council.390 In the controversy over the withdrawal of the cup from the laity, involved in the Bohemian heresy, Gerson also took an extreme position, defending it by arguments which seem to us altogether unworthy of a genuine theology. In a tract on the subject he declared that, though some passages of Scripture and of the Fathers favored the distribution of both wine and bread, they do not contain a definite command, and in the cases where an explicit command is given it must be understood as applying to the priests who are obliged to commune under both kinds so as to fully represent Christ’s sufferings and death. But this is not required of the laity who commune for the sake of the effect of Christ’s death and not to set it forth. Christ commanded only the Apostles to partake of both kinds.391 The custom of lay communion was never universal, as is proved by Acts 2:42, 46. The essence of the sacrament of the body and blood is more important than the elements, John 6:54. But the whole Christ is in either element, and, if some of the doctors take a different view, the Church’s doctrine is to be followed, and not they. From time immemorial the Church has given the communion only in one form. The Council of Constance was right in deciding that only a single element is necessary to a saving participation in the sacrament. The Church may make changes in the outward observance when the change does not touch the essence of the right in question.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  His apartment is on a small commercial strip and I pass it a few times before finding unevenly placed numbers at the top of a dirty, banged-up metal door. The ground floor contains a futon store that looks like it’s been here since the beginning of time – I wonder, do people still actually buy futons? Mark had asked that I call him upon arrival since his buzzer is broken, so I call now to let him know I’ll be downstairs perusing the futons until he comes to fetch me. A couple of minutes later, the door swings open to a teenage girl wielding a granny cart piled with dirty laundry. She smiles shyly at me and I see Mark right behind her. “This is my daughter,” he says, and we exchange hellos. “She’s on her way to the laundromat.” He nudges her along with his eyes and a nod of his head. She walks away, the overloaded metal cart clanging behind her on the uneven sidewalk. He holds the door open and I follow him up two long flights of stairs to a narrow landing covered with sneakers and boots. Stepping out of my heeled clog boots and lowering myself by about two inches, I leave my shoes in the pile in the hallway and enter his railroad apartment. It is small and dark, with windows placed at either end, one of which is his bedroom and the other his kitchen and his daughter’s bedroom, so the narrow living space between is windowless and dim. It’s comfortably furnished and carpeted but feels like a starter apartment, striking me as odd for a successful lawyer at this stage in his life. This makes me feel like an unbearable snob, but it’s less about my thinking it’s not good enough for me than about wondering why it’s good enough for him. He ushers me into the kitchen, where he starts slicing a baguette and laying chorizo and wedges of cheese on a platter. Again, I brace myself against my inner snob, watching in dismay as he unwraps plastic wrap from hunks of cheese on which I can see price tags from the supermarket. Lately, my brother has been teasing me about how bougie I’ve become, as I appear to be simple but with a country house and an SUV and an apartment on lower Fifth Avenue. I am frugal about certain things – happy to buy clothes and dishes at thrift shops, throwing cheap bottles of conditioner in my grocery cart and upgrading only when Tina insists I try one of her rarefied Parisian products – but when it comes to certain categories like food, reading material and hotels, I am highbrow: sheepish about it, but highbrow nonetheless. When he’s assembled the platter to his satisfaction, he asks me to grab the wine and follow him to the living room. We sit on the loveseat and as we talk, he scooches closer to me and sets down his wine glass.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Oh, but she knew, and only too well, what it would mean should they be there together; the lies, the despicable subterfuges, as though they were little less than criminals. It would be: ‘Mary, don’t hang about my bedroom—be careful . . . of course while we’re here at Morton . . . it’s my mother, she can’t understand these things; to her they would seem an outrage, an insult. . . .’ And then the guard set upon eyes and lips; the feeling of guilt at so much as a hand-touch; the pretence of a careless, quite usual friendship—‘Mary, don’t look at me as though you cared! you did this evening—remember my mother.’ Intolerable quagmire of lies and deceit! The degrading of all that to them was sacred—a very gross degrading of love, and through love a gross degrading of Mary. Mary . . . so loyal and as yet so gallant, but so pitifully untried in the war of existence. Warned only by words, the words of a lover, and what were mere words when it came to actions? And the ageing woman with the far-away eyes, eyes that could yet be so cruel, so accusing—they might turn and rest with repugnance on Mary, even as once they had rested on Stephen: ‘I would rather see you dead at my feet. . . .’ A fearful saying, and yet she had meant it, that ageing woman with the far-away eyes—she had uttered it knowing herself to be a mother. But that at least should be hidden from Mary. She began to consider the ageing woman who had scourged her but whom she had so deeply wounded, and as she did so the depth of that wound made her shrink in spite of her bitter anger, so that gradually the anger gave way to a slow and almost reluctant pity. Poor, ignorant, blind, unreasoning woman; herself a victim, having given her body for Nature’s most inexplicable whim. Yes, there had been two victims already—must there now be a third—and that one Mary? She trembled. At that moment she could not face it, she was weak, she was utterly undone by loving. Greedy she had grown for happiness, for the joys and the peace that their union had brought her. She would try to minimize the whole thing; she would say: ‘It will only be for ten days; I must just run over about this business,’ then Mary would probably think it quite natural that she had not been invited to Morton and would ask no questions—she never asked questions. But would Mary think such a slight was quite natural? Fear possessed her; she sat there terribly afraid of this cloud that had suddenly risen to menace—afraid yet determined not to submit, not to let it gain power through her own acquiescence. There was only one weapon to keep it at bay. Getting up she opened the window: ‘Mary!’ All unconscious the girl hurried in with David: ‘Did you call?’

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  6That night she stared at herself in the glass; and even as she did so she hated her body with its muscular shoulders, its small compact breasts, and its slender flanks of an athlete. All her life she must drag this body of hers like a monstrous fetter imposed on her spirit. This strangely ardent yet sterile body that must worship yet never be worshipped in return by the creature of its adoration. She longed to maim it, for it made her feel cruel; it was so white, so strong and so self-sufficient; yet withal so poor and unhappy a thing that her eyes filled with tears and her hate turned to pity. She began to grieve over it, touching her breasts with pitiful fingers, stroking her shoulders, letting her hands slip along her straight thighs—Oh, poor and most desolate body! Then she, for whom Puddle was actually praying at that moment, must now pray also, but blindly; finding few words that seemed worthy of prayer, few words that seemed to encompass her meaning—for she did not know the meaning of herself. But she loved, and loving groped for the God who had fashioned her, even unto this bitter loving. CHAPTER 251S tephen’s troubles had begun to be aggravated by Violet, who was always driving over to Morton, ostensibly to talk about Alec, in reality to collect information as to what might be happening at The Grange. She would stay for hours, very skilfully pumping while she dropped unwelcome hints anent Roger. ‘Father’s going to cut down his allowance,’ she declared, ‘if he doesn’t stop hanging about that woman. Oh, I’m sorry! I always forget she’s your friend—’ Then looking at Stephen with inquisitive eyes: ‘But I can’t understand that friendship of yours; for one thing, how can you put up with Crossby?’ And Stephen knew that yet once again, county gossip was rife about her. Violet was going to be married in September, they would then live in London, for Alec was a barrister. Their house, it seemed, was already bespoken: ‘A perfect duck of a house in Belgravia,’ where Violet intended to entertain largely on the strength of a bountiful parent Peacock. She was in the highest possible fettle these days, invested with an enormous importance in her own eyes, as also in those of her neighbours. Oh, yes, the whole world smiled broadly on Violet and her Alec: ‘Such a charming young couple,’ said the world, and at once proceeded to shower them with presents. Apostle teaspoons arrived in their dozens, so did coffee-pots, cream-jugs and large fish slices; to say nothing of a heavy silver bowl from the Hunt, and a massive salver from the grateful Scottish tenants.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  She really hates it there, but she’s not getting out anytime soon. I’m going to try to get her to go to treatment for drugs and depression following her stay. Apparently she’d been taking pills again.” That’s not gonna do it, I thought. It’s not the pills or the depression. It’s the sex and love. But you can’t tell a person’s husband, one who probably still very much loves her, about her addiction to other men. You can’t say, Oh, the real problem is in her heart and cunt. Who was I to know what the real problem was anyway? Maybe her real problem was drug addiction, and this love and sex thing was only a poor substitute. But if that was the case then where was my drug problem? And why was she crying for men but never for drugs? Why was it that whenever one of them left or did not give her enough of what she wanted, she dissolved into a disaster? And why was I vomiting on Abbot Kinney last night? “I’ll go see her,” I said. I walked and fed Dominic quickly and then I went to see Claire, just like that, no fear of what I would see, no recalling the memory of having almost been hospitalized by the doughnut incident. There was only this person who needed me. It wasn’t a reflection of me that I was seeking, a way to feel good about myself. There was just this human being for whom I could maybe bring some love. For once I could actually do something of service. The thought of getting out of my own mind, and the situation with Theo, made me feel good for a moment. The psych ward smelled like institutional mashed potatoes and the nurses said that Claire was with a doctor. I wondered if this was where I was going to end up. Or would I end up in a hospital in Phoenix? As the patients moved back and forth, shuffling around the locked ward, I felt very aware of my freedom. One woman about my age sat in a chair, in her gown, digging her nails into her scalp: red sores scabbing all along the hairline. With every few digs she would intently scrutinize the skin she had scraped off and then put it in her mouth. I did not feel like I was a better person than these people, but perhaps stronger, or luckier, or something. Then I felt ashamed of my strength and freedom. I was one of them, only I was out here. But I wasn’t one of them, was I? I had been alive a long time and had not ended up in one of these places. I had come close but never completely lost my freedom.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In the progress of his reign, especially after his second marriage to the ambitious Judith, he showed deplorable weakness and allowed his empire to decay, while he wasted his time between monkish exercises and field- sports in the forest of the Ardennes. He unwisely shared his rule with his three sons who soon rebelled against their father and engaged in fraternal wars. After his death the treaty of Verdun was concluded in 843. By this treaty the empire was divided; Lothair received Italy with the title of emperor, France fell to Charles the Bald, Germany to Louis the German. Thus Charlemagne’s conception of a Western empire that should be commensurate with the Latin church was destroyed, or at least greatly contracted, and the three countries have henceforth a separate history. This was better for the development of nationality. The imperial dignity was afterwards united with the German crown, and continued under this modified form till 1806. During this civil commotion the papacy had no distinguished representative, but upon the whole profited by it. Some of the popes evaded the imperial sanction of their election. The French clergy forced the gentle Louis to make at Soissons a most humiliating confession of guilt for all the slaughter, pillage, and sacrilege committed during the civil wars, and for bringing the empire to the brink of ruin. Thus the hierarchy assumed control even over the civil misconduct of the sovereign and imposed ecclesiastical penance for ft. Note. The Myth of Johanna Papissa. We must make a passing mention of the curious and mysterious myth of papess Johanna, who is said during this period between Leo IV. (847) and Benedict III. (855) to have worn the triple crown for two years and a half. She was a lady of Mayence (her name is variously called Agnes, Gilberta, Johanna, Jutta), studied in disguise philosophy in Athens (where philosophy had long before died out), taught theology in Rome, under the name of Johannes Anglicus, and was elevated to the papal dignity as John VIII., but died in consequence of the discovery of her sex by a sudden confinement in the open street during a solemn procession from the Vatican to the Lateran. According to another tradition she was tied to the hoof of a horse, dragged outside of the city and stoned to death by the people, and the inscription was put on her grave: "Parce pater patrum papissae edere partum." The strange story originated in Rome, and was first circulated by the Dominicans and Minorites, and acquired general credit in the 13th and 14th centuries. Pope John XX. (1276) called himself John XXI. In the beginning of the 15th century the bust of this woman-pope was placed alongside with the busts of the other popes at Sienna, and nobody took offence at it. Even Chancellor Gerson used the story as an argument that the church could err in matters of fact. At the Council in Constance it was used against the popes.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Pius left Mantua the last of January, 1461, stopping on the return journey a second time at his beloved Siena, and canonizing its distinguished daughter, Catherine.742 Here Rodrigo Borgia’s gayeties were so notorious as to call forth papal rebuke. The cardinal gave banquets to which women were invited without their husbands. In a severe letter to the future supreme pontiff, Pius spoke of the dancing at the entertainments as being performed, so he understood, with "all licentiousness." The ease with which Pius, when it was to his interest, renounced theories which he once advocated is shown in two bulls. The first, the famous bull, Execrabilis, declared it an accursed and unheard-of abuse to make appeal to a council from the decisions of the Roman pontiff, Christ’s vicar, to whom it was given to feed his sheep and to bind and loose on earth and in heaven. To rid the Church of this pestiferous venom,—pestiferum virus,—it announced the papal purpose to damn such appeals and to lay upon the appellants a curse from which there could be no absolution except by the Roman pontiff himself and in the article of death.743 Thus the solemn principle which had bloomed so promisingly in the fair days of the councils of Constance and Basel, and for which Gerson and D’Ailly had so zealously contended, was set aside by one stroke of the pen. Thenceforward, the decree announced, papal decisions were to be treated as final. Three years later, April 26, 1463, the theory of the supremacy of general councils was set aside in still more precise language.744 In an elaborate letter addressed to the rector and scholars of the University of Cologne, Pius pronounced for the monarchical form of government in the church—monarchicum regimen — as being of divine origin, and the one given to Peter. As storks follow one leader, and as the bees have one king, so the militant church has in the vicar of Christ one who is moderator and arbiter of all. He receives his authority directly from Christ without mediation. He is the prince—praesul — of all the bishops, the heir of the Apostles, of the line of Abel and Melchisedek. As for the Council Of Constance, Pius expressed his regard for its decrees so far as they were approved by his predecessors, but the definitions of general councils, he affirmed, are subject to the sanction of the supreme pontiff, Peter’s successor. With reference to his former utterances at Basel, he expressly revoked anything he had said in conflict with the positions taken in the bull, and ascribed those statements to immaturity of mind, the imprudence of youth and the circumstances of his early training. Quis non errat mortalis— what mortal does not make mistakes, he exclaimed. Reject Aeneas and follow Pius—Aeneam rejicite, Pium recipite — he said.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  And yet with all his weakness of character, and time-serving policy, Cranmer must have been an eminently devout man if he translated and reproduced (as he certainly edited) the Anglican liturgy, which has stood the test of many generations to this day.620 John Knox, the Luther of Scotland, had the courage, as a widower of fifty-eight (March, 1563–64), to marry a Scotch lass of sixteen, Margaret Stuart, of royal name and blood, to the great indignation of Queen Mary, who "stormed wonderfully" at his audacity. The papists got up the story that he gained her affection by sorcery, and aimed to secure for his heirs, with the aid of the Devil, the throne of Scotland. His wife bore him three daughters, and two years after his death (1572) contracted a second marriage with Andrew Ker, a widower.621 The most unfortunate matrimonial incident in the Reformation is the consent of Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer to the disgraceful bigamy of Landgrave Philip of Hesse. It is a blot on their character, and admits of no justification. When the secret came out (1540), Melanchthon was so over-whelmed with the reproaches of conscience and a sense of shame that he fell dangerously ill at Weimar, till Luther, who was made of sterner stuff, and found comfort in his doctrine of justification by faith alone, prayed him out of the jaws of death. In forming a just estimate of this subject, we must not only look backward to the long ages of clerical celibacy with all its dangers and evils, but also forward to the innumerable clerical homes which were made possible by the Reformation. They can bear the test of the closest examination. Clerical celibacy and monastic vows deprived the church of the services of many men who might have become shining stars. On the other hand, it has been calculated by Justus Möser in 1750, that within two centuries after the Reformation from ten to fifteen millions of human beings in all lands owe their existence to the abolition of clerical celibacy.622 More important than this numerical increase is the fact that an unusual proportion of eminent scholars and useful men in church and state were descended from clerical families.623 There is a poetic as well as religious charm in the home of a Protestant country pastor who moves among his flock as a father, friend, and comforter, and enforces his teaching of domestic virtues and affections by his example, speaking louder than words. The beauty of this relation has often been the theme of secular poets.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  But then I had to pee again ten minutes later. “Jesus fuck, why?” I whimpered, curling up in a fetal position. Dominic licked my cheek. He seemed to understand that I was hurting. He whined a little. I whined back at him and we whined together. I wanted to pretend it was just irritation, maybe the dawning of a mild yeast infection, which could be snuffed out with a bit of Monistat. But this was no yeast infection. It was a goddamn urinary tract infection. I hadn’t had one in years, but the feeling was not one you forget. The dull ache in the pelvis, the urgent need to pee, the burning. After my first three UTIs I had learned the secret at my college infirmary: always pee after sex. Pee immediately, within ten minutes, if possible. But I wasn’t about to pee in front of Garrett. I thought about how I was taught to wipe, as a little girl, after I’d gotten my first UTI. “From now on you’re going to wipe from front to back,” said the pediatrician. “Do you understand?” When Garrett tried to stick his dick into my asshole, and then abandoned the mission for my vagina, I did, for a split second, think, This can’t be good. Back to front. I tried to sleep but it was no use. I knew exactly what I needed: Pyridium to take the pain away and Cipro to kill the bug. I started moaning little things out loud in a deeply self-pitying way, like “Noooooo” and “Why meeeeeeee?” Part of me was reacting to the pain. But another part of me liked being melodramatic, babying myself. I managed to walk Dominic and then summon a car. The closest hospital was in Marina del Rey, not far. “Be good,” I said. “Mommy is very, very sick.” I heard myself talking to the dog, and it reminded me that I existed. Existence always looked like something other than I thought it would. 22. Somehow, at five in the morning, there were three families ahead of me in the ER. Did children only get injured at dawn? One of them was a boy with a soccer uniform on and one sneaker off, crying. I didn’t understand why he was playing soccer at four in the morning. Was he playing in his sleep? His mother and father seemed so concerned about him, comforting him and stroking his hair. I wanted someone to stroke my hair. I thought about texting Annika, who would definitely be awake in Europe, but didn’t want to worry her. I didn’t want her to ask how I got the UTI. Instead I texted Jamie. Hi just seeing what you are doing and how you are? He was an early riser. I saw the dot dot dot of him responding. Then the dots stopped. Nothing. I bet Megan the scientist was in bed with him. Immediately I regretted it.