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 Canterbury Tales (2009)

  God give us the grace to withstand his wiles! The poor priest had no idea, of course. He never saw the trap being laid for him. Oh silly innocent man! You will soon be blinded by avarice. Unfortunate priest, you have lost your way. All unawares, you are falling into the clutches of a fox who will trick you and deceive you. Let me hurry on now to the conclusion - and to your confusion. I will display your folly and stupidity. And I will reveal, as far as I am able, the wickedness of the man who led you forward. Do you think I am talking about my master? Not at all. I am talking about another canon, a hundred times more skilful than the man I serve. He has betrayed more people than you can imagine. It is impossible to describe all of his falsehoods. Whenever I talk about him, my cheeks grow red with shame. Well, they would grow red if they could. I know well enough that I have no colour left in my face. The glow left my cheeks when I first began working among the stinks and fumes. Anyway, listen to the false canon. ‘Sir,’ he said to the priest, ‘get your servant to buy some quicksilver. Tell him to hurry. Two or three ounces of the stuff will suffice. When he comes back with it, I will show you a miracle. Something you have never seen before.’ ‘Of course,’ replied the priest. ‘Right away.’ So he ordered his servant to go to the apothecary, and purchase three ounces of quicksilver. The boy rushed off, and returned very quickly with the material. He gave it to the canon, who laid it down carefully. The canon then asked the servant to bring some coals, and to start a fire. This was promptly done. Once the coals had started burning the canon took a crucible from the folds of his cloak. He showed it to the priest. ‘Take hold of it,’ he said. ‘I want you to do this for yourself. Pour into this crucible an ounce of the quicksilver. In the name of Christ, we will make an alchemist of you yet. There are very few people to whom I would confide my secrets. I will show you how to harden this quicksilver. In front of your eyes I will make it as fine and as durable as the silver in your purse. You can test it with your teeth, if you like. If you prove me wrong, then you can reveal me as a liar and a fraud to the whole world. I have a powder here, in my pocket, that will do all. It cost me a lot of money, but it is worth it. It is the agent of all my work, as you shall soon see. Tell your boy to leave the room, by the way, and shut the door behind him.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  For instance, a code bologna sandwich meant white bread, one or two slices of bologna, mustard, one wilted piece of iceberg lettuce. (The Catholics were heavily into mayonnaise, which we might get into later.) Fathers, to begin with, always used nonregulation bread and then buttered it, which made the sandwich about as tradable as a plate of haggis. Also, everything was always falling out of the sandwiches fathers made. I’m not sure why. They’d use anything green and frilly for lettuce, when of course only the one piece of wilted iceberg was permissible. Your friends saw a big leaf of romaine falling out along with the slice of bologna, and you might soon find yourself alongside the kid against the fence . There was always that one kid against the fence. How could the rest of us feel Okay if there wasn’t? If it was a guy, there was probably a trumpet case at his feet and he wore strangely scuffed shoes, because he avoided the foot traffic on sidewalks and walked instead through weedy lots with dogs yipping at him. He didn’t end up at that station only because his lunches were nightmarish in their eccentricity, but his lunches didn’t help . He almost certainly ended up being a writer . Now, who knows if any of this is usable material? There’s no way to tell until you’ve got it all down, and then there might just be one sentence or one character or one theme that you end up using. But you get it all down. You just write . I heard Natalie Goldberg, the author of Writing Down the Bones , speak on writing once. Someone asked her for the best possible writing advice she had to offer, and she held up a yellow legal pad, pretended her fingers held a pen, and scribbled away. I think this was some sort of Zen reference—the Buddhist disciple remembering Buddha’s flower sermon, in which all Buddha did was hold up a flower and twirl it, in silence, sitting on the mountain. Me, I’m a nice Christian girl, and while I wish I could quote something kicky and inspirational that Jesus had to say about writing, the truth is that when students ask me for the best practical advice I know, I always pick up a piece of paper and pantomime scribbling away. My students usually think this is a very wise and Zenlike thing for me to convey. Mostly, I forget to give Natalie Goldberg credit. But write about what? they ask next. Write about carrot sticks, I tell them: Code carrots had to look machine extruded, absolutely uniform, none longer than the length of the sandwich. Your parents would sometimes send you to school with waxed-paper packets of uneven cuckoo-bunny carrots, and your carrot esteem would be so low you couldn’t even risk looking at the guy against the fence.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Finally, Caitlin threw herself on her bed. There was nothing Vix could say to comfort her. Instead, she handed Caitlin a box of tissues then sat beside her, rubbing her back. Caitlin blew her nose. “You’re the only one in this house I don’t hate. You’re the only one who cares about me.” Caitlin didn’t even hate her when Vix got her period, though Caitlin wanted desperately to be first. “I guarantee I’ll be first with everything else!” she promised. Maybe ... maybe not, Vix thought. This was the first thing she’d had that Caitlin wanted and she liked the feeling. They hiked the two miles to town without telling anyone, to buy pads for Vix, then Caitlin escorted her to the secret bathroom behind Patisserie Francaise on Main Street and helped her stick the pad inside her pants. Outside, they ran into Trisha, who was delivering muffins to the gourmet food shop. “Lordy ... look who’s here!” Trisha set the tray on the hood of her truck and handed each of them a peach muffin. She was wearing short shorts and an orange T-shirt. Vix thought of those gigantic breasts and warned hers not to grow that big. “So how’s the bride and groom?” Trisha asked. Caitlin made a retching sound. Trisha nodded. “You think you know somebody really well and then they go and do something so outrageous ... so totally off the wall ...” “He should have married you!” Caitlin said. “Oh, honey ... you’re not the only one who’s thinking that.” Only when Caitlin decided to hitch home did Vix balk. “I’m not allowed to hitch.” Though the idea of walking back with the sun beating down on her when she was already feeling queasy, made her wish she could. “This is the Vineyard, Vix. Everybody hitches.” “I can’t. It’s the one thing I’ve promised my parents I’ll never do, along with drugs and sex before marriage.” “That’s three things.” “You know what I mean.” But moments later an old blue Camaro screeched to a halt. There were

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Do you think I am talking about my master? Not at all. I am talking about another canon, a hundred times more skilful than the man I serve. He has betrayed more people than you can imagine. It is impossible to describe all of his falsehoods. Whenever I talk about him, my cheeks grow red with shame. Well, they would grow red if they could. I know well enough that I have no colour left in my face. The glow left my cheeks when I first began working among the stinks and fumes. Anyway, listen to the false canon. ‘Sir,’ he said to the priest, ‘get your servant to buy some quicksilver. Tell him to hurry. Two or three ounces of the stuff will suffice. When he comes back with it, I will show you a miracle. Something you have never seen before.’ ‘Of course,’ replied the priest. ‘Right away.’ So he ordered his servant to go to the apothecary, and purchase three ounces of quicksilver. The boy rushed off, and returned very quickly with the material. He gave it to the canon, who laid it down carefully. The canon then asked the servant to bring some coals, and to start a fire. This was promptly done. Once the coals had started burning the canon took a crucible from the folds of his cloak. He showed it to the priest. ‘Take hold of it,’ he said. ‘I want you to do this for yourself. Pour into this crucible an ounce of the quicksilver. In the name of Christ, we will make an alchemist of you yet. There are very few people to whom I would confide my secrets. I will show you how to harden this quicksilver. In front of your eyes I will make it as fine and as durable as the silver in your purse. You can test it with your teeth, if you like. If you prove me wrong, then you can reveal me as a liar and a fraud to the whole world. I have a powder here, in my pocket, that will do all. It cost me a lot of money, but it is worth it. It is the agent of all my work, as you shall soon see. Tell your boy to leave the room, by the way, and shut the door behind him. No one else must learn our secrets.’

• From City of Night (1963)

  But before I can begin to dress, the man in bed says: “Dont go yet. Have a cigarette.” He holds out the cigarette as if, I think, it were an indication of truce after the sex act which has suddenly, for me—now remembered vividly after the brief, blacked-out period of sleep—made us Strangers. I take the cigarette from him. He reached for his pants on a chair next to him and retrieved from a pocket several bills which he places for me on the table beside the bed. He did this as if, for him, this is the most insignificant aspect of the scene we have played out. Coming here with him—I remember distinctly—I hadnt mentioned money. There had been nothing about him to suggest he was a score. In the state of pilled and liquored panic which I had felt threatening to bludgeon my senses at that bar, the evenness of his voice, the calmness, had acted immediately to sap my nerves in that advancing tide of forcedly laughing faces determined above all else to enter an engulfing tide of madness.... And so I had merely been grateful to him for the offer of momentary respite from the crowds. Now, aware acutely of the thriving street, as if its sounds were connected electrically to my senses, and remembering the previous sex scene, during which I had played the unreciprocal role more obsessively than ever before (as if the dropping of the streetpose, in the bar previously with those two scores, had made it necessary for me to prove with greater urgency that I could still wear that mask), I thought of one thing: Escape from this room! Escape from the bedcover thrown in a heap on the floor—escape, especially and mysteriously disturbingly, from the rumpled sheets.... But I lay back in bed. I would stay only a few more minutes, I told myself, trying momentarily to shut out the hypnotizing, seductively beckoning sounds of the frenzy roaring Outside: beckoning like a ritual prepared especially for me. “Why is it,” this man was saying slowly, almost as if he were seeking an excuse, by talking, in order not to join the streetcrowds—or to keep me from it, “that the moment the orgasm is over—or the moment it’s remembered, after sleep,” he added, as if understanding very clearly my anxiety to leave—as if, too, he is speaking about me personally, “why is it that people want to leave, as if to forget—with someone else—whats just happened between them—which will happen again and again—and again have to be forgotten?” The inappropriateness of his searching remarks, while the carnival fury which we have all come to seek—that very cramming of experiences with many, many people—roars outside—the vast inappropriateness of it strikes me immediately. Of course, what he had said was largely true: Afterwards, in those hurried contacts, you want to leave instantly, as if in some kind of shame, or guilt, for something not exchanged.

• From City of Night (1963)

  “Yeah!—say yes sir, punk!—aint you got Respect for your elders?—hell, Im twice as old as you are, dont forget that... Greedy bastards—allasame.... Well, then, for chrissake, I aint even got a quarter’s worth from you,” he says, coming back to the bed. “Now stop squirming and dont hold it—relax, if youre gonna go along with it—at least pretend you enjoy it—what the hell, I should pay and you act like you dont give a damn?—punks, allasame. I was like you once—you believe it?” he says, “and now look at me, playing the other side of this goddam game. What the hell, pal, people change, remember that, dont forget it for a moment, remember that and dont be so fuckin cocky. Now lay back, close your goddam eyes and stop staring at me like Im a goddam creep—hell, I aint ashamed of nothing. Pretend Im some milkfed chick back in—wherever the hell youre from.... Thats it, thats better.... Relax.... Thats it....” Later, he adjusted his robe modestly again, reached for his pants, handed me a $10.00 bill. “Thats what you came for, aint it?—so take it,” he said looking at me very long. I take the bill, crush it quickly into my pocket. Suddenly the room is explodingly hot. I want to leave quickly. “And say thankyou, cantcha?” he adds, looking away now. The roles we have just played for each other seem to materialize harshly now that it’s over. “And heres three more bucks for cabfare,” he said. “It’s always goodluck to give cabfare,” he added. “You-wanna-come-back-sometime?... Hell, I dont care. I can pick up a different punk any night, see—and no skinny wiseass punk pulls any shit on me, pal, I know judo like the best of em.... But youre kinda new, I like that. Available, but kinda new.... Take my advice, I know what Im tellinya, go Home and get Married,” he says guiltily, “that streetll swallow you so deep you wont know where you got sucked in, and it wont even throw you up like bad beer, itll digestya—” He gnashed his teeth harshly. “Hell, youll become a part of the 42nd Street army of punks—sleeping in movies, cant make it; everybodys had you: the dayll come nobody wants you—then what?... Bad scene, bad scene.... So you wanna see me again or not? Tellyawot, we’ll have dinner again, wanna have dinner?—how about Friday?” “All right—Friday,” I say quickly, I want to get out. Im sure I wont be there.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Suddenly Im frighteningly moved by this youngman beside me. I feel that impotent helplessness that comes when, through some perhaps casual remark, I see a person nakedly, sadly, pitifully revealed—as I see Dave now. We were both silent as we drove to his apartment. Along the hall of that building, a door is open. Two youngmen had moved in—and the mother of one, Dave had told me earlier, had come to visit them, staying there with them, aware that her son and the other youngman were lovers. Through the open door as we passed it, I heard the voice of one, whining peevishly: “Mommee! listen to what Duane is saying to me!”... I cringed visibly. Dave noticed this. “They fight all the time,” he told me. “Duane thinks Rick is making it with other guys—and Rick’s mother always takes Rick’s side.” Inside the apartment, Dave said unexpectedly: “It sure is great to be with you!” He put his hand fondly on my shoulder, letting it rest there—the first time he had touched me even this intimately since that first night For a long moment, I didnt move, feeling his hand increasingly heavier.... I ierked away from him. The words erupted out of me: “Maybe so—but it’s all stopping!” Even when I saw the look of amazement on his face, even when I wanted to stop, even when I felt that compassion, tenderness, closeness to this youngman—even then, I knew, as much for me as for him, that I had to go on; that although, inside, I was cringing at my own words, in hammerblows I have to destroy this friendship. “I mean—well—Ive spent too much time with you—thats all.” And crazily through it all, I keep thinking about the pink elephant at the park — the ridiculous flowered hat! — the sad eyes!... And the echoing, petulant, girlish “Mommee!” that had emerged from the half-open door along the hallway.... “Im sorry, Dave,” I said at the door, which I was opening now, to clinch the Escape, to get myself away from him. “Im sorry,” I repeated, “but this scene is nowhere!” Outside in the hall, I close the door behind me. I pause for a moment, not knowing why. Then I walked out of the building quickly. Im back in Santa Monica, alone, facing the wind-tossed ocean. SOMEONE: People Dont Have Wings I HAD SEEN HIM ON THE BEACH several times before. He never wore trunks. He was always dressed neatly in summer sportclothes. After I began to notice him—and even on the crowded beach he stood out—I realized that during the last week he had been here daily. He would stand on the sidewalk before the beach, looking, it seemed to me, not at anyone in particular but at the whole beach and everyone on it. After a few minutes, he would drive away—alone, without having spoken to anyone. Occasionally, that same afternoon, he would return. Soon, I began to watch for him to appear.

• From City of Night (1963)

  I would never talk to anyone first I would merely wait at the pick-up places for someone to talk to me—while, about me, I would see squads of other youngmen aggressively approaching the obvious street-scores. My inability to talk first was an aspect of that same hunger for attention whose effects I had felt even in El Paso—the motive which had sent me away from that girl who had climbed Cristo Rey, long ago, with me: I had sensed her yet-unspoken demands for the very attention which I needed, and she had sensed them in me too, I am certain.... And so, in the world of males, on the streets, it was I who would be the desired in those furtive relationships, without desiring back. Sex for me became the mechanical reaction of This on one side, That on the other. And the boundary must not be crossed. Of course there were times when a score would indicate he expected more of me. Those times, inordinately depressed, I would walk out on him instantly. Immediately, I must find others who would accept me on my own terms. From the beginning, I had become aware of overtones of defensive derision aimed by some scores at those youngmen they picked up for the very masculinity they would later disparage—as if convinced, or needfully proclaiming their conviction, that the more masculine a hustler, the more his masculinity is a subterfuge: “And when we got into bed, that tough butch number— he turned over on his stomach and I —...” a score had told me about a very masculine youngman I had seen on the streets. Later, I would hear that story more and more often. Whether that was true or not of the others, with me, there were things which categorically I would not—must not—do to score. To reciprocate in any way for the money would have violated the craving for the manifestation of desire toward me. It would have compromised my needs.... The money which I got in exchange for sex was a token indication of one-way desire: that I was wanted enough to be paid for, on my own terms. Yet with that childhood-tampered ego poised flimsily on a structure as wavering and ephemeral as that of the streets (and a further irony: that it was only here that I could be surfeited, if anywhere), it needed more and more reassurance, in numbers: a search for reassurance which at times would backfire sharply—insidiously wounding that devouring narcissism. In a bar with two men from out of town who have come to explore, on vacation, this make-out world of Times Square, I agree to meet them later at their hotel room in the East 20s. When I got there that night—and after I had knocked loudly several times—the door opened cautiously on a dark room. One of the men peeked out, said, hurriedly in order to close the door quickly: “Im sorry but weve got someone else now; lets make it tomorrow.”

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Crusading was the first cooperative act of the new Europe as it struggled back onto the international stage. It appealed to the knights, who were men of war and wanted an aggressive religion, and would remain a major passion in the West until the end of the thirteenth century. This was, of course, an idolatrous catastrophe and one of the most shameful developments in Western Christian history. The Crusaders’ God was an idol; they had foisted their own fear and loathing of these rival faiths onto a deity they had created in their own likeness and thus given themselves a sacred seal of absolute approval. Crusading made anti-Semitism an incurable disease in Europe and would indelibly scar relations between Islam and the West. But it was not the whole story. At the same time as Christians were slaughtering Muslims in the Near East, others were traveling to Spain to study under Muslim scholars in Cordoba and Toledo. Here they discovered the works of Aristotle and other Greek scientists and philosophers whose work had been lost to them after the fall of Rome. They also encountered the work of the Jewish and Muslim faylasufs. With the help of the local Jews, European scholars translated these writings from Arabic into Latin, and by the beginning of the thirteenth century, a wide array of Greek and Arabic scientific and philosophical works had become available to Europeans. This influx of new knowledge sparked an intellectual renaissance. The discovery of Aristotle in particular showed theologians how to present their doctrines in a coherent system. This reminds us that in any age, the religious life is always multifarious, varied, and contradictory—even within a single individual. One of the most famous Europeans of the period was Francis of Assisi (1181–1226). His life and career show us that while some Europeans were engaged in scholarly rationalism, others like Francis had no time for theology of any kind and were far more literal-minded than the apophatic Anselm. Yet Francis’s literalism, like that of the pilgrims, was neither intellectual nor doctrinal but practical. He represented a strand of popular piety that saw the life of Christ as primarily a miqra to be imitated literally down to the last detail. Francis emulated the absolute poverty of Christ in his own life; he and the Franciscan friars who followed him begged for their food, went barefoot, owned no property, and slept rough. He even reproduced the wounds of Christ in his own body. And yet this gentle saint seems to have approved of the Crusades and accompanied the Fifth Crusade to Egypt, though he did not take part in the fighting but preached to the sultan.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Above all, many of us forgot that religious teaching was what the rabbis called miqra. It was essentially and crucially a program for action. You had to engage with a symbol imaginatively, become ritually and ethically involved with it, and allow it to effect a profound change in you. That was the original meaning of the words “faith” and “belief.” If you held aloof, a symbol would remain opaque and implausible. Many people today can work with the symbolism of the modern God in this way; backed up by ritual and compassionate, self- emptying practice, it still introduces them to the transcendence that gives meaning to their lives. But not everybody is able to do this. Because “faith” has come to mean intellectual assent to a set of purely notional doctrines that make no sense unless they are applied practically, some have given up altogether. Others, reluctant to abandon religion, are obscurely ashamed of their “unbelief” and feel uncomfortably caught between two sets of extremists: religious fundamentalists, whose belligerent piety they find alienating, on the one hand, and militant atheists calling for the wholesale extermination of religion, on the other. Idolatry has always been one of the pitfalls of monotheism. Because its chief symbol of the divine is a personalized deity, there is an inherent danger that people would imagine “him” as a larger, more powerful version of themselves, which they could use to endorse their own ideas, practices, loves, and hatreds—sometimes to lethal effect. There can be only one absolute, so once a finite idea, theology, nation, polity, or ideology is made supreme, it is compelled to destroy anything that opposes it. We have seen a good deal of this kind of idolatry in recent years. To make limited historical phenomena—a particular idea of “God,” “creation science,” “family values,” “Islam” (understood as an institutional and civilizational entity), or the “Holy Land”—more important than the sacred reverence due to the “other” is, as the rabbis pointed out long ago, a sacrilegious denial of everything that “God” stands for. It is idolatrous, because it elevates an inherently limited value to an unacceptably high level. As Tillich pointed out, if it assumes that a man-made idea of “God” is an adequate representation of the transcendence toward which it can only imperfectly gesture, a great deal of mainstream theology is also idolatrous. Atheists are right to condemn such abuses. But when they insist that society should no longer tolerate faith and demand the withdrawal of respect from all things religious, they fall prey to the same intolerance. Some atheists are unhappy about this militancy. For Julian Baggini, atheism means “open-hearted commitment to truth and rational enquiry,” so that “hostile opposition to the beliefs of others combined with a dogged conviction of the certainty of one’s own beliefs ... is antithetical to such values.”

• From City of Night (1963)

  Outside, Buzz said: “Why did you play square? You wanted to bug him, didnt you?” It wasnt asked in annoyance—almost, instead, in amusement. “You knew the scene. You kept putting him on.” “I hope I didnt screw up anything for you.” “Hell, no. Wanna know something? I kind of dug seeing you put him down. Hell, most of the people hes got there—I got for him. When he needs someone, he calls me. He’d called me that he needed someone—well—you know—your type—to replace that kid that left.” “The skinny one,” I laughed. “Why did you play square?” he repeated. In my mind I could still see clearly the delirious face of that man with the bleeding nose. “I don’t know,” I said. Throughout the time I will be in San Francisco, I wont see Buzz again. I’ll hear a few days later that he was busted for “harboring” two youngmen involved in a robbery.... People just disappear, in one way or another. You seldom know what really happened to anyone, except as your own life may have touched theirs.... And even then— The fastidiously dressed man next to me at the Stirrup Club on Turk Street has been wordlessly drawing on a piece of notebook paper. Earlier today someone had mentioned this bar to me, and I had come here for the first time tonight—knowing what I would find.... Now the man slides the paper toward me. On it is the lightly outlined figure of a man wearing tall boots, lovingly and in detail drawn so that they shine. The figure also wears a wide garrison belt and an open jacket, both as sharply and shiningly indicated as the boots. About us in this malebar are a number of men—some young, others not so young—dressed similarly: black shiny jackets, boots. The goodlooking ones—and sometimes the not-so-good-looking ones—pose imperiously for the others ogling them. Just as the queens become a parody of femininity, many in this leathered group are parodies of masculinity: posing stiffly; mirror-practiced looks of disdain nevertheless soliciting those they seek to attract. I was ready to push the slip of paper back to the man beside me, resenting it, when I heard him say: “Thats how you should be dressed, youngman. Those Wellington boots youre wearing arent nearly enough. Really, Im a good judge of character.” I faced him for the first time. In his late 30s, he looks like a college professor. He is obviously trying to suggest elegance. “I dont know what youre talking about,” I said curtly.

• From Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  I was then, by Mrs. Cole, brought in, and presented to him, in a loose dishabille fitted, by her direction, to the exercise I was to go through, all in the finest linen and a thorough white uniform: gown, petticoat, stocking, and satin slippers, like a victim led to sacrifice; whilst my dark auburn hair, falling in drop-curls over my neck, created a pleasing distinction of colour from the rest of my dress. As soon as Mr. Barville saw me, he got up, with a visible air of pleasure and surprise, and saluting me, asked Mrs. Cole, if so fine and delicate a creature would voluntarily submit to such sufferings and rigours, as were the subject of his assignation. She answered him properly, and now, reading in his eyes that she could not too soon leave us together, she went out, after recommending to him to use moderation with so tender a novice. But whilst she was employing his attention, mine had been taken up with examining the figure and person of this unhappy young gentleman, who was thus unaccountably condemned to have his pleasure lashed into him, as boys have their learning. He was exceedingly fair, and, smooth complexioned, and appeared to me no more than twenty at most, though he was three years older than what my conjectures gave him; but then he owed this favourable mistake to a habit of fatness, which spread through a short, squab stature; and a round, plump, fresh coloured face gave him greatly the look of a Bacchus, had not an air of austerity, not to say sternness, very unsuitable even to his shape of face, dashed that character of joy, necessary to complete the resemblance. His dress was extremely neat, but plain, and far inferior to the ample fortune he was in full possession of; this too was a taste in him, and not avarice. As soon as Mrs. Cole was gone, he seated me near him, when now his face changed upon me, into an expression of the most pleasing sweetness and good humour, the most remarkable for its sudden shift from the other extreme, which I found afterwards, when I knew more of his character, was owing to a habitual state of conflict with, and dislike of himself, for being enslaved to so peculiar a lust, by the fatality of a constitutional ascendant, that rendered him incapable of receiving any pleasure, till he submitted to these extraordinary means of procuring it at the hands of pain, whilst the constancy of this repining consciousness stamped at length that cast of sourness and severity on his features: which was, in fact, very foreign to the natural sweetness of his temper.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  His voice was a mild baritone, and not at all unpleasant; there had been a burst of applause at his first appearance, and there was another round of satisfied clapping now, and one or two cheers. His song, however, was a strange one: he sang of a son that he had lost, named ‘Little Jacky’. There were a number of verses, each of them ending on the same refrain - it might have been, ‘Where, oh where, is Little Jacky now?’ I thought it queer he should be there, singing such a song, alone. Where was Kitty? I drew hard on my cigarette. I couldn’t imagine how she would fit into this routine, in a silk hat, a bow-tie and a flower ... Suddenly a horrible idea began to form itself in my mind. Walter had taken a handkerchief from his pocket, and was dabbing at his eye with it. His voice rose on the predictable chorus, and was joined by not a few from the hall: ‘But where, oh where, is Little Jacky now?’ I shifted in my seat. I thought, Let it not be that! Oh please, oh please, let the act not be that! But it was. As Walter called his plaintive question, there was a piping from the wing: ‘Here’s your Little Jacky, Father! Here!’ A figure ran on to the stage, and seized his hand and kissed it. It was Kitty. She was dressed in a boy’s sailor-suit - a baggy white blouse with a blue sash, white knickerbockers, stockings, and flat brown shoes; and she had a straw hat slung over her back, on a ribbon. Her hair was rather longer, and had been combed into a curl. Now the band struck up another tune, and she joined her voice with Walter’s in a duet. The crowd clapped her, and smiled. She skipped, and Walter bent and wagged a finger at her, and they laughed. They liked this turn. They liked seeing Kitty - my lovely, saucy, swaggering Kitty - play the child, with her husband, in stockings to the knee. They could not see me, as I blushed and squirmed; they would not have known why I did it, if they had. I hardly knew it, myself; I only felt myself smart with a terrible shame. I could not have felt worse if they had booed her, or pelted her with eggs. But they liked her! I looked at her a little harder. Then I remembered my opera glasses, and pulled them from my pocket and lifted them to my eyes, and saw her close before me, as close as in a dream. Her hair, though longer, was still nut-brown.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  They were placated, mildly. But I left Eugene that day knowing they had a low opinion of me, and Nike. I also left thinking I’d never, ever, ever take this company public. If thirty people could cause this kind of acid stomach, I couldn’t imagine being answerable to thousands of stockholders. We were better off financing through Nissho and the bank. THAT IS, IF there was anything to finance. As feared, Onitsuka had filed suit against us in Japan. So now we had to file quickly against them in the United States, for breach of contract and trademark infringement. I put the case in the hands of Cousin Houser. It wasn’t a tough call. There was the trust factor, of course. Kinship, blood, so on. Also, there was the confidence factor. Though he was only two years older, Cousin Houser seemed vastly more mature. He carried himself with remarkable assurance. Especially before a judge and jury. His father had been a salesman, and a good one, and Cousin Houser learned from him how to sell his client. Better yet, he was a tenacious competitor. When we were kids Cousin Houser and I used to play vicious, marathon games of badminton in his backyard. One summer we played exactly 116 games. Why 116? Because Cousin Houser beat me 115 straight times. I refused to quit until I’d won. And he had no trouble understanding my position. But the main reason I chose Cousin Houser was poverty. I had no money for legal fees, and Cousin Houser talked his firm into taking my case on contingency. Much of 1973 was spent in Cousin Houser’s office, reading documents, reviewing memos, cringing at my own words and actions. My memo about hiring a spy —the court would take a dim view of this, Cousin Houser warned. And my “borrowing” Kitami’s folder from his briefcase? How could a judge view that as anything but theft? MacArthur came to mind. You are remembered for the rules you break. I contemplated hiding these painful facts from the court. In the end, however, there was only one thing to do. Play it straight. It was the smart thing, the right thing. I’d simply have to hope the court would see the stealing of Kitami’s folder as a kind of self-defense. When I wasn’t with Cousin Houser, studying the case, I was being studied. In other words, deposed. For all my belief that business was war without bullets, I’d never felt the full fury of conference-room combat until I found myself at a table surrounded by five lawyers. They tried everything to get me to say I’d violated my contract with Onitsuka. They tried trick questions, hostile questions, squirrelly questions, loaded questions. When questions didn’t work, they twisted my answers. A deposition is strenuous for anyone, but for a shy person it’s an ordeal. Badgered, baited, harassed, mocked, I was a shell of myself by the end.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Si quieres saber qué está pasando con Cole, pregúntale a él. En cuanto a quién le alquilo una habitación, no es asunto tuyo. Deslizo mis dedos por mi cabello, olvidándome de darle un estilo. Se queda en silencio por un momento, y no la miro mientras saco mi teléfono del cargador y lo guardo en el bolsillo. Se para a mi lado y toma mi barbilla, forzándome a enfrentarla. Me alejo. —¿Qué? —Estás sonrojado. —Hace calor —le respondo. Pero debajo de mi piel, mi sangre se calienta y mi corazón late con más fuerza. Recojo mi café, tomando un sorbo para ocultar mi nerviosismo. La mujer es un tiburón. Puede oler sangre a través de un océano. —Sé cómo luces después de correrte —acusa—. Entonces, la pregunta es... ¿es ese dulce pedazo de culo adolescente que está arriba o alguien nuevo? Bajo mi taza de golpe, mirándola. —Suficiente. Maldita sea. Olvidé lo inteligente que es. Ni siquiera he salido de la casa, y ni siquiera puedo entender lo que siento por la única persona con la que me he encontrado. Increíble. Dirigiéndome a la mesa, me siento, me pongo los calcetines y las botas y recojo todo lo que necesito para el día. —Cole renunció a su trabajo en la planta —dice finalmente—. Hace tres días. Miro hacia arriba, deteniendo lo que estoy haciendo. ¿Tres días? —Déjame darte un consejo. —Se vuelve condesciende—. La crianza de los hijos no se detiene cuando cumplen los dieciocho años y cuando ya no tienes que pagar manutención. Él todavía te necesita. —Perdóname si no tomo lecciones de crianza de una mujer que se embarazó para tener un boleto de comida por el resto de su vida. —Me vuelvo hacia ella, inmovilizándola con mi mirada—. Tal vez renunció para no tener que trabajar por nada ya que lo haces sentir culpable para que te dé la mitad de sus cheques de pago. Me da una bofetada, y mi cabeza se mueve a un lado. Pero solo me río.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  -WOMAN S ERA A relationship between black people, representation, and political subjectivity has always existed and, at times, has been contingent upon representations of black womanhood. Still, this relationship has been more pronounced during particular historical moments. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, African Americans, having been negatively stereotyped as uncivilized, ignorant, and licentious within a racially hegemonic society, were relegated to an inferior status and deemed ineligible for full civic and political rights. In an effort to counter ubiquitous negative images and secure sociopolitical equality, some African Americans, largely under the influence of black intellectuals and activists, subscribed to certain codes of conduct-namely, respectability and propriety-to uplift and empower the race through acts of self-definition and determination. Bourgeois behavior and mores, including the espousal of Victorian sexual conduct, served for blacks, then, as a means of racial and sociopolitical advancement.' While such strategies affected the black community collectively, they had their most pronounced effects on black women, who were seen as symbols of their race. Having been characterized as licentious and immoral, as the very antithesis of "ideal" (white) womanhood, black women were perceived as responsible for so-called black deviancy and pathology. In light of this and their sexual violation by white men especially during slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow-with their putative lasciviousness serving as justification for such crimes-black women embraced respectability as both protection and countermyth. Deploying propriety and a rhetoric of moral superiority in various aspects of life and culture, they challenged prevailing images of black women particularly and African Americans generally. Their comportment and public display of "respectable" behavior served as forms of counterrepresentation, as well as racial uplift and advancement. These very female behavioral codes surrounding black womanhood can be seen not only in black women's literature and the black women's club movement, but also in newspapers, journals, and periodicals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as this chapter's opening epigraph illustrates.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Like a bull ready to charge, the fatman lowers his head, places his hands on the table. “I’ll tell you,” he says to Skipper, and in acute awareness of what will happen, I want suddenly to stop his words. I start to get up, but the fatman is already saying to Skipper: “My friend here,” indicating the skinny man, “would like you to go home with him. He hasnt got the guts to ask you, and so I offered to buy you for him—no big deal like youre used to: just for tonight.” The skinny man, even drunk, blinked incredulously. Skipper passes his hand dazedly over his face, as if trying to place the scene in his mind. “Yeah?” he mutters. “Yeah?” Again I want to leave quickly. This blacked-in scene, in focus, has become excruciatingly real. But helplessly aware that the bull is already charging—the beer and hard liquor churning vilely inside me—I hear the fatman’s words go on ineluctably: “Will you go with him?” he has asked Skipper. The skinny man, grasping all at once for the vestiges of sobriety, said, almost in tears: “Leave me alone, will you? Will—you—please—leave—me—alone—please!” “Well?” the fatman asks Skipper. “I’ll go with him—” Skipper muttered. “Good,” said the fatman. But he seems disappointed; as if somehow he has expected another climax. “—for thirty bucks,” Skipper finishes. And by the way the fatman blows out the smoke in relief, I know this is what hes been waiting for. “Thirty dollars!” he roars. “One for every year, huh?—and a few years thrown into the bargain? Is that how you figure it?” “Thirty bills,” Skipper repeated. His head almost touched the table. “I can get several for that price,” the fatman boasts. “Any of them! Take my pick of em!” “Leave me alone,” the skinny man is muttering. “Twenty-five bucks,” Skipper said, clenching his fists. “Too much,” the fatman says laughing. Painfully, I see the bewilderment on Skipper’s face as he looks up now from the table in amazed stupor—to face the fatman, the score—the Enemy.... As Skipper reaches into his pocket, removing the group of pictures from an envelope, I hear something inside of me shout to him: Dont! ... realizing that Skinper is about to barter for his Youth. But already there are two frayed clippings in Skipper’s hand. “Look,” he says triumphantly to the fatman. “I was in the columns.” The fatman reaches for the clippings. He looked at them carefully. “Oh,” he said dully, “you escorted a young actress to a nightclub.” He reads the other. “This one doesnt have a name. All it says is that she was escorted by a young actor.” “Yeah,” says Skipper, “but it was Me....” The fatman returns the clippings to him.

• From Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  Pretending, however, to yield at length to the vehemence of his insistence, in action and words, I sparing disclosed my thighs, so that he could just touch the cloven inlet with the tip of his instrument: but as he fatigued and toiled to get in, a twist of my body, so as to receive it obliquely, not only thwarted his admission, but giving a scream, as if he had pierced me to the heart, I shook him off me, with such violence that he could not with all his might to it, keep the saddle: vexed indeed at this he seemed, but not in the style of displeasure with me for my skittishness; on the contrary, I dare swear he held me the dearer, and hugged himself for the difficulties that even hurt his instant pleasure. Fired, however, now beyond all bearance of delay, he remounts, and begged of me to have patience, stroking and soothing me to it by all the tenderest endearments and protestations of what he would moreover do for me; at which, feigning to be somewhat softened, and abating of the anger that I had shewn at his hurting me so prodigiously, I suffered him to lay my thighs aside, and make way for a new trial; but I watched the directions and management of his point so well, that no sooner was the orifice in the least open to it, but I gave such a timely jerk as seemed to proceed not from the evasion of his entry, but from the pain his efforts at it put me to: a circumstance too that I did not fail to accompany with proper gestures, sighs and cries of complaint, of which, “that he had hurt me... he killed me... I should die...,” were the most frequent interjections. But now, after repeated attempts, in which he had not made the least impression towards gaining his point, at least for that time, the pleasure rose so fast upon him, that he could not check or delay it, and in the vigour and fury which the approaches of the height of it inspired him, he made one fierce-thrust, that had almost put me by my guard, and lodged it so far that I could feel the warm inspersion just within the exterior orifice, which I had the cruelty not to let him finish there, but threw him out again, not without a most piercing loud exclamation, as if the pain had put me beyond all regard of being overheard. It was then easy to observe that he was more satisfied, more highly pleased with the supposed motives of his baulk of consummation, than he would have-been at the full attainment of it. It was on this foot that I solved to myself all the falsity I employed to procure him that blissful pleasure in it, which most certainly he would not have tasted in the truth of things.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  Unlike Hannah, Nel's mother, Helene Wright-the apotheosis of motherhood as it is defined by the classical black female script-"rose grandly to the occasion of motherhood" (i8); and, in counterdistinction to Hannah, she raises her daughter in strict accordance with bourgeois propriety and respectability. In fact, "under Helene's hand [Nel] became obedient and polite. Any enthusiasm that little Nel showed was calmed by the mother until she drove her daughter's imagination underground" (i8). Yet, while Nel is raised in accordance with the script-which is, in her case, severely "maternally imposed" and socially mandated-she eventually comes to question her own identity in relation to her maternal female progenitors. Nel's sojourn begins in 1920 while she rides a segregated train to New Orleans with Helene, who is objectified and sexualized by the patriarchal gazes of male passengers. After having witnessed her mother's victimization and silent composure, ten-year-old Nel vows that no man will ever look at her that way. For, she would never let "midnight eyes and marble flesh [...] accost her and turn her into jelly" (22). Nel's experience on the train is far from innocuous, exposing her to the extent to which black womanhood is subjected to (hyper)sexualization (as evidenced in the sexualized metaphor "jelly") that renders black women-even those like her mother who are the quintessence of respectability and decorum-vulnerable to sexual dehumanization, objectification, or violence. While in this instance the sexual violation is not physical, its psychological aspect is no less acute or deleterious. Unprotected as such, Nel, as a black female, cannot necessarily elude and transcend the inevitability of racialized sexual vulnerability, yet what she can and does do, is divest herself of associations with her intergenerational female progenitors who have already encountered varied instantiations of these sexual entanglements. Thus, upon their return to the Bottom, while looking in the mirror, Nel proclaims, "I'm me. Not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me. Me" (28).

• From Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  I did not care what became of my wretched body: and wanting life, spirits, or courage to oppose the least struggle, even that of the modesty of my sex, I suffered, tamely, whatever the gentleman pleased; who proceeding insensibly from freedom to freedom, insinuating his hand between my handkerchief and bosom, which he handled at discretion: finding thus no repulse, and that every thing favoured, beyond expectation, the completion of his desires, he took me in his arms, and bore me, without life or motion, to the bed, on which laying me gently downed, and having me at what advantage he pleased, I did not so much as know what he was about, till recovering from a trance of lifeless insensibility, I found him buried in me, whilst I lay passive and innocent of the least sensations of pleasure: a death-cold corpse could scarce have less life or sense in it. As soon as he had thus pacified a passion which had too little respected the condition I was in, he got off, and after recomposing the disorder of my clothes, employed himself with the utmost tenderness to calm the transports of remorse and madness at myself, with which I was seized, too late, I confess, for having suffered on that bed, the embraces of an utter stranger I tore my hair, wrung my hands, and beat my breast like a mad woman. But when my new master, for in that light I then viewed him, applied himself to appease me, as my whole rage was levelled at myself, no part of which I thought myself permitted to aim at him, I begged of him with more submission than anger, to leave me alone, that I might, at least, enjoy my affliction in quiet. This he positively refused, for fear, as he pretended, I should do myself a mischief. Violent passions seldom last long, and those of women least of any. A dead still calm succeeded this storm, which ended in a profuse shower of tears.