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 Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Marlowe is blubbering. He imagines they are his teeth. It is my last dinner at the dramatist’s home. They have just rented a new piano, a concert grand. I meet Sylvester coming out of the florist’s with a rubber plant in his arms. He asks me if I would carry it for him while he goes for the cigars. One by one I’ve fucked myself out of all these free meals which I had planned so carefully. One by one the husbands turn against me, or the wives. As I walk along with the rubber plant in my arms I think of that night a few months back when the idea first occurred to me. I was sitting on a bench near the Coupole, fingering the wedding ring which I had tried to pawn off on a garçon at the Dôme. He had offered me six francs for it and I was in a rage about it. But the belly was getting the upper hand. Ever since I left Mona I had worn the ring on my pinkie. It was so much a part of me that it had never occurred to me to sell it. It was one of those orange-blossom affairs in white gold. Worth a dollar and a half once, maybe more. For three years we went along without a wedding ring and then one day when I was going to the pier to meet Mona I happened to pass a jewelry window on Maiden Lane and the whole window was stuffed with wedding rings. When I got to the pier Mona was not to be seen. I waited for the last passenger to descend the gangplank, but no Mona. Finally I asked to be shown the passenger list. Her name was not on it. I slipped the wedding ring on my pinkie and there it stayed. Once I left it in a public bath, but then I got it back again. One of the orange blossoms had fallen off. Anyway, I was sitting there on the bench with my head down, twiddling the ring, when suddenly someone clapped me on the back. To make it brief, I got a meal and a few francs besides. And then it occurred to me, like a flash, that no one would refuse a man a meal if only he had the courage to demand it. I went immediately to a café and wrote a dozen letters. “Would you let me have dinner with you once a week? Tell me what day is most convenient for you.” It worked like a charm. I was not only fed... I was feasted. Every night I went home drunk. They couldn’t do enough for me, these generous once-a-week souls. What happened to me between times was none of their affair. Now and then the thoughtful ones presented me with cigarettes, or a little pin money.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I wouldn’t care then what happened to me: I wouldn’t need a job or friends or books or anything. If she could only make me believe that there was something more important on earth than myself. Jesus, I hate myself! But I hate these bastardly cunts even more—because they’re none of them any good. “You think I like myself,” he continues. “That shows how little you know about me. I know I’m a great guy. … I wouldn’t have these problems if there weren’t something to me. But what eats me up is that I can’t express myself. People think I’m a cunt-chaser. That’s how shallow they are, these high brows who sit on the terrasse all day chewing the psychologic cud. … That’s not so bad, eh—psychologic cud? Write it down for me. I’ll use it in my column next week. … By the way, did you ever read Stekel? Is he any good? It looks like nothing but case histories to me. I wish to Christ I could get up enough nerve to visit an analyst… a good one, I mean. I don’t want to see these little shysters with goatees and frock coats, like your friend Boris. How do you manage to tolerate those guys? Don’t they bore you stiff? You talk to anybody, I notice. You don’t give a goddamn. Maybe you’re right. I wish I weren’t so damned critical. But these dirty little Jews who hang around the Dôme, Jesus, they give me the creeps. They sound just like textbooks. If I could talk to you every day maybe I could get things off my chest. You’re a good listener. I know you don’t give a damn about me, but you’re patient. And you don’t have any theories to exploit. I suppose you put it all down afterward in that notebook of yours. Listen, I don’t mind what you say about me, but don’t make me out to be a cunt-chaser—it’s too simple. Some day I’ll write a book about myself, about my thoughts. I don’t mean just a piece of introspective analysis… I mean that I’ll lay myself down on the operating table and I’ll expose my whole guts… every goddamned thing. Has anybody ever done that before?—What the hell are you smiling at? Does it sound naïf?” I’m smiling because whenever we touch on the subject of this book which he is going to write some day things assume an incongruous aspect. He has only to say “my book” and immediately the world shrinks to the private dimensions of Van Norden and Co. The book must be absolutely original, absolutely perfect. That is why, among other things, it is impossible for him to get started on it. As soon as he gets an idea he begins to question it. He remembers that Dostoevski used it, or Hamsun, or somebody else. “I’m not saying that I want to be better than them, but I want to be different,” he explains.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  These discrepancies between what one is, what one is brought up to believe is the right way of behaving toward others, and what actually happens during these awful black manias, or mixed states, are absolute and disturbing beyond description—particularly, I think, for a woman brought up in a highly conservative and traditional world. They seem a very long way from my mother’s grace and gentleness, and farther still from the quiet seasons of cotillions, taffetas and silks, and elegant gloves that slid up over the elbows and had pearl buttons at the wrist, when one had no worries other than making sure that the seams in one’s stockings were straight before going to Sunday-night dinners at the Officers’ Club. For the most important and shaping years of my life I had been brought up in a straitlaced world, taught to be thoughtful of others, circumspect, and restrained in my actions. We went as a family to church every Sunday, and all of my answers to adults ended with a “ma’am” or a “sir.” The independence encouraged by my parents had been of an intellectual, not socially disruptive, nature. Then, suddenly, I was unpredictably and uncontrollably irrational and destructive. This was not something that could be overcome by protocol or etiquette. God, conspicuously, was nowhere to be found. Navy Cotillion, candy-striping, and Tiffany’s Table Manners for Teenagers could not, nor were they ever intended to be, any preparation or match for madness. Uncontrollable anger and violence are dreadfully, irreconcilably, far from a civilized and predictable world. I had, ever since I could remember, inclined in the direction of strong and exuberant feelings, loving and living with what Delmore Schwartz called “the throat of exaltation.” Inflammability, however, always lay just the other side of exaltation. These fiery moods were, at least initially, not all bad: in addition to giving a certain romantic tumultuousness to my personal life, they had, over the years, added a great deal that was positive to my professional life. Certainly, they had ignited and propelled much of my writing, research, and advocacy work. They had driven me to try and make a difference. They had made me impatient with life as it was and made me restless for more. But, always, there was a lingering discomfort when the impatience or ardor or restlessness tipped over into too much anger. It did not seem consistent with being the kind of gentle, well-bred woman I had been brought up to admire and, indeed, continue to admire.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  7-17-75Patient has elected to resume lithium because of the severity of her depressive episodes. Will begin with lithium 300mg. BID [twice a day]. 7-25-75Vomiting. 8-5-75Tolerating lithium. Feeling depressed at realization she was more hypomanic than she believed. 9-30-75Patient has stopped lithium again. Very important, she says, to prove she can handle stress without it. 10-2-75Persists in not taking lithium. Already hypomanic. Patient well aware of it. 10-7-75Patient has resumed lithium because of increased irritability, insomnia, and inability to concentrate.Part of my stubbornness can be put down to human nature. It is hard for anyone with an illness, chronic or acute, to take medications absolutely as prescribed. Once the symptoms of an illness improve or go away, it becomes even more difficult. In my case, once I felt well again I had neither the desire nor incentive to continue taking my medication. I didn’t want to take it to begin with; the side effects were hard for me to adjust to; I missed my highs; and, once I felt normal again, it was very easy for me to deny that I had an illness that would come back. Somehow I was convinced that I was an exception to the extensive research literature, which clearly showed not only that manic-depressive illness comes back, but that it often comes back in a more severe and frequent form. It was not that I ever thought lithium was an ineffective drug. Far from it. The evidence for its efficacy and safety was compelling. Not only that, I knew it worked for me. It certainly was not that I had any moral arguments against psychiatric medications. On the contrary. I had, and have, no tolerance for those individuals—especially psychiatrists and psychologists—who oppose using medications for psychiatric illnesses; those clinicians who somehow draw a distinction between the suffering and treatability of “medical illnesses” such as Hodgkin’s disease or breast cancer, and psychiatric illnesses such as depression, manic-depression, or schizophrenia. I believe, without doubt, that manic-depressive illness is a medical illness; I also believe that, with rare exception, it is malpractice to treat it without medication. All of these beliefs aside, however, I still somehow thought that I ought to be able to carry on without drugs, that I ought to be able to continue to do things my own way.

• From The Girls (2016)

  surface with no place to retreat, and even the kid was mad at him. I was ashamed for bringing him around, for how he’d caused such a fuss, and Suzanne was staring at me, so I knew exactly what a stupid idea it had been. Tom looked at me for help, but he saw the distance in my face, the way I slid my eyes back to the ground. “I just think you should be careful,” Tom said. Suzanne snorted. “We should be careful?” “I was a lifeguard,” he said, his voice cracking. “People can drown even in shallow water.” But Suzanne wasn’t listening, making a face at Donna. Their shared disgust including me, I thought. I couldn’t bear it. “Relax,” I said to Tom. Tom looked wounded. “This is an awful place.” “You should leave, then,” Suzanne said. “Doesn’t that sound like a good idea?” The rattle of speed in her, the vacant, vicious smile—she was being meaner than she needed to be. “Can I talk to you for a second?” Tom said to me. Suzanne laughed. “Oh, man. Here we go.” “Just for a second,” he said. When I hesitated, Suzanne sighed. “Go talk to him,” she said. “Christ.” Tom walked away from the others and I followed him with halting steps, as if distance could prevent contagion. I kept glancing back to the group, the girls heading to the porch. I wanted to be among them. I was furious with Tom, his silly pants, his thatchy hair. “What?” I said. Impatient, my lips tight. “I don’t know,” Tom said, “I just think—” He hesitated, darting a look at the house, pulling at his shirt. “You can come back with me right now, if you want. There’s a party tonight,” he said. “At the International House.” I could picture it. The Ritz crackers, earnest groups crammed around bowls of watery ice. Talking SDS and comparing reading lists. I half shrugged, the barest shift of a shoulder. He seemed to understand this gesture for the falsehood it was. “Maybe I should write down my number for you,” Tom said. “It’s the hall phone, but you can just ask for me.”

• From The Girls (2016)

  Zav sucked his teeth, then let loose a nervous laugh. My voice sounded strangled. “Of course not.” “But you knew what they were going to do,” Julian said. Grinning with the thrill of capture. “You were there with Russell Hadrick and shit.” “Hadrick?” Zav said. “Are you shitting me?” I tried to rein in the hysterical lean coming into my voice. “I was barely around.” Julian shrugged. “That’s not what it sounded like.” “You don’t really believe that.” But there was no entry point in any of their faces. “Sasha said you told her so,” Julian went on. “Like you could have done it, too.” I inhaled sharply. The pathetic betrayal: Sasha had told Julian everything I’d said. “So show us,” Zav said, turning back to Sasha. I was already invisible again. “Show us the famous tits.” “You don’t have to,” I said to her. Sasha flicked her eyes in my direction. “It isn’t a big deal or anything,” she said, her tone dripping with cool, obvious disdain. She plucked her neckline away from her chest and looked pensively down her shirt. “See?” Julian said, smiling hard at me. “Listen to Sasha.” — I had gone to one of Julian’s recitals when Dan and I were still close. Julian must have been nine years old or so. He was good at the cello, I remembered, his tiny arms going about their mournful adult work. His nostrils rimed with snot, the instrument in careful balance. It didn’t seem possible that the boy who had called forth those sounds of longing and beauty was the same almost-man who watched Sasha now, a cold varnish on his eyes. She pulled her shirt down, her face flushed but mostly dreamy. The impatient, professional tug she gave when the neckline caught on her bra. Then both pale breasts were exposed, her skin marked by the line of her bra. Zav exclaimed approvingly. Reaching to thumb a rosy nipple while Julian looked on. I had long outlived whatever usefulness I had here. 1969

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  Some 200 years after this came the terrible persecution by the Emperor Diocletian. When peace came after the storm, the one test some wanted to apply to every surviving member of the Church was: ‘Did you deny Christ and so save your life?’ And, if any had denied their Lord, they would have shut the door on them once and for all. The sociologist Kermit Eby tells of a French churchman who, when asked what he did during the French Revolution, whispered: ‘I survived.’ This is the condemnation of those who loved life more than they loved Christ. It was never meant to be built up into a doctrine that there is no forgiveness for post-baptismal sin. Who can possibly say that another person is beyond the forgiveness of God? What it is meant to show is the terrible seriousness of choosing existence instead of loyalty to Christ. The writer to the Hebrews goes on to say a tremendous thing. Those who fall away crucify Christ again . This is the point of the great Quo vadis legend. It tells how, in the Neronic persecution, Peter was caught in Rome and his courage failed. Down the Appian Way, he fled for his life. Suddenly, there was a figure standing in his path. It was Jesus himself. ‘ Domine ,’ said Peter, ‘ quo vadis? Lord, where are you going?’ ‘I am going back to Rome to be crucified again, this time in your place.’ And Peter, shamed into heroism, turned back to Rome and died a martyr’s death. Late in Roman history, there was an emperor who tried to put back the clock. Julian wanted to destroy Christianity and bring back the old gods. His attempt ended in defeat. The playwright Henrik Ibsen makes him say: ‘Where is he now? Has he been at work elsewhere since that happened at Golgotha? … Where is he now? What if that , at Golgotha, near Jerusalem, was but a wayside matter, a thing done, as it were, in the passing? What if he goes on and on, suffers and dies and conquers again and again, from world to world?’ There is a certain truth there. Behind the thought of the writer to the Hebrews, there is a tremendous conception. He saw the cross as an event which opened a window into the heart of God. He saw it as showing in a moment of time the suffering love which is forever in that heart. The cross said to men and women: ‘That is how I have always loved you and always will love you. This is what your sin does to me and always will do to me. This is the only way I can ever redeem you.’ As long as there is sin, there is always in God’s heart this agony of suffering and redeeming love.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Circumstances had placed me in a position where fortunately I could be of aid to them; I secured jobs for them, I harbored them, and I fed them when necessary. They were very grateful, I must say; so much so, in fact that they made my life miserable with their attentions. Two of them were saints, if I know what a saint is; particularly Gupte who was found one morning with his throat cut from ear to ear. In a little boarding house in Greenwich Village he was found one morning stretched out stark naked on the bed, his flute beside him, and his throat gashed, as I say, from ear to ear. It was never discovered whether he had been murdered or whether he had committed suicide. But that’s neither here nor there. ... I’m thinking back to the chain of circumstances which has brought me finally to Nanantatee’s place. Thinking how strange it is that I should have forgotten all about Nanantatee until the other day when lying in a shabby hotel room on the Rue Cels. I’m lying there on the iron bed thinking what a zero I have become, what a cipher, what a nullity, when bango! out pops the word: NONENTITY! That’s what we called him in New York—Nonentity. Mister Nonentity. I’m lying on the floor now in that gorgeous suite of rooms he boasted of when he was in New York. Nanantatee is playing the good Samaritan; he has given me a pair of itchy blankets, horse blankets they are, in which I curl up on the dusty floor. There are little jobs to do every hour of the day—that is, if I am foolish enough to remain indoors. In the morning he wakes me rudely in order to have me prepare the vegetables for his lunch: onions, garlic, beans, etc. His friend, Kepi, warns me not to eat the food—he says it’s bad. Bad or good what difference? Food! That’s all that matters. For a little food I am quite willing to sweep his carpets with a broken broom, to wash his clothes and to scrape the crumbs off the floor as soon as he has finished eating. He’s become absolutely immaculate since my arrival: everything has to be dusted now, the chairs must be arranged a certain way, the clock must ring, the toilet must flush properly. ... A crazy Hindu if ever there was one! And parsimonious as a string bean. I’ll have a great laugh over it when I get out of his clutches, but just now I’m a prisoner, a man without caste, an untouchable. ...

• From The Girls (2016)

  She watched me through the smoke. I felt shamed. For doubting Suzanne or thinking it was strange to share. For the limits of my carpeted bedroom at home. I shoved my hands in my shorts. This wasn’t bullshit dabbling, like my mother’s afternoon workshops. “I get it,” I said. And I did, and tried to isolate the flutter of solidarity in myself. The dress Suzanne chose for me stank like mouse shit, my nose twitching as I pulled it over my head, but I was happy wearing it—the dress belonged to someone else, and that endorsement released me from the pressure of my own judgments. “Good,” Suzanne said, surveying me. I ascribed more meaning to her pronouncement than I ever had to Connie’s. There was something grudging about Suzanne’s attention, and that made it doubly valued. “Let me braid your hair,” she said. “Come here. It’ll tangle if you dance with it loose.” I sat on the floor in front of Suzanne, her legs on either side of me, and tried to feel comfortable with the closeness, the sudden, guileless intimacy. My parents were not affectionate, and it surprised me that someone could just touch me at any moment, the gift of their hand given as thoughtlessly as a piece of gum. It was an unexplained blessing. Her tangy breath on my neck as she swept my hair to one side. Walking her fingers along my scalp, drawing a straight part. Even the pimples I’d seen on her jaw seemed obliquely beautiful, the rosy flame an inner excess made visible. — Both of us were silent as she braided my hair. I picked up one of the reddish rocks from the floor, lined up beneath the mirror like the eggs of a foreign species. “We lived in the desert for a while,” Suzanne said. “That’s where I got that.” She told me about the Victorian they had rented in San Francisco. How they’d had to leave after Donna had accidentally started a fire in the bedroom. The time spent in Death Valley where they were all so sunburned they couldn’t sleep for days. The remains of a gutted, roofless

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  During the winter, we had collected a bowl of snow and poured Pet milk over it, and sprinkled it with sugar and called it ice cream. Momma beamed and Uncle Willie was proud when Bailey regaled the customers with our exploits. We were drawing cards for the Store and objects of the town's adoration. Our journey to magical places alone was a spot of color on the town's drab canvas, and our return made us even more the most enviable of people. High spots in Stamps were usually negative: droughts, floods, lynchings and deaths. Bailey played on the country folks' need for diversion. Just after our return he had taken to sarcasm, picked it up as one might pick up a stone, and put it snufflike under his lip. The double entendres, the two-pronged sentences, slid over his tongue to dart rapier-like into anything that happened to be in the way. Our customers, though, generally were so straight thinking and speaking that they were never hurt by his attacks. They didn't comprehend them. “Bailey Junior sound just like Big Bailey. Got a silver tongue. Just like his daddy.” “I hear tell they don't pick cotton up there. How the people live then?” Bailey said that the cotton up North was so tall, if ordinary people tried to pick it they'd have to get up on ladders, so the cotton farmers had their cotton picked by machines. For a while I was the only recipient of Bailey's kindness. It was not that he pitied me but that he felt we were in the same boat for different reasons, and that I could understand his frustration just as he could countenance my withdrawal. I never knew if Uncle Willie had been told about the incident in St. Louis, but sometimes I caught him watching me with a far-off look in his big eyes. Then he would quickly send me on some errand that would take me out of his presence. When that happened I was both relieved and ashamed. I certainly didn't want a cripple's sympathy (that would have been a case of the blind leading the blind), nor did I want Uncle Willie, whom I loved in my fashion, to think of me as being sinful and dirty. If he thought so, at least I didn't want to know it. Sounds came to me dully, as if people were speaking through their handkerchiefs or with their hands over their mouths. Colors weren't true either, but rather a vague assortment of shaded pastels that indicated not so much color as faded familiarities. People's names escaped me and I began to worry over my sanity. After all, we had been away less than a year, and customers whose accounts I had formerly remembered without consulting the ledger were now complete strangers. People, except Momma and Uncle Willie, accepted my unwillingness to talk as a natural outgrowth of a reluctant return to the South.

• From The Girls (2016)

  Suzanne didn’t speak for a minute, then smiled without looking over. “Okay,” she said. I didn’t miss the test in her voice. “You want to help. You can help.” — My task made me a spy in my mother’s house, my mother the clueless quarry. I could even apologize for our fight when I ran into her that night across the stillness of the hallway. My mother gave a little shrug but accepted my apology, smiling in a brave way. It would bother me, normally, that wavery brave smile, but the new me bowed my head in abject regret. I was imitating a daughter, acting like a daughter would. Part of me thrilled at the knowledge I held out of her reach, how every time I looked at her or spoke to her, I was lying. The night with Russell, the ranch, the secret space I tended to the side. She could have the husk of my old life, all the dried-up leftovers. “You’re home so early,” she said. “I thought you might sleep at Connie’s again.” “I didn’t feel like it.” It was strange to be reminded of Connie, to jar back to the regular world. I’d been surprised, even, that I could feel the ordinary desire for food. I wanted the world to reorder itself visibly around the change, like a mend marking a tear. My mother softened. “I’m just glad because I wanted to spend some time with you. Just us. It’s been a while, huh? Maybe I’ll make Stroganoff,” she said. “Or meatballs. What do you think?” I was suspicious of her offer: she didn’t buy food for the house unless I wrote notes for her to find when she got back from group. And we hadn’t eaten meat in forever. Sal told my mother that to eat meat was to eat fear and that ingesting fear would make you gain weight. “Meatballs would be good,” I allowed. I didn’t want to notice how happy it made her. — My mother turned on the radio in the kitchen, playing the kind of slight, balmy songs that I’d loved as a child. Diamond rings, cool streams, apple

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  They were regarded with hatred and suspicion and contempt. In Sparta, xenos was the equivalent of barbaros, barbarian. One man writes complaining that he was despised ‘because I am a xenos’. Another writes that, however poor a home is, it is better to live at home than epi xenēs, in a foreign country. When clubs had their common meal, those who sat down to it were divided into members and xenoi. Xenos can even mean a refugee. All their lives, the patriarchs were foreigners in a land that was never their own. (b) In 11:9, he uses the word paroikein, to stay for a time, of Abraham. A paroikos was a resident alien. The word is used of the Jews when they were captives in Babylon and in Egypt. Anyone called paroikos was not considered much above a slave in the social scale and had to pay an alien tax. Such people were always outsiders and only became members of the community as a result of payment. (c) In 11:13, he uses the word parepidēmos. A parepidēmos was a person who was staying there temporarily and who had a permanent home somewhere else. Sometimes, the stay was strictly limited. A parepidēmos was someone in lodgings, someone without a home in a particular place at a particular time. All their lives, the patriarchs were men who had no settled place that they could call home. It is to be noted that, in the ancient world, to dwell in a foreign land was considered humiliating; a certain stigma was attached to the foreigner in any country. In the Letter of Aristeas, the writer says: ‘It is a fine thing to live and to die in one’s native land; a foreign land brings contempt to poor men and shame to rich men, for there is the lurking suspicion that they have been exiled for the evil they have done.’ In Ecclesiasticus (29:22–8), there is a wistful passage: Better is the life of the poor under their own crude roof than sumptuous food in the house of others. Be content with little or much, and you will hear no reproach for being a guest. It is a miserable life to go from house to house; as a guest you should not open your mouth; you will play the host and provide drink without being thanked and besides this you will hear rude words like these: ‘Come here, stranger, prepare the table; let me eat what you have there.’ ‘Be off, stranger, for an honoured guest is here; my brother has come for a visit, and I need the guestroom. ’ It is hard for a sensible person to bear scolding about lodging and the insults of the moneylender. At any time, it is an unhappy thing to be a stranger in a foreign land; but, in the ancient world, to this natural unhappiness there was added the bitterness of humiliation. All their days, the patriarchs were strangers in a strange land.

• From The Girls (2016)

  boy in Petaluma to enlist. His father had driven him to register. I’d seen him later at the Hamburger Hamlet with a petite brunette whose nostrils streamed snot. She called him stubbornly by his full name, Will-iam, like the extra syllable was the secret password that would transform him into a grown, responsible man. She clung to him like a burr. “He’s always out in the driveway,” Peter said. “Washing his car like nothing’s different. He can’t even drive anymore, I don’t think.” This was news from the other world. I felt ashamed, seeing Peter’s face, for how I only playacted at real feelings, reaching for the world through songs. Peter could actually be sent away, he could actually die. He didn’t have to force himself to feel that way, the emotional exercises Connie and I occupied ourselves with: What would you do if your father died? What would you do if you got pregnant? What would you do if a teacher wanted to fuck you, like Mr. Garrison and Patricia Bell? “It was all puckered, his stump,” Peter said. “Pink.” “Disgusting,” Henry said from the machine. He didn’t turn away from the looping images of cherries that scrolled in front of him. “You wanna kill people, you better be okay with those people blowing your legs off.” “He’s proud of it, too,” Peter said, his voice rising as he flicked the end of the joint onto the garage floor. He watched it snuff out. “Wanting people to see it. That’s what’s crazy.” The dramatics of their conversation made me feel dramatic, too. I was stirred by the alcohol, the burn in my chest I exaggerated until I became moved by an authority not my own. I stood up. The boys didn’t notice. They were talking about a movie they had seen in San Francisco. I recognized the title—they hadn’t shown it in town because it was supposed to be perverted, though I couldn’t remember why. When I finally watched the movie, as an adult, the palpable innocence of the sex scenes surprised me. The humble pudge of fat above the actress’s pubic hair. How she laughed when she pulled the yacht captain’s face to her saggy, lovely breasts. There was a good-natured quality to the raunch, like fun was still an erotic idea. Unlike the movies that came later, girls wincing while their legs dangled like a dead thing’s. Henry was fluttering his eyelids, tongue in an obscene rictus. Aping some scene from the movie. Peter laughed. “Sick.”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She was hungry, not having eaten much luncheon, but now she could not enjoy her cake; Roger himself was stuffing like a grampus, but his eyes never left her face. Then Roger, the slow-witted in his dealings with Stephen, all but choked in the throes of a great inspiration. ‘I say, you,’ he began, with his mouth very full, ‘what about a certain young lady out hunting? What about a fat leg on each side of her horse like a monkey on a stick, and everybody laughing!’ ‘They were not!’ exclaimed Stephen, growing suddenly red. ‘Oh, yes, but they were, though!’ mocked Roger. Now had Stephen been wise she would have let the thing drop, for no fun is derived from a one-sided contest, but at eight years old one is not always wise, and moreover her pride had been stung to the quick. She said: ‘I’d like to see you get the brush; why you can’t stick on just riding round the paddock! I’ve seen you fall off jumping nothing but a hurdle; I’d like to see you out hunting!’ Roger swallowed some more cake; there was now no great hurry; he had thrown his sprat and had landed his mackerel. He had very much feared that she might not be drawn—it was not always easy to draw Stephen. ‘Well now, listen,’ he drawled, ‘and I’ll tell you something. You thought they admired you squatting on your pony; you thought you were being very grand, I’ll bet, with your new riding breeches and your black velvet cap; you thought they’d suppose that you looked like a boy, just because you were trying to be one. As a matter of fact, if you really want to know, they were busting their sides; why, my father said so. He was laughing all the time at your looking so funny on that rotten old pony that’s as fat as a porpoise. Why, he only gave you the brush for fun, because you were such a small kid—he said so. He said: “I gave Stephen Gordon the brush because I thought she might cry if I didn’t.” ’ ‘You’re a liar,’ breathed Stephen, who had turned very pale. ‘Oh, am I? Well, you ask father.’ ‘Do stop—’ whimpered Violet, beginning to cry; ‘you’re horrid, you’re spoiling my party.’ But Roger was launched on his first perfect triumph; he had seen the expression in Stephen’s eyes: ‘And my mother said,’ he continued more loudly, ‘that your mother must be funny to allow you to do it; she said it was horrid to let girls ride that way; she said she was awfully surprised at your mother; she said that she’d have thought that your mother had more sense; she said that it wasn’t modest; she said—’ Stephen had suddenly sprung to her feet: ‘How dare you! How dare you—my mother!’ she spluttered.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “Hungry lately, huh?” “Don’t touch me, perv,” she said, hitting his hand away. She giggled a little. “Fuck you.” “Fine,” he said, grabbing Connie’s hands by the wrist. “Fuck me.” She tried halfheartedly to pull away, whining until Henry finally let her go. She rubbed her wrists. “Asshole,” she muttered, but she wasn’t really mad. That was part of being a girl—you were resigned to whatever feedback you’d get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn’t react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they’d backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you. I didn’t like the taste of beer, the granular bitterness nothing like the pleasing hygienic chill of my father’s martinis, but I drank one and then another. The boys fed the slot machine from a shopping bag full of nickels until they were almost out of coins. “We need the machine keys,” Peter said, lighting a thin joint he pulled from his pocket. “So we can open it up.” “I’ll get them,” Connie said. “Don’t miss me too much,” she crooned to Henry, fluttering a little wave before she left. To me, she just raised her eyebrows. I understood this was part of some plan she had hatched to get Henry’s attention. To leave, then return. She had probably read about it in a magazine. That was our mistake, I think. One of many mistakes. To believe that boys were acting with a logic that we could someday understand. To believe that their actions had any meaning beyond thoughtless impulse. We were like conspiracy theorists, seeing portent and intention in every detail, wishing desperately that we mattered enough to be the object of planning and speculation. But they were just boys. Silly and young and straightforward; they weren’t hiding anything. Peter let the lever ratchet to a starting position and stepped back to give Henry a turn, the two of them passing the joint back and forth. They both wore white T-shirts that were thin from washings. Peter smiled at the carnival racket when the slot machine clattered out a pile of coins, but he seemed distracted, finishing another beer, smoking the joint until it was crushed and oily. They were speaking low. I heard bits and pieces. They were talking about Willie Poteracke: we all knew him, the first

• From The Girls (2016)

  4 My mother was dating again. First, a man who introduced himself as Vismaya and kept massaging my mother’s scalp with his clawed fingers. Who told me that my birthday, on the cusp of Aquarius and Pisces, meant my two phrases were “I believe” and “I know.” “Which is it?” Vismaya asked me. “Do you believe you know, or do you know you believe?” Next, a man who flew small silver planes and told me that my nipples were showing through my shirt. He said it plainly, as if this were helpful information. He made pastel portraits of Native Americans and wanted my mother to help open a museum of his work in Arizona. Next, a real estate developer from Tiburon who took us out for Chinese food. He kept encouraging me to meet his daughter. Repeating again and again how sure he was that we’d get along like a house on fire. His daughter was eleven, I came to realize. Connie would have laughed, dissecting the way the man’s teeth gummed up with rice, but I hadn’t spoken to her since the day at her house. “I’m fourteen,” I said. The man looked to my mother, who nodded. “Of course,” he said, a tang of soy sauce on his breath. “I see now you’re practically a grown-up.” “I’m sorry,” my mother mouthed across the table, but when the man turned to feed her a slimy-looking snow pea from his fork, she opened her mouth obediently, like a bird. — The pity I felt for my mother in these situations was new and uncomfortable, but also I sensed that I deserved to carry it around—a grim and private responsibility, like a medical condition. There had been a cocktail party my parents had thrown, the year before

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  enjoying the games I had been given when I was sick. When I refused to be the child they knew and accepted me to be, I was called impudent and my muteness sullenness. For a while I was punished for being so uppity that I wouldn't speak; and then came the thrashings, given by any relative who felt himself offended. • • • We were on the train going back to Stamps, and this time it was I who had to console Bailey. He cried his heart out down the aisles of the coach, and pressed his little-boy body against the window pane looking for a last glimpse of his Mother Dear. I have never known if Momma sent for us, or if the St. Louis family just got fed up with my grim presence. There is nothing more appalling than a constantly morose child. I cared less about the trip than about the fact that Bailey was unhappy, and had no more thought of our destination than if I had simply been heading for the toilet.

• From Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation (2016)

  Lecture 20—Jewish Identity and Rebuilding after Exile 135 commentary. These same basic actions have been done repeatedly as people gather in their synagogues. Thus, many now remember Ezra as the one who defined Jewish identity around the centrality of Jewish law. ● If we follow this theme into Nehemiah chapter 10, attention continues to focus on the community’s distinctiveness. Commitment to the law means not intermarrying with outsiders, observing the weekly Sabbath day, and paying for sacrifices to be offered in the temple. In the vast expanse of the Persian Empire, this community can say that it has an identity that is distinctively shaped by the Law of Moses. Rebuilding the Walls ‹ Nehemiah, a Jewish man, is a servant of the Persian king. In chapter 1, he is in the Persian city of Susa, and the year is about 445 B.C. Some travelers tell Nehemiah that despite all the efforts at rebuilding, the walls of Jerusalem are still in a shambles, which Nehemiah regards as shameful. Walls were important for protection and to give a city a sense of grandeur. T o live among ruined walls was a disgrace; thus, Nehemiah is determined to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. ‹ The Persian king authorizes the project and allows Nehemiah to lead another group back to Jerusalem to begin the work. But when he arrives in Jerusalem, conflict breaks out almost immediately. The officials who govern the Persian provinces surrounding Jerusalem are highly critical of the project, which they see as a dangerous act of self-assertion. They accuse Nehemiah of strengthening the city’s defenses to achieve greater political independence and more influence. They begin a campaign of harassment to stop the rebuilding. ‹ The efforts to halt the project involve the threat of attack against the workers, but Nehemiah establishes successful defenses, and by the end of chapter 6, the project is complete. T o increase the population, the nearby towns and villages send 10 percent of their people to live in Jerusalem. Then, in chapter 12, there’s a festival to dedicate the walls. This well-defined and well-protected city now helps the community assert its own unique place within the empire.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  Some 200 years after this came the terrible persecution by the Emperor Diocletian. When peace came after the storm, the one test some wanted to apply to every surviving member of the Church was: ‘Did you deny Christ and so save your life?’ And, if any had denied their Lord, they would have shut the door on them once and for all. The sociologist Kermit Eby tells of a French churchman who, when asked what he did during the French Revolution, whispered: ‘I survived.’ This is the condemnation of those who loved life more than they loved Christ. It was never meant to be built up into a doctrine that there is no forgiveness for post-baptismal sin. Who can possibly say that another person is beyond the forgiveness of God? What it is meant to show is the terrible seriousness of choosing existence instead of loyalty to Christ. The writer to the Hebrews goes on to say a tremendous thing. Those who fall away crucify Christ again. This is the point of the great Quo vadis legend. It tells how, in the Neronic persecution, Peter was caught in Rome and his courage failed. Down the Appian Way, he fled for his life. Suddenly, there was a figure standing in his path. It was Jesus himself. ‘Domine,’ said Peter, ‘quo vadis? Lord, where are you going?’ ‘I am going back to Rome to be crucified again, this time in your place.’ And Peter, shamed into heroism, turned back to Rome and died a martyr’s death. Late in Roman history, there was an emperor who tried to put back the clock. Julian wanted to destroy Christianity and bring back the old gods. His attempt ended in defeat. The playwright Henrik Ibsen makes him say: ‘Where is he now? Has he been at work elsewhere since that happened at Golgotha? ... Where is he now? What if that, at Golgotha, near Jerusalem, was but a wayside matter, a thing done, as it were, in the passing? What if he goes on and on, suffers and dies and conquers again and again, from world to world?’ There is a certain truth there. Behind the thought of the writer to the Hebrews, there is a tremendous conception. He saw the cross as an event which opened a window into the heart of God. He saw it as showing in a moment of time the suffering love which is forever in that heart. The cross said to men and women: ‘That is how I have always loved you and always will love you. This is what your sin does to me and always will do to me. This is the only way I can ever redeem you.’

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  There are many reasons why I have been reluctant to be open about having manic-depressive illness; some of the reasons are personal, many are professional. The personal issues revolve, to a large extent, around issues of family privacy—especially because the illness under consideration is a genetic one—as well as a general belief that personal matters should be kept personal. Too, I have been very concerned, perhaps unduly so, with how knowing that I have manic-depressive illness will affect peoples perception of who I am and what I do. There is a thin line between what is considered zany and what is thought to be—a ghastly but damning word—“inappropriate,” and only a sliverish gap exists between being thought intense, or a bit volatile, and being dismissively labeled “unstable.” And, for whatever reasons of personal vanity, I dread the fact that my suicide attempt and depressions will be seen by some as acts of weakness or as “neurotic.” Somehow, I don’t mind the thought of being seen as intermittently psychotic nearly as much as I mind being pigeonholed as weak and neurotic. Finally, I am deeply wary that by speaking publicly or writing about such intensely private aspects of my life, I will return to them one day and find them bleached of meaning and feeling. By putting myself in the position of speaking too freely and too often, I am concerned that the experiences will become remote, inaccessible, and far distant, behind me; I fear that the experiences will become those of someone else rather than my own. My major concerns about discussing my illness, however, have tended to be professional in nature. Early in my career, these concerns were centered on fears that the California Board of Medical Examiners would not grant me a license if it knew about my manic-depression. As time went by, I became less afraid of such administrative actions—primarily because I had worked out such an elaborate system of clinical safeguards, had told my close colleagues, and had discussed ad nauseam with my psychiatrist every conceivable contingency and how best to mitigate it—but I became increasingly concerned that my professional anonymity in teaching and research, such as it was, would be compromised. At UCLA, for example, I lectured and supervised large numbers of psychiatric residents and psychology interns in the clinic I directed; at Johns Hopkins I teach residents and medical students on the inpatient wards and in the outpatient mood disorders clinic. I cringe at the thought that these residents and interns may, in deference to what they perceive to be my feelings, not say what they really think or not ask the questions that they otherwise should and would ask.