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 Trash (1988)

  There are people in the world who are, but they are not us. Don’t show your fear to anyone. The things that would happen are too terrible to name. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night to the call of my name shouted in my mama’s voice, rising from silence like an echo caught in the folds of my brain. It is her hard voice I hear, not the soft one she used when she held me tight, the hard voice she used on bill collectors and process servers. Sometimes her laugh comes too, that sad laugh, thin and foreshadowing a cough, with her angry laugh following. I hate that laugh; hate the sound of it in the night following on my name like shame. When I hear myself laugh like that, I always start to curse; to echo what I know was the stronger force in my mama’s life. As I grew up my teachers warned me to clean up my language, and my lovers became impatient with the things I said. Sugar and honey, my teachers reminded me when I sprinkled my sentences with the vinegar of my mama’s rage—as if I was supposed to want to draw flies. And, “Oh honey,” my girlfriends would whisper, “do you have to talk that way?” I did, I did indeed. I smiled them my mama’s smile and played for them my mama’s words while they tightened up and pulled back, seeing me for someone they had not imagined before. They didn’t shout, they hissed; and even when they got angry, their language never quite rose up out of them the way my mama’s rage would fly. “Must you? Must you?” They begged me. And then, “For God’s sake!” “Sweet Jesus!” I’d shout back but they didn’t know enough to laugh. “Must you? Must you?” Hiss, hiss. “For God’s sake, do you have to end everything with ass? An anal obsession, that’s what you’ve got, a goddamn anal obsession!” “I do, I do,” I told them, “and you don’t even know how to say Goddamn. A woman who says Goddamn as soft as you do isn’t worth the price of a meal of shit!” Coarse, crude, rude words, and ruder gestures—Mama knew them all. You Assfucker, Get out of my Yard, to the cop who came to take the furniture. Shitsucking Bastard! To the man who put his hand under her skirt. Jesus shit a brick, every day of her life. Though she slapped me when I used them, my mama taught me the power of nasty words. Say Goddamn. Say anything but begin it with Jesus and end it with shit. Add that laugh, the one that disguises your broken heart. Oh, never show your broken heart!

• From Trash (1988)

  Then she shook her head nervously and tried to persuade me to talk about myself, interrupting only to get me to switch topics as she moved restlessly from her rocking chair to a bolster to the couch beside me. She did not want to hear about my summers working in the mop factory, but she loved my lies about hitchhiking cross-country. “Meet me for lunch on Monday,” she insisted, while her eyes behind her glasses kept glancing at me, turning away and turning back. My palms were sweaty, but I nodded yes. At the door she stopped me, and put her hand out to touch my face. “Your family is very poor, aren’t they?” My face froze and burned at the same time. “Not really,” I told her, “not anymore.” She nodded and smiled, and the heat in my face went down my body in waves. I didn’t want to go on Monday but made myself. Her secretary was confused when I asked about lunch. “I don’t have anything written down about it,” she said, without looking up from her calendar. After class that afternoon the sociology professor explained her absence with a story about one of her children who had been bitten by a dog, “but not seriously. Come on Thursday,” she insisted, but on Thursday neither she nor her secretary were there. I stood in the doorway to her office and tilted my head back to take in her shelves of books. I wanted to pocket them all, but at the same time I didn’t want anything of hers. Trembling, I reached and pulled out the fattest book on the closest shelf. It was a hardbound edition of Sadism in the Movies, with a third of the pages underlined in red. It fit easily in my backpack, and I stopped in the Student Union bookstore on the way back to the dorm to buy a Hershey bar and steal a bright blue pen. On the next Monday, she apologized again, and again invited me to go to lunch the next day. I skipped lunch but slipped in that afternoon to return her book, now full of my bright blue comments. In its spot on the shelf there was now a collection of the essays of Georges Bataille, still unmarked. By the time I returned it on Friday, heavy blue ink stains showed on the binding itself . Eventually we did have lunch. She talked to me about how hard it was to be a woman alone in a college town, about how all the male professors treated her like a fool, and yet how hard she worked. I nodded. “You read so much,” I whispered. “I keep up,” she agreed with me. “So do I,” I smiled. She looked nervous and changed the subject but let me walk her back to her office. On her desk, there was a new edition of Malinowski’s The Sexual Life of Savages .

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘That is where you are mistaken,’ said the lady. ‘I swear to you by God’s wounds that he does it better than my husband, and he informs me that they do it up there as well. But he has fallen in love with me because he thinks me more beautiful than any of the women in Heaven, and he is forever coming down to keep me company. So there!’ On leaving Monna Lisetta, her friend could scarcely contain her eagerness to repeat what she had heard, and at the earliest opportunity, whilst attending a party with a number of other ladies, she recounted the whole of the story from beginning to end. These ladies passed the tale on to their husbands and to various of their female acquaintances, and thus within forty-eight hours the news was all over Venice. Unfortunately, however, the brothers of Monna Lisetta’s husband were among those to whose ears the story came, and they firmly made up their minds, without breathing a word to the lady herself, to run this angel to earth and discover whether he could fly. And for several nights running they lay in wait for his coming. Some tiny hint of what had occurred chanced to reach the ears of Friar Alberto, who, having called upon the lady one night with the intention of giving her a scolding, had scarcely stripped off his clothes before her brothers-in-law, who had seen him arrive at the house, were hammering at the door and trying to force it open. Hearing the noise and guessing what it signified, Friar Alberto leapt out of bed, and seeing that there was nowhere to hide, he threw open a window overlooking the Grand Canal and took a flying leap into the water. Friar Alberto was a good swimmer, and because the water was deep he came to no harm. Having swum across the canal, he dashed through the open door of a house on the other bank, and pleaded with its tenant, an honest-looking fellow, to save his life for the love of God, spinning him some yarn to account for his arrival there at such a late hour in a state of nudity. The honest man took pity on him, and since he was in any case obliged to go and attend to certain affairs of his, he tucked the Friar up in his own bed and told him to stay there until he returned. And having locked him in, he went about his business. On forcing their way into her room, the lady’s in-laws discovered that the Angel Gabriel had flown, leaving his wings behind. They were feeling discountenanced, to say the least, and bombarded the woman with a torrent of violent abuse, after which they left her there, alone and disconsolate, and returned home with the Angel’s bits and pieces.

• From Trash (1988)

  With all the hatefulness I was trying to hide, it was a wonder I wasn’t uglier than a toad in mud season. The singing started. I sat back on my heels and hugged my knees, humming. Revivals are funny. People get pretty enthusiastic, but they sometimes forget just which hymn it is they’re singing. I grinned to myself and watched the men near the road punch each other lightly and curse in a friendly fashion. You bastard. You son of a bitch. The preacher said something I didn’t understand. There was a moment of silence, and then a pure tenor voice rose up into the night sky. The spit soured in my mouth. They had a real singer in there, a real gospel choir. SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT . . . COMING FOR TO CARRY ME HOME . . . AS I WALKED OUT IN THE STREETS OF LAREDO . . . SWEET JESUS . . . LIFT ME UP, LIFT ME UP IN THE AIR. . . . The night seemed to wrap all around me like a blanket. My insides felt as if they had melted, and I could just feel the wind in my mouth. The sweet gospel music poured through me and made all my nastiness, all my jealousy and hatred, swell in my heart. I knew. I knew I was the most disgusting person in the world. I didn’t deserve to live another day. I started hiccupping and crying. “I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m sorry.” How could I live with myself? How could God stand me? Was this why Jesus wouldn’t speak to my heart? The music washed over me . . . SOFTLY AND TENDERLY . The music was a river trying to wash me clean. I sobbed and dug my heels into the dirt, drunk on grief and that pure, pure voice. It didn’t matter then if it was whiskey backstage or tongue kissing in the dressing room. Whatever it took to make that juice was necessary, was fine. I wiped my eyes and swore out loud. Get those boys another bottle, I said. Find that girl a hard-headed husband. But goddamn, get them to make that music. Make that music! Lord, make me drunk on that music. The next Sunday I went off with Shannon and the Pearls for another gospel drive. Driving backcountry with the Pearls meant stopping in at little country churches listening to gospel choirs. Mostly all those choirs had was a little echo of the real stuff. “Pitiful, an’t it?” Shannon sounded like her father’s daughter. “Organ music just can’t stand against a slide guitar.”

• From Trash (1988)

  She laughed at me, but then put her hand on my arm in apology. “I don’t know. You’re younger. Maybe it’s different for you. Women my age now, we’ve always been kind of hard on each other for that kind of thing. You’re supposed to do it because you’re in love. You get a reputation for sleeping around and people treat you bad, call you terrible names. I always hated that, but not enough to do anything myself. To tell you the truth, the only time I ever brought anybody home that way, I was drunk and I hated it. Must be different if you’re younger, huh?” “No, not that I’ve seen, and the trouble is I like them older than me anyway,” I’d shrugged, “older than you. And yeah, they got a word for me, too.” “I don’t want to hear it.” “Neither do I.” I ran my palms up my own stringy arms and looked up at the pictures she had pinned all over her bedroom door. The women up there looked back at me with pinpoint black sleepy eyes—lesbians Anna’s age and older, mysterious, powerful and mean, no doubt, if you didn’t play by their rules. I hugged myself and looked away. “Neither do I.” At the concert last week, I kept walking back to Cass and the little bottle of Jack Daniel’s she had in her coat pocket. “Have a drink, darling. It’ll open your eyes,” she’d say, her pupils hidden behind half-closed lids. I shook my head no and gave her a quick lick on the neck that made her cheeks flash pink and her eyes open wide. All the women near us, most of them Cass’s friends from work or the pool hall, had their own bottles. I tried to get Cass to keep her little bottle down in the shadows. The crowd kept pushing past, their eyes hooded with too much dope and skin sour with cigarettes—women in party clothes: loose trousers, velvet vests, hats, high-heeled boots, glittering necklaces, and elaborate hoops dangling from their ears. Most of them looked like they belonged to the same gypsy troupe, their tribe indicated by the slogan-bearing buttons pinned to their collars and jackets. I saw Anna go by with her new girlfriend, Gayle, and then three of the women from the house—Judy, Paula, and Lenore. But none of them seemed to have seen us, and they all quickly disappeared into the audience. I felt Cass slip her hands around my waist and turned my face into the shelter of her neck. “Where do they all come from?” I was only half serious. There were more women in the audience than I’d seen at any demonstration up at the capitol building. “Oh, these only come out for the music,” Cass laughed. “Just like me.”

• From Trash (1988)

  Did I look like that? Would I look like that when I grew up? I remembered Aunt Grace putting her big hands over my ears and turning my face to catch the light, saying, “Just as well you smart; you an’t never gonna be a beauty.” At least I wasn’t as ugly as Shannon Pearl, I told myself, and was immediately ashamed. Shannon hadn’t made herself ugly, but if I kept thinking that way I just might. Mama always said people could see your soul in your face, could see your hatefulness and lack of charity. With all the hatefulness I was trying to hide, it was a wonder I wasn’t uglier than a toad in mud season. The singing started. I sat back on my heels and hugged my knees, humming. Revivals are funny. People get pretty enthusiastic, but they sometimes forget just which hymn it is they’re singing. I grinned to myself and watched the men near the road punch each other lightly and curse in a friendly fashion. You bastard. You son of a bitch. The preacher said something I didn’t understand. There was a moment of silence, and then a pure tenor voice rose up into the night sky. The spit soured in my mouth. They had a real singer in there, a real gospel choir. SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT . . . COMING FOR TO CARRY ME HOME . . . AS I WALKED OUT IN THE STREETS OF LAREDO . . . SWEET JESUS . . . LIFT ME UP, LIFT ME UP IN THE AIR. . . . The night seemed to wrap all around me like a blanket. My insides felt as if they had melted, and I could just feel the wind in my mouth. The sweet gospel music poured through me and made all my nastiness, all my jealousy and hatred, swell in my heart. I knew. I knew I was the most disgusting person in the world. I didn’t deserve to live another day. I started hiccupping and crying. “I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m sorry.” How could I live with myself? How could God stand me? Was this why Jesus wouldn’t speak to my heart? The music washed over me . . . SOFTLY AND TENDERLY. The music was a river trying to wash me clean. I sobbed and dug my heels into the dirt, drunk on grief and that pure, pure voice. It didn’t matter then if it was whiskey backstage or tongue kissing in the dressing room. Whatever it took to make that juice was necessary, was fine. I wiped my eyes and swore out loud. Get those boys another bottle, I said. Find that girl a hard-headed husband. But goddamn, get them to make that music. Make that music! Lord, make me drunk on that music. The next Sunday I went off with Shannon and the Pearls for another gospel drive.

• From Trash (1988)

  I laid my notebook down on top of it, and took them both when I left. Malinowski was a fast read. I had that one back a day later. She was going through her date book looking for a free evening we could have dinner. But exams were coming up so soon. I smiled and nodded and backed out the door. The secretary, used to seeing me come and go, didn’t even look up. I took no other meals with professors; didn’t trust myself in their houses. But I studied their words, gestures, jokes, and quarrels to see just how they were different from me. I limited my outrage to their office shelves, working my way through their books one at a time, carefully underlining my favorite passages in dark blue ink—occasionally covering over their own faded marks. I continued to take the sociology professor’s classes but refused to stay after to talk, and when she called my name in the halls, I would just smile and keep walking. Once she sat beside me in a seminar and put her hand on the back of my neck where I was leaning back in my chair. I turned and saw she was biting her lips. I remembered her saying, “Your family is very poor, aren’t they?” I kept my face expressionless and looked forward again. That was the afternoon I made myself a pair of harem pants out of the gauze curtains from the infirmary. My parents came for graduation, Mama taking the day off from the diner, my father walking slow in his back brace. They both were bored at the lunch, uncomfortable and impatient to have the ceremony be over so we could pack my boxes in the car and leave. Mama kept pulling at the collar of my robe while waiting for the call for me to join my class. She was so nervous she kept rocking back on her heels and poked my statistics professor with her elbow as he tried to pass. “Quite something, your daughter,” he grinned as he shook my mama’s hand. Mama and I could both tell he was uncomfortable, so she just nodded, not knowing what to say. “We’re expecting great things of her,” he added, and quickly joined the other professors on the platform, their eyes roaming over the parents headed for the elevated rows at the sides and back of the hall. I saw my sociology professor sharing a quick sip from the dean’s pocket flask. She caught me watching, and her face flushed a dull reddish gray. I smiled as widely as ever I had, and held that smile through the long slow ceremony that followed, the walk up to get my diploma, and the confused milling around that followed the moment when we were all supposed to throw our tassels over to the other side.

• From Trash (1988)

  My contempt, my terror, took over my life, because they were the first things I felt when I looked at myself, until I became unable to see my true self at all. “You’re an animal,” she used to say to me, in the dark with her teeth against my thigh, and I believed her, growled back at her, and swallowed all the poison she could pour into my soul. Now I sit and think about Bobby’s thighs, her legs opening in the dark where no one could see, certainly not herself. My own legs opening. That was so long ago and far away, but not so far as she finally ran when she could not stand it anymore, when the lust I made her feel got too wild, too uncivilized, too dangerous. Now I think about what I did. What I did. What I was. What I do. What I am. “Sex,” I told her. “I will be sex for you.” Never asked, “You. What will you be for me?” Now I make sure to ask. I keep Bobby in mind when I stare at women’s thighs. I finger my seams, flash my teeth, and put it right out there. “You. What will you let yourself be for me?” This page constitutes an extension of the copyright page. “Deciding to Live.” Writing Women’s Lives: An Anthology of Autobiographical Narratives by Twentieth-Century Women Writers, edited by Susan Cahill. HarperPerennial, 1994. “Demon Lover.” Off Our Backs: A Women’s Liberation Bi-Weekly. Fiction/Poetry Supplement, July 1979. “Gospel Song.” Downhome: An Anthology of Southern Women Writers, edited by Susie Mee. Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1995. “Her Thighs.” The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, edited by Joan Nestle. Alyson Publications, 1992. “I’m Working on My Charm.” Conditions Six. Spring, 1980. “A Lesbian Appetite.” Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present, edited by Lillian Faderman. Viking, 1994. “A Lesbian Appetite.” The Penguin Book of Lesbian Short Stories, edited by Margaret Reynolds. Viking Penguin, 1994. “A Lesbian Appetite.” Women on Women: An Anthology of American Lesbian Short Fiction, edited by Joan Nestle and Naomi Holoch. Plume, 1990. “Mama.” Calling Home: Working-Class Women’s Writings, edited by Janet Zandy. Rutgers University Press, 1990. “Monkeybites.” The Second Gates of Paradise: The Anthology of Erotic Short Fiction, edited by Alberto Manguel. Macfarlane, Walter & Ross, 1994. “River of Names.” The Picador Book of Contemporary American Stories, edited by Tobias Wolff. Picador/Pan MacMillan, London, 1993. What’s next on your reading list? Discover your next great read!

• From Trash (1988)

  I grabbed her, pulling her back, doing it as gently as I could so I wouldn’t break the stitches from her operation. She had her other arm clamped across her abdomen and couldn’t fight me at all. She just kept shrieking. “That little bastard just screams and screams. That little bastard. I’ll kill him.” Then the words seeped in and she looked at me while her son kept crying and kicking his feet. By his head the mattress still showed the impact of her fist. “Oh no,” she moaned, “I wasn’t going to be like that. I always promised myself.” She started to cry, holding her belly and sobbing. “We an’t no different. We an’t no different.” Jesse wraps her arm around my stomach, presses her belly into my back. I relax against her. “You sure you can’t have children?” she asks. “I sure would like to see what your kids would turn out to be like.” I stiffen, say, “I can’t have children. I’ve never wanted children.” “Still,” she says, “you’re so good with children, so gentle.” I think of all the times my hands have curled into fists, when I have just barely held on. I open my mouth, close it, can’t speak. What could I say now? All the times I have not spoken before, all the things I just could not tell her, the shame, the self-hatred, the fear; all of that hangs between us now—a wall I cannot tear down. I would like to turn around and talk to her, tell her . . . “I’ve got a dust river in my head, a river of names endlessly repeating. That dirty water rises in me, all those children screaming out their lives in my memory, and I become someone else, someone I have tried so hard not to be.” But I don’t say anything, and I know, as surely as I know I will never have a child, that by not speaking I am condemning us, that I cannot go on loving you and hating you for your fairy-tale life, for not asking about what you have no reason to imagine, for that soft-chinned innocence I love. Jesse puts her hands behind my neck, smiles and says, “You tell the funniest stories.” I put my hands behind her back, feeling the ridges of my knuckles pulsing. “Yeah,” I tell her. “But I lie.” Meanest Woman Ever Left Tennessee M y Grandmother Mattie always said my Great-grandmother Shirley lived too long.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The lady, to whom it appeared more a time for comfort than for reproof, said, smilingly, 'Alack, my son, hast thou then for this suffered thyself to languish thus? Take comfort and leave me do, once thou shalt be recovered.' The youth, full of good hope, in a very short time showed signs of great amendment, whereas the lady, being much rejoiced, began to cast about how she might perform that which she had promised him. Accordingly, calling Jeannette to her one day, she asked her very civilly, as by way of a jest, if she had a lover; whereupon she waxed all red and answered, 'Madam, it concerneth not neither were it seemly in a poor damsel like myself, banished from house and home and abiding in others' service, to think of love.' Quoth the lady, 'An you have no lover, we mean to give you one, in whom you may rejoice and live merry and have more delight of your beauty, for it behoveth not that so handsome a girl as you are abide without a lover.' To this Jeannette made answer, 'Madam, you took me from my father's poverty and have reared me as a daughter, wherefore it behoveth me to do your every pleasure; but in this I will nowise comply with you, and therein methinketh I do well. If it please you give me a husband, him do I purpose to love, but none other; for that, since of the inheritance of my ancestors nought is left me save only honour, this latter I mean to keep and preserve as long as life shall endure to me.' This speech seemed to the lady very contrary to that whereto she thought to come for the keeping of her promise to her son,--albeit, like a discreet woman as she was, she inwardly much commended the damsel therefor,--and she said, 'How now, Jeannette? If our lord the king, who is a young cavalier, as thou art a very fair damsel, would fain have some easance of thy love, wouldst thou deny it to him?' Whereto she answered forthright, 'The king might do me violence, but of my consent he should never avail to have aught of me save what was honourable.' The lady, seeing how she was minded, left parleying with her and bethought herself to put her to the proof; wherefore she told her son that, whenas he should be recovered, she would contrive to get her alone with him in a chamber, so he might make shift to have his pleasure of her, saying that it appeared to her unseemly that she should, procuress-wise, plead for her son and solicit her own maid.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Just as I have shared my other possessions with you, so I would share Sophronia, if I were already married to her and no other solution were possible; but as the matter stands at present, I am able to ensure that she is yours alone, and that is what I intend to do. For I should be a poor sort of friend if I were unable to convert you to my own way of thinking when the thing can be so decorously arranged. It is perfectly true that Sophronia is my promised bride, that I love her a great deal, and that I was eagerly looking forward to our marriage; but because your love for her is greater, and because you desire more fervently than I to possess so precious an object, you may rest assured that she shall enter the bridal chamber, not as my wife, but as yours. Fret no more then, cast aside your gloom, retrieve your health, your spirits and your gaiety; and from this time forth, look forward cheerfully to the reward of your love – a love far worthier than mine ever was.’ To hear Gisippus speak in these terms, Titus was at one and the same time delighted and ashamed: delighted on account of the tempting picture Gisippus had drawn, and ashamed because common sense argued that the greater the generosity of his friend, the more unseemly did it appear for him to profit from it. And so, with tears still rolling down his cheeks, he replied with an effort as follows: ‘Gisippus, your true and generous friendship shows me very clearly where my duty lies. God forbid that I should ever accept from you as mine the wife that He has given you as a mark of your superior worth. Had He judged that she ought to be mine, neither you nor anyone else can deny that He would never have given her to you. Be content, therefore, that in His infinite wisdom He has chosen you as the recipient of His largesse, and leave me to waste away in the tears of woe He has allotted to one who is unworthy of such bounty; for either I shall conquer my grief, in which case you will be happy, or it will conquer me and I shall be released from my suffering.’ To which Gisippus replied:

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

  On the strength of these testimonies, many historians date the Swiss Reformation from 1516, one year before that of Luther, which began Oct. 31, 1517. But Zwingli’s preaching at Einsiedeln had no such consequences as Luther’s Theses. He was not yet ripe for his task, nor placed on the proper field of action. He was at that time simply an Erasmian or advanced liberal in the Roman Church, laboring for higher education rather than religious renovation, and had no idea of a separation. He enjoyed the full confidence of the abbot, the bishop of Constance, Cardinal Schinner, and even the Pope. At Schinner’s recommendation, he was offered an annual pension of fifty guilders from Rome as an encouragement in the pursuit of his studies, and he actually received it for about five years (from 1515 to 1520). Pucci, the papal nuncio at Zurich, in a letter dated Aug. 24, 1518, appointed him papal chaplain (Accolitus Capellanus), with all the privileges and honors of that position, assigning as the reason "his splendid virtues and merits," and promising even higher dignities.37 He also offered to double his pension, and to give him in addition a canonry in Basle or Coire, on condition that he should promote the papal cause. Zwingli very properly declined the chaplaincy and the increase of salary, and declared frankly that he would never sacrifice a syllable of the truth for love of money; but he continued to receive the former pension of fifty guilders, which was urged upon him without condition, for the purchase of books. In 1520 he declined it altogether,—what he ought to have done long before.38 Francis Zink, the papal chaplain at Einsiedeln, who paid the pension, was present at Zwingli’s interview with Pucci, and says, in a letter to the magistracy at Zurich (1521), that Zwingli could not well have lived without the pension, but felt very badly about it, and thought of returning to Einsiedeln.39 Even as late as Jan. 23, 1523, Pope Adrian VI., unacquainted with the true state of things, wrote to Zwingli a kind and respectful letter, hoping to secure through him the influence of Zurich for the holy see.40 § 9. Zwingli and Luther. Comp. Vol. VI. 620–651, and the portrait of Luther, p. 107. The training of Zwingli for his life-work differs considerably from that of Luther. This difference affected their future work, and accounts in part for their collision when they met as antagonists in writing, and on one occasion (at Marburg) face to face, in a debate on the real presence. Comparisons are odious when partisan or sectarian feeling is involved, but necessary and useful if impartial.

• From Trash (1988)

  Of course,” she had to add, “don’t go ’round like a grinning fool. Just smile like you know what you’re doing, and never look like you’re in a hurry.” I found it difficult to keep from looking like I was in a hurry, especially when I got out of breath running from steam table to counter. Worse, moving at the speed I did, I tended to sway a little and occasionally lost control of a plate. “Never,” my mama told me, “serve food someone has seen fall to the floor. It’s not only bad manners, it’ll get us all in trouble. Take it in the back, clean it off, and return it to the steam table.” After a while I decided I could just run to the back, count to ten, and take it back out to the customer with an apology. Since I usually just dropped biscuits, cornbread, and baked potatoes—the kind of stuff that would roll on a plate—I figured brushing it off was sufficient. But once, in a real rush to an impatient customer, I watched a ten-ounce T-bone slip right off the plate, flip in the air, and smack the rubber floor mat. The customer’s mouth flew open, and I saw my mama’s eyes shoot fire. Hurriedly I picked it up by the bone and ran to the back with it. I was running water on it when Mama came in the back room. “All right,” she snapped, “you are not to run, you are not even to walk fast. And,” she added, taking the meat out of my fingers and dropping it into the open waste can, “you are not, not ever to drop anything as expensive as that again.” I watched smoky frost from the leaky cooler float up toward her blond curls, and I promised her tearfully that I wouldn’t. The greater skills Mama taught me were less tangible than rules about speed and smiling. What I needed most from her had a lot to do with being as young as I was, as naive, and quick to believe the stories put across the counter by all those travelers heading north. Mama always said I was the smartest of her daughters and the most foolish. I believed everything I read in books, and most of the stuff I heard on the TV, and all of Mama’s carefully framed warnings never seemed to quite slow down my capacity to take people as who they wanted me to think they were. I tried hard to be like my mama, but, as she kept complaining, I was just too quick to trust—badly in need of a little practical experience. My practical education began the day I started work. The first comment by the manager was cryptic but to the point. “Well, sixteen.” Harriet smiled, looking me up and down. “At least you’ll up the ante.” Mama’s friend Mabel came over and squeezed my arm. “Don’t get nervous, young one. We’ll keep moving you around.

• From Trash (1988)

  It’s got to where it’s easier around here for a faggot to get a liquor license than fire insurance.” “There’s that pool hall over on College.” “Yeah, after one o’clock in the morning, and then only if you’re real discreet, and real careful, and real young. I an’t none of that, and I prefer Panama City myself. ’Course, you probably like those sweaty girls in tank tops that go in there and pose under those sling lamps, sneaking whiskey in their soda bottles when it an’t their turn to play.” “You have been there.” “Hell, I’ve been everywhere in this town. I could tell you stories would keep you awake nights. Like the name of the boy who firebombed the last two gay bars, and exactly what year his daddy got appointed sheriff.” “Damn!” I shook my head. “Uh uh. ’Course you got a few stories yourself. Don’t play pool worth a damn, do you? But you bring ’em home, those sweaty girls?” “Bar dykes.” I said it flatly. “You know how it is. They got those stringy muscles in their arms, and they all grin like those old pictures of Elvis Presley getting ready to shake his butt where the camera can’t see. Gets to me every time.” She laughed at me, but then put her hand on my arm in apology. “I don’t know. You’re younger. Maybe it’s different for you. Women my age now, we’ve always been kind of hard on each other for that kind of thing. You’re supposed to do it because you’re in love. You get a reputation for sleeping around and people treat you bad, call you terrible names. I always hated that, but not enough to do anything myself. To tell you the truth, the only time I ever brought anybody home that way, I was drunk and I hated it. Must be different if you’re younger, huh?” “No, not that I’ve seen, and the trouble is I like them older than me anyway,” I’d shrugged, “older than you. And yeah, they got a word for me, too.” “I don’t want to hear it.” “Neither do I.” I ran my palms up my own stringy arms and looked up at the pictures she had pinned all over her bedroom door. The women up there looked back at me with pinpoint black sleepy eyes—lesbians Anna’s age and older, mysterious, powerful and mean, no doubt, if you didn’t play by their rules. I hugged myself and looked away. “Neither do I.” At the concert last week, I kept walking back to Cass and the little bottle of Jack Daniel’s she had in her coat pocket. “Have a drink, darling.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Can you have so soon forgotten that it was Manfred’s abuse of his subjects’ womenfolk that opened the gates of this realm to you? Was there ever an act of betrayal more deserving of eternal punishment than this, whereby you deprive a man who does you honour, not only of his good name, but of his source of hope and consolation? What will people say of you, if you do such a thing? Perhaps you think it would be a sufficient excuse to say: “I did it because he is a Ghibelline” But is it consistent with the justice of a king that those who look to him for protection, no matter who they may be, should receive this kind of treatment? Let me remind you, my lord, that you covered yourself with glory by conquering Manfred and defeating Conradin.5 But it is far more glorious to conquer oneself. And therefore, as you have to govern others, conquer these feelings of yours, curb this wanton desire, and do not allow the splendour of your achievements to be dimmed by any such deed as this.’ The Count’s words pierced the King to the very core of his being, affecting him all the more deeply because he knew them to be true; and so after unloosing a fervent sigh or two, he said: ‘My dear Count, it is certainly true that to the experienced soldier, all other enemies, however powerful, are exceedingly weak and easy to conquer by comparison with his own desires. But although I shall suffer great torment, and the effort required is incalculable, your words have spurred me on to such a degree that I am determined, before many days have elapsed, to show you by my deeds that, just as I can conquer others, I am likewise able to master myself.’ Nor did many days elapse from the time these words were spoken before the King, having meanwhile returned to Naples, resolved to deprive himself of all occasion for straying from the path of virtue, at the same time repaying Messer Neri’s hospitality. And this he would do by bestowing the two girls in marriage as though they were his own daughters, even though it was hard for him to let others possess what he so ardently desired for himself. So with Messer Neri’s ready consent he supplied them both with splendid dowries and forthwith bestowed them in marriage, giving the lovely Ginevra to Messer Maffeo da Palizzi, and the fair Isotta to Messer Guiglielmo della Magna,6 who were noble knights and mighty barons both. And after consigning them to their respective husbands, he retired in agonies of despair to Apulia, where by dint of constant effort he mortified his ardent longings to such good and purposeful effect that the chains of Love were shattered, and for as long as he lived he was never a slave to this kind of passion again.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘They have done wrong, and well deserve to be punished, but not by you; for although wrongdoing requires a punishment, good deeds require a reward, to say nothing of pardon and clemency. Do you realize who these people are that you are so eager to put to death at the stake?’ The King replied that he did not know them, whereupon Ruggieri said: ‘Then I shall make it my business to tell you, so that you will see how unwise it is for you to let yourself be carried away by your anger. The young man is the son of Landolfo of Procida, blood-brother to Messer Gianni of Procida, through whose efforts you became King and master of this island. The girl is the daughter of Marin Bòlgaro, without whose power and influence Ischia would be lost to you tomorrow.7 What is more, these two youngsters have long been in love with one another, and it was not out of any disrespect towards your royal highness, but rather through being constrained by their love, that they committed this sin of theirs – if sin is a suitable word to describe the things young people do in the cause of love. Why, then, should you wish to have them put to death, when you ought to be entertaining them right royally and bestowing precious gifts upon them?’ On realizing that Ruggieri must be speaking the truth, the King was not only filled with horror over what he was proposing to do, but bitterly regretted the action he had already taken. So he promptly sent word that the two young lovers were to be released from the stake and brought into his presence. These orders were carried out, and after inquiring fully into their condition, the King decided that he must make amends, through largesse and hospitality, for the indignity he had caused them to suffer. He therefore had them newly clothed in courtly attire, and arranged, by their mutual consent, for Gianni and the girl to be married. And finally he sent them back, well content and laden with magnificent presents, to the place from which they had come. There they were received with tremendous rejoicing, and long thereafter lived in joy and happiness together. SEVENTH STORYTeodoro falls in love with Violante, the daughter of his master, Messer Amerigo. He gets her with child, and is sentenced to die on the gallows. But whilst he is being whipped along the road to his execution, he is recognized by his father and set at liberty, after which he and Violante become husband and wife. All the ladies were on tenterhooks, anxiously wondering whether the two lovers would be burnt, and on learning that they had escaped, they all rejoiced and offered thanks to God. Then, having heard the end of the story, the queen entrusted the telling of the next to Lauretta, who cheerfully began as follows:

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

  Erasmus struck the right note and expressed the view of a later age. Writing at the very close of the Middle Ages making an appeal485 for the proclamation of the Gospel by preaching and speaking of wars against the Turks, he said, "Truly, it is not meet to declare ourselves Christian men by killing very many but by saving very many, not if we send thousands of heathen people to hell, but if we make many infidels Christian; not if we cruelly curse and excommunicate, but if we with devout prayers and with our hearts desire their health, and pray unto God, to send them better minds."486 § 59. Effects of the Crusades. "... The knights’ bones are dust And their good swords are rust; Their souls are with the saints, we trust." Coleridge. Literature.—A. R. L. Heeren: Versuch einer Entwickelung der Folgen der Kreuzzüge für Europa, Göttingen, 1808; French trans., Paris, 1808.—Maxime de Choiseul-Daillecourt: De l’influence des croisades sur l’état des peuples de l’Europe, Paris, 1809. Crowned by the French Institute, it presents the Crusades as upon the whole favorable to civil liberty, commerce, etc.—J. L. Hahn: Ursachen und Folgen der Kreuzzüge, Greifsw., 1859.—G. B. Adams: Civilization during the M. A., N. Y., 1894, 258–311. See the general treatments of the Crusades by Gibbon, Wilken, Michaud, Archer-Kingsford, 425–451, etc., and especially Prutz (Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzzüge and The Economic Development of Western Europe under the Influence of the Crusades in Essays on the Crusades, Burlington, 1903), who in presenting the social, political, commercial, and literary aspects and effects of the Crusades lays relatively too much stress upon them. The Crusades failed in three respects. The Holy Land was not won. The advance of Islam was not permanently checked. The schism between the East and the West was not healed. These were the primary objects of the Crusades. They were the cause of great evils. As a school of practical religion and morals, they were no doubt disastrous for most of the Crusaders. They were attended by all the usual demoralizing influences of war and the sojourn of armies in an enemy’s country. The vices of the Crusading camps were a source of deep shame in Europe. Popes lamented them. Bernard exposed them. Writers set forth the fatal mistake of those who were eager to make conquest of the earthly Jerusalem and were forgetful of the heavenly city. "Many wended their way to the holy city, unmindful that our Jerusalem is not here." So wrote the Englishman, Walter Map, after Saladin’s victories in 1187. The schism between the East and the West was widened by the insolent action of the popes in establishing Latin patriarchates in the East and their consent to the establishment of the Latin empire of Constantinople. The memory of the indignities heaped upon Greek emperors and ecclesiastics has not yet been forgotten. Another evil was the deepening of the contempt and hatred in the minds of the Mohammedans for the doctrines of Christianity.

• From Trash (1988)

  The me that will be waits for me. If I cannot dream myself new, how will I find my true self? “What about you?” Judy leaned toward me with an intent expression. “Do you have fantasies?” The roar in my ears was my heart, an ocean of shame and rage. My leg muscles pulled tight and cramped. My belly turned liquid and hot under my navel. I would throw up if I opened my mouth. I would throw up. My muscles failed me, failed me completely. “Not much, not really.” Peter denied Christ three times before cockcrow. I cursed myself for being such a piece of shit, such a piece of chickenshit. “Not any more, not really.” I kept my eyes on my hands where they twisted in my lap. If I looked up I might say anything, anything. Waking up and not being able to go back to sleep, I sit with a cup of coffee and my journal. I’ve kept one off and on since school, after the guidance counselor told me it was a way to keep control of your life, to look back and see your own changes. I don’t look back at it much, though, never seem to have the time, but it doesn’t matter. Sometimes writing in it is a way of smoothing things out inside me. The morning after the concert, I didn’t write about the concert or Roxanne or even Cass. I wrote about the muscles of the mind, what my old sensei used to call the secret of all karate, the disciplined belief in yourself. “We are under so many illusions about our powers,” I wrote, “illusions that vary with the moon, the mood, the moment. Waxing, we are all-powerful. We are the mother-destroyers, She-Who-Eats-Her-Young, devours her lover, her own heart; great-winged midnight creatures and the witches of legend. Waning, we are powerless. We are the outlaws of the earth, daughters of nightmare, victimized, raped, and abandoned in our own bodies. We tell ourselves lies and pretend not to know the difference. It takes all we have to know the truth, to believe in ourselves without reference to moon or magic. “The only magic we have is what we make in ourselves, the muscles we build up on the inside, and the sense of belief we create from nothing. I used to watch my mama hold off terror with only the edges of her own eyes for a shield, and I still don’t know how she did it. But I am her daughter and have as much muscle in me as she ever did. It’s just that some days I am not strong enough. I stretch myself out a little, and then my own fear pulls me back in. The shaking starts inside. Then I have to stretch myself again. Waxing and waning through my life, maybe I’m building up layers of strength inside.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Finally, since the Abbot showed no sign of coming, Primas, having finished the second loaf, started to eat the third. This too was reported to the Abbot, who began to ponder the matter and say to himself: “Now what on earth has got into me today? Why have I suddenly become such a miser? Why should I feel so much contempt for this unknown visitor? For years I have provided food for any man who cared to eat it, without inquiring whether he was a peasant or a gentleman, poor or rich, merchant or swindler. With my own eyes, I have seen any number of rogues devouring my food, and I have never felt as I do today about this fellow. No ordinary man can have caused me to be afflicted with such meanness. This fellow I regard as a knave must be someone important, for me to have set my heart so firmly against offering him my hospitality.” ‘Having said this to himself, he was anxious to know who the man might be. And when he discovered it was Primas, who had come there to see if the tales of his generosity were true, the Abbot felt thoroughly ashamed, for he had long been aware of the reputation Primas enjoyed as a man of excellent worth. Being desirous of making amends, he went out of his way to do him honour. After having fed him in a manner appropriate to his renown, he saw that he was richly clothed, provided him with money and a saddle-horse, and offered him the freedom of his household. Well satisfied, Primas thanked the Abbot as heartily as he could, before returning on horseback to Paris, whence he had set out on foot.’ Can Grande, being a man of some intelligence, had no need to hear any more in order to see exactly what Bergamino was driving at. And with a broad smile, he said to him: ‘Bergamino, you have given an apt demonstration of the wrongs you have suffered. You have shown us your worth, my meanness, and what it is that you want from me. To tell you the truth, I was never seized before with the meanness I have lately felt on your account. But I shall drive it away with the stock that you yourself have furnished.’ Can Grande saw that the innkeeper’s account was settled, then dressed Bergamino most sumptuously in one of his own robes, provided him with money and a saddle-horse, and offered him the freedom of his household for the rest of his stay. EIGHTH STORYWith a few prettily spoken words, Guiglielmo Borsiere punctures the avarice of Ermino de’ Grimaldi. Next to Filostrato was sitting Lauretta, who, knowing that she was expected to speak, without waiting to be bidden allowed the applause for Bergamino’s cleverness to subside, then gracefully began as follows:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Heaven help me, you are my child’s godfather; how could you suggest such a thing? It would be awfully wicked; in fact I was always told it was one of the worst sins anyone could commit, otherwise I should be only too willing to do as you suggest.’ ‘If that’s the only thing that deters you,’ said Friar Rinaldo, ‘then you’re just being silly. I don’t say it isn’t a sin, but God forgives greater sins than this to those who repent. However, tell me this, to whom is this child of yours more closely related: myself, who held him at his baptism, or your husband, by whom he was begotten?’ ‘My husband, naturally,’ she replied. ‘Exactly,’ said the friar, ‘and doesn’t your husband go to bed with you?’ ‘Of course he does,’ the lady replied. ‘Well then,’ said the friar, ‘since your husband’s more closely akin to the child than I am, surely I can do the same.’ Since logic was not one of her strong points, and she needed little persuasion in any case, the lady either believed or pretended to believe that the friar was speaking the truth, and she replied: ‘How could anyone refute so sensible an argument?’ After which, notwithstanding the fact that he was her child’s godfather, she allowed him to have his will of her. And thereafter, having taken the first step, they forgathered very frequently, for his sponsorship of the child made it easy for him to come and go without arousing suspicion. On one of these occasions, having called at the lady’s house with one of his fellow friars, to discover that she was alone except for the child and a very pretty and attractive little maidservant, he packed his companion off to the attic to teach the wench the Lord’s Prayer, whilst he and the lady, who was holding her little boy by the hand, made their way into her bedroom, locking the door behind them. And having settled down on a sofa, they began to have a merry time of it together. But while they were carrying on in this fashion, the child’s father happened to return home, and before anyone realized he was there, he was knocking at the door of the bedroom and calling for his wife. Hearing his voice, Madonna Agnesa said: ‘Oh my God, I’m done for, that’s my husband. Now he’s bound to discover why you and I are always so friendly.’ ‘That’s true enough,’ said Friar Rinaldo, who had nothing on except his vest, having discarded his habit and his hood. ‘If only I had my clothes on, we could invent some explanation. But if you open the door and he sees me like this, no excuse can possibly do any good.’