Shame

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  7 I do not know if the pimp’s album may not have been another link in the daisy-chain; but soon after, for my own safety, I decided to marry. It occurred to me that regular hours, home-cooked meals, all the conventions of marriage, the prophylactic routine of its bedroom activities and, who knows, the eventual flowering of certain moral values, of certain spiritual substitutes, might help me, if not to purge myself of my degrading and dangerous desires, at least to keep them under pacific control. A little money that had come my way after my father’s death (nothing very grand—the Mirana had been sold long before), in addition to my striking if somewhat brutal good looks, allowed me to enter upon my quest with equanimity. After considerable deliberation, my choice fell on the daughter of a Polish doctor: the good man happened to be treating me for spells of dizziness and tachycardia. We played chess: his daughter watched me from behind her easel, and inserted eyes or knuckles borrowed from me into the cubistic trash that accomplished misses then painted instead of lilacs and lambs. Let me repeat with quiet force: I was, and still am, despite mes malheurs , an exceptionally handsome male; slow-moving, tall, with soft dark hair and a gloomy but all the more seductive cast of demeanor. Exceptional virility often reflects in the subject’s displayable features a sullen and congested something that pertains to what he has to conceal. And this was my case. Well did I know, alas, that I could obtain at the snap of my fingers any adult female I chose; in fact, it had become quite a habit with me of not being too attentive to women lest they come toppling, bloodripe, into my cold lap. Had I been a français moyen with a taste for flashy ladies, I might have easily found, among the many crazed beauties that lashed my grim rock, creatures far more fascinating than Valeria. My choice, however, was prompted by considerations whose essence was, as I realized too late, a piteous compromise. All of which goes to show how dreadfully stupid poor Humbert always was in matters of sex. 8 Although I told myself I was looking merely for a soothing presence, a glorified pot-au-feu , an animated merkin, what really attracted me to Valeria was the imitation she gave of a little girl. She gave it not because she had divined something about me; it was just her style—and I fell for it. Actually, she was at least in her late twenties (I never established her exact age for even her passport lied) and had mislaid her virginity under circumstances that changed with her reminiscent moods. I, on my part, was as naïve as only a pervert can be.

• From Querelle (1953)

  At the first thrust, so strong it almost killed him, Querelle whimpered quietly, then more loudly, until he was moaning without restraint or shame. Such lively expression of pleasure gave Norbert reason to feel certain that this sailor was not really a man, in that he was not able to exercise, at the moment of pleasure, the traditionary reserve and restraint of the manly male. The murderer suddenly felt ill at ease, hardly able to formulate the reason for it : "Is that what it's like, being a real 76 I JEAN GENET fairy?" he thought. But at once he felt floored by the full weight of the French Police Force: without really succeeding, Mario's face was attempting to substitute itself for that of the man who was screwing him. Querelle ejaculated onto the velvet. A little higher up on the cover he softly buried his head with its strangely disordered black curls, untidy and lifeless like the grass on an upturned clump of turf. Norbert had stopped moving. His jaws relaxed, letting go of the downy nape of Querelle's neck which he- had been biting. Then the brothelkeeper's massive bulk, very gently and slowly, withdrew from Querelle. Querelle was still holding his belt. The discovery of the murdered sailor caused no panic, not even surprise. Crimes are no . more common in Brest than anywhere else, but by its climate of fog, rain, and thick low cloud, by the grayness of the granite, the memory of the galley slaves, by the presence, right next to the city but beyond its walls-and for that reason all the more stirring-of Bougen Prison, by the old penitentiary, by the invisible but durable thread that linked the old salts, admirals, sailors, fishermen, to the tropical regions, the -city's atmosphere is such, heavy yet luminous, that it seems to us not only conducive, but even essential to the flowering of a murder. Flowering is the word. It appears obvious to us that a knife slashing the fog at any conceivable spot, or a revolver bullet boring a hole in it, at the height of a man, might well burst a bubble full of blood and cause it to stream along the inside walls of the vaporous edifice. No matter where the blow falls, small stars of blood appear in the wounded fog. In whatever direction you extend your hand (already so far from your body that it no longer belongs to you) , now invisible, solitary and anonymous, the back of it will brush against-or your fingers grab hold of-the strong, trembling, naked, hot, ready-for-action, rid-of-its-underwear prick of a docker or sailor who waits there, burning hot and ice cold, 77 I QUERELLE

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  After tea he went out into the hall to order his horses to be put in, and, when he came back, he found Darya Alexandrovna greatly disturbed, with a troubled face, and tears in her eyes. While Levin had been outside, an incident had occurred which had utterly shattered all the happiness she had been feeling that day, and her pride in her children. Grisha and Tanya had been fighting over a ball. Darya Alexandrovna, hearing a scream in the nursery, ran in and saw a terrible sight. Tanya was pulling Grisha’s hair, while he, with a face hideous with rage, was beating her with his fists wherever he could get at her. Something snapped in Darya Alexandrovna’s heart when she saw this. It was as if darkness had swooped down upon her life; she felt that these children of hers, that she was so proud of, were not merely most ordinary, but positively bad, ill-bred children, with coarse, brutal propensities—wicked children. She could not talk or think of anything else, and she could not speak to Levin of her misery. Levin saw she was unhappy and tried to comfort her, saying that it showed nothing bad, that all children fight; but, even as he said it, he was thinking in his heart: “No, I won’t be artificial and talk French with my children; but my children won’t be like that. All one has to do is not spoil children, not to distort their nature, and they’ll be delightful. No, my children won’t be like that.” He said good-bye and drove away, and she did not try to keep him. Chapter 11

• From Querelle (1953)

  tha t his body would then be ready for it. Slowly, eyes closed as if still asleep, and hoping to look convincing in case all other eyes were attending his awakening, he turned round in his bed. A beam of sunlight from the window shone straight onto his blankets, on which some buzzing flies had settled. Without knowing what it was that attracted them, Gil knew that it had to do with the exposure of some secret. As nonchalantly as possible, he pulled the object-his briefs-down under the sheets, to find that they were a pair sligh tly soiled with shit and blood at the back : this, in the sunlight, had been attracting the flies. Now they buzzed off with such an infernal drone that the room was filled with the sound of it, revealing Gil's infamy, proclaiming it with the majesty and splendor of an organ voluntary. Gil felt certain that it was Thea's vengeful doing: he had gone through Gil's kit bag, come up with the disgusting item, and placed it on the young mason's bed while he was still asleep. The boys had watched these preparations gravely, silently, not interfering, as they knew Thea to be a violent character, and as that trait of his made them feel more real to themselves. And, well, there was no harm in taking that young guy down a peg or two, was there? The sun and the flies-Thea hadn't even reckoned with them-had added their talen ts to the show. \Vithout raising it fr01n the pillow, Gil turned his head to the left : he felt something hard under his cheek. Most carefully, slowly, he extended his hand and pulled the object down under the sheets, against h is chest. It was a huge eggplant. He held it in his hand; it was quite beautiful, terrifyingly large, violet in color, round. All of Gil's suppressed angermanifest in the taut muscles under the smooth white skin, in the fixed stare of his green eyes, in his lack of wit, in his mouth ill at case with his always unfinished smile that refused to disclose any but his front teeth and looked as tight-stretched as a cntcl length of clastic that must flip back and hurt you; in his dry, colorless, and rather sparse hair; in his silences; in his clea r 100 I JEAN GENET

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “When electricity was discovered,” Levin interrupted hurriedly, “it was only the phenomenon that was discovered, and it was unknown from what it proceeded and what were its effects, and ages passed before its applications were conceived. But the spiritualists have begun with tables writing for them, and spirits appearing to them, and have only later started saying that it is an unknown force.” Vronsky listened attentively to Levin, as he always did listen, obviously interested in his words. “Yes, but the spiritualists say we don’t know at present what this force is, but there is a force, and these are the conditions in which it acts. Let the scientific men find out what the force consists in. No, I don’t see why there should not be a new force, if it....” “Why, because with electricity,” Levin interrupted again, “every time you rub tar against wool, a recognized phenomenon is manifested, but in this case it does not happen every time, and so it follows it is not a natural phenomenon.” Feeling probably that the conversation was taking a tone too serious for a drawing-room, Vronsky made no rejoinder, but by way of trying to change the conversation, he smiled brightly, and turned to the ladies. “Do let us try at once, countess,” he said; but Levin would finish saying what he thought. “I think,” he went on, “that this attempt of the spiritualists to explain their marvels as some sort of new natural force is most futile. They boldly talk of spiritual force, and then try to subject it to material experiment.” Everyone was waiting for him to finish, and he felt it. “And I think you would be a first-rate medium,” said Countess Nordston; “there’s something enthusiastic in you.” Levin opened his mouth, was about to say something, reddened, and said nothing. “Do let us try table-turning at once, please,” said Vronsky. “Princess, will you allow it?” And Vronsky stood up, looking for a little table. Kitty got up to fetch a table, and as she passed, her eyes met Levin’s. She felt for him with her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for suffering of which she was herself the cause. “If you can forgive me, forgive me,” said her eyes, “I am so happy.” “I hate them all, and you, and myself,” his eyes responded, and he took up his hat. But he was not destined to escape. Just as they were arranging themselves round the table, and Levin was on the point of retiring, the old prince came in, and after greeting the ladies, addressed Levin. “Ah!” he began joyously. “Been here long, my boy? I didn’t even know you were in town. Very glad to see you.” The old prince embraced Levin, and talking to him did not observe Vronsky, who had risen, and was serenely waiting till the prince should turn to him.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Won’t you sit down?” He indicated an armchair at a writing-table covered with papers. He sat down himself, and, rubbing his little hands with short fingers covered with white hairs, he bent his head on one side. But as soon as he was settled in this position a moth flew over the table. The lawyer, with a swiftness that could never have been expected of him, opened his hands, caught the moth, and resumed his former attitude. “Before beginning to speak of my business,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, following the lawyer’s movements with wondering eyes, “I ought to observe that the business about which I have to speak to you is to be strictly private.” The lawyer’s overhanging reddish mustaches were parted in a scarcely perceptible smile. “I should not be a lawyer if I could not keep the secrets confided to me. But if you would like proof....” Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced at his face, and saw that the shrewd, gray eyes were laughing, and seemed to know all about it already. “You know my name?” Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed. “I know you and the good”—again he caught a moth—“work you are doing, like every Russian,” said the lawyer, bowing. Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed, plucking up his courage. But having once made up his mind he went on in his shrill voice, without timidity—or hesitation, accentuating here and there a word. “I have the misfortune,” Alexey Alexandrovitch began, “to have been deceived in my married life, and I desire to break off all relations with my wife by legal means—that is, to be divorced, but to do this so that my son may not remain with his mother.” The lawyer’s gray eyes tried not to laugh, but they were dancing with irrepressible glee, and Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that it was not simply the delight of a man who has just got a profitable job: there was triumph and joy, there was a gleam like the malignant gleam he saw in his wife’s eyes. “You desire my assistance in securing a divorce?” “Yes, precisely so; but I ought to warn you that I may be wasting your time and attention. I have come simply to consult you as a preliminary step. I want a divorce, but the form in which it is possible is of great consequence to me. It is very possible that if that form does not correspond with my requirements I may give up a legal divorce.” “Oh, that’s always the case,” said the lawyer, “and that’s always for you to decide.” He let his eyes rest on Alexey Alexandrovitch’s feet, feeling that he might offend his client by the sight of his irrepressible amusement. He looked at a moth that flew before his nose, and moved his hands, but did not catch it from regard for Alexey Alexandrovitch’s position.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I had just retracted some silly promise she had forced me to make in a moment of blind impatient passion, and there she was sprawling and sobbing, and pinching my caressing hand, and I was laughing happily, and the atrocious, unbelievable, unbearable, and, I suspect, eternal horror that I know now was still but a dot of blackness in the blue of my bliss; and so we lay, when with one of those jolts that have ended by knocking my poor heart out of its groove, I met the unblinking dark eyes of two strange and beautiful children, faunlet and nymphet, whom their identical flat dark hair and bloodless cheeks proclaimed siblings if not twins. They stood crouching and gaping at us, both in blue play-suits, blending with the mountain blossoms. I plucked at the lap-robe for desperate concealment—and within the same instant, something that looked like a polka-dotted pushball among the undergrowth a few paces away, went into a turning motion which was transformed into the gradually rising figure of a stout lady with a raven-black bob, who automatically added a wild lily to her bouquet, while staring over her shoulder at us from behind her lovejy carved bluestone children. Now that I have an altogether different mess on my conscience, I know that I am a courageous man, but in those days I was not aware of it, and I remember being surprised by my own coolness. With the quiet murmured order one gives a sweatstained distracted cringing trained animal even in the worst of plights (what mad hope or hate makes the young beast’s flanks pulsate, what black stars pierce the heart of the tamer!), I made Lo get up, and we decorously walked, and then indecorously scuttled down to the car. Behind it a nifty station wagon was parked, and a handsome Assyrian with a little blue-black beard, un monsieur très bien , in silk shirt and magenta slacks, presumably the corpulent botanist’s husband, was gravely taking the picture of a signboard giving the altitude of the pass. It was well over 10,000 feet and I was quite out of breath; and with a scrunch and a skid we drove off, Lo still struggling with her clothes and swearing at me in language that I never dreamed little girls could know, let alone use. There were other unpleasant incidents. There was the movie theatre once, for example. Lo at the time still had for the cinema a veritable passion (it was to decline into tepid condescension during her second high school year). We took in, voluptuously and indiscriminately, oh, I don’t know, one hundred and fifty or two hundred programs during that one year, and during some of the denser periods of movie-going we saw many of the news-reels up to half-a-dozen times since the same weekly one went with different main pictures and pursued us from town to town. Her favorite kinds were, in this order: musicals, underworlders, westerners.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Destroy it and go. Do not forget to leave the key on the desk in your room. And some scrap of address so that I could refund the twelve dollars I owe you till the end of the month. Good-bye, dear one. Pray for me—if you ever pray. C.H . What I present here is what I remember of the letter, and what I remember of the letter I remember verbatim (including that awful French). It was at least twice longer. I have left out a lyrical passage which I more or less skipped at the time, concerning Lolita’s brother who died at 2 when she was 4, and how much I would have liked him. Let me see what else can I say? Yes. There is just a chance that “the vortex of the toilet” (where the letter did go) is my own matter-of-fact contribution. She probably begged me to make a special fire to consume it. My first movement was one of repulsion and retreat. My second was like a friend’s calm hand falling upon my shoulder and bidding me take my time. I did. I came out of my daze and found myself still in Lo’s room. A full-page ad ripped out of a slick magazine was affixed to the wall above the bed, between a crooner’s mug and the lashes of a movie actress. It represented a dark-haired young husband with a kind of drained look in his Irish eyes. He was modeling a robe by So-and-So and holding a bridgelike tray by So-and-So, with breakfast for two. The legend, by the Rev. Thomas Morell, called him a “conquering hero.” The thoroughly conquered lady (not shown) was presumably propping herself up to receive her half of the tray. How her bedfellow was to get under the bridge without some messy mishap was not clear. Lo had drawn a jocose arrow to the haggard lover’s face and had put, in block letters: H.H. And indeed, despite a difference of a few years, the resemblance was striking. Under this was another picture, also a colored ad. A distinguished playwright was solemnly smoking a Drome. He always smoked Dromes. The resemblance was slight. Under this was Lo’s chaste bed, littered with “comics.” The enamel had come off the bedstead, leaving black, more or less rounded, marks on the white. Having convinced myself that Louise had left, I got into Lo’s bed and reread the letter. 17 Gentlemen of the jury! I cannot swear that certain motions pertaining to the business in hand—if I may coin an expression—had not drifted across my mind before. My mind had not retained them in any logical form or in any relation to definitely recollected occasions; but I cannot swear—let me repeat—that I had not toyed with them (to rig up yet another expression), in my dimness of thought, in my darkness of passion.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Her eyes overflowed with tears. It took all her control not to drop her hands to cover her sex as she felt Leon part her legs even wider now and gently touch the moisture there. Lord Gregory gave a soft laugh. "Yes, a truly remarkable Princess," he said. "I should have watched her more carefully." Beauty gave a little muffled sob of shame and yet the driving desire between her legs would not stop, and her face was stinging as Lord Gregory spoke to her. "Most of our little Princesses are too frightened in the first few days to show such willingness to serve, Beauty," he said in the same cold voice. "They must be awakened and educated. But I see you are very passionate and much enamored of your new masters and all they wish to teach you." Beauty struggled against her tears. This was more humiliating surely than anything that had happened to her. And now Lord Gregory was taking her chin as the Prince had taken Prince Alexi's chin and forcing her to look at him. "Beauty, this is a great virtue in you. You have no cause to be ashamed. It only means that you must learn yet another form of discipline. You are awakened to the desires of your master as you should be, but you must learn to control that desire just as you see the male slaves control it." "Yes, my Lord," Beauty whispered. Leon withdrew and a moment later he returned with a small white tray on which were laid several little objects Beauty could not see. But to her terror, Lord Gregory parted her legs and affixed to that little hard kernel of tormented flesh a plaster of sorts that covered it and adhered to it. He shaped it quickly with his fingers as if he did not wish to have Beauty enjoy this. And Beauty was all the more relieved, for had she felt the ultimate pleasure, had she commenced to shudder and to blush with the final release from this torment, she would have been absolutely mortified. But now the little plaster gave her an added torment. What could it mean? It seemed Lord Gregory read her thoughts. "That will prevent you from all too easily satisfying your newfound and undisciplined desire, Beauty. It will not alleviate it. It will merely prevent, shall we say, accidental release, until you have gained the proper control of yourself. I had not thought to commence this detailed instruction so soon, but I shall tell you now that you are never allowed to experience full pleasure save at the whims of your master or mistress. Never, never, must you be caught touching your private parts with your own hands, nor trying more secretly to alleviate your obvious...misery." "Well-chosen words," Beauty thought, "for all his coldness to me." But he was immediately gone, and once more Leon was bathing her. "Don't be so frightened and so ashamed," he said.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what. I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together…. It’s time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. I added that I was supporting Hillary Clinton based only on her greater experience. About Obama, I wrote, “If he’s the nominee, I’ll volunteer….To clean up the mess left by President Bush, we may need two terms of President Clinton and two of President Obama.” The first response was overwhelmingly positive. Because Hillary Clinton unexpectedly won that New Hampshire primary, my column was even given some of the credit. The New York Times published a letter from a voter there to that effect. It was as if I’d written what many people were thinking. Most just seemed glad that I’d spoken up about the humiliation of a good woman. But then a few calls came in from interviewers assuming that by supporting Hillary I was ranking sex over race—despite my lifetime of arguing that sexism and racism were linked, not ranked, and despite writing in that same op-ed that the caste systems of sex and race could only be uprooted together, I was seen as asking people to take sexism more seriously than racism. When I went on a television show, an Obama supporter, a black woman academic, accused me by saying that “white women have been complicit in the oppression of black men and black women.” She talked many times more than I did, mentioned lynching, and said, “To take this kind of position in The New York Times struck me as the very worst of what feminism can offer.” I was left saying things like “I refuse to be divided on this” and pointing out that whether Hillary or Obama won the primary, she and I would be united in the general election. Afterward I felt as if I had been hit by a Mack truck. From then on, every morning brought new attacks. I came to dread the particular ring of my cell phone. Though I had been called many things, from a baby killer to a destroyer of the family, those had come from people with whom I really disagreed.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  It was still sore from the Prince's thrusts, and though the fingers were gentle, she felt that soreness again. But the most excruciating part was being opened like this and hearing their soft voices now as they talked of her. "Innocent, very innocent," said one, and another that she had very lean thighs and that her skin was resilient. That seemed to produce laughter again -- that light tinkling laughter, as if all of this were but the greatest amusement, and Beauty realized suddenly that she was straining with all her might to close her legs, but it was quite impossible. Those fingers were gone, and now someone patted her sex, and pinched shut the hidden little lips, and Beauty squirmed again, only to hear the laughter coming now from the man beside her: "Little Princess," he said gently in her ear, leaning over so she could feel his velvet cape against her naked arm, "you cannot hide your charms from anyone." She moaned as if she were trying to appeal to him, but his finger touched her lips. "Now if I have to seal your lips, the Prince will be very angry. You must resign yourself. You must accept. It is the hardest lesson, compared to which the pain is really nothing." And Beauty could feel him raising his arm so that she knew the hand that touched her breast was no his. He had imprisoned her nipple and was pressing it rhythmically. At the same time, someone stroked her thighs and her sex, and to her shame she felt, even in the midst of this degradation, that disgraceful pleasure. "That's it, that's it," he comforted her. "You must not resist, but rather take possession of your charms, that is, let your mind inhabit your body." "You are naked, helpless, and all will enjoy you and what can you do? By the way, I should tell you that your squirming only makes you more exquisite. It is very lovely except that it is so rebellious. Now look again, did you see what I pointed out to you?" Beauty made a soft sound of assent, and fearfully raised her eyes again. It was as she had seen before, the row of young women with their eyes down and their bodies as vulnerable in display as her own. But what was it she felt? Why must she be subjected to so many confusing feelings? She had thought herself the only one so displayed and humiliated, a great prize for the Prince whom she could no longer see. And was she not displayed here in the very center of the hall? But then who were these prisoners? Would she only be one of them? Was this the meaning of the odd conversation that had passed between the Prince and her father and mother? No, they could not have served like this. She felt an odd mingling of torrential jealousy and comfort. It was a ritual, this treatment. Others had suffered it before.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  Daddy, and his whole family, had wanted me to be a boy, so they never used my first name: they all called me Tracey because it could conceivably be a boy’s name. “Okay, Tracey . . . sorry, Sharisse,” the so-called counselor droned on. “I’ve had a long talk with your father. I know him quite well, you know. He’s very sorry and I don’t think he will ever do this again. This was just a onetime thing.” Daddy’s friend was so glib about Daddy raping me, as if it was just a fluke, a regrettable blip on an otherwise unblemished record, like that one time you drove blackout drunk, or that one time you stole your grandmother’s purse and did black tar heroin: that one time you raped your only child. “Besides, you’ll come back to see me. We’ll talk about whatever’s confusing you. You’re a good girl, Tracey, right? Tell me, Tracey, where’s your favorite place to go?” “What do you mean?” I said, without correcting him about my name again. “You know, your favorite place!” he said enthusiastically, as if it were a perfectly natural segue from talking about That One Time Your Father Raped You Which Will Totally Never Happen Again He Swears. “I think the three of you should go someplace. As a family. You pick!” “I don’t know,” I said. “C’mon, Tracey,” he wheedled. “Where’s your favorite place to go? Where would you really like to go? Anyplace at all!” “I just went to Magic Mountain with my eighth-grade class.” “That’s it,” he said, clapping his hands with a satisfied grin at my stricken parents. “Magic Mountain. There. Take her to Magic Mountain.” WHEN MY FATHER WAS INSIDE ME, THERE WAS A MOMENT that I didn’t cry. The minute before I didn’t cry, I tried to scream and realized that no sound was leaving my mouth. So I lay there, eyes shut, and tried to distract myself with thoughts of something that felt good. I pictured the boy who was supposed to be my date for my eighth-grade graduation field trip to Magic Mountain. I was in love with that boy for the entire second semester and I’d felt so special until two days before the trip, when he dumped me. “Does that feel good, baby?” said my daddy. “Yes . . . NO!” I said, when I registered it was the voice of the man who’d raised me for thirteen years and not the boy I’d been trying to focus on. I was feeling pain like I’d never experienced before, tearing, breaking, and throbbing in a place I didn’t know could feel that. The weight on top of me and inside, combined with the heartache that my father was causing, was unbearable. No darkness or daydream could take that away. “No,” I said. He continued. “No!” I yelled. He paused.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Nona, who themselves were (and were for each other) glory personified. On reaching the Recouvrance bridge he went down the steps to the landing stage. It was then that it occurred to him, while passing the Customs House, that he was letting his six kilos of opium go too cheap. But then again it was important. to get business off to a good start. He walked to the quayside to wait for the patrol boat that would come to return seamen and officers to the Vengeur which was lying at anchor out in the Roads. He checked his watch : ten of four. The boat would be there in ten minutes. He took a tum up and down to keep 37 I QUERELLE warm, but chiefly because the shame he felt forced him to keep on the move. Suddenly he found himself at the foot of the wall supporting the coastal road that circles the port, and from which springs the main arch of the bridge. The fog prevented Querelle from seeing the top of the wall, but judging by its slope and the angle at which it rose from the ground, from the size and quality of its stones-details he was quick to observe-he guessed that it was of considerable height. The same sinking of the heart he had felt in the presence of the two men in the brothel upset his stomach a little and tightened his throat. But even though his obvious, even brutal physical strength appeared subject to one of those weaknesses that cause one to be called "delicate," Querelle would never dare to acknowledge such frailty-by leaning against the wall, for example: but the distressing feeling that he was about to be engulfed did make him slump a little: He walked away from the wall, turned his back on it. The sea lay in front of him, shrouded in fog. "\Vhat a strange guy," he thought, raising his eyebrows. Stock-still, legs wide apart, he stood and pondered. His lowered gaze traveled over the gray miasma of the fog and came to rest on the black, wet stones of the jetty. Little by little, but at random, he considered Mario's various peculiarities. His hands. The curve-he had been staring at it-from the tip of his thumb to the tip of the index finger. The thickness of his anns. The width of his shoulders. His indifference. His blond hair. His blue eyes. Norbert's mustache. His round and shiny pate. Mario again, one of whose fingernails was completely black, a very beautiful black, as if lacquered. There are no black flowers; yet, at the end of his crushed finger, that black fingernail looked like nothing so much as a flower. "\Vhat are you doing here?''

• From Querelle (1953)

  Facing the sea Gil leaned against the balustrade. Out in the Roads the lights of the Dunkerque glimmered. Gil kept on climbing, from the breasts to the chubby white neck, to the chin, to the smile (Roger's smile, then Paulette's ) . Gil understood, albeit dimly, that the feminine quality which veiled the girl's smile had its source between the thighs. That smile was of the same nature as-he didn't know what, exactly-but that it 109 I QUERELLE was the most remote, the subtlest, yet the most powerful ( as it could travel such distances ) , the most disturbing of all the vibrations em itted by that artful apparatus situated between the thighs. He imagined that he was pressing up close against her, hugging and kissing her. Quite promptly the image . of Thea intervened, and Gil suspended his reverie well on its way to fulfillment in order to fill up on hatred of the mason. As a consequence, his erection \viltcd a little. He wanted to banish all notions of the mason, whom he now sensed standing right behind him, caressing his buttocks with a huge rod, twice as fat as his own. "Me, I'm a man," he n1uttercd into the fog. " I shove it up other guys! I'll screw you too! " In vain h e tried to compose an image of a Thea whom h e was buggering� He got as far as i1nagining the mason's dusty, unbuttoned garments, his pants down, his shirt tucked up, but that was all . To make his happiness total, his pleasure certain, he would have had to visualize in detail, and gloating over that detail, Thea's face and buttocks : but, finding it impossible to imagine them anything but ( as indeed they were ) bearded and hairy, the vision of the face and downy back of another male intervened : it was Roger. \Vhen he realized this, Gil knew that he would enjoy a surfeit of pleasure. He held fast to the image of the boy, which had blotted out the mason's. With violence, thinking he would like to address Thea in such terms, and no doubt also enraged and desperate at finding that he was inevitably going to bugger the young one, he cried : "Come on, stick it out! Let me stuff it right up your ass, you little heifer you ! Hurry up, no messing around!" He was holding Roger from behind. And he heard himself sing, in that jumble of glasses and broken bottles : uHe was a happy bandit, Nothing did he fear . . ." 110 I JEAN GENET He smiled. He arched his back and his legs. Facing Roger, he knew himself to be a man. His hand let go. He did not come. That great ·sadness born of shame welled · up once more, but Roger's smile was still there, responding to his own. ''Why'n the hell didn't I bust his jaw!"

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  It was just that I felt somewhat abashed by the couch’s very explicitness, as though it were someone’s beautiful mother who wouldn’t cross her legs, who had even decided to flaunt her most intimate charms. That was just how musky and startling I found the couch, which so shamelessly resembled itself in a thousand cartoons, although now I understood the cartoons had done nothing so much as to sensitize me to its heroic and decidedly unfunny actuality. My first sight of the analytic couch constituted the primal scene, for only its existence jarred me into recognizing that the world is governed by a minority, the sexually active, and that they hold sway over a huge majority of the nonsexual, those people too young or too old or too poor or homely or sick or crazy or powerless to be able to afford sexual partners (or the luxury of systematic, sustained and shared introspection, so sexual in its own way). All advertisements and films and songs are addressed to sexuals, to their rash whims and finicky tastes, but these communications cleverly ignore nonsexuals, those pale, penniless, underdeveloped bodies, blue nipples flung like two test drops of ink from a new pen across the blotting paper of a chest, or high, hairless buttocks, unmolded by hands into something lovely, something enticing, left pure and formless like butcher’s lard. The patient who always preceded me was the lady in the Persian-lamb coat; she left behind the peculiar perfumed smell of the paper tissues she wept into, a weak solution of those chemical towels handed out after lobster in family restaurants, and the heavier, more aggressive and I suppose offensive smell of her stubbed-out cigarettes (eight or nine in the sterling-silver cupped hand that served as the ashtray). These smells and the ghosts of smoke circulating through the sunlight, colloidal souvenirs, seemed to be the echoes of a just-completed drama by Racine in which lambent passions had glowed within the glass chimney of formal measures, in which all the action must occur offstage and is merely reported here and the only permissible emotions are the great ones—incestuous longings, guilt, and the impulse to murder—whereas the dimmer, more usual feelings of sloth, boredom, spleen, irritability are airily dismissed. For psychoanalysis feeds on intensity, as though life were all flame and no ash. Dr. O’Reilly was not a good listener. He was always scooping up handfuls of orange diet pills and swallowing them with a jigger of scotch. As a great man and the author of several books, he had theories to propound and little need to attend to the particularities of any given life—especially since he knew in advance that life would soon enough yield merely another illustration of his theories. To save time, O’Reilly unfolded his ideas at the outset and then rehearsed them during each subsequent session since, as he explained, although these notions could easily enough penetrate the conscious mind, they soaked less readily into the hairy taproot of the unconscious.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  It seemed the air itself touched her naked buttocks and the hair between her legs, and she struggled to lower her face demurely but the firm wooden chin rest would not yield and all she could do was drop her eyes again. The first Ladies and Lords were very near and she could hear the rustle of their clothes and see the flash of their gold bracelets. These ornaments caught the light of the fire and the distant troches, and the dim image of the Prince and the Queen appeared to flicker. She let out a moan. "Hush, my darling dear," said the gray-eyed man. And suddenly it was a great comfort that he was so near to her. "Now look up and to your left," he said now, and she could see his lips spread into a smile. "You see?" For one instant Beauty beheld what was surely an impossibility, but before she could look again, or clear the tears from her eyes, a great Lady came between her and this distant vision, and with shock, she felt the Lady's hands upon her. She felt the cool fingers gathering her heavy breasts, and twisting them almost painfully. She trembled, trying desperately not to cry out. For others had gathered around her, and behind her she felt a pair of very slow and calm hands parting her legs even more. And now someone touched her face, and another hand pinched the calf of her leg almost cruelly. It seemed her body was all concentrated then in its shameful and secret places. There was a throbbing in the tips of her breasts, and those hands felt cold as if she herself were burning, and now she felt fingers examining her buttocks and prodding even at that tiny and most concealed of openings. She couldn't help but moan, but she kept her lips tightly shut, and the tears fell down her cheeks. And for one instant she thought of nothing but what she had glimpsed an instant ago before the procession of Lords and Ladies had intercepted her vision. High up along the wall of the Great Hall, on a broad stone ledge, she had glimpsed a row of naked women. It had not seemed possible, but she had seen it. They were all of the young like herself, and they stood with their hands clasped behind their necks as the Prince had taught her to do, and their eyes were down, and she could see the glow of the fire on the curl of pubic hair between each pair of legs, and the swelling, pink nipples of their bosoms. She could not believe it. She did not want it to be so, and yet if it were so...well...again only confusion. Was she all the more terrified, or was she glad that she was not the only one enduring this unspeakable humiliation? But she could not even think of this, shocking as it was, for the hands were all over her.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  Imagine, too, that I’d already made plans to go with a friend from my dorm, a guy named Jeff, who had pledged a fraternity the previous fall. Stretched to his full height, Jeff reached only to my nose, but he was clever and made me laugh, so when he’d quite casually offered to bring me along to Shasta, I’d agreed. But a real invitation from a real date with a real car and a real apartment with real furniture seemed like just the kick in status I needed to go from full-scholarship hippie kid with Beatles posters and batik bedspreads stapled to the walls of her dorm room to . . . to what? What did I want to be? Part of the system my liberal artist parents had always rejected? Noticed? Accepted? Desired? I didn’t even like Kurt: he represented everything I’d been taught to distrust in the world, a privileged fuck from the burbs who thought anything could be his for the right price, including me. So, at first, I did the right thing: I said no to Kurt. But my best girlfriend, D, had not gotten a date for the lake trip, and I felt bad leaving her behind. Also, I didn’t want to go on this trip as a lone independent—an Honors College student, a veritable freak—in a vast Grecian sea, with Jeff as my sole companion. So when Kurt’s frat buddy agreed to take D on the trip with us if I would go with Kurt, I consented. And then all hell broke loose. When I told Jeff that I was going with Kurt instead, he flipped out. His room was just below mine, and all night, he played angry music and hung out his window screaming that I was a bitch, a whore, a fucking cunt. Other boys from the dorm joined Jeff in his righteous fury, smashing things against the floor, pounding on my door, and hissing through the crack. I didn’t get mad back. I felt terrible and guilty, cowering in my room while the whole male population of my dorm rose up with a clear message: I had belonged to them and I had strayed from the pack, hooking up with a rogue male and threatening the sanctity of the whole goddamned dormitory gene pool. All night, I took in their anger, crying so hard and so long without the good sense to take out my contact lenses that, in the morning, I had to have an emergency appointment with the ophthalmologist. My corneas were both scratched, one eye so badly I had to wear an eye patch. I was a sea wench who had survived the shaming, but barely. And there was no turning back now: I would go to Shasta as a pirate, with Kurt.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  There had been a guy in his twenties who scanned my thirteen-year-old body, all Manhattan rooftop-tan and a tiny silver bikini, and said, “How old are you?” And I said “Old enough,” and he laughed and said “You’re some pretty little jailbait,” and he never laid a finger on me. By that point, I had been hurt when men touched me. But this hurt, too, when he turned me down. The truth is I should have been glad—it would have been wrong for him to touch me. In junior high school, I had been the confidante of the forty-year-old manager of a neighborhood restaurant who said I was the only one who understood his sexual problems with his wife, which he detailed to me explicitly. But to his credit, between his sordid confessions, he taught me a lot about chess. I had loved a boy, once, and he had dumped me just a week after I went down on him for the first time. But I had felt so fortunate that he had ever wanted me at all. I gave a blow job to a boy I’d crushed on for a year, in a shed in the alley behind our high school. A few days later, he started hooking up with one of my best friends. But at least, before he ditched me, he smiled dreamily and said, “Wow. Thank you. That is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.” That is how I became the patron saint of blow jobs—and isn’t that divine? The previous summer I’d given a blow job to a man in his late thirties, putrid and wearing a wedding ring, in the back of a city bus. He had bought me beer, and I drank it. Later, he pushed my head down into his lap, and I had surrendered to the moment. If what that man did strikes you as wrong, let me reassure you the way I reassured myself: the marriage was only for his wife’s citizenship, we were coworkers, and I had acquiesced at every turn—no hesitation or complaint. I had loved girls to whom I was nothing more than an experiment. But weren’t they my experiments, too? Sophomore year, I had been invited to a birthday party by the hottest guy in my homeroom, and the party had turned out to be five guys watching porn, and me, just me. I quickly downed four or five shots of vodka and thought Okay, let’s cut to the chase, let’s not let this be a group activity. So I took one boy’s hand, the one who had invited me, and led him to the bathroom and fucked him so hard on the tile floor, no condom, and later his friends taunted me (“Whore!” “Slut!”). In school the next week, that boy wouldn’t speak to me or look me in the eye. But at least I didn’t get pregnant or catch anything.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  That same summer place. The back porch. After swimming. My older brother’s friend. My brothers. All of us wrapped in towels, sitting around. I was an age where there is no pubic hair and you’re aware there’s none, embarrassed about it. Whichever age that is. My brother’s friend overlapping his towel onto mine, his hand snaking in, snaking under, trying to get to the girl of me. But my brothers are there! Nobody is there. I cement my legs closed. I press so hard and plead so hard with the thighs I will learn to hate for the rest of my life simply because of their roundness. Why is he doing this? Why can’t anyone see? Why am I not moving saying yelling screaming? Why me? The fingers go as far as he can get them, which isn’t as far as he wants to get them, and he gives up. They go play. I release. My thighs quiver, spent, mostly victorious. Summary If they want it, they can take it. What you want or don’t want is irrelevant. Points: One? A half? Lesson Three The same summer place. A father’s friend, drunk. A master bedroom during a party he sneaks away from. I’m watching cartoons. Still no breasts, no pubes, only a summer tan, shorts, halter top. Risqué? Did my lying on my side, head on my hand, lounge pose siren-seduce him? Or maybe it was my long tan legs? Slut child. I was watching cartoons. In a room. By myself. He lay down on the bed, his pose mirroring mine. He begins stroking the mountain-range length of me; head, hair, cheek, shoulder, arm, waist, hip, thigh, calf. An endless petting. I watch cartoons. His sour breath, garbled words. His hand. Slow and stroking. Feeling him inch closer, narrowing the valley between us. I want for bedsheets, a night-light, a way to hide, shrink away. Monsters aren’t always in closets, under beds. I watched cartoons, unsure. Uncle ****. He’s nice, right? My dad’s friend. This is okay, right? Then why does it feel wrong? Why can’t I move? Get up? Run? My body betraying me once more. Once more, a car without brakes. The door opens and another father’s friend rages, rips him off the bed. What the fuck do you think you’re doing? he asks. And that’s when I know, for sure, that was a wrong thing. I am left alone with the bed, the cartoons, feeling a partner in the wrong thing. If I was a good girl, I would’ve left. I didn’t do anything. I let him. I let him. I let him. I. Let. Him. My fault. Summary If you do nothing, it’s your fault. Even if you are a child. Even if you are scared. Even if the man is your dad’s good friend who you’ve known since growing up. Pay attention. Take notes. This is how you are shamed shaped into a woman. Points: None? One-half? Lesson Four

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "There was a girl ahead of me in line last night who ran the Bridle Path just before me. She was resigned, wasn't she?" Beauty asked. "No, forget about her, she is nothing, that is Princess Claire and she is silly and playful and always was and feels nothing. She has no depth, no great mystery. But you have these and you will always suffer more than she does." "But does everyone sooner or later acquire this ability to accept?" "No, some never do, but it is very hard to tell who has attained it. I can tell, but our masters are not always so wise, I can assure you. For example, Felix told me yesterday you saw Princess Lizetta strung up in the Hall of Punishments. Do you think she is resigned?" "Certainly not!" "Ah, but she is, and she is a great and valuable slave Princess. But Princess Lizetta adores being bound up, being unable to move, and when she is greatly bored, she endures the displeasure of her betters, the better to amuse them by letting them punish her." "Ah, no, you can't be serious." "Yes, I can. That is her way. All slaves have their way. And you must find yours. It will never be easy for you. You will suffer much before you know it, but don't you see that on the Bridle Path and tonight when you gave the rose to Lady Juliana you felt the beginnings of it. Princess Lizetta is a struggler. You shall be a yielder, much as I am. That shall be your way, exquisite and personal devotion. Great calm, great serenity. In time perhaps you will see other slaves who are exemplary in this. Prince Tristan, for example, the slave of Lord Stefan, is incomparable. His Lord is in love with him as the Prince is with you, which makes it both difficult and simple." Beauty gave a deep sigh. She was flooded suddenly with the sensation of kneeling before Lady Juliana and offering her the rose. She felt herself running on the Bridle Path, and the breeze touching her, and her body burning all over with her striving. "I don't know, I feel ashamed when I give in, I feel as if I have truly lost myself." "Yes, that is it. But listen. We have the night here together. I want to tell you the story of how I came here and how I attained the path I speak of. When I am finished, if you still feel rebellious, I ask you to think on it. I shall go on loving you, no matter, and go on striving for moments to see you in secret. But if you listen to me, you shall see that you can conquer everything about you. "Don't try to understand all that I say at once.