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 Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  XVI, who as Cardinal Josef Ratzinger and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the former Roman Inquisition) had done his best to rein in Pope John Paul’s wilder theological impulses. In May 2006 a statement about Maciel was issued on behalf of Benedict’s own successor as Prefect, that the Church had decided ‘taking account of the advanced age of the Reverend Maciel and his delicate health – to renounce any canonical process and to invite the Father to a reserved life of prayer and penance, renouncing every public ministry’. That was the extent of any action against Maciel before his death in 2008. [17] At last the Vatican was showing signs of taking the abuse problem seriously, but the damage had been done, and Benedict’s sense of its daunting scale was one factor in his unanticipated resignation in 2013. The wider world was losing its patience. The crisis was larger than sexual abuse; it was a general abuse of clerical power and prestige by damaged or frightened personalities among the clergy, particularly in covering up abuse where it was unearthed. Certain states founded on their Catholic identity, such as the Canadian province of Quebec or the Kingdom of Belgium, saw church attendance plummet, but nowhere has the reaction been more extreme than in the Irish Republic. The tipping point came in the 1990s when certain prominent priests, notably the extrovert Bishop of Galway Eamonn Casey, were revealed as having clandestine female partners and children. Back in Archbishop McQuaid’s days, ‘everyone knew…and at the same time they managed not to know’ about ecclesiastical misuse of power; now the revelations poured out in increasing detail. [18] Particularly devastating was the Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Mother and Baby Homes published by the Irish government in 2020, which included details of archaeological work on the site of a sewage tank containing the remains of illegitimate babies from a Catholic-run children’s home in Tuam. On cherished shibboleths in the Vatican I construction of a Catholic family, the Irish population and its representatives in the Dáil (Parliament) now repeatedly exercised their right of rejection, despite strong attempts from the Church authorities to influence the votes. In 1993 male homosexual practice ceased to be illegal; in 1995 a referendum approved divorce (a result which was now backed by all the Republic’s political leaders); in 2015, Ireland became the first country in the world to introduce equal marriage for same-sex couples by popular vote; and in 2018 a decisive two-to-one referendum vote led to an end on the ban on abortion. Already in 2011, the Republic had pointedly closed its embassy in the Vatican, while Archbishop McQuaid’s posthumous reaction to an openly gay man becoming Taoiseach (Prime Minister) in 2017 is not recorded.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  necessary disclosure, I was involved in the early stages of GCM’s development. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 12 13 . This mordant coinage of the Anglo-Catholic socialist priest Fr Kenneth Leech began differently ordered, as ‘lace, gin and backbiting’, in Leech’s letter to the Catholic Standard (Nov. 1975), 3, then reported in the Church Times , 12 Dec. 1975. Popular usage gave it the more punchy formulation; see K. Leech, ‘Beyond gin and lace: homosexuality and the Anglo-Catholic subculture’, in Speaking Love’s Name: Homosexuality: some Catholic and socialist reflections , Jubilee Group Pamphlets (London, 1988), 16–27, at 16. Matthew Bemand-Qureshi helped me excavate this intellectual genealogy. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 13 14 . See W. Whyte, ‘OutRage! Hypocrisy, episcopacy, and homosexuality in England, 1968–1995’, in K. Cubitt (ed.), The Church and Hypocrisy , Studies in Church History 60 (forthcoming). BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 14 15 . J. Cornwell, The Pope in Winter: The dark face of John Paul II’s papacy (London, 2004), 234–46. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 15 16 . F. Martel, In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, homosexuality, hypocrisy (London, 2019), 279–97, and 82, 123. For a summary discussion of the whole problem against a long-term background, see J. Cornwell, The Dark Box: A secret history of confession (London, 2014), ch. 10. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 16 17 . Vatican Press Office statement, 19 May 2006: clumsily translated from the Italian http://nationalcatholicreporter.org/update/maciel_communique.pdf (accessed 19 Dec. 2023). BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 17 18 . A phrase of the novelist John Banville, reviewing O’Toole, We Don’t Know Ourselves , Times Literary Supplement , 17 Dec. 2021, 3–4. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 18 19 . Fuller, ‘Catholicism in 20th-century Ireland’, 497, 504, 507; C. Gribben, The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland (Oxford, 2021), 205–6. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 19 20 . While there is as yet no monograph on the Ball affair, a devastating account of his activities is provided by Dame Moira Gibb’s independent report, ‘An abuse of faith’, commissioned by the Church of England: churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/the-independent-peter-ball-review.pdf (accessed 11 Jan. 2024). BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 20 21 . A scathing newspaper article on the Bash Camp atmosphere from a female Evangelical insider and first-hand witness is A. Atkins, ‘Inside the sexual apartheid of John Smyth’s summer camps’, Daily Telegraph , 3 Feb. 2017. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 21 22 . Currently the best way of following the story is the Independent Report, J. Pickles and G. Woods, Review into the Abuse by John Smyth of Pupils and Former Pupils of Winchester College (Winchester, 2021), commissioned by the College and published with admirable honesty on the internet: https://www.winchestercollege.org/assets/files/uploads/john-smyth-review-winchester-college-jan-2022- final.pdf (accessed 2 Dec. 2023). BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 22 23 . A sympathetic analysis of Johnston is A. Atherstone, ‘Christian family, Christian nation: Raymond Johnston and Nationwide Festival of Light in defence of the family’, in J. Doran, C. Methuen and A. Walsham (eds), Religion and the Household , Studies in Church History 50 (Woodbridge, 2014), 456–68.

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

  Those who fell under Eastern skies or on their way to the East received the benefits of special indulgence for sins committed and were esteemed in the popular judgment as martyrs. John VIII., 872–882, pressed by the Saracens who were devastating Italy, had promised to soldiers fighting bravely against the pagans the rest of eternal life and, as far as it belonged to him to give it, absolution from sins.302 This precedent was followed by Urban II., who promised the first Crusaders marching to Jerusalem that the journey should be counted as a substitute for penance.303 Eugenius, 1146, went farther, in distinctly promising the reward of eternal life. The virtue of the reward was extended to the parents of those taking part in Crusades. Innocent III. included in the plenary indulgence those who built ships and contributed in any way, and promised to them "increase of eternal life." God, said the abbot Guibert, chronicler of the First Crusade, invented the Crusades as a new way for the laity to atone for their sins, and to merit salvation.304 The rewards were not confined to spiritual privileges. Eugenius III., in his exhortations to the Second Crusade, placed the Crusaders in the same category with clerics before the courts in the case of most offences.305 The kings of France, from 1188 to 1270 joined with the Holy See in granting to them temporal advantages, exemption from debt, freedom from taxation and the payment of interest. Complaint was frequently made by the kings of France that the Crusaders committed the most offensive crimes under cover of ecclesiastical protection. These complaints called forth from Innocent IV., 1246, and Alexander IV., 1260, instructions to the bishops not to protect such offenders. William of Tyre, in his account of the First Crusade, and probably reading into it some of the experiences of a later date, says (bk. I. 16), "Many took the cross to elude their creditors."306 If it is hard for us to unite the idea of war and bloodshed with the achievement of a purely religious purpose, it must be remembered that no such feeling prevailed in the Middle Ages. The wars of the period of Joshua and the Judges still formed a stimulating example. Chrysostom, Augustine, and other Church Fathers of the fifth century lifted up their voices against the violent destruction of heathen temples which went on in Egypt and Gaul; but whatever compunction might have been felt for the wanton slaying of Saracens by Christian armies in an attitude of aggression, the compunction was not felt when the Saracens placed themselves in the position of holding the sacred sites of Palestine.

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

  He was the first to cast off the Jewish prejudices against the unclean heathen and to fraternize with the Gentile converts at Caesarea and at Antioch; and he was the first to withdraw from them in cowardly fear of the narrow-minded Judaizers from Jerusalem, for which inconsistency he had to submit to a humiliating rebuke of Paul.292 But Peter was as quick in returning to his right position as in turning away from it. He most sincerely loved the Lord from the start and had no rest nor peace till he found forgiveness. With all his weakness he was a noble, generous soul, and of the greatest service in the church. God overruled his very sins and inconsistencies for his humiliation and spiritual progress. And in his Epistles we find the mature result of the work of purification, a spirit most humble, meek, gentle, tender, loving, and lovely. Almost every word and incident in the gospel history connected with Peter left its impress upon his Epistles in the way of humble or thankful reminiscence and allusion. His new name, "Rock," appears simply as a "stone" among other living stones in the temple of God, built upon Christ, "the chief corner-stone."293 His charge to his fellow-presbyters is the same which Christ gave to him after the resurrection, that they should be faithful "shepherds of the flock" under Christ, the chief "shepherd and bishop of their souls."294 The record of his denial of Christ is as prominent in all the four Gospels, as Paul’s persecution of the church is in the Acts, and it is most prominent—as it would seem under his own direction—in the Gospel of his pupil and "interpreter" Mark, which alone mentions the two cock-crows, thus doubling the guilt of the denial,295 and which records Christ’s words of censure ("Satan"), but omits Christ’s praise ("Rock").296 Peter made as little effort to conceal his great sin, as Paul. It served as a thorn in his flesh, and the remembrance kept him near the cross; while his recovery from the fall was a standing proof of the power and mercy of Christ and a perpetual call to gratitude. To the Christian Church the double story of Peter’s denial and recovery has been ever since an unfailing source of warning and comfort. Having turned again to his Lord, who prayed for him that his personal faith fail not, he is still strengthening the brethren.297 As to his official position in the church, Peter stood from the beginning at the head of the Jewish apostles, not in a partisan sense, but in a large-hearted spirit of moderation and comprehension. He never was a narrow, contracted, exclusive sectarian.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  147 o In Constantinople, he studied biblical exegesis with the great theologian Gregory of Nazianzus. o Jerome spent three years as the secretary and counselor to Pope Damasus I, one of the most powerful of the early bishops of Rome. Damasus assigned him the task of translating the entire bible into Latin in order to provide a standard text (the Vulgate) to replace the many “Old Latin” versions. o Jerome moved to Bethlehem in 389, where he lived as a hermit until his death in 419/20. Among his many writings, his Lives of Eminent Men is an indispensable biographical source for early Christian history. His commentaries on biblical books also show careful attention to historical realities and linguistic accuracy. o Jerome’s towering achievement was undoubtedly the Vulgate translation of the Old Testament (from Hebrew) and the New Testament (from Greek), which provided the standard text for medieval Latin Christianity. • The final doctor, Augustine of Hippo (354–430), is by far the best known man of late antiquity because of his autobiographical Confessions (composed in 397/98). It is a remarkable composition, both as the first truly introspective analysis of a personal life in antiquity and as a sustained song of praise to God. o Born in North Africa of a pagan father and a devout Christian mother (Monica), Augustine was educated in rhetoric and lived what he later considered a dissolute life, siring an illegitimate son. o He converted to the dualistic religion called Manichaeism (a combination of Persian and Christian Gnostic systems), attracted by its ascetical appeal. He embraced its radical dualism between matter and spirit, which seemed to offer Augustine’s intellectual soul some liberation from his passion- driven body.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  When I walked into the house I could hear voices coming from upstairs. I climbed to the top of the steps where my mom’s bedroom was. Her door was open and immediately I realized that was where the voices were coming from. There was my moms, and she had left her bedroom door open not thinking that her little teenager would be home early, and I watched her. I stood there and watched her. At that particular time she just happened to be tricking with two men at the same time. If one was in her mouth, the other was in her cunt. If one was in her cunt, the other was in her ass, or some type of sexual combination. One would have thought my moms was made out of rubber the way they had her stretched and positioned all over the place. The shit looked like it hurt the way they were blowin’ her back out. I don’t know why, but I just continued to stand there watching. I couldn’t move. Then all of a sudden my mother turned around and faced the door. I guess she just had a feeling that someone was watching her. Someone was watching her. That someone was me, her daughter. I’ll never—I mean, never—forget the look in her eyes when they locked with mine. By then I think the tears that had welded in my eyes were running down my cheeks. Without saying a word, I curved around to the left, where my bedroom was, went into my room, and slammed the door behind me. I made it over to my trash can just in time to throw up. I had already thrown up twice at school. But then it was because my stomach was sick, this time it was because my heart was. Of course, Naomi continued fucking those two men. She had to. Everybody knows if dem niggas don’t bust a nut, a ho don’t get paid. Once the two trick niggas finally left, I heard the front door close, and then I heard Naomi come back upstairs. Please don’t come in my room, I remember thinking. Please don’t come in my room. I was embarrassed for her. I knew my moms was a whore, everybody knew she was a whore, but to see it with my own eyes was just too much for me to take. My moms didn’t come into my room, but I could have sworn I heard her standing outside my door. She never came in, though.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Piarist foundations spread as far as Poland, showed a pleasing interest in new mathematical advances and in the research of Galileo, and were characterized in their early years by their relentless holy poverty. Calasanz was a deeply austere man and was never himself accused of any sexual misbehaviour; his twin weaknesses were poor judgement of character and indulging particular favourites among his brethren. The Piarists then became the theatre of a classic child-abuse scandal, complete with cover-ups and perpetrators being promoted out of the way. [75] Sexual scandal began to gain publicity only six years after the Order’s formal papal approval, but the real trouble awaited the rise within its ranks of a rich Roman lawyer’s son, Stefano Cherubini, a pleasure-loving young man whom Calasanz quickly over-promoted. Cherubini soon set out drastically to modify the Order’s strict mode of life; then in 1629 Calasanz was urgently informed of far more serious sexual offences involving pupils of Cherubini’s school in Naples. The old man, browbeaten by Cherubini and fearful for the future of his Order, took no action, despite a raft of explicit evidence from furious Piarist colleagues. He wrote to Cherubini: There is no one in the world today that wishes more than I that this rumour would disappear…because I have at heart the honour of the Order and of the individual people in it more than anyone else…The Lord make everything disappear as I wish and pray to his divine Majesty. [76] Repeatedly in Calasanz’s letters comes a preferred way forward: ‘it seems best to me, that if we are allowed to be the judges of this case, we will not permit it to come into the hands of outsiders.’ In later years, Calasanz added another reason for the cover-up: respect for Cherubini’s distinguished family. In a pattern later all too familiar, Cherubini was promoted to Visitor General to get him away from the scene of his misdeeds. In the end the outraged chorus from the majority of conscientious Piarists across Europe was too great to ignore, but Pope Innocent X’s Gordian-Knot-style solution in 1646 was simply to dissolve the Order. Several decades passed, and it was only refounded after all the principal actors were dead. The Piarists survived to educate an array of European great names from Mozart to Goya to Pope Pius IX to Egon Ronay. In 1948, Pope Pius XII named Joseph Calasanz as patron saint of Christian schools; it took a conscientious modern researcher to find the scandal still buried in Piarist archives, despite earlier efforts at archival weeding. [77] The sorry tale is worth setting out at length because it illuminates two separate Catholic ideals intertwining with toxic results: the enforcement of clerical celibacy, and the provision of education for all. There was nothing new about child abuse in a clerical context as we have seen in Egypt and early medieval Ireland, but the Counter-Reformation brought a new structural problem without precedent in the Church.

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  Vast adolescent muttering. Silver guard rail... chasm a thousand feet down into the glittering sunlight. Little: green plots of cabbage and lettuce. Brown youths with adzes spied by the old queen across a sewage canal. "Oh dear, I wonder if they fertilize with human excrement.... Maybe they'll do it right now." He flips out mother of pearl opera glasses -- Aztec mosaic in the sun. Long line of Greek lads march up with alabaster bowls of shit, empty into the limestone marl hole. Dusty poplars shake across the red brick Plaza de Toros in the afternoon wind. Wooden cubicles around a hot spring... rubble of ruined walls in a grove of cottonwoods... the benches worn smooth as metal by a million masturbating boys. Greek lads white as marble fuck dog style on the portico of a great golden temple... naked Mugwump twangs a lute. Walking down by the tracks in his red sweater met Sammy the Dock Keeper's son with two Mexicans. "Hey, Skinny," he said, "want to get screwed?" "Well... Yeah." On a ruined straw mattress the Mexican pulled him up on all fours -- Negro boy dance around them beating out the strokes... sun through a knot hole pink spotlights his cock. A waste of raw pink shame to the pastel blue horizon where vast iron mesas crash into the shattered sky, "It's all right." The God screams through you three thousand year rusty load.... Hail of crystal skulls shattered the greenhouse to slivers in the winter moon.... The American woman has left a whiff of poison behind in the dank St. Louis garden party. Pool covered with green slime in a ruined French garden. Huge pathic frog rises slowly from the water on a mud platform playing the clavichord. A Sollubi rushes into the bar and starts polishing The Saint's shoes with the oil on his nose.... The Saint kicks him petulantly in the mouth. The Sollubi screams, whirls around and shits on the Saint's pants. Then he dashes into the street. A pimp looks after him speculatively.... The Saint calls the manager: "Jesus, Al, what kinda creep joint you running here? My brand new fishskin Dégagées..." "I'm sorry, Saint. He slipped by me." (The Sollubi are an untouchable caste in Arabia noted for their abject vileness. De luxe cafes are equipped with Sollubi who rim the guests while they eat -- holes in the seating benches being provided for this purpose. Citizens who want to be utterly humiliated and degraded -- so many people do, nowadays, hoping to jump the gun -- over themselves up for passive homosexual intercourse to an encampment of Sollubis.... Nothing like it, they tell me.... In fact, the Sollubi are subject to become wealthy and arrogant and lose their native vileness. What is origin of untouchable? Perhaps a fallen priest caste. In fact, untouchables perform a priestly function in taking on themselves all human vileness.) A.

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints (2023)

  9. Margaret of Cortona: Midwife and Mystic When he was about 12, she sent him to the Franciscans of Arezzo as a novice. It is unclear whether they ever met again or what her son’s impressions of his mother were. Emphasizing this aspect of their relationship furthered Giunta’s efforts to portray Margaret as desperately penitent for her sins and eager to shed her former life, son included. The connections Margaret had built with wealthy Cortonese families benefited many of her later projects and raised her status in the community. Even as her fame as a holy woman and ascetic grew, Margaret proved herself a savvy manager of people and resources. She leveraged her contacts to become an able fundraiser and administrator. As her charitable efforts became well known, she inspired the wealthy families of her circle to greater acts of charity themselves. One Lady Diabella dedicated her own home as a hospice of mercy, which Margaret ran as an infirmary for the local Franciscans. She built the small hospice into a thriving charity. In 1286, she convinced one of the most powerful noblemen of Cortona, Uguccio Casali, to support the foundation of a hospital. She became the driving force behind the foundation and administration of Spedale di Santa Maria della Misericordia, also founding an organization of pious laypeople (known as a confraternity) to run the hospital. 67 9. Margaret of Cortona: Midwife and Mystic Margaret’s Rising Status While Margaret’s embrace of poverty and good works benefitted her reputation in Cortona, it was her mystical visions that attracted followers and elevated her authority above that of priests and bishops. Margaret became a local celebrity. She was asked to perform baptisms, healings, and even exorcisms so often that she began to refuse, fearing that she was spending too much time on these worldly things. But Margaret also wondered if, by refusing to attend, she would lose favor with Christ. She was constantly on the alert for signs of weakness in herself, and the Legenda is full of passages in which she castigates herself for not being ascetic enough—devout enough—to atone for her past sins. She was devoted to prayer and frequently overcome with contrition. She would give away all her possessions, and paupers clustered around her cell in expectation of alms. Margaret’s devoted followers tried to tempt her with good food, but she reprimanded them and rejected their offerings—though apparently, she had a weakness for figs, which she ate but later bemoaned as a temptation. Margaret also became the holy defender of Cortona. A miracle describes her prayers as forming a wall around the city. This was not a hypothetical attack she envisioned. Arezzo and Cortona had been at war for some time and only reached a fragile peace in 1277. They had a difficult relationship for decades afterward. The holy woman’s defense of her city was held up as an example of Cortonese independence. 68

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  29 The Manner of Jesus’s Death • If the Resurrection of Jesus was the good news, his death seemed problematic to both Gentiles and Jews, appearing to disqualify him as a source of divine life for others. • In 1 Corinthians 1:18–25, Paul acknowledges that the “message of the cross,” which was for Christians the “power of salvation,” appeared to Greeks as foolishness and to Jews as a stumbling block. • In antiquity, the manner of death was proof of the quality of a life, and Jesus’s violent death by legal execution disqualified him as a source of divine life for both sides of the cultural world. o Paul says that the “Greeks seek wisdom,” meaning that a great soldier or sage could join the gods—but crucifixion, the most shameful of all deaths and one used mainly for slaves, could appear only “foolish.” o Paul further says that “Jews seek signs,” meaning signs that Jesus was a genuine messiah for the Jews, but Jesus did nothing to make things better for the Jews; he did not restore the kingdom, the Temple, or the Law. In Jewish terms, he was a failed messiah. o The manner of Jesus’s life was that of a sinner; worse, his manner of death was one cursed by God, for “cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree” (Deut. 21:23). Crucifixion was the most shameful of all deaths, used mainly for slaves and rebels against the Roman order; the fact that Jesus died in this manner disqualified him as a source of divine life for both Greeks and Jews. © iStockphoto/Thinkstock.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “I just don’t get it,” Zav went on, addressing Sasha, “why you stay with Julian. You’re too hot for him.” Sasha giggled, though I glanced back and saw her labor to calculate a response. “I mean, she’s a babe,” Zav said to Julian, “am I right?” Julian smiled what I thought of as the smile of an only son, someone who believed he would always get what he wanted. He probably always had. The three of them were lit like a scene from a movie I was too old to watch. “But Sasha and I know each other, don’t we?” Zav smiled at her. “I like Sasha.” Sasha held a basic smile on her face, her fingers tidying the pile of torn label. “She doesn’t like her tits,” Julian said, pulsing the back of her neck, “but I tell her they’re nice.” “Sasha!” Zav affected upset. “You have great tits.” I flushed, hurrying to finish the dishes. “Yeah,” Julian said, his hand still on her neck. “Zav would tell you if you didn’t.” “I always tell the truth,” Zav said. “He does,” Julian said. “That’s true.” “Show me,” Zav said. “They’re too small,” Sasha said. Her mouth was tight like she was making fun of herself, and she shifted in her seat. “They’ll never sag, so that’s good,” Julian said. Tickling her shoulder. “Let Zav see.” Sasha’s face reddened. “Do it, babe,” Julian said, a harshness in his voice making me glance over. I caught Sasha’s eye—I told myself the look in her face was pleading. “Come on, you guys,” I said. The boys turned with amused surprise. Though I think they were tracking where I was all along. That my presence was a part of the game. “What?” Julian said, his face snapping into innocence. “Just cool it,” I told him. “Oh, it’s fine,” Sasha said. Laughing a little, her eyes on Julian. “What exactly are we doing?” Julian said. “What exactly should we ‘cool’?” He and Zav snorted—how quickly all the old feelings came back, the humiliating interior fumble. I crossed my arms, looking to Sasha. “You’re bothering her.” “Sasha’s fine,” Julian said. He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear—she smiled faintly and with effort. “Besides,” he went on, “are you really someone who should be lecturing us?” My heart tightened. “Didn’t you, like, kill someone?” Julian said. 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.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “Fuck.” Suzanne sighed. “This is all messed up.” “You need pliers or something,” Donna said. “You aren’t gonna fix it now. Stick it in the bus, come hang with us for a while.” “Let’s just give her a ride into town,” Suzanne said. She spoke briskly, like I was a mess that needed to be cleaned up. Even so, I was glad. I was used to thinking about people who never thought about me. “We’re having a solstice party,” Donna said. I didn’t want to go back to my mother, to the forlorn guardianship of my own self. I had the sense that if I let Suzanne go, I would not see her again. “Evie wants to come,” Donna said. “I can tell she’s up for it. You like to have fun, don’t you?” “Come on,” Suzanne said. “She’s a kid.” I surged with shame. “I’m sixteen,” I lied. “She’s sixteen,” Donna repeated. “Don’t you think Russell would want us to be hospitable? I think he’d be upset if I told him we weren’t being hospitable.” I didn’t read any threat in Donna’s voice, only teasing. Suzanne’s mouth was tight; she finally smiled. “Okay,” she said. “Put the bike in the back.” — I saw that the bus had been emptied and rebuilt, the interior cruddy and overworked in the way things were back then—the floor gridded with Oriental carpets, grayed with dust, the drained tufts of thrift store cushions. The stink of a joss stick in the air, prisms ticking against the windows. Cardboard scrawled with dopey phrases. There were three other girls in the bus, and they turned to me with eagerness, a feral attention I read as flattering. Cigarettes going in their hands while they looked me up and down, an air of festivity and timelessness. A sack of green potatoes, pasty hot dog buns. A crate of wet, overripe tomatoes. “We were on a food run,” Donna said, though I didn’t really understand what that meant. My mind was preoccupied with this

• From The Girls (2016)

  Donna could tell I was distracted and catted her eyes over at me. “Did he show you the fountain in the backyard?” she said. “He got it from Rome. Mitch’s place has high vibes,” she went on, “all the ions, ’cause of the ocean.” I reddened, trying to concentrate on separating the garlic from its woody husks. The buzz of the radio suddenly seemed nasty, polluting, the announcer talking too fast. They’d all been there, I understood, to Mitch’s strange house by the sea. I’d enacted some pattern, been defined, neatly, as a girl, providing a known value. There was something almost comforting about it, the clarity of purpose, even as it shamed me. I didn’t understand that you could hope for more. I hadn’t seen the fountain. I did not say so. Donna’s eyes were bright. “You know,” she said, “Suzanne’s parents are actually real rich. Propane or something. She never was homeless or anything, either.” She was working the dough on the counter as she spoke. “Didn’t end up in any hospital. Any of that shit she says. Just scratched herself up with a paper clip, on some freaky jag.” I was queasy from the stench of food scraps softening in the sink. I shrugged like I didn’t much care either way. Donna went on. “You don’t believe me,” she said. “But it’s true. We were up in Mendocino. Crashing with an apple farmer. She’d done too much acid, just started working away at herself with that clip until we made her quit. She didn’t even bleed, though.” When I didn’t respond, Donna slammed the dough into a bowl. Punching it down. “Think whatever you want,” she said. —Suzanne came into her bedroom later, while I was changing. I hunched myself protectively over my naked chest: Suzanne noticed and seemed ready to mock me but stopped herself. I saw the scars on her wrist but didn’t indulge the uneasy questions—Donna was just jealous. Never mind Donna and her stiff Vaseline hair, shanky and foul as a muskrat’s. “Last night was a trip,” Suzanne said. I pulled away when she tried to sling her arm around me. “Oh, come on, you were into it,” she said. “I saw.” I made a sick face—she laughed. I occupied myself with tidying the sheets, as if the bed could ever be anything but a dank nest. “Aw, it’s fine,” Suzanne said. “I got something to cheer you up.” I thought she was going to apologize. But then it occurred to me—she was going to kiss me again. The dim room got airless. I almost felt it happen, an imperceptible lean—but Suzanne just hefted her bag onto the bed, the fringe pooling on the mattress. The bag was full of a strange weight. She gave me a triumphant look. “Go on,” she said. “Look inside.” Suzanne huffed at my stubbornness and opened it herself. I didn’t understand what was inside, the odd metallic flash. The sharp corners. “Take it out,” Suzanne said, impatient.

• From The Girls (2016)

  Packing herself with particulars: the autopsy reports, the testimony the girls gave of that night, like the transcript of a bad dream. “It’s nothing to be proud of,” I said. Recounting the usual things—it was awful. Not glamorous, not enviable. “There wasn’t anything about you,” Sasha said. “Not that I could find.” I felt a lurch. I wanted to tell her something valuable, my existence traced with enough care that I would become visible. “It’s better that way,” I said. “So the lunatics don’t search me out.” “But you were there?” “I lived there. Basically. For a while. I didn’t kill anyone or anything.” My laugh came out flat. “Obviously.” She was huddling into her sweatshirt. “You just left your parents?” Her voice was admiring. “It was a different time,” I said. “Everyone ran around. My parents were divorced.” “So are mine,” Sasha said, forgetting to be shy. “And you were my age?” “A little younger.” “I bet you were really pretty. I mean, duh, you’re pretty now, too,” she said. I could see her puff up with her own generosity. “How’d you even meet them?” Sasha asked. It took me a moment to gather myself, to remember the sequence of things. “Revisit” is the word they always used in anniversary articles about the murder. “Revisiting the horror of Edgewater Road,” as if the event existed singularly, a box you could close a lid on. As if I hadn’t been stopped by hundreds of ghosted Suzannes on the streets or in the background of movies. I fielded Sasha’s questions about what they had been like in real life, those people who had become totems of themselves. Guy had been less interesting to the media, just a man doing what men had always done, but the girls were made mythic. Donna was the unattractive one, slow and rough, often cast as a pity case. The hungry harshness in her face. Helen, the former Camp Fire Girl, tan and pigtailed and pretty—she was the fetish object, the pinup murderess. But Suzanne got the worst of it. Depraved. Evil. Her sneaky beauty didn’t photograph well. She looked feral and meager, like she might have existed only to kill. Talking about Suzanne raised a rev in my chest that I was sure Sasha could see. It seemed shameful. To feel that helpless excitement, considering what had happened. The caretaker on the couch, the coiled casing of his guts exposed to the air. The mother’s hair soaked with gore. The boy so disfigured the police weren’t sure of his gender. Surely Sasha had read about those things, too. “Did you ever think you could have done what they did?” she asked. “Of course not,” I said reflexively. In all the times I had ever told anyone about the ranch, few had ever asked me that question. Whether I could have done it, too. Whether I almost had. Most assumed a base level of morality separated me, as if the girls had been a different species.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “You told me you were going to Connie’s all summer,” my mother said. Almost shouting. “You said it so many times. Right to my face. And guess what? I called Arthur. He says you haven’t been there in months. Almost two months.” My mother looked like an animal then, her face made strange with rage, a gaspy run of tears. “You’re a liar. You lied about that. You’re lying about this, too.” Her hands were clenched hard. She kept lifting them, then dropping them at her sides. “I was seeing friends,” I snapped. “I have other friends besides Connie.” “Other friends. Sure. You were out screwing some boyfriend, God knows what. Nasty little liar.” She was barely looking at me, her words as compulsive and fevered as the muttered obscenities of a pervert. “Maybe I should take you down to the juvenile detention center. Is that what you want? It’s clear to me I just can’t control you anymore. I’ll let them have you. See if they can straighten you out.” I wrenched away, but even in the hallway, even with my door closed, I could still hear my mother at her bitter chant. —Frank was called in as reinforcement: I watched from the bed as he took my bedroom door off its hinges. He was careful and quiet, though it took him a while, and he eased the door out of the frame as if it were made of glass instead of cheapo hollow-core. He placed it against the wall gently. Then hovered for a moment in the now empty doorway. Rattling the screws in his hands like dice. “Sorry about this,” he said, like he was just the hired help, the maintenance man carrying out my mother’s wishes. I didn’t want to have to notice the actual kindness in his eyes, how immediately it drained my hateful narration of Frank of any real heat. I could picture him in Mexico for the first time, slightly sunburned so the hair on his arm turned platinum. Sipping a lemon soda while overseeing his gold mine—I pictured a cave whose interior was cobblestoned in stony growths of gold. I kept expecting Frank to tell my mother about the stolen money. Pile on more problems to the list. But he didn’t. Maybe he’d seen that she was already angry enough. Frank kept up a silent vigil at the table during her many phone calls with my father while I listened from the hallway. Her high-pitched complaints, all her questions squeezed to a panicked register. What kind of person breaks into a neighbor’s house? A family I’d known my whole life? “For no reason,” she added shrilly. A pause. “You think I haven’t asked her? You think I haven’t tried?” Silence. “Oh, sure, right, I bet. You want to try?” And so I was sent to Palo Alto. —I spent two weeks at my father’s apartment.

• From The Girls (2016)

  Anything could be yoga: doing the dishes, grooming the llamas. Making food for Russell. You were supposed to bliss out on it, to settle into whatever the rhythms were going to teach you. Break down the self, offer yourself up like dust to the universe. —All the books made it sound like the men forced the girls into it. That wasn’t true, not all the time. Suzanne wielded her Swinger camera like a weapon. Goading men to drop their jeans. To expose their penises, tender and naked in dark nests of hair. The men smiled shyly in the pictures, paled from the guilty flash, all hair and wet animal eyes. “ There isn’t any film in the camera,” Suzanne would say, though she had stolen a case of film from the store. The boys pretended to believe her. It was like that with lots of things. I trailed after Suzanne, after all of them. Suzanne letting me draw suns and moons on her naked back with tanning oil while Russell played an idle riff on his guitar, a coy up-and-down fragment. Helen sighing like the lovesick kid she was, Roos joining us with a drifty smile, some teenage boy I didn’t know looking at us all with grateful awe, and no one even had to speak—the silence was knit with so much. —I prepared inwardly for Russell’s advances, but it only happened after a while. Russell giving me a cryptic nod so I knew to follow him. I’d been washing windows with Suzanne in the main house—the floor littered with the crumple of newspaper and vinegar, the transistor radio going; even chores took on the delight of truancy. Suzanne singing along, talking to me with happy, fitful distraction. She looked different, those times we worked together, like she forgot herself and relaxed into the girl she was. It’s strange to remember she was just nineteen. When Russell nodded at me, I looked at her reflexively. For permission or forgiveness, either one. The ease in her face had drained into a brittle mask. Scrubbing the warped window with new concentration. She shrugged goodbye when I left, like she didn’t mind, though I could sense her watchful gaze on my back. Every time Russell nodded at me like that, my heart contracted, despite the strangeness. I was eager for our encounters, eager to cement my place among them, as if doing what Suzanne did was a way of being with her. Russell never fucked me—it was always other stuff, his fingers moving in me with a technical remove I ascribed to his purity. His aims were elevated, I told myself, unsullied by primitive concerns. “Look at yourself,” he said whenever he sensed shame or hesitance. Pointing me toward the fogged mirror in the trailer. “Look at your body. It’s not some stranger’s body,” he said evenly. When I shied away, goofing some excuse, he took me by the shoulders and pointed me back at the mirror. “It’s you,” he said. “It’s Evie.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  He sipped. It didn’t burn as much as it had before. “Did you hear me?” She whispered, “Yes, I did, sir.” He moved close. She smelled the liquor. “I don’t want a whisper.” He invaded her space. Got real personal. “I want the boardroom beast. I want the wild wife that can’t get what she needs from her husband. I want the bitch that I know you can be. Can you give me that voice?” Her voice reached a higher decibel. “Yes, you can get that woman, sir.” “Well, why do you want to be a part of this?” he growled. “Because my husband can’t fuck, sir,” she shouted. Pretty lost his composure. “Huh?” She stood proud even though she gave away part of her family’s secret. “He cannot fuck, sir.” “So, why me?” She gave no eye contact. The schoolgirl in her came out. “I said, why me, bitch!” Her answer was short and aggressive. “Because you’re black, sir.” He pointed toward the door. “There are a few black men out there. You could have any one of them. Why did your husband call me into his office?” “Because I asked him to.” She paused. Irritation flared. “Sir.” “And how do you know me?” “I don’t.” “Well, why did you ask for me?” “Because you are the one that they call Pretty, sir.” “Who are they?” She stepped out of character. “Does it matter who they are?” “I ask the questions, bitch!” She fell back into place. “I’m sorry, sir.” She warmed to his commands. She ate his voice. “The they that I refer to is my good friend Mrs. Charleston, sir.” Pretty coughed. He knew Mrs. Charleston as the lady with the unenviable task of time sheets. She was in Human Resources. She was Oriental and built like a sumo wrestler. How she knew his nickname was Pretty, he didn’t know. “I know Mrs. Charleston. And she told you what?” “She told me that they call you Pretty, sir.” “Do you know why they call me Pretty?” “I can guess. But I would love for you to show me why they call you Pretty, sir.” Pretty moved to her ear. He tugged it his way before words found the inside. “I’ll show you why, but not here.” Her body language showed hesitation. He took it as defiance. They got their signals crossed. “We fuck at my place.” He checked his watch. His tone was disrespectful. “I parked in back. Tell Geronimo that you’ll be back in a couple of hours.” He pulled her near. “No questions. We do it my way. Understand?” His question was obviously rhetorical, because he didn’t wait for an answer. He strolled out. Her horse turned into a pumpkin.

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

  After an inward snort about “normal comparison group,” I read on and found that, as usual in new fields of clinical medicine, there were far more questions than answers, and it was unclear what any of these findings really meant: they could be due to problems in measurement, they could be explained by dietary or treatment history, they could be due to something totally unrelated to manic-depressive illness; there could be any number of other explanations. The odds were very strong, however, that the UBOs meant something. In a strange way, though, after reading through a long series of studies, I ended up more reassured and less frightened. The very fact that the science was moving so quickly had a way of generating hope, and, if the changes in the brain structure did turn out to be meaningful, I was glad that first-class researchers were studying them. Without science, there would be no such hope. No hope at all. And, whatever else, it certainly gave new meaning to the concept of losing one’s mind. Clinical Privileges [image file=image_rsrcW1.jpg] There is no easy way to tell other people that you have manic-depressive illness; if there is, I haven’t found it. So despite the fact that most people that I have told have been very understanding—some remarkably so—I remain haunted by those occasions when the response was unkind, condescending, or lacking in even a semblance of empathy. The thought of discussing my illness in a more public forum has been, until quite recently, almost inconceivable. Much of this reluctance has been for professional reasons, but some has resulted from the cruelty, intentional or otherwise, that I have now and again experienced from colleagues or friends that I have chosen to confide in. It is what I have come to think of, not without bitterness, as the Mouseheart factor. Mouseheart, a former colleague of mine in Los Angeles, was also, I thought, a friend. A soft-spoken psychoanalyst, he was someone I was in the habit of getting together with for a morning coffee. Less frequently, but enjoyably, we would go out for a long lunch and talk about our work and our lives. After some time, I began to feel the usual discomfort I tend to experience whenever a certain level of friendship or intimacy has been reached in a relationship and I have not mentioned my illness. It is, after all, not just an illness, but something that affects every aspect of my life: my moods, my temperament, my work, and my reactions to almost everything that comes my way. Not talking about manic-depressive illness, if only to discuss it once, generally consigns a friendship to a certain inevitable level of superficiality. With an inward sigh, I decided to go ahead and tell him.

• 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)

  “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 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.