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 Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  Nori Muster, a longtime devotee of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) who later left the movement, noted deception in the recruitment process. “I don’t know that they actually join ISKCON, They come to the temple, but that’s something different.”1196 Muster was once ISKCON’s public relations secretary and editor of its newspaper. After she left, Muster wrote a book about the abuses in ISKCON titled Betrayal of The Spirit .1197 These abuses caused many members to leave.1198 Groenveld said that the sense of betrayal many former cult members feel cuts deep. “It hurts to discover you were deceived [by]…people you trusted implicitly, whom you were taught not to question.” And it hurts “when you learn that those you were taught were your ‘enemies’ were telling the truth after all.” Jayanti Tamm was born into a group called a “cult” led by Guru Sri Chinmoy. She writes, “Cults are designed to keep a clear separation between those inside and outside. The more faithful a follower, the more reliant the person is on the group. It becomes everything—family, friends, church, home, work, dwelling, community. Extracting oneself from that after decades is difficult, and sometimes impossible. It is both terrifying and isolating.”1199 Like Muster, Tam later wrote a book about her experience titled Cartwheels in Sari .1200 Groenveld relates how difficult it can be to “start all over again” and that there may be profound sadness if substantial time has been lost. “Your self-confidence and self-worth are almost non-existent,” she said.1201 Tamm describes the mind-set many cult members have when considering another life in the outside world. “It’s hard to leave and finally admit that what you put your whole life into is something that isn’t really true,” she said.1202 Groenveld says that shame may follow such a realization about “what you were” and a terrible feeling that “you are all alone.” This is coupled with a painful realization that the “love and acceptance” once experienced within the group “was conditional” and dependent on “remaining a member of good standing.” Groenveld even wondered if she might be “better off” back in the group. She also experienced a longing “for the security…in the organization” despite the knowledge that she could never “go back.” Conway and Siegelman found that deprogramming was beneficial to cult members. About 73 percent of the former cult members they surveyed had been deprogrammed, half on a voluntary basis and the other half on an involuntary basis through an intervention. “As a group, they reported a third less, and in many cases only half as many, post-cult effects than those who weren’t deprogrammed,” the authors said.1203 There was also a significant difference in recovery time for those who had been deprogrammed. “Average rehabilitation time was one-third longer—more than a year and half—for those who weren’t deprogrammed compared to just over a year for those who were.

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

  Helpless he cast himself at the feet of Jesus, wet them with tears of repentance, and subdued the resisting flesh by a week of fasting and by the dry study of Hebrew grammar (which, according to a letter to Rusticus,357 he was at that time learning from a converted Jew), until he found peace, and thought himself transported to the choirs of the angels in heaven. In this period probably falls the dream mentioned above, and the composition of several ascetic writings, full of heated eulogy of the monastic life.358 His biographies of distinguished anchorets, however, are very pleasantly and temperately written.359 He commends monastic seclusion even against the will of parents; interpreting the word of the Lord about forsaking father and mother, as if monasticism and Christianity were the same. "Though thy mother"—he writes, in 373, to his friend Heliodorus, who had left him in the midst of his journey to the Syrian desert—"with flowing hair and rent garments, should show thee the breasts which have nourished thee; though thy father should lie upon the threshold; yet depart thou, treading over thy father, and fly with dry eyes to the standard of the cross. This is the only religion of its kind, in this matter to be cruel .... The love of God and the fear of hell easily, rend the bonds of the household asunder. The holy Scripture indeed enjoins obedience to parents; but he who loves them more than Christ, loses his soul .... O desert, where the flowers of Christ are blooming!. O solitude, where the stones for the new Jerusalem are prepared! O retreat, which rejoices in the friendship of God! What doest thou in the world, my brother, with thy soul greater than the world? How long wilt thou remain in the shadow of roofs, and in the smoky dungeon of cities? Believe me, I see here more of the light."360 The eloquent appeal, however, failed of the desired effect; Heliodorus entered the teaching order and became a bishop. The active and restless spirit of Jerome soon brought him again upon the public stage, and involved him in all the doctrinal and ecclesiastical controversies of those controversial times. He received the ordination of presbyter from the bishop Paulinus in Antioch, without taking charge of a congregation. He preferred the itinerant life of a monk and a student to a fixed office, and about 380 journeyed to Constantinople, where he heard the anti-Arian sermons of the celebrated Gregory Nazianzen, and translated the Chronicle of Eusebius and the homilies of Origen on Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In 382, on account of the Meletian schism, he returned to Rome with Paulinus and Epiphanius. Here he came into close connection with the bishop, Damasus, as his theological adviser and ecclesiastical secretary,361 and was led by him into new exegetical labors, particularly the revision of the Latin version of the Bible, which he completed at a later day in the East.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  I had never dreamed that this could happen. I had failed to take into account the fact that Sonoko and her family might have an attitude toward the war markedly different from my own. I was a student, still under twenty-one, and working in an airplane factory ; moreover, having grown up during a series of wars, I had thought too much of the romantic sway of war. Actually, however, even during such times of violent disaster as these to which the war had now brought us, the magnetic needle of human affairs still remained pointing in the same direction as always. And up to now even I had thought I was in love. So why had I failed to realize that the everyday affairs and responsibilities of life went on even in wartime? As I reread Kusano's letter, however, a strange, faint smile came playing about my lips, and at last a quite ordinary feeling of superiority rose in me. I'm a conqueror, I told myself. A person who has never known happiness has no right to scorn it. But I give an appearance of happiness in which no one can detect any flaw, and so have as much right to scorn it as anyone else. Even though my heart was filled with uneasiness and unspeakable grief, I put a brazen, cynical smile upon my lips. I told myself that all I had to do was clear one small hurdle. All I had to do was to regard all the past few months as absurd; to decide that from the beginning I'd never been in love with a girl called Sonoko, not with such a chit of a girl; to believe that I'd been prompted by a trifling passion (liar!) and had deceived her. Then there'd be no reason why I couldn't refuse her. Surely a mere kiss didn't obligate me! . . . I was elated with the conclusion to which my thoughts had brought me: "I'm not in love with Sonoko." What a splendid thing! I've become a man who can entice a woman without even loving her, and then, when love blazes up in her, abandon her without thinking twice about it. How far I am from being the upright and virtuous honor student I appear to be. . . . And yet I could not have been ignorant of the fact that there is no such thing as a libertine who abandons a woman without first achieving his purpose. But I ignored any such thoughts. I had acquired the habit of closing my ears completely, like an obstinate old woman, to anything I did not want to hear. The only thing needed now was to devise a way to get out of the marriage. I set about the task exactly as though I were a jealous lover scheming to prevent a marriage between the girl he loved and someone else.

• From Enchanted: Erotic Bedtime Stories for Women (Erotic Fiction) (2006)

  Bluebeard carefully unfastened his wife’s hands and feet and, lifting her into his arms, carried her over to the table with the shackles. He placed her gently on the table, adjusting her body so that she was positioned on her hands and knees, with her legs spread wide apart. Her wrists and ankles were quickly and adeptly fastened to the table. Then Bluebeard gently forced her head down onto the table and placed a clasp of sorts around her neck to hold it in place. She was deeply humiliated and agitated to be bound thus, for in this position her most private parts were especially laid open and visible. With horror she realized that her husband had walked to that end of the table and stood before her at that very moment, examining her. She felt his warm breath on her flesh as he approached nearer, and then something soft and wet touched her exposed area. It took her a moment to realize that it was his tongue, and she moaned with a mixture of pleasure and apprehension. With precision and determination he continued relentlessly, until she was unable to fight off the feelings of arousal that were coming over her. She struggled under the constraints in an effort to enhance her own pleasure. But just before she reached a point of release, her husband stopped, leaving her anxious and fretful. He repeated this process several times, and each time he would test her submissiveness, asking, “Who will you obey from this day forward?” And to each inquiry, what else could she do, besides willingly acknowledge his power and vow to obey him? Bluebeard continued teasing his wife in this manner for what seemed to her like an eternity, but suddenly he stopped abruptly and walked to the other end of the table so that he stood directly in front of her. Slowly he unfastened her neck and lifted her head. His pants had been opened, and his arousal stood within inches of her lips. She hesitated only a moment before she understood what he meant for her to do. Then she took him willingly, eagerly even, for she felt a voracious hunger to please him in any way he would allow. He watched her carefully as she delighted in the pleasure she was giving him. Urgently she struggled to take him as his thrusts became harder and faster, but when he was about to release himself she drew back, just as he had done with her. At that moment their eyes met, and she saw the silent demand in his. Hypnotized by his powerful gaze, she arched her neck in a submissive gesture, voluntarily taking him, and actually savoring him. When he was finished, Bluebeard once again placed his wife’s head gently upon the table and fastened her neck as before. Then he walked out of the room. His wife waited in absolute agony for his return.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  At the conclusion of his book Lee wrote, I was guided in all that I did which is called criminal, by the orders of the leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have never knowingly disobeyed the orders of the Church since I joined it at Far West, Missouri, until I was deserted by Brigham Young and his slaves. On the morning of March 23, 1877, under the watchful eye of his guards, Lee stepped out of a carriage onto the sandy loam of the Mountain Meadow, the first time he had returned to the site of the massacre in twenty years. The condemned man completed his will, sat down on the coffin that would shortly hold his corpse, and listened to a marshal make a formal recitation of his death warrant. Then he stood and calmly addressed the crowd of some eighty people who had traveled to the meadow to watch him die. “A victim must be had, and I am the victim,” Lee declared with a mix of resignation and accusation. “I have been sacrificed in a cowardly, dastardly manner.” After Lee finished speaking, the marshal tied a blindfold across his eyes, and Lee sat down again on the edge of the open coffin, imploring of the firing squad, “Let them shoot the balls through my heart! Don’t let them mangle my body.” A moment later, a deafening blast shattered the peace of the morning and four bullets tore into his chest. John D. Lee tipped back from the waist into the wooden box, his feet still planted on the meadow, as the rifles’ report echoed from the surrounding hills. TWENTY UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN Civil libertarians have consistently insisted on America’s sacred duty to make the country a place of unprecedented religious tolerance. Faced however, with the realities of religious pluralism—multiplying sects and excessive fervor for seemingly bizarre religious tenets—they have reacted with something short of enthusiasm. R. LAURENCE MOORE, RELIGIOUS OUTSIDERS AND THE MAKING OF AMERICANS In his day, John D. Lee was renowned not only for his role in the Mountain Meadows massacre but also as a gifted healer and oracle. He cured many an ailing Mormon by the laying on of hands. Numerous Saints were awed by the accuracy of his prophecies—and never more so than on the occasion of his final prediction. According to a family memoir, shortly before Lee was executed he prophesied, “If I am guilty of the crime for which I am convicted, I will go down and out and never be heard of again. If I am not guilty, Brigham Young will die within one year! Yes, within six months.” On August 23, 1877, exactly five months after Lee’s death, Brigham was overcome with fever, gastrointestinal cramps, diarrhea, and vomiting. Six days later “The Old Boss,” as Lee called him, was dead, most likely from a ruptured appendix.

• From Enchanted: Erotic Bedtime Stories for Women (Erotic Fiction) (2006)

  […] the youngest daughter was thought by comparison to be gangly and awkward, with large bones and features that were less than perfect. […] They all criticized the poor girl incessantly, saying such things as, “Perhaps if you ate less, you would be more petite,” though she ate no more than any of the others, or, “If you rub lemons in your hair it would not be such a dull color.” In truth, the unfortunate child went to bed hungry many a night and rubbed lemon after lemon into her hair, but nothing she did seemed to matter; there was always one thing or another that they would find wrong with her. […] Since her older sisters were thought to be so much more beautiful by comparison, the youngest sister soon came to be known to everyone as “the ugly duckling.”

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  There is, no doubt, a certain humiliation in begging, as having a thing done to you is less honourable than doing it, and receiving than giving, and obeying royal power than governing and reigning. The spontaneous embracing of humiliations is a practice of humility, not in any and every case, but when it is done for a needful purpose: for humility, being a virtue, does nothing indiscreetly. It is then not humility but folly to embrace any and every humiliation: but where virtue calls for a thing to be done, it belongs to humility not to shrink from doing it for the humiliation that goes with it, for instance, not to refuse some mean service where charity calls upon you so to help your neighbour. Thus then where begging is requisite for the perfection of a life of poverty, it is a point of humility to bear this humiliation. Sometimes too, even where our own duty does not require us to embrace humiliations, it is an act of virtue to take them up in order to encourage others by our example more easily to bear what is incumbent on them: for a general sometimes will do the office of a common soldier to encourage the rest. Sometimes again we may make a virtuous use of humiliations as a medicine. Thus if any one’s mind is prone to undue self-exaltation, he may with advantage make a moderate use of humiliations, either self-imposed or imposed by others, so to check the elation of his spirit by putting himself on a level with the lowest class of the community in the doing of mean offices. Fifth mode. There have also been some who said that the votaries of a perfect life should take no thought either for begging or labouring or laying up anything for themselves, but should exped their sustenance from God alone, according to the texts, Be not solicitous, and, Take no thought for the morrow (Matt. vi, 25, 34). Criticism. This seems quite an irrational proceeding. For it is foolish to wish an end and omit the means ordained to that end. Now to the end of eating there is ordained some human care of providing oneself with food. They then who cannot live without eating ought to have some solicitude about seeking their food. There follows also a strange absurdity: for by parity of reasoning one might say that he will not walk, or open his mouth to eat, or avoid a stone falling, or a sword striking him, but expect God to do all, which is tantamount to tempting God.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  My assumption that I would die young was also a factor in this belief. In the course of time, however, this optimism or, better said, this daydream was to suffer a cruel disillusionment.By way of precaution I should add that it is not the usual matter of "self-consciousness" to which I am referring here. Instead it is simply a matter of sex, of the role by means of which one attempts to conceal, often even from himself, the true nature of his sexual desires. For the present I do not intend to refer to anything beyond that. Now it may well be that the so-called backward student is the product of heredity. I nevertheless wanted to receive regular promotions along with the rest of my generation in the school of life, and I hit upon a makeshift way of doing so. This device consisted, in brief, of copying my friends' answers during examinations, without any understanding of what I was writing, and handing in my paper with studied innocence. There are times when such a method, more stupid and shameless than cunning, reaps an outward success, and the pupil is promoted. In the grade to which he has advanced, however, he is presumed to have mastered the materials of the lower grades, and as the lessons progress in difficulty, he becomes completely lost. Even though he hears what the teacher says, he understands not a word of it. At this point only two courses are open to him: either he goes to the dogs, or else he bluffs his way through by pretending with all his might that he does understand. The choice between these two courses will be determined by the nature, not the quantity, of his weakness and boldness. Either course requires the same amount of boldness, or of weakness, and either requires a kind of lyrical and imperishable craving for laziness. One day I joined a group of classmates who were walking along outside the school walls, noisily discussing the rumor that one of our friends, who was not present, had fallen in love with the conductress of a bus on which he went back and forth to school. Before long the gossip turned to a theoretical argument as to what one could find to like about bus conductresses. At this point I spoke up, deliberately adopting a cold-blooded tone and speaking brusquely, as though flinging out the words : "It's their uniforms! Because they fit so tight to their bodies." Needless to say, I had never felt the slightest such sensual attraction toward bus conductresses as my words suggested. I had spoken by analogy—a perfect analogy, in which I saw the same sort of tight uniform on a different body—and also out of a desire, then very strong in me, to pose as a mature, cynical sensualist about everything. The other boys reacted immediately.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Those artificial efforts only inflicted some strange, numbed tiredness upon my mind. The realistic portion of my mind sensed the artificiality in the eternal protestations with which I persuaded myself that I was in love with her, and it fought back with this spiteful fatigue. There seemed to be some terrible poison in this mental exhaustion. Between the intervals of these mental efforts I was making toward artificiality I would sometimes be overwhelmed with a paralyzing emptiness and, in order to escape, would turn shamelessly to a different sort of daydream. Then immediately I would become quick with life, would become myself, and would blaze toward strange images. Moreover, the flame thus created would remain in my mind as an abstract feeling, divorced from the reality of the image that had caused it, and I would distort my interpretation of the feeling until I believed it to be evidence of passion inspired by the girl herself. . Thus once again I deceived myself. If there are those who would reproach me, saying that what I have been describing is too much of a generalization, too abstract, I can only reply that I have had no intention of giving a tedious description of a period of my life whose outward aspects differed in no way from those of normal adolescence. Excepting the shameful portion of my mind, my adolescence was, even in its inner aspects, altogether ordinary, and during that period I was exactly like any other boy. The reader need only picture to himself a fairly good student, not yet twenty; with average curiosity and average appetite for life; of a retiring disposition probably for no other reason than that he is too much given to introspection; quick to blush at the slightest word; and, lacking the confidence that comes from being handsome enough to appeal to girls, clinging perforce only to his books. It will be quite enough to picture to oneself how that student yearns for women, how his breast is afire, and how he is in useless agony. Can there be anything more prosaic or easy to imagine? It is right that I should omit these tedious details, which would only repeat what everyone already knows. Suffice it to say, then, that—always excepting the one shameful difference I am describing—in that most colorless phase of the bashful student I was exactly like the other boys, that I had sworn unconditional loyalty to the stage manager of the play called adolescence. During this time the attraction I had formerly felt only toward older youths had little by little been extended to include younger boys as well. This was only natural as by this time even these younger boys were the same age Omi had been when I was in love with him.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Gisippus, having beheld him several days full of melancholy thought and seeing him presently sick, was sore concerned and with every art and all solicitude studied to comfort him, never leaving him and questioning him often and instantly of the cause of his melancholy and his sickness. Titus, after having once and again given him idle tales, which Gisippus knew to be such, by way of answer, finding himself e'en constrained thereunto, with tears and sighs replied to him on this wise, 'Gisippus, had it pleased the Gods, death were far more a-gree to me than to live longer, considering that fortune hath brought me to a pass whereas it behoved me make proof of my virtue and that I have, to my exceeding shame, found this latter overcome; but certes I look thereof to have ere long the reward that befitteth me, to wit, death, and this will be more pleasing to me than to live in remembrance of my baseness, which latter, for that I cannot nor should hide aught from thee, I will, not without sore blushing, discover to thee.' Then, beginning from the beginning, he discovered to him the cause of his melancholy and the conflict of his thoughts and ultimately gave him to know which had gotten the victory and confessed himself perishing for love of Sophronia, declaring that, knowing how much this misbeseemed him, he had for penance thereof resolved himself to die, whereof he trusted speedily to make an end.

• From Enchanted: Erotic Bedtime Stories for Women (Erotic Fiction) (2006)

  The prince, however, was impatient to know all that had passed between his wife and the princess. Their reluctance was like torture for him, and so he addressed the ladies who stood so enticingly before him impatiently, saying, “You have both betrayed me—one with her unfaithfulness and the other with her trickery. Under the law I may punish you however I wish. So you may both pay your debt to me, in full, here and now, or suffer the full penalty under the law.” He spoke thus to the ladies, but only because he was in a highly agitated state and wished to spur them into action by whatever means necessary. In truth, the prince had completely forgiven both women when he beheld them together in the bath. The women climbed awkwardly onto the bed and arranged themselves beside each other as they had before, with their heads facing in opposite directions at eye level with the other’s hips. The prince watched silently as the women struggled to overcome their embarrassment. He didn’t even blink, so loath was he to lose sight of them for even an instant as they tentatively touched each other’s soft flesh, gently prying it open and exposing the inside completely to his gaze, and touching the tender, aching flesh with their tongues. He slowly paced up and down the length of the bed, first on one side and then on the other as he watched, desperately wanting to witness the apparition from every possible angle. He was mesmerized by the image of the goose girl’s small, pink tongue as it worked its way into his wife’s most private place, a place where he had thought himself to be the only trespasser. He was equally enthralled by the sight of his wife performing that same unorthodox ritual with her own sweet lips and tongue, so that he could not resist kissing her lips and tasting the evidence of what he was seeing there. The goose girl did not even notice the prince, so happy was she to once again hold her maid in her arms. She caressed her brazenly with her lips and tongue, delighting in every shudder and quake of her lover’s body in response to her touch. And finally, the maid, who had experienced so many conflicting emotions that day, began to relax. It had all been so traumatic: beginning with the shame of having what she’d done exposed, followed by the terror of the consequences she might suffer for her actions, and finally, her stunned relief upon hearing her husband’s declaration that her punishment would go no further than that room. She had been treated with more kindness than she deserved, and her punishment was, in fact, the very thing she had been dreaming of all these months, for, although she had fallen in love with her husband, she had not been able to completely forget her mistress’s charms, or how exquisite their lovemaking had been.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  The compulsion toward evil that some demon incited in him gave his life its meaning and constituted his destiny. At least so it seemed to me. . . . Upon further thought, however, his "evil" came to have a different meaning for me. I decided that the huge conspiracy into which the demon had driven him, with its intricately organized secret society and its minutely planned underground machinations, was surely all for the sake of some forbidden god. Omi had served that god, had attempted to convert others to his faith, had been betrayed, and then had been executed in secret. One evening at dusk he had been stripped naked and taken to the grove on the hill. There he had been bound to a tree, both hands tied high over his head. The first arrow had pierced the side of his chest; the second, his armpit. The more I remembered the picture he had made that day, grasping the exercise-bar in preparation for the pull-up, the more I became convinced of his close affinity with St. Sebastian. During my fourth year at middle school I developed anemia. I became even more pallid than usual, so much so that my hands were the color of dead grass. Whenever I climbed a steep staircase I had to squat down and rest at the top. I would feel as though a windspout of white fog had whirled down onto the back of my head, digging a hole there and making me all but faint away. My family took me to the doctor, who diagnosed my trouble as anemia. He was an agreeable man and a friend of the family's. When they began asking him for details about my trouble, he said : "Well, let's see what the answer book has to say about anemia." The examination was over, and I was at the doctor's elbow, where I could peep into the book from which he began reading aloud. The family was seated facing him and could not see the pages of the book. ". . . So then, next there's the etiology—the causes of the disease. Hookworms—these are a frequent cause. This is probably the boy's case. We'll have to have a stool examination. Next there's chlorosis. But it's rare, and anyway it's a woman's disease—" At this point the book gave a further cause for anemia, but the doctor did not read it aloud. Instead, he skipped over it, mumbling the rest of the passage in his throat as he closed the book. But I had seen the phrase that he had omitted. It was "self-pollution." I could feel my heart pounding with shame. The doctor had discovered my secret. But what no one could ever have discovered was the singular reciprocal relationship between my lack of blood and my blood lust itself.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  He was lying with his white, muscular arms folded, exposing his lightly tanned chest to the breeze, and steadily chewing his lower lip as though teasing it with his white teeth. The self-styled invalids had begun to gather in the shade of a tree beside the pool, and I had no difficulty in drawing near him. Sitting beside him, I measured his slim waist with my eye and gazed at his gently breathing abdomen. As I did so I recalled a line from Whitman : The young men float on their backs—their white bellies bulge to the sun . . . But now again I said not a word. I was ashamed of my own thin chest, of my bony, pallid arms. . . . In September, 1944, the year before the end of the war, I graduated from the school I had attended ever since childhood and entered a certain university. Given no other choice by my father, I entered the Law Department. But I was not greatly annoyed by this as I was convinced that I would soon be called into the army and would die in battle, and that my family also would mercifully be killed in the air raids, leaving not a single survivor.As was the common practice in those days, I borrowed a university uniform from an upperclassman who was going to war just when I was matriculating, promising to return it to his family when I myself should be called up. I put on the uniform and began going to classes. The air raids were becoming more frequent. I was uncommonly afraid of them, and yet at the same time I somehow looked forward to death impatiently, with a sweet expectation. As I have remarked several times, the future was a heavy burden for me. From the very beginning, life had oppressed me with a heavy sense of duty. Even though I was clearly incapable of performing this duty, life still nagged at me for my dereliction. Thus I longed for the great sense of relief that death would surely bring if only, like a wrestler, I could wrench the heavy weight of life from my shoulders. I sensuously accepted the creed of death that was popular during the war. I thought that if by any chance I should attain "glorious death in battle" (how ill it would have become me!), this would be a truly ironical end for my life, and I could laugh sarcastically at it forever from the grave. . . . And when the sirens sounded, that same me would dash for the air-raid shelters faster than anyone. . . . I heard the sound of a piano, clumsily played.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  He bathed the site of his transgression with a violet shell soap. —What are you doing? Elena called sleepily as he dried himself off in the bathroom. Never coming enough out of her unconsciousness to see it. —Oh, just brushing my teeth, Hood mumbled. Didn’t want to wake you. Just brushing. Nine months later. A full gestation period after Melody, he began to execute his affair with Janey Williams. Their kids and his kids got along famously. This provided the opportunity. The kids were like some suburban gang of Sharks or Jets. Slovenly, affluent kids from the suburbs, staying out late to shoot pellet guns at the Van Dorens’ rottweiler, to smoke marijuana, or to get into one another’s pants. Mikey Williams and his friends had begun to call each other Charles all the time—this was part of how Janey and Hood had grown close, one night, talking it over. Hood had asked Mikey, taking him aside brusquely one night at a dinner party at the Williamses, what the hell Charles was all about. Short for the opposition in the Vietnam conflict? Nickname of Manson? Name of a perfume? Nah, Mike told him sullenly, Charles, like Charles Nelson Reilly. From Match Game. The one, Hood surmised, with the incredibly long microphone. Wendy was the only sensible kid on the block. The wind gusted fiercely, wailing its dissonances, turning the corner around Janey’s house, around the guest room, passing into the valley below, over the Silvermine River—a creek, really—and into the forest. The weather report was bad. Rain, rain, and then turning sharply colder. It was coming down in sheets now and mixed with harder stuff. Kids, that was how it happened. They had a laugh over Charles. It was Halloween night and their kids, his daughter and the Williams kids and Danny Spofford from up the street, were dressed up, along with every other kid in the neighborhood, as vagrants. Decked out in rags with mud and tar and eyeliner speckling them, with penciled-on boils and gin blossoms and dead teeth. Dressed like urban flotsam. Benjamin Hood had driven the half mile to fetch some forgotten culinary item, a cup of milk or some Tang or something. He sat for a moment on the couch next to Janey. They rated the costumes of their beloved vagrants. The further the distance from their cushy lives, the higher the rating. It had to do with kids and Halloween. With this mythology of the holiday. The carnival of sleep and death. The ghosts of the past, the ghosts of all his mistakes, crowded the earth, reminded him of the folly of his best efforts. Regrets. Hood turned the other cheek: he permitted the kids to carry shaving cream and soap and raw eggs out into the street. Go ahead, he laughed. Go fuck each other up. Doesn’t matter in the long run. Doesn’t matter what the hell you do. The kids froze, stunned by the oath.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  Consider how often the average American male masturbated in 1973. That year there were, say, 100 million American men, two thirds of whom were capable of achieving orgasm. At once a week, that meant approximately 3,432,000,000 ejaculations in the calendar year. At ½ ounce per ejaculation, that’s 1,716,000,000 ounces or 13,406,250 gallons. Larger than a very large oil spill. Where to put all that waste sperm? All across the vast land, in the suburbs, in the rural and forested regions, in inner cities, guys were coming into rags, into sinks, onto their own bodies, outdoors in the alley or upon the earth. How many thought about disposal? He had tried to explain self-abuse to his son once, and this was one of the conversations that did not go well. He sat the boy down in the bedroom one day and asked him not to do it in the shower, because it wasted water and electricity and because everyone would expect it of him there anyway, and not to do it onto the linen, and not to do it with his sister’s undergarments or any clothes belonging to his mother, and not to do it with the dog. The best time was when he was certain no one else was in the house. The best place was into the john, where it would cause no trouble and mix with the other sad waste products of America. If he became concerned about any sign of perversion in his habits, he should feel free to come forward and discuss it. Together they could consult a medical text. At the close of this monologue, Paul looked as though he had just learned of his family’s financial ruin. Every man lusted to renounce masturbation once and for all, to cease from those tepid orgasms whose only novelty lay in the freedom to invent that they encouraged (Janey in crotchless hot pants presenting her ass to him while sucking on her third finger). Inventions that were otherwise shameful to harbor. Yet Hood himself had not found occasion to give it up. Sometimes he even had to masturbate while lying next to Elena. He imagined, he hoped, he relied on the fact that she slept through these nocturnal abasements. Hood left Mike’s room. He stood at the top of the banister and looked down. He leaned over it and felt the cool of the polished wood on his abdomen. Why dwell in the illusion that Janey was waiting for him here? She had left, of course. The conclusion was unavoidable. She had released him to the inevitability of his marriage, to confession and inadequate apologies. He could hear the rain and sleet pelting urgently against the windows of the second floor. It was only a half mile or so to his house, along Valley Road. In minutes, he might be settled in front of a fire in the library, contemplating the oblivion of fires. He headed for the Williamses’ bathroom. One last look.

• From Fragments (7)

  Il lui semble, du moins à lui seul, qu'il fait partie des Isothées, lui, cet homme qui établit la concurrence <à notre) école ; lui qui, frappant la lyre avec le plectre, a l'habitude de débiter des tirades prosaïques, devant lesquelles tu t'inclines et lui souris avec désir. Tandis que moi. certes, mon cœur se renverse dans ma poitrine, dès qu'il m'apparaît. de ma voix aucun son même enroué ne peut plus retentir et ma langue reste paralysée ; puis c'est un feu subtil qui court sous mon épiderme ; ensuite par les yeux rien ne peut plus m'exciler ; mes oreilles résonnent comme si la mer venait dedans briser ses vagues ; je n'ai pas peur et la sueur m'inonde et le frisson me saisit toute entière ; plus blafarde que l'aube, je me meurs, encore un peu je parais descendre dans la demeure d'Hadès. Mais ce n'est pas en suivant tout mouvement poétique hardi, et en chantant des œuvres dignes de louange, que (cet homme si présomptueux) se montre avide d'admiration. De même que pour les poésies de bon goût et l'enchaînement régulier des mètres, la manière de les concevoir, qui nous est commune, n'a pas changé. Et pourtant tu agis au contraire, de manière à faire fuir aux gens de goût, les poèmes honnêtes que nous modulons avec art, sans plectre, sur les sept voix de notre lyre. Tu m'affliges, lu me couvres de honte. Par cette honte, puisse se gonfler, sans excès, ton cœur d'élan, afin que cette conception de l'idéal, qui nous est commune, ne te laisse plus seule t'endormir dans ce manque d'ardeur pour la lutte. Les Prétendues Amies de Sappho Les Prétendues Amies de Sappho

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  God, what a face! But at least that house is fairly safe." "The face doesn't make any difference," I said. "All right then, just to be different I'll take the pretty one. Don't hold it against me later." At our approach the two women jumped up as though some devil had taken possession of them. We went in the house, which was so small that our heads seemed to touch the ceiling as we entered. Giving a smile that revealed her gold teeth and gums, the spindly one with a country accent took me off to a tiny three-mat room.A sense of duty made me embrace her. Holding her in my arms, I was about to kiss her. Her heavy shoulders began shaking crazily with laughter. "Don't do thaaat! You'll get lipstick on you. This here's the way." The prostitute opened her big mouth, its gold teeth framed by lipstick, and produced her sturdy tongue like a stick. Following her example, I stuck out my tongue also. The tips of our tongues touched. . . . Perhaps I will not be understood when I say there is a numbness that resembles fierce pain. I felt my entire body becoming paralyzed with just such a pain, a pain that was intense, but still could not be felt at all. I dropped my head onto the pillow. Ten minutes later there was no doubt of my incapacity. My knees were shaking with shame. I assumed that my friend had no suspicion of what had happened, and surprisingly enough, during the next few days I surrendered myself to the drab feelings of convalescence. I was like a person who has been suffering an unknown disease in an agony of fear: just learning the name of his disease, even though it is an incurable one, gives him a surprising feeling of temporary relief. He knows well, though, that the relief is only temporary. Moreover, in his heart he foresees a still more inescapable hopelessness, which, by its very nature, will give a more permanent feeling of relief. I too had probably come to expect a blow that it would be even more impossible to parry, or to say it another way, a more inescapable feeling of relief. During the following weeks I met my friend at school many times, but neither of us ever referred to the incident. About a month later he came to visit me one evening, accompanied by another student, a mutual acquaintance of ours. This was T, a great ladies' man, full of vanity and always boasting that he could make any girl in only fifteen minutes. In no time our conversation descended to the inevitable theme. "I just can't get along without it any more—I simply can't control myself," T said, looking closely at me. "If any of my friends were impotent I'd really envy them.

• From Fragments (7)

  Il lui semble, du moins à lui seul, qu'il fait partie des Isothées, lui, cet homme qui établit la concurrence <à notre) école ; lui qui, frappant la lyre avec le plectre, a l'habitude de débiter des tirades prosaïques, devant lesquelles tu t'inclines et lui souris avec désir. Tandis que moi. certes, mon cœur se renverse dans ma poitrine, dès qu'il m'apparaît. de ma voix aucun son même enroué ne peut plus retentir et ma langue reste paralysée ; puis c'est un feu subtil qui court sous mon épiderme ; ensuite par les yeux rien ne peut plus m'exciler ; mes oreilles résonnent comme si la mer venait dedans briser ses vagues ; je n'ai pas peur et la sueur m'inonde et le frisson me saisit toute entière ; plus blafarde que l'aube, je me meurs, encore un peu je parais descendre dans la demeure d'Hadès. Mais ce n'est pas en suivant tout mouvement poétique hardi, et en chantant des œuvres dignes de louange, que (cet homme si présomptueux) se montre avide d'admiration. De même que pour les poésies de bon goût et l'enchaînement régulier des mètres, la manière de les concevoir, qui nous est commune, n'a pas changé. Et pourtant tu agis au contraire, de manière à faire fuir aux gens de goût, les poèmes honnêtes que nous modulons avec art, sans plectre, sur les sept voix de notre lyre. Tu m'affliges, lu me couvres de honte. Par cette honte, puisse se gonfler, sans excès, ton cœur d'élan, afin que cette conception de l'idéal, qui nous est commune, ne te laisse plus seule t'endormir dans ce manque d'ardeur pour la lutte. Les Prétendues Amies de Sappho Les Prétendues Amies de Sappho

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Instantly Sonoko took on a new meaning for me—she was my sole armor, the sole coat of mail for my frail conscience in its struggle against these hands. Right or wrong, by fair means or foul, I told myself, you simply must love her. This feeling became, as it were, a moral obligation for me, lying even heavier in the bottom of my heart than did my sense of sin. Knowing nothing of all this, Kusano said innocently : "You don't need a washrag for a bath when you've got hands like these to rub with." A tiny sigh escaped from his mother's lips. In my position I could not help feeling like a shameless, uninvited guest. Sonoko happened to glance up at me. I hung my head. Absurd as it was, I had a feeling as though I must ask her forgiveness for something. "Let's go outside," said Kusano, pushing roughly at the backs of his grandmother and mother in his embarrassment. Each family group was seated in a circle on the dead turf of the bleak barracks courtyard, treating its cadet to a feast. I regret to say that no matter how I looked I could find no beauty in the scene. Soon we too had formed a circle of our own, with Kusano sitting cross-legged in the middle of it. He was cramming some Western-style candies into his mouth and could only roll his eyes when he wanted to call my attention to the sky in the direction of Tokyo. From the hilly region where we were I could look across sear fields to the basin in which M City lay extended. And beyond it I could look between a gap formed by the meeting of two low mountain ranges to what Kusano said was the sky over Tokyo. The chilly clouds of early spring were spreading their shadows over that distant region. "Last night the sky was bright red there. It was something awful. There's no telling whether your house is still standing or not. There's never been an air raid before that made all the sky there turn so red. . . ." No one spoke. Kusano went on chattering importantly, complaining that unless his grandmother and mother evacuated the family to the country as soon as possible he'd never be able to get a full night's sleep. "I agree with you," the grandmother said spiritedly. "We'll evacuate right away. I promise you." From her obi she extracted a small notebook and a silver pencil no larger than a toothpick and began writing something painstakingly. On the return journey the train was filled with gloom.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Aren't you the girl who's going to be my wife?" At every turn this sort of curious contradiction cropped up between my intellectual views and my emotions. I knew that what made me adopt such lukewarm attitudes—like that "H'm, perhaps so"—was not some fault in my character that I could change, but was the work of something that had existed even before I had had any hand in the matter. In short, I knew clearly that it was not my fault. But for this very reason I had formed the habit of treating those parts of my character that were in any way my responsibility to exhortations so wholesome and sensible as to be comical. As a part of my system of self-discipline, dating from childhood, I constantly told myself it would be better to die than become a lukewarm person, an unmanly person, a person who does not clearly know his likes and dislikes, a person who wants only to be loved without knowing how to love. This exhortation of course had a possible applicability to the parts of my character for which I was to blame, but so far as the other parts were concerned, the parts for which I was not to blame, it was an impossible requirement from the beginning. Thus, in the present case even the strength of a Samson would not have been sufficient to make me adopt a manly and unequivocal attitude toward Sonoko. So then, this image of a lukewarm man that Sonoko was now seeing, this thing that appeared to be my character, aroused my disgust, made my entire existence seem worthless, and tore my self-confidence into shreds. I was made to distrust both my will and my character, or at least, so far as my will was concerned, I could not believe it was anything but a fake. On the other hand, this way of thinking that placed such emphasis upon the will was in itself an exaggeration amounting almost to fantasy. Even a normal person cannot govern his behavior by will alone. No matter how normal I might have been, there certainly might have been a reason somewhere for doubting whether Sonoko and I were perfectly matched at every point for a happy married life, some reason that would have justified even that normal me in answering "H'm, perhaps so." But I had deliberately acquired the habit of closing my eyes even to such obvious assumptions, just as though I did not want to miss a single opportunity for tormenting myself.... This is a trite device, often adopted by persons who, cut off from all other means of escape, retreat into the safe haven of regarding themselves as objects of tragedy. . . . "Don't worry," Sonoko said in a quiet voice. "You won't be killed. You won't be even slightly hurt. Every night I pray to the Lord Jesus for you, and my prayers are always answered." "You're very devout, aren't you?