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 Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  The preacher woman was listed as his wife. My mother’s name was not on the list. There is a small tree—I picture it as a skinny, overgrown bush—in the yard of the prison where Brother Terrell served his time. He told my sisters that when he finished his work as a prison janitor, he went to the tree to read his Bible and pray. Since praying and pacing were synonymous for Brother Terrell, he walked around the tree and called out to his God, sometimes in silence and at other times aloud. Did he beg forgiveness and ask for a second chance? Did he call down the wrath of Jehovah upon his enemies? Knowing Brother Terrell, I would bet he did both.My sister Carol met a man who served as chaplain of the prison after her daddy left.He told her that her father had become something of a legend. Five years after his release, the longtime prisoners still talked about the tent preacher, and when they were troubled, many of them visited what had become known as the Prayin’ Tree. Chapter Twenty-oneAFTER SEVERAL FALSE STARTS AND STOPS, I FOUND A PATH THAT LED away from the tent and the Terrellites. I went to college and studied philosophy, literature, and journalism. For a long time I felt like a cardboard cutout of a person, flat and one-dimensional, propped up with a plastic stand, nothing behind me. I watched the students, teachers, employers, friends, and colleagues around me and picked up cues on how to be in the world: Look them in the eye, firm up the handshake, file down the emotion, read good books, wear good shoes, dark colors, the best haircut you can afford. Fake it till you make it. Gradually, the years between me and the tent stacked up until they formed a wall of experience that separated me from my former self. Upon meeting my relatives who remained in the ministry, my husband and friends commented, “I don’t know what to think. They’re so different from you.” The elevenand-a-half-year-old girl who sold her soul to the devil in exchange for the world—the very thing everyone under the tent warned against—had gotten exactly that: the world, in all its messy glory.When casual acquaintances asked where I grew up, or where I came from, as we say in Texas, there was a long and uncomfortable pause. After a moment I might say, “Oh, we moved around,” or “We lived all over,” which led to questions about whether my “stepfather” was in the military. If I felt brave, I laughed and said, “Oh, something like that,” and made a fast getaway. Most times I stammered and shifted my eyes until the conversation limped off in another direction.

• From What My Bones Know (2022)

  Unfortunately, the car ride was silent. I fretted and peeled my chapped lips until we were home and we’d unloaded the duffel bags from the car. It was then that she exploded. “At breakfast this morning, you corrected the way Lindsay was holding her knife. Do you remember that? You told her to cut her ham differently. In front of her mother! Why did you do that?” she snapped. “It’s not your job to teach people that! You looked like an asshole!” Flummoxed, I replied, “I don’t know—she was holding her knife wrong, like she couldn’t even cut it. I thought I could help?” “Help! Ha!” she barked. “Oh, a lot of help you were. I was so ashamed of you on that trip I couldn’t even stand it. Do you know how competitive you were during Pictionary? You got upset when other people didn’t know what you were drawing, like a big baby. Everyone felt uncomfortable. Everyone was staring at you. I wanted to die watching you. I wanted to say, ‘That is not my daughter.’ ” It felt like I’d sat up quickly in a top bunk and thwacked my head on the ceiling. Now? Really? Of all times, after a mother-daughter bonding trip? “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize.” “Of course you didn’t realize. Because you don’t think, do you? You just act without thinking all the time even though I keep telling you, ‘Think.’ No wonder all the kids at school hate you.” “I’m sorry about the Pictionary. And with the knife. I was just like…here, try it this way. I don’t think her mom felt bad. It didn’t seem like she was upset, but…” “Ooh.” My mother’s lips formed a very thin line, and her eyes narrowed. “You think you know better than I do? Now you’re talking back to me?” “I’m just trying to apologize! Please! I’m really sorry. I just thought…maybe after that weekend…I thought maybe things would be okay.” “How can things be okay when you keep making me look bad?” she screeched. I knew none of the other girls in the troop were being screamed at right now. I thought of the ease with which the girls had leaned into their mothers during that song, how they expected to be held. How they expected to be safe. But at the same time, my mother was right—the other kids didn’t like me. They said I was weird and intense. Maybe I had been overly competitive at Pictionary? Had they really been staring at me? How did I not notice that? How could I know when I was screwing up? Was everything I did a mistake? My eyes welled up.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  statisticians.” He told my seminar and me of researchers at the University of Michigan who were generally optimistic about intuitive statistics. I had strong feelings about that claim, which I took personally: I had recently discovered that I was not a good intuitive statistician, and I did not believe that I was worse than others. For a research psychologist, sampling variation is not a curiosity; it is a nuisance and a costly obstacle, which turns the undertaking of every research project into a gamble. Suppose that you wish to confirm the hypothesis that the vocabulary of the average six-year-old girl is larger than the vocabulary of an average boy of the same age. The hypothesis is true in the population; the average vocabulary of girls is indeed larger. Girls and boys vary a great deal, however, and by the luck of the draw you could select a sample in which the difference is inconclusive, or even one in which boys actually score higher. If you are the researcher, this outcome is costly to you because you have wasted time and effort, and failed to confirm a hypothesis that was in fact true. Using a sufficiently large sample is the only way to reduce the risk. Researchers who pick too small a sample leave themselves at the mercy of sampling luck. The risk of error can be estimated for any given sample size by a fairly simple procedure. Traditionally, however, psychologists do not use calculations to decide on a sample size. They use their judgment, which is commonly flawed. An article I had read shortly before the debate with Amos demonstrated the mistake that researchers made (they still do) by a dramatic observation. The author pointed out that psychologists commonly chose samples so small that they exposed themselves to a 50% risk of failing to confirm their true hypotheses! No researcher in his right mind would accept such a risk. A plausible explanation was that psychologists’ decisions about sample size reflected prevalent intuitive misconceptions of the extent of sampling variation. The article shocked me, because it explained some troubles I had had in my own research. Like most research psychologists, I had routinely chosen samples that were too small and had often obtained results that made no sense. Now I knew why: the odd results were actually artifacts of my research method. My mistake was particularly embarrassing because I taught statistics and knew how to compute the sample size that would reduce the risk of failure to an acceptable level. But I had never chosen a sample size by computation. Like my colleagues, I had trusted tradition and my intuition in planning my experiments and had never thought seriously about the issue. When Amos visited the seminar, I had already reached the conclusion that my intuitions were deficient, and in the course of the seminar we quickly agreed that the Michigan optimists were wrong.

• From Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex (2023)

  By 1994, Koons and Staller were embroiled in an acrimonious divorce and custody battle for their toddler, Ludwig. In the proceedings, Koons sought to use Staller’s career as an adult film star against her, telling the court, “To have a family based on Protestant values was important to me.” The New Yorker reported on his damning comments: “He berated her pornographic work as ‘vile’ and ‘vulgar’ … he declared, ‘She’ll do anything to dismantle cultural mores.’” Koons and his attorney thought the court might be swayed by getting “a picture of what’s involved,” promptly turning out the lights to screen clips from Staller’s films, in which she had sex with a snake, had sex with three men at once, and had sex with “a fat man in a field.” Lauding Staller’s films as on par with high art just three years prior, and going on record in a prestige publication that he intended to make hardcore films with her—that, indeed, what he thought about as they posed for photos together was “having anal sex with Ilona”—Koons now pivoted to the long tradition of using a woman’s participation in sex work to render her an unfit mother in the eyes of the law. The court granted him custody. In a 2013 interview with Pharrell Williams on the musician-cum-entrepreneur’s Reserve Channel show ARTST TLK, Jeff Koons describes his relationship to his work as “trying to share … transcendence with the viewer: I believe very much in the beholder’s share … that an artwork is completed in the viewer. The object is just some kind of transponder.” The beholder’s share is a concept coined by Alois Riegl, nineteenth-century art historian of the Vienna School, and subsequently popularized by his disciples Ernst Kris and Ernst Gombrich; simply, “that art is incomplete without the perceptual and emotional involvement of the viewer.” (The beholder’s share might also be a way to describe prostitution: such a relation requires a perceptual involvement of the viewer and could be said to culminate in their involvement.) Koons evokes this idea while reflecting on his decision to create and subsequently destroy much of the Made in Heaven series. He tells Williams, I wanted to make a body of work that would help remove that kind of guilt and shame, and so the intentions of the work are very good. So even though it’s very direct, and some of the images are kind of explicit, there’s a place for adults to look at those type of images, and to be involved with that dialogue.

• From Educated (2018)

  He smiled at me from the back of the chapel. A few months before, Richard had written to me. He’d said he was sorry for believing Dad, that he wished he’d done more to help me when I needed it, and that from then on, I could count on his support. We were family, he said. Audrey and Benjamin chose a bench near the back. Audrey had arrived early, when the chapel was empty. She had grabbed my arm and whispered that my refusing to see our father was a grave sin. “He is a great man,” she said. “For the rest of your life you will regret not humbling yourself and following his counsel.” These were the first words my sister had said to me in years, and I had no response to them. Shawn arrived a few minutes before the service, with Emily and Peter and a little girl I had never met. It was the first time I had been in a room with him since the night he’d killed Diego. I was tense, but there was no need. He did not look at me once during the service. My oldest brother, Tony, sat with my parents, his five children fanning out in the pew. Tony had a GED and had built a successful trucking company in Las Vegas, but it hadn’t survived the recession. Now he worked for my parents, as did Shawn and Luke and their wives, as well as Audrey and her husband, Benjamin. Now I thought about it, I realized that all my siblings, except Richard and Tyler, were economically dependent on my parents. My family was splitting down the middle—the three who had left the mountain, and the four who had stayed. The three with doctorates, and the four without high school diplomas. A chasm had appeared, and was growing. —A YEAR WOULD PASS before I would return to Idaho. A few hours before my flight from London, I wrote to my mother—as I always did, as I always will do—to ask if she would see me. Again, her response was swift. She would not, she would never, unless I would see my father. To see me without him, she said, would be to disrespect her husband. For a moment it seemed pointless, this annual pilgrimage to a home that continued to reject me, and I wondered if I should go. Then I received another message, this one from Aunt Angie. She said Grandpa had canceled his plans for the next day, and was refusing even to go to the temple, as he usually did on Wednesdays, because he wanted to be at home in case I came by. To this Angie added: I get to see you in about twelve hours! But who’s counting? * The italicized language in the description of the referenced exchange is paraphrased, not directly quoted.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  Tron adj.m. kind, pious (so, as denoting active practice of 101, kindness, Thes MV De and most, cf. Y32, TPB etc.; >Hup on w 4* RVm who expl. as passive reception of "'8 TON, cf. שָכִיר‎ DS 660.; its use as attribute of God Je 3” ץ‎ 145”, and the context ~ 12’ Mi 7? etc., favour active sense) —ny4'+ot.; TPO Dt33°y89"; Pron 16; pl.OMPON ץ‎ 149"; sf. ‘DM y 50°; ron 18 2°+15 +. kind: a. of man עם ח' תתחסד‎ with the kind thow shewest thyself kind 28 22%=wW 18%. b. of wing of ostrich חַסִירֶה‎ 718 OS Jb 39” zs 4 a kindly pinion? poss. with play on TDN nf. stork (is the ostrich kind like the stork?). 6. of God, only 163 ~145". 2. pious, godly, either as exhibition of ‘duteous love’ toward God (Che°’**), or (in view of rarity of such passages as Ho 6*° Je 2 and their possible ambiguity) because kindness, as prominent in the godly, comes to imply other attributes, and to be a designation of the godly character, piety: @ as adj—T dn לא‎ 3 ₪ nation, not pious,=ungodly 43%. b. elsewh. as subst.: sing., a pious man, the godly ?ו‎ 4* 127 32° 86°, |W Miy?; (thy) pious one(s) +16" (Kt pl.), 1S 2°(Qr pl.) Pr2’, JON איש‎ men of thy pious one Dt 33° (Moses, v. Di; others, the man, thy godly one, i.e. Levi); pl. the pious, godly, those of the people who were faithful, devoted to God’s service, only in Psalter and chiefly, if not entirely, in late Psalms /ו‎ 149'°; his pious ones yy 30° 317 37 859 97 116" 148" 149°; thy pious ones 52" 79° 89” 132° = 2 Ch 6%, 145"; my pious ones W 50°, her (Zion’s) pious wv 132°.—(In 1186082. age, cvvaywy? ’Acidaiar denoted, technically, the party of the pious, who opposed the Hellenization of Judaea, v. I Mace 2” 4 2 Macc 14° and Che? *™: so perhaps y 116” 149'°*.) +. .מ רְְסִידה‎ stork (so called as kind and affectionate to its young)—Ly 11% Dt ז‎ 4% ~ 104" Je 8’ 20 5°. n.pr.m. (Yah is kind) son of‏ חסדִיה1 Zerubbabel 1 Ch 3”.‏ Z2 TOM qa [TD [ח‎ vb. be reproached, ashamed (Aramaism, v. "ל ת‎ Arama. חפל‎ be put to shame, ,מ‎ 150 reproach, revile ; NTBN, Joan shame, reproach, oft. in TS for 7B) ;— only Pi. Jmpf. JIBS Pr 25” lest he reproach thee, expose thee to shame. yu. חסד‎ n.m. shame, reproach, only abs.:—S3 “0 Ly 20” (H) it is ₪ shame (shame- ful thing); לאָמִּים חַטָאת‎ T 4%נעק‎ sin ts a reproach to peoples.

• From What My Bones Know (2022)

  The next day we had a full puberty curriculum. Our troop’s leaders had brought pads and tampons, and they did a graphic show-and-tell about how to handle your period. This was followed by trust falls and going around in a circle to share puberty-related feelings…. I’m sure there was more, but everything was so embarrassing that I have blocked out nearly all of it. One cringey memory that persists is when our leaders brought out large rolls of paper, which we spread out on the floor. The girls lay down on the paper, and our mothers traced the outlines of our bodies in marker. Then, together, as mother and daughter, we were supposed to draw the changes we’d expect on our bodies. Breasts on our chests. Armpit and pubic hair. I tried to be funny and made stinky green waves coming out of my armpits and a puka-shell choker around my neck, but there was no evading how abominable this entire exercise was. My future boobs didn’t have nipples. Neither of us could bear to draw nipples. Just big, hulking, grape-scented, purple U’s on my chest. I kept waiting for my mother to deride this as white-people nonsense, but she played along gamely the entire time, smiling and laughing and teasing me, as if she were just like them. Afterward, we all stood in a circle and held hands. My troop leader pulled out her guitar, and we swayed together while singing “Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof. The lyrics are nostalgic, wondering how a daughter could have blossomed into a woman when yesterday she was just a girl. As we sang, all the mothers became misty-eyed, stroking their daughters’ hair, kissing the tops of their heads. The other girls leaned into their embraces. My mother did not touch me but stood alone and wept loudly. She cried all the time in the privacy of our home—ugly, bent-in-half sobs—but she never fell apart in public, and the sight alarmed me. If it hurt her so much for me to grow up, I wouldn’t. That moment determined my actions for the next few years: I did not tell her when I got my period and instead stuffed my underwear with toilet paper and hid my stained clothes in the attic. I bound my chest, wore baggy T-shirts, and hunched to keep my developing breasts from showing—even when she slammed her hand between my shoulder blades and snarled that I looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. But I would do anything to make sure she was happy, to show her that I would be hers forever. That was all that mattered. After the song, we hugged our mothers, and they wiped their tears and held us close. Then we went to our bunk beds to grab our duffel bags and go. My mother’s face was still red from crying, but I hoped she wasn’t just upset. I hoped the strange rituals had made her closer to me, somehow.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  Norm said, “We’re here because our mom is too busy to take care of us.” “What about your dad?” Jason asked. I looked at Norm again. He and I had the same last name, Brooks, though we had different fathers. Norm was a real Brooks and he was the only one of the five of us who was born while Cookie was married to his father. Gi and my oldest sister, Cherie, had Cookie’s maiden name, Calcaterra. Camille’s last name was completely different. No one, including Camille, knew where the name came from. When we asked her about Camille’s last name, Cookie either shrugged or told us to shut the fuck up and M.Y.O.B. ! Gi told me that by the time I came along, my normally shameless mother was embarrassed that each of her kids was from a different guy. So she gave me the last name Brooks to make it appear as if fewer men had fathered us. “Our dad’s too busy for us, too,” Norm said. As far as I knew, Norm couldn’t remember his father. He’d left before Norm was three. I had vague, almost dreamlike memories of my father—they were sensory memories: the smell of spicy aftershave, shiny black shoes, whiskers that scratched my face when he kissed me on the cheek. Brian and Charlie warned us to stay away from Becky. “S-sh-sh-she’s evil,” Brian said. “She lies like a fly with a booger in its eye!” Charlie said. “Sh-sh-sh-she lies like a g-g-g-guy with a b-b-b-b-booger in his fly!” Brian said, and we all laughed until we heard the screeching voice of Becky from the bottom of the stairs. “Rent-a-things! Dinner!” she shouted. I knew she’d put thing into action. Norm and I looked at each other. He was thinking the same thing. Liver. After months of eating butter, saltines, and anything else Gi and Camille could get down their pants at the grocery store, the only thing I couldn’t stomach was liver. Norm looked at his plate, then mine. He tilted his body so our shoulders almost touched and whispered, “We’ve gone hungry most of our lives. No big deal if we don’t eat it.” While the other kids silently forked in the gray, slimy sheets of meat, Norm and I picked at the teaspoonful of peas on our plates. Becky had cut-up apple, American cheese slices, and eight chicken nuggets with ketchup on her plate. I guess she didn’t eat liver either. Mr. Callahan, our foster father, ate with his head tilted toward his plate, as if no one else was at the table. His skin was the same color and texture as the meat he put in his mouth. His hair looked wet and shiny, the color of steel cables. Mrs. Callahan and Becky chatted in louder than normal voices. It was as if they thought we needed a lesson in dinner conversation and they were going to provide it by example.

• From The Ultimate Guide to Orgasm for Women: How to Become Orgasmic for a Lifetime (2011)

  Spend time thinking about sex. Note what thoughts trigger an actual physical reaction. Do certain things make you squirm inside? Look at what those things are: are they things that turn you on, things that you find disgusting, or both? Don’t worry if the answer is both; we have been brought up watching TV and movies that offer us a very warped view of sex: on the one hand, it’s sordid, on the other hand it’s glamorous. Having paradoxical and conflicting reactions to sexual desire is normal. In fact, the strength of your response, even if on the surface it appears to be negative, might be a clue that those are the very things that arouse you. Let your mind and your body do whatever they do. Don’t censor, just observe. If you practice this basic form of meditation, you will eventually get to a place where you can make a choice between following the desires of your body or the judgments of your mind. How do you feel about touching your own body? Do you enjoy making love to yourself? Or do you just want to get it over with? Notice how you masturbate. Do you follow a standard formula? If so, vary it. And take your time! Is your mind somewhere else? Are you concentrating on what you’re doing? Stay with the feelings that come up when you are touching yourself, acknowledge them, and allow yourself to feel them. This is a practice that I would recommend for anyone who wants to expand their sexual awareness, because you may discover feelings of desire that you would not allow yourself to experience when you are with a partner. Dealing with Difficult Feelings We are trained to cover up and ignore feelings of disgust or hostility, yet it is quite normal for feelings of this kind to arise when you get in touch with the power of sexual desire. Feelings of revulsion could be the residue of an abusive past. Or they may reflect the contradictory attitude toward sex displayed and promoted by our culture; while on the one hand we are spoon-fed a sanitized version of sex in order to sell anything and everything, with the other hand we are taught to revile all things earthy or natural. Despite social worship of hard bodies, fashion models, and sports stars, there is a strong undercurrent of abhorrence for the body, especially the female body. I don’t like naked flesh, and I don’t like body smells. They turn me off.

• From Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex (2023)

  I do not know how to speak about this, exactly, because I think to lament over and over the dehumanization of Black women, as a white woman, so too adds to that dehumanization. But: the white girl can play the hooker, depict herself in art, gain the cultural capital, and lose little in the process. Objectification and simple sexism are not all that bad. Black women have had and continue to have a much more complicated relationship with visibility foisted upon them, to great material consequence. In 1991 at the Sonnabend Gallery in SoHo, commodities-trader-turned-art-star Jeff Koons debuted Made in Heaven, a series of works depicting Koons in sexual positions with Italian porn star and politician Ilona Staller (stage name Cicciolina). Though neither spoke the other’s language, the two married shortly after producing the works. Photographs printed on canvas, along with marble and glass sculptures, depicted the couple in softcore Kama Sutra poses alongside more explicit visuals. Dirty Ejaculation showed Koons ejaculating between Staller’s open legs. At the time, reviewers focused on the distinction between artwork and pornography: novelist and critic Jim Lewis wrote, “[the work is] not … pornographic … because an art work becomes prurient only when it ceases to be a representation of desire and instead becomes the impetus for it … These works would be very much diminished if they provided occasions for arousal. They don’t, and they’re not intended to.” Koons himself made the distinction less absolute, telling Vanity Fair the pieces were “advertising for a porno film I’m going to make with Cicciolina,” that, with respect to sex acts, would include “everything.” In the same interview, he praised his wife as an artist in her own right, explaining, “Ilona uses her body in the way another artist uses a paintbrush or a chisel. She uses her genitalia. And she communicates a very precise language with her genitalia.” In 1997 Koons sold Ilona On Top on auction at Sotheby’s for $140,000, later selling other pieces of the series for close to a million.

• From On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy (1961)

  As he becomes more open to what is going on within him he becomes able to listen to feelings which he has always denied and repressed. He can listen to feelings which have seemed to him so terrible, or so disorganizing, or so abnormal, or so shameful, that he has never been able to recognize their existence in himself. While he is learning to listen to himself he also becomes more acceptant of himself. As he expresses more and more of the hidden and awful aspects of himself, he finds the therapist showing a consistent and unconditional positive regard for him and his feelings. Slowly he moves toward taking the same attitude toward himself, accepting himself as he is, and therefore ready to move forward in the process of becoming. And finally as he listens more accurately to the feelings within, and becomes less evaluative and more acceptant toward himself, he also moves toward greater congruence. He finds it possible to move out from behind the façades he has used, to drop his defensive behaviors, and more openly to be what he truly is. As these changes occur, as he becomes more self-aware, more self-acceptant, less defensive and more open, he finds that he is at last free to change and grow in the directions natural to the human organism. THE PROCESS Now let me put something of this process in factual statements, each statement borne out by empirical research. We know that the client shows movement on each of a number of continua. Starting from wherever he may be on each continuum I will mention, he moves toward the upper end. In regard to feelings and personal meanings, he moves away from a state in which feelings are unrecognized, unowned, unexpressed. He moves toward a flow in which ever-changing feelings are experienced in the moment, knowingly and acceptingly, and may be accurately expressed. The process involves a change in the manner of his experiencing. Initially he is remote from his experiencing. An example would be the intellectualizing person who talks about himself and his feelings in abstractions, leaving you wondering what is actually going on within him. From such remoteness he moves toward an immediacy of experiencing in which he lives openly in his experiencing, and knows that he can turn to it to discover its current meanings. The process involves a loosening of the cognitive maps of experience. From construing experience in rigid ways, which are perceived as external facts, the client moves toward developing changing, loosely held construings of meaning in experience, constructs which are modifiable by each new experience. In general, the evidence shows that the process moves away from fixity, remoteness from feelings and experience, rigidity of self-concept, remoteness from people, impersonality of functioning.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  The front end of the car accordioned as though it were engineered to do so. The frame moaned slightly as the engine folded up within it. Jim Williams cradled his head on the steering wheel. He asked if she was all right. Elena nodded. —Happy holidays, Jim said. He untangled his legs from the engine parts that protruded up through the dash—he was miraculously uninjured—and helped her out. There were cars abandoned all around them. A Who’s Who of Halford party attendees. —Look, let’s just put up at my place till morning, sweetie, Jim said. It’s closer. It doesn’t make any sense to be out walking. You can sleep in the guest room or something. If that’s what you want. But this isn’t a night to be going any further than you have to. Elena thought it over. —And your son. He isn’t on that train, I’ll bet you. He knows better than that. That is, if the trains are even running. And Wendy’s in bed and will be until morning. So it just makes sense. Besides, I owe you one. I want to pay up. Let me do just that. She thought about it. And the next thing that happened, at exactly midnight, was that the streetlamp at the corner of Ferris Hill and Valley Road, the only one for miles, abruptly went out. Libbets Casey told Paul Hood that she loved him as a friend. Her reasoning was labored, her tongue was thick. The world outside vanished during this discussion. That class Paul hated, Origins of the West; Spiro Agnew’s resignation; Gerald Ford’s confirmation. All this stuff vanished. Paul told her she was his best friend in the world, the only person he felt comfortable with, some kinda exact opposite he had been circling around, but the way he said it, it felt desperate and exaggerated, even to him. He was trying to cudgel her with good vibes. And she knew it. They sat on the edge of Libbets’s bed. She said: —But you don’t even know me really. —Sure I do, Paul Hood said. I know the aura you give off, Libbets. Sure. I know how you are in the cafeteria, where you sit, in the chapel, all over the place. It just seems right to me, you know? It just seems right. —Well, I like you, too, Paul, but— And she said it again: She loved him as a friend. Whatever that meant. They doodled in her blank book with colored pencils. Paul felt like some woeful responsibility of his was being held at bay, just while he was on that bed with her. As long as she let him sit there, whatever she said was just syllables flung at problems. She could still change her mind. These minutes were worth the hyperbole and the train ride and the Seconals. Paul penciled an approximation of the Human Torch on the page, and then filled him in with the yellow and orange.

• From Three Women (2019)

  Sloane broke out of her reverie and looked at Jenny, at the way Jenny was looking at her. She realized suddenly that she was more known, better seen, than she’d thought. You’re the woman, Jenny spat. And you let this happen. Sloane felt the car seat disappear beneath her. You’re the woman, Jenny repeated. Don’t you know you’re supposed to have the power? Last year, before the business with Jenny and Wes had come to a head, Sloane was dropping her mother off at the airport after a visit. It had been a good one. This was also before the day on the golf course when her brother’s daughters asked about her accident. She and her mother were talking about how nice their time together had been, when suddenly Dyan’s voice caught in her throat. Mom? Sloane said. Are you all right? That man, Dyan said, indicating a man checking his luggage ahead of them. Who is it? It’s no one, Dyan said. He just looks like someone. Like who? Like the father of the girl I lived with after the accident. He would always cheat in tennis. We played tennis at his club, he and I. When the ball hit just outside the line, he would always call it for himself. I was seventeen. I didn’t know what to do. I knew he was cheating. I didn’t know you lived with people after the accident, Sloane said. Dyan nodded. She went on to explain, for the first time, that her father could not deal with looking at her, so he sent her away to live with a friend. Dyan described the situation very clinically, as if she were talking about somebody else. Sloane began to cry. She hugged her mother, who felt like a cool stone. It’s one reason, Dyan said, smiling and breaking away, that I don’t like tennis. Sloane kept holding her hands on her mother’s arms, though she wasn’t sure it was helping. She didn’t feel like a succorer. She thought of everything her mother had ever done for her. All the ways in which she’d ensured Sloane would have the best chance at life. Every magnificent meal she’d cooked. Every time she waited inside a cold rink, a hot dance studio. Every bighearted thing she’d done for her grandchildren, the fine clothes, the thoughtfully chosen toys. The way she often told Sloane she was beautiful, looking into her eyes and confirming a child’s appearance the way only a mother can. But then there were times like these, when it seemed her mother had pushed things so far down that Sloane couldn’t reach them. The same, she knew, was true of the arrangement that Sloane had with her own husband. That the rules, the lines, were drawn in the sand of a beach, where they were not easily seen. Where the tide could change them over the course of an evening so that by morning, what you’d drawn was gone.

• From The Ultimate Guide to Orgasm for Women: How to Become Orgasmic for a Lifetime (2011)

  Beware: much pornography is poorly produced and gives an unrealistic picture of what constitutes real sex between real people. But there is some higher quality material available, and I have listed some of these in the Resources section. I would recommend avoiding the real garbage; it may be inexpensive, but it will not help you to love yourself. If you and/or your lover are uptight about sex and experience shame about being turned on, then you are very unlikely to have terrific sex until you examine where that shame comes from and find some way of exorcizing it. Feeling shame around our natural sexual responses and bodily functions, and needing to stay in control of our physical responses, is not unusual, but it will certainly inhibit sexual enjoyment. Good sex always involves letting go. The mind has a tendency to hold on, in an effort to prevent the body from doing something unacceptable. I come easily when I’m on my own, but when I’m with my lover I can’t always come. I need oral stimulation and he’s good at it and likes to do it, but I find myself somewhat inhibited when he does it. I’m thinking too much. Are you afraid your partner will think you look ugly and sound weird when you are allowing your body to respond freely? Why not ask? You may be surprised: most people get very excited when their partner is clearly turned on. Most of us prefer to make love with someone who is responsive instead of contained. The following are all quotes from men: I love it when a woman comes like crazy. They are so very, very unladylike—it is wonderful. I love watching, listening, smelling women having orgasms—out of control, into ecstasy—that is very, very pleasurable. My favorite aspect of a woman’s orgasm is her loss of control. For that short time she is not planning or calculating. Many women I’ve been with have trouble letting go, but to have a satisfying orgasm, they have to. It’s not that I feel I have control over them, just that they are free for a moment. I made love to one woman who had no inhibitions of any kind. She was and is the best lover I have ever known. Whether or not you have a partner, I would recommend that you spend some time masturbating. If you don’t know yourself, then you can’t tell your partner how to pleasure you. Play with your genitals. See what feels good, and as I said earlier, allow your body to respond in whatever way it chooses. Vibrators are not a substitute for getting to know your body with your own hands, but they are an excellent way to achieve sensations that you won’t get any other way.

• From What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013)

  “Oral sex with a man I can trust. I know that sounds mundane, but I suppose this stems from growing up in conservative, backwater, buttfuck Kentucky, where blow jobs were expected and relished in discussion but eating out was either gross or wasn’t discussed at all.” “I am a young virgin peasant girl whose family is one of many that works the land of a rich landowner; the landowner or his son forces himself on me, and I know I have no choice but to let him do what he wants. Or I am the school whore or a social misfit, and the football team is taking turns with me. I am still coming to terms with the fact that things that I find to be wrong—rape; taking advantage of those without power—are the things that bring me to mind-blowing orgasms.” “Not scenes. Textural sensations playing through my head.” “Another couple having sex, near me, where I can see them. Someone licking me or touching me, maybe two people, and then a man entering me from behind. I wouldn’t say it’s violent. Maybe vigorous—is that a dorky word to use?” “The rape scene from The Accused, I’m ashamed to say.” “A married, older man that I work with, who I’m not even all that attracted to, fucking me from behind against a whiteboard—we work at a school—and hitting my face against it. Then he turns me around so that I can fellate him. Him coming on my face.” “Once in a while I dream of dreamy stuff: kissing and fluffy desserts we feed to each other. Quite often I dream of many men, servicing me all at once.” “A stranger, usually a construction type, peeking in my window.” “Essentially rapes. I started masturbating when I was around ten or eleven—the most common one back then was a middle-aged bald man while I was chemically paralyzed. Receiving pleasure wasn’t my fault if I was being raped; I didn’t have to explain myself to Jesus or my parents. Where the bald man came from I have no idea. Then, when I started having sex with my husband, it turned out that orgasm was kind of a lot of work. It was very important to him that I have one whenever we had sex, and sex with him was nice, but orgasm required that I fantasize. Reenter the bald man.” “Thinking about the girl-on-girl ads on Craigslist.” “The bored housewife who lets the FedEx man take advantage of her, only to be seen by the postal delivery guy, who forces himself on her next. The bored teenager who pretends to fall asleep while lounging by the pool in a loosely tied string bikini while a construction crew just happens to be working close by.” “The part in Excalibur where Arthur’s father transmutes into the form of another man and has sex with Arthur’s mother while wearing bloody armor.”

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  I have to look in on the kids. Paul is supposed to be coming back from the city. —Jesus, Jim said, refixing his belt. I want to make it up to you, Elena. I can do better than that, honestly. I mean it. She sighed. —Well, we can talk about it. —That’s fine. I wouldn’t expect you to see it any other way. —Maybe you just need.… We can talk any time, you know— —I need that, too. I really do, Williams said. He pointed at the seat belts. He threw the car in drive, and that was when they noticed the skid marks on the driveway. Beneath the crust of snow was a much harder, more implacable layer of ice. An equalizing layer. It was like trying to drive a bumper car. The Cadillac had a mind of its own. As they circled around the gravel circle, Jim Williams turned wildly in either direction. Trying to catch the wheel. They each fell into their own remorse. They were just neighbors again, if they had ever been anything else. Elena felt cheap and isolated. It had been as romantic as a pap smear or a home breast exam. She would rather wait in a gas-rationing line; she would rather watch war footage; she would rather—she was shocked to learn—clean up after the drunken Benjamin Hood. She let herself do certain things because of fashion, though she didn’t think of herself as fashionable in any way, and fashion brought the unexpected along with it. So here she was driving home with the fraud next door, a man she had little respect for, after having fucked him in his car. They went into the tailspin coming off Ferris Hill Road. Just as they saw the other cars abandoned at the bottom of the hill, Jim lost control of the Cadillac. It was more than one spin. They went all the way around twice, two three-sixties, and Elena could hear the scream coming from her, but it didn’t seem like part of her. It was as alien, as elsewhere, as a radio signal during one of those emergency tests. Her frequency was pure and open. She was uninterrupted by decisions or responsibilities: there was time to think. She didn’t notice or care that her screams originated in her own throat. In the second before she imagined death, she recalled many things to be done. The dog was pacing back and forth in front of his bowl. Paul needed a haircut. She wanted to see Wendy wear those lovely new shoes. They, she and Benjamin, were going to replace the curtains in the drafty living room. They were going to find out about energy alternatives for their drafty house. They were going to buy a smaller car. The Cadillac landed nose down in a shallow ditch. The last revolution had been painfully slow, like a merry-go-round on the lowest kiddie speed.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  Fluted crystal, lace napkins, the finest eight-track stereo components, all the Williamses’ personal property belonged that afternoon to him. At the front door, however, the last of Hood’s resolve failed. He was a spook, a fool, a voice from the beyond, a housebreaker, and it was time he faced up to these things. His wife took no notice of his comings and goings, his mistress abandoned him in her own house, his children wouldn’t speak to him. Only the back exit was fit for Benjamin Paul Hood. He would leave by the servant’s entrance, with imperceptible footfalls. On tippy-toes. Like a Plumber, an official burglar. Then, at the top of the basement stairs, having opened the door already, having opened the door absently, he heard laughter. The laughter of teenagers. That hard, bitter, revenging laughter of distrust and disillusionment. One way out! One way only! New Canaan was tiny already, but as Wendy got older it seemed to be shrinking, too. It was vanishing, maybe. Its avenues were like the crosshatching on a legal tender dollar bill. You could read Wendy’s town with one of those beginner microscopes that Paul had gotten for his birthdays from three or four relatives. Next to New Canaan, a black ant was like a Cadillac or like an armored personnel carrier; a housefly, the Huey helicopter. Shag carpet was like an Asian rain forest. One time she had cut her wrist lightly—just a scratch: long sleeves to school for a while and no one knew any better; later you couldn’t even tell—so that she could look at her own blood under the microscope. Just the usual traffic and hustle, though, these globs of color overtaking these other globs. In New Canaan, there was one high school, one junior high, four elementaries. No school bus more than fifteen minutes from its destination. This meant that you could know everyone in your demographic category by the time you started high school. So Wendy Hood knew everyone. One movie theater. One grocery store. Churches were Protestant. Neither snow, nor rain, nor gloom of night stayed New Canaan’s relentless progress toward neighborliness. The girls took home economics and the boys took shop or else risked civic humiliation for the rest of their lives. Wendy took home economics but she hated it. Best thing about it was its resemblance to sorcery. Between cooking and science, she had learned all the fundamentals of poisoning. Eagerly she imagined dispatching a loved one, or altering her own future, or turning her father’s SX-70 camera into a twisted sculpture of metal and plastic. To class she wore ponchos and handmade sweaters, and her blond hair tickled the top of her butt. She had toe socks and clogs and painter’s pants.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  A positive proof of the theory would, on the other hand, be given if we could find a subject absolutely anæsthetic inside and out, but not paralytic, so that emotion-inspiring objects might evoke the usual bodily expressions from him, but who, on being consulted, should say that no subjective emotional affection was felt. Such a man would be like one who, because he eats, appears to bystanders to be hungry, but who afterwards confesses that he had no appetite at all. Cases like this are extremely hard to find. Medical literature contains reports, so far as I know, of but three. In the famous one of Remigius Leins no mention is made by the reporters of his emotional condition. In Dr. G. Winter's case[419] the patient is said to be inert and phlegmatic, but no particular attention, as I learn from Dr. W., was paid to his psychic condition. In the extraordinary case reported by Professor Strumpell (to which I must refer later in another connection)[420] we read that the patient, a shoemaker's apprentice of fifteen, entirely anæsthetic, inside and out, with the exception of one eye and one ear, had shown shame on the occasion of soiling his bed, and grief, when a formerly favorite dish was set before him, at the thought that he could no longer taste its flavor. Dr. Strumpell is also kind enough to inform me that he manifested surprise, fear, and anger on certain occasions. In observing him, however, no such theory as the present one seems to have been thought of; and it always remains possible that, just as he satisfied his natural appetites and necessities in cold blood, with no inward feeling, so his emotional expressions may have been accompanied by a quite cold heart.[421] Any new case which turns up of generalized anæsthesia ought to be carefully examined as to the inward emotional sensibility as distinct from the 'expressions' of emotion which circumstances may bring forth. Objections Considered. Let me now notice a few objections. The replies will make the theory still more plausible. First Objection. There is no real evidence, it may be said, for the assumption that particular perceptions do produce wide-spread bodily effects by a sort of immediate physical influence, antecedent to the arousal of an emotion or emotional idea?

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

  Between price quotes from produce companies, a calendar with a wine company's logo, cooks' schedules, and a fuzzy faxed photo of the New York Times food critic, was an old snapshot of Rob and Paul, standing out front of Red House: two young men, looking cocky and triumphant in snap-front dishwasher shirts, brandishing their knives and grimacing for the camera. Red House had been the place chefs ate after work! All twelve tables were constantly booked! They had been the toast of the town . . . Things were different now, he thought. Turning slowly to Michelle, he asked her for a cigarette, lit it, took a deep draw, and sat back in his chair. "I know where he's going to be tomorrow," he said. "Get somebody to cover for you until nine. We'll go and get him." The Hitchcock Annual Christmas Party was in full swing at the Turgeson Galleries in Chelsea. An entire floor of industrial space had been set aside for the event. In the center of the room, an enormous ice carving of a letter H kindly provided by Tavern on the Green melted slowly into a bed of crushed ice and seaweed. Behind it, two uniformed oyster shuckers from the Grand Central Oyster Bar, dispatched at the last minute after a late-night request heavy with implicit threat and promise, opened littleneck clams, Wellfleet oysters, and sea urchins from a not-characteristically-so-generous seafood company. Cooks from a cross-section of New York restaurants struggled to keep up with the hungry partygoers, arranging tiny sculpted portions of intricately garnished food on paper plates and decorating them with squeeze bottles, tiny heaps of frizzled vegetables, and truffle chips, while their chefs looked nervously on in their best embroidered finery with pained rictuses of smiles stitched across their faces. A charcuterie and provisions company had come through with twin towers of Armagnac-soaked foie gras-stuffed prunes, pate assortments, galantines, and sausages, and a cook seared tiny packages of feuille de brie pastry filled with duck rillettes on a hot plate. Rob Holland, dressed as Santa Claus (though without wig or beard), posed for photographs with giggly female Hitchcock staffers and their mothers. He was drunk and smelled of old lady. "And what do you want, little girl?" he managed to say, as yet another blushing assistant from the ad sales department squirmed sweatily on his lap. Jesus, she had her legs apart on his thigh, was rubbing herself on his red polyester-clad upper leg while her pink-blotched mom snapped a photo. This was the final straw, Rob was thinking. Free food, fine. Reservations at the last second, sure. Sending over some hors d'oeuvres for his cocktail parties, kiss the ring. Reasonable. Hook him up with a Viking range or a Sub-Zero at cost (or better), all right, why not? It sucked, but this is the business we chose. And he is the all-powerful one who must be pleased at all costs.

• From American Swing (2008)

  IT WAS A TRIAL. ON TRIAL WAS LARRY, HY, FRANK, THE ACCOUNTANT. LARRY TOOK THE STAND AND TRIED TO EXPLAIN THE CIRCUMSTANCES. HE BELIEVED THAT HE WAS IN A-- A NON-PROFIT, NOT-FOR-PROFIT CLUB AND THAT HE TRULY BELIEVED THAT. LARRY LEVENSON WASN'T ON THE STAND. HE WAS ON THE STAGE. EVERYTHING WAS A JOKE TO HIM, OR SO IT APPEARED. Sudler: I THINK THE JURY, AS I RECALL, WAS LAUGHING AT HIM. THE TRIAL WAS COMPLETED. THE JURY DELIBERATED FOR APPROXIMATELY FIVE OR SIX HOURS, I BELIEVE. AND CAME BACK WITH GUILTY VERDICTS. LARRY LEVENSON, FRANK PERNICE, HY GORDON RECEIVED EIGHT YEARS PLUS A FINE. I THINK AN EIGHT-YEAR JAIL SENTENCE AT THAT TIME FOR THIS TYPE OF A TAX EVASION WAS SOMETHING OF A RECORD. Goldstein: WHAT FUCKED HIM UP WAS HE WAS STEALING CASH. AND HE DID THE DUMBEST THING OF ALL. IF ANY OF YOU EVER DO CASH OR HAVE YOUR OWN COMPANY, YOU DON'T DO IT IN FRONT OF EMPLOYEES, 'CAUSE THE GUY WHO'S WORKING FOR YOU OR THE GAL WHO'S WORKING FOR YOU, YOU'RE GONNA FIRE THEM OR YELL AT THEM AND THEY'RE GONNA BRING YOU DOWN. A LOT OF CASH-- JUST LIKE STUDIO 54! I DON'T BELIEVE HE WAS STEALING MONEY, I DON'T BELIEVE THAT HE WAS CREATING BOOKS THAT-- DIDN'T EXIST. I MEAN-- DOUBLE BOOKS? LARRY WAS BEING KING OF SWING. THE DEMEANOR AT THE DEFENSE TABLE CHANGED. ALL OF A SUDDEN THERE WAS SILENCE UPON THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE VERDICT. THERE WAS NO MORE AFFABLE, CLASS-CLOWN LARRY LEVENSON. IT WAS TOTAL SILENCE. Breitbart: IF YOU BREAK THE LAW, THERE'S AN OLD SAYING IN THE BUSINESS: "IF YA CAN'T AFFORDS THE TIME, YA DON'T COMMITS THE CRIME." TRUE. ♪ HAPPINESS, HAPPINESS ♪ ♪ THE GREATEST GIFT THAT I POSSESS ♪ ♪ I THANK THE LORD THAT I'VE BEEN BLESSED... ♪ SOME OF YOU MAY HAVE BEEN WONDERING WHATEVER HAPPENED TO LARRY LEVENSON? HE'S HERE IN ALLENWOOD, WHICH IS A FEDERAL PENITENTIARY. IT'S CONSIDERED A LEVEL-ONE PRISON. IN THE TRUNK WE'D HAVE CLOTHES, SUITCASES, GOLF CLUBS, A TENNIS RACKET. WE THOUGHT IT WAS A PLACE WHERE YOU BASICALLY JUST-- YOU HUNG OUT BUT YOU COULDN'T LEAVE. THE LACK OF SEX-- VERY RARELY DISCUSSED OR ANYTHING. EVERYBODY TAKES CARE OF THAT SITUATION BY THEMSELVES, YOU KNOW? WE WERE IN CONSTANT COMMUNICATION. - AND HE NEVER COMPLAINED ABOUT IT, RIGHT? - RIGHT. ♪ THE GREATEST GIFT THAT I POSSESS ♪ Woman: "LARRY LEVENSON, YOU'RE OKAY, EVEN THOUGH YOU'VE GONE AWAY. YOU GOT INTO AN AWFUL MESS. YOU JUST CAN'T FUCK WITH THE I.R.S." Goldstein: PLATO'S WITHOUT LARRY WAS LIKE EASTER AT THE VATICAN WITHOUT THE POPE. THE POPE HAD THIS TRACHEOTOMY AND THE CHRISTIANS ARE RUNNING AMOK. Gillis: WITHOUT LARRY, PLATO'S TOOK A BIG DIVE. AND IT WASN'T PLATO'S ANYMORE. IT WASN'T-- IT WASN'T EVEN WHOLESOME ANYMORE. YOU KNOW? BECAUSE WITHOUT THAT BENEVOLENT HEART BEHIND IT, IT WAS JUST A TACKY SWINGERS CLUB, YOU KNOW? Vera: IT REQUIRED A LOT MORE PEOPLE TO FILL THE PLACE.