Surprise

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 My Life on the Road (2015)

  As usual, I tell her I’m glad to have a woman driver. She says not a word. Only at the end of the ride does she ask: “Do you remember a young man who drove you long ago and wanted advice about lingerie?” I say yes, I definitely do. “Well, I was that miserable man,” she says. “Now I’ve had tops and bottoms done, and I’m a happy woman.” I congratulate her on what has become a choice. A growing number of people have been able to match their inner sense of self with a place on the continuum of gender that wasn’t assigned to them at birth. And over time, the question I have to ask myself is this: What would I have felt had I known I was talking to a woman, not a man? Such is the divisive power of a binary called gender. • As I get into a taxi to Friendship Airport, not far from Annapolis, the driver puts a textbook back on the stack next to him. Clearly, he’s been using every moment to study. He’s moonlighting from his food service job at the Naval Academy, as he explains, and is studying to be an engineer. For me, this is a big déjà vu. Long ago, in 1972, one of my first lectures with my speaking partner, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, was to the more than four thousand cadets at the Naval Academy. We were the only women in a lecture series that otherwise included a quarterback from the Dallas Cowboys, the novelist Herman Wouk, and a deputy secretary of defense. The cadets themselves were all male, and only about eighty of the four thousand were other than white. We did our best to introduce the women’s movement to this huge crowd seated far away from us in regimented rows, but we couldn’t tell whether the roar of response was approval or disapproval. Some cadets carried oranges from dinner and tossed them at the stage. We weren’t sure whether this was the equivalent of roses or rotten eggs. Just before that lecture, there had been a seated dinner at the home of Admiral James Calvert, the Naval Academy superintendent. Dorothy and I were surprised that only Filipino men were serving us. For many years, assigning this domestic role to male Filipinos had been the navy’s way of getting women’s work done without women, yet I thought the 1960s and the civil rights movement would have changed all that. When we asked, Admiral Calvert assured us that Filipinos were happy to get these jobs. Dorothy replied, “Like my folks in Georgia were happy to be picking cotton?” I could see the admiral was relieved when we returned to arguing about Vietnam. During dessert, the naval cadet sitting next to me whispered that one of the Filipino servers must not be all that happy. He had asked to borrow that cadet’s engineering books. Now I tell my Annapolis driver about my memory.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  As we drive toward the Badlands, we see an acre of motorcycles around each isolated diner and motel. This solves the mystery of the leather and chains, but creates another. When we stop for coffee, our waitress can’t believe we don’t know. Every August since 1938, bikers from all over the world have come here for a rally named after Sturgis, a town that’s just a wide place in the road. They are drawn by this sparsely populated space of forests, mountains, and a grid of highways so straight that it is recognizable from outer space. Right now about 250,000 bikers are filling every motel and campground within five hundred miles. Our band of six strong women takes note. The truth is we are a little afraid of so many bikers in one place. How could we not be? We have all learned from movies that bikers travel in packs, treat their women like possessions, and may see other women as sexual fair game. But we don’t run into the bikers because we spend our days traveling down unmarked roads, past the last stand of trees, in Indian Country. We eat home- cooked food brought in trucks, sit on blankets around powwow grounds where dancers follow the heartbeat of drums, and watch Indian ponies as decorated as the dancers. When it rains, a rainbow stretches from can’t-see to can’t-see, and fields of wet sweet grass become as fragrant as gigantic flowers. Only when we return late each night to our cabins do we see motorcycles in the parking lot. While walking in Rapid City, I hear a biker say to his tattooed woman partner, “Honey, shop as long as you want—I’ll meet you at the cappuccino place.” I assume this is an aberration. On our last morning, I enter the lodge alone for an early breakfast, trying to remain both inconspicuous and open-minded. Still, I’m hyperconscious of a room full of knife sheaths, jackboots, and very few women. In the booth next to me, a man with chains around his muscles and a woman in leather pants and an improbable hairdo are taking note of my presence. Finally, the woman comes over to talk. “I just want to tell you,” she says cheerfully, “how much Ms. magazine has meant to me over the years—and my husband, too. He reads some now that he’s retired. But what I wanted to ask—isn’t one of the women you’re traveling with Alice Walker? I love her poetry.” It turns out that she and her husband have been coming to this motorcycle rally every year since they were first married.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  • I’m headed to the airport for the third time in a week, trying to hail a taxi in the pouring rain. I’m late, I’m grouchy, and when a driver finally picks me up, I’m in no mood to talk to this scruffy white kid in his twenties. The only personal thing I see is a drawing of a gigantic eye propped up on the front seat next to him. I suppress my curiosity. After a long time of quiet, he asks what I do. I offer just three words—I’m a writer —hoping brevity won’t invite conversation. “Then I wouldn’t know you,” he says seriously, “because I don’t read.” Assuming he’s a smart-ass, I don’t answer. “I also don’t watch television,” he goes on. “I don’t look at the Internet or read newspapers or books or play video games. I haven’t done any of those things in almost a year. I don’t want anything to interpret the world for me. I’m mainlining life.” My resolve is slipping. He has made me think of a classics professor who told us to read Plato or Shakespeare or Dante as if we found their books in the street and had no idea who they were. I always loved his trust in the work itself—and also his trust in us. Finally, I can no longer resist asking this guy why he is shutting out all the usual signals. He explains that his girlfriend was taking courses like women’s studies and black studies, so she put tape over the names of authors and told him to judge without knowing the identity of the author. He found this so disorienting that he started to count the filters that were telling him what to think. “Filters let in a cup of water,” he says, “but keep out the ocean.” It turns out that driving a taxi is just part of a year he’s planned, working his way cross-country, doing odd jobs like repairing cars and picking fruit to support himself, all the while going cold turkey on media. He is seeing America without being told first what he’s seeing. I tell him he has a lot in common with organizers. We’re trying to create spaces where people can listen and talk, without first putting each other in categories. After his year is up, I suggest he take what he’s learned and teach it to others. “You see?” he says seriously as we pull into LaGuardia, “This is what happens with no filters.” Instead of a tip, he asks for a bargain. “Write about my experiment,” he says. “Explain that you met this recovering media addict who used to dream about people in movies instead of real people. I never read a book unless some reviewer told me to. I was such a news junkie, I went to sleep with my headset on. I even worried about missing email while I was making love to my girlfriend. I had media-itis, but now I’m trying to see life unmediated.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Those were Querelle's first words. In the dark, he held out a pack of cigarettes to Gil, and their hands met in a groping handshake that enclosed the pack. "Thanks, buddy. That's good of you. I won't forget it." "Come on. Don't even mention it." "And I got you some cold meat and a little bit of pate." "Put 'em on the crate there." · 168 I JEAN GENET Querelle took out another pack and lit himself a cigarette from it. He wanted to be able to see Gil's face. He was surprised when he saw how emaciated, pain-racked and dirty it was, and covered with a fair, soft growth of beard. Gil's hair was matted. The face was a moving sight, in the light of the match. It was a murderer's face. Querelle raised the match to look around. "It must be pretty grim, living here." "You said it, it's no joke. But what could I do? 'Where else c.ould I have gone?" Querelle stuck his hands in his pants pockets, and all three were silent for a moment or two. "Aren't you going to eat, Gil?" Gil certainly was hungry, but he didn't want to show it to Querelle. "Go ahead and light the candle, there's no one else around." Gil sat down on a comer of the crate. He started to eat, in a casual manner. The boy hunkered down at his feet, and Querelle stood looking at the two of them, his legs apart, smoking his ciagarette without touching it with his hands. "I probably look like hell, don't I?" Querelle grinned. "Can't say you're a beaut, but it'll be easy to fix. You're safe here, in any case?" "Yeah. Unless someone snitches, that is." "If that's me you have in mind, you're wrong. I got no truck with informers. But I can't see how much longer you can make it here. You've got to get out of here, and that's for sure." Querelle knew that his expression had suddenly turned cruel, as on the days of arms drill when it was shielded by the steel triangle of the bayonet fixed to his rifle. Those times his face, itself, became as if plated with steel. Sheltering behind it and representing that bayonet was the true soul of a Querelle otherwise put together out of flesh and cloth. To the officer inspect- 169 I QUERELLE ing the men on deck, the bayonet was exactly in line with Querelle's left eyebrow and eye, and when he met Querelle's stare it seemed to him like looking into an entire arms factory. "With a little dough I could perhaps make it to Spain. I know some guys in Perpignan; I used to work down there."

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Lionel slid a little down the inclining sidewalk. The ice was scratchy beneath the snow, but then his soles found traction and he righted himself. The voice was closer then, but Lionel could see his building nearby, right there on the corner. He had a first-floor apartment. The light from the center hall of the building projected out onto the snow, a dull, yellow pool. He patted his pockets for his keys. “Lionel!” he heard, the voice no longer indistinct but clear and ringing through the night: his name. Lionel looked up, and there was Charles, at the boundary between the light and the shadow. He breathed hard and bent over, clutching his side. His hair was damp, and beads of sweat had frozen to the ends of his curls, glinting. It was strange to see him here. Lionel found his keys in his pocket. “Why are you here? How are you here?” “You ran! Who runs?” Charles looked up at him, his panting coming to an end. “I guess I did,” Lionel said. “I wasn’t trying to. I mean, I didn’t know I was running from you.” “I texted you!” Charles said. He was upright then. His hands rested on his hips. But his weight distribution had him favoring one leg over the other. Lionel remembered his knee and felt bad. “Ah. That was you.” “Yes, idiot,” Charles said. “Where’s your car?” “Up the street.” “I guess that makes sense,” Lionel said. His thighs burned and his lower back hurt. He had been running. Jostling himself through the thick snowdrifts. He felt very tired. And he wanted to be warm. “Do you want to come inside, then?” “Sure,” Charles said. Lionel nodded but did not move right away to open the door for them. He looked down into his palm at his keys, which the hospital staff had returned to him a few days before, along with the rest of his possessions. They were light, cold against his palm. The apartment building loomed behind them. All he had to do was turn and put the key into the lock, but he couldn’t. His joints wouldn’t move. His muscles wouldn’t budge. It felt too much after too long a night. “Can you?” Lionel asked. “Would you?” “You’re such a little weirdo,” Charles said. But he took the keys from Lionel’s hand. He tried the first one, but when it wouldn’t undo the lock of the main door, he turned back to look at Lionel. He tried another, still no luck. “You want to help out here?” “It’s the one with the red tape,” Lionel said. A car passed on the street, kicking up gray slush into the air. Some of it landed near the rim of light at the edge of the yard. Charles unlocked the door and the warmth of the lower hall wafted out to them. It smelled like boiled cabbage and floor wax.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  If Dante ever really entertained such a purpose, his changed estimate of Frederick was probably caused by the latter’s slackness in espousing the imperial cause in opposition to his hereditary foe, Robert of Naples, the head of the Italian Guelfs.12. The space allotted to the record of so paltry a man being limited, contracted words must be used if room is to be found for all his bad qualities and deeds.13. James of the Balearic Isles and James of Aragon.14. Orosius of Rascia issued counterfeit Venetian coins. See map on p. 454.15. In 1300 Andrew was king of Hungary. He was succeeded by Caroberto (1310-1342), the son of Dante’s friend Carlo Martello whom his uncle Robert had ousted from the Neapolitan succession. (Cf. Canto ix, note 1.) Hungary had suffered from the evils of a disputed succession and of terrible wars. Happy if she had now seen the end of them!16. Navarre was the separate kingdom of Joanna, wife of Philip the Fair. Happy if she maintained the barrier of the Pyrenees between herself and her great neighbour! The fate of Cyprus under the French dynasty of Lusignan may warn her of her fate should she fell under France.C A N T O X XAs when the one light of the sun disappears, the heaven is straightway rekindled by many stars, so when the one voice of the eagle ceased the many beings that composed it, shining yet more brightly, burst into an angelic chime of many notes, which was followed by a murmuring as of falling waters, gathering once more in the neck of the eagle into a single voice. The eagle declares that the six lights which forms its pupil and eyebrow are the greatest of all, and goes on to enumerate them, using, in most cases, rich and pregnant circumlocution, but expressly naming Ripheus the Trojan, that there may be no room to misconceive a statement so incredible as that he (as well as Trajan, the heathen emperor, already indicated by a paraphrase not to be misunderstood) is in heaven. Then once more the eagle bursts into rapturous song, and when it pauses, Dante, though he knows that the spirits read his inmost thoughts as we on earth see colour through a sheet of glass, yet can not restrain the utterance of his amazement at the presence of these two heathen; whereon the eagle declares that both of them died in the true faith, Ripheus in Christ to come and Trajan in Christ come; and so explains the former case as to suggest that revelations may have been vouchsafed to other righteous Pagans. So little do men fathom the divine counsels! Nay, the redeemed souls, as they look on God, know not yet who shall be the saved; and in this very limitation of their knowledge they rejoice, for it is a point of conscious contact with the will of God.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  “I’m telling you this because today is our wedding anniversary—and if you don’t mind my saying so, you two kind of remind me of us. If you wouldn’t be offended, I’d like to give you a free ride—so I can go home and tell my wife I helped another young couple like us.” Surprised and touched, we say his words are enough, but we end up accepting because it matters so much to him. At the airport, we all stand outside his taxi, shaking hands—a little awkward with emotion. “You know,” the driver says, “me and my wife and you two, we’re what this country is all about.” Later my friend and I will agree that the worst punishment of that racist shout in the street was making us mistrust this man when we first got into his taxi. Years pass. My friend and I are carried into different lives. He lives on the West Coast, has children, grandchildren, and a life I cannot know. We are only sure that we wish each other well. When I run into him again almost thirty years later, the first thing he says to me is, “Do you remember that taxi driver?” And I do. —WHEN I ENTER A TAXI, I find myself in someone’s life. Kids’ photos on the dashboard, religious or other decorations hanging from the rearview mirror, name and perhaps ethnicity evident from the hack license on display—plus the sensory hit of the driver’s physical self in a small space—all plunge me into a mobile world. In what writer Pete Hamill calls a “common strategy against loneliness, a fleeting intimacy with their passengers,”1 drivers tell you stories and are happy to listen to yours. I discovered these worlds on wheels when I was first living in New York. After I began writing “The City Politic,” a weekly column for New York magazine, I depended on cabbies not only to get me to my destination but to give me tips on public opinion and elections. They tend to be shit-free guides to the state of social issues, and are often better political predictors than most media pundits. After all, they spend more time listening to random strangers than any public opinion poll could afford; they overhear more private conversations than a wiretapper; and they often are themselves new immigrants or work with those who are. This makes them treasure troves of information on what’s really going on, not only here but in other countries. An example came only ten days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks felled the Twin Towers in Manhattan. I was haunted by the televised scenes of office workers diving to their deaths rather than be immolated in that inferno, images so terrible that television stations soon stopped showing them. Downtown streets were covered with surrealistic gray ash and debris, and gutters were filled with the bodies of birds that had been incinerated in flight.

• From Escape (2007)

  Linda and Claudel began making plans to escape after they turned eighteen. Claudel had made a friend in Salt Lake City who was not in the FLDS and knew about her despair. Having one friend on the outside, one number to call, was huge, especially since Claudel had returned to Colorado City to live. I had been working at my father’s construction company that summer and was being paid $1.25 an hour. But I was saving every dime I made. Mama had gone on a business trip with my father, and Rosie was taking care of the family. Linda had been acting strange for several days, which baffled me. Elaine, one of Linda’s best friends, had come over, ostensibly to help Linda clean out her room. Linda was giving a lot of her things away, which didn’t strike me as odd until I realized that she was unpacking her hope chest. Most of us started hope chests in our early teens. Hope chests were status symbols in the community. We filled them with things we’d need in our marriages: pots, pans, linens, and blankets. Some girls made quilts for their hope chests. I did not. But often at birthdays we’d give one another things for our hope chests. I asked Linda why she was giving away the treasured items she was saving for her marriage and many of her clothes. “I’m sick of everything, so I’ve given it to Elaine. I don’t want to wear these clothes anymore. I’ll just make some more.” She wasn’t very convincing; her behavior was like jagged pieces of a puzzle that I couldn’t put together. Linda knocked on my door at nine o’clock that night. I was getting ready for bed and was surprised to see her fully dressed at bedtime. Her face was pale. She clutched a large garbage bag of things she hadn’t given away. In a whisper, she said to me, “Carolyn, I am leaving. Some of my friends are taking me to a neighboring community. From there I’m going to disappear. Some people are going to help me escape.” I was stunned. Never, ever would I have guessed that Linda was running away with total strangers. I started to tremble. “Why are you doing that? How can you trust people you don’t even know?” Linda shrugged again. “Even if they are bad people, I don’t have anything to lose. If I stay here, my life is over. I’m not going to do that. Carolyn, do you think I can borrow twenty dollars from you?” I was numb. I didn’t want to lose my sister. I walked over to the dresser drawer where I kept my summer money and handed her the envelope. “Take all of it, Linda—you’re going to need it.” Linda resisted. “I only need twenty dollars—that’s enough. I can’t take all your money.”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  “Surely,” said I within myself, “something new must answer this new signal, which my Master thus follows with his eye.” Ah! how cautious ought men to be with those who see not only the deed, but with their sense look through into the thoughts! He said to me: “What I expect will soon come up; and what thy thought dreams of, soon must be discovered to thy view.” Always to that truth which has an air of falsehood, a man should close his lips, so far as he is able, for, though blameless, he incurs reproach; but here keep silent I cannot; and, Reader, I swear to thee, by the notes of this my Comedy—so may they not be void of lasting favour — that I saw, through that air gross and dark, come swimming upwards, a figure 9 marvellous to every steadfast heart; like as he returns, who on a time goes down to loose the anchor, which grapples a rock or other thing that in the sea is hid, who spreads the arms and gathers up the feet. 1. The haste to do them reverence. 2. Because of the sand. 3. According to a romantic story, Guido Guerra IV married Gualdrada at the instigation of the Emperor Otto IV, whom she had given a striking proof of her chaste disposition. Their grandson was, contrary to the family tradition, a zealous Guelf, who, having served his party faithfully from 1250 to 1266, was appointed Vicar of Tuscany by Charles of Anjou, and held this post till his death (1272). In one of the most notable events of his career he was associated with Tegghiaio Aldobrandi (a powerful Guelf of the Adimari family, for which see Canto viii). Before the expedition against the Sienese, which resulted in the disastrous defeat of the Guelfs at Montaperti (1260), Tegghiaio acted as the spokesman of the Guelf nobles (headed by Guido Guerra) who voted against the expedition, knowing that the enemy had been reinforced by German mercenaries (see Villani, vi).—The reference to Aldobrandi should perhaps be rendered: “... whose words of advice should have been accepted in the world above.” 4. Jacopo Rusticucci, a Florentine of lowly origin whose savage-tempered wife appears to have been partly responsible for his present position. 5. Little is known of this personage, save that he appears to have been a purse-maker, who exchanged his trade for a life of social pleasure. 6. “I was,” namely—in the world below. 7. The Montone, which (under the name of Acquacheta) rises in the Etruscan Alps, and flows past Forlì and Ravenna into the Adriatic, was, in Dante’s time, the first river, rising in those parts, that did not flow into the Po. (Now the Lamone would answer this description.)—Monte Viso is a peak of the Cottian Alps in Piedmont where the Po rises. If the where refers to the monastery known as San Benedetto in Alpe and standing on a hill bearing the same name, Dante would mean that the foundation was able to support many more monks than actually were supported by it. But the monastery appears always to have been in want of money; so it is better to refer where to descent, and to adopt Boccaccio’s explanation that the allusion is to a castle and settlement which the Conti Guidi contemplated building for their vassals on this spot. 8. The symbolism here would be quite clear, if we could credit Buti’s statement that Dante joined the Franciscans in his youth; but unfortunately the story has every appearance of having been fabricated for the purpose of elucidating this passage. References to Isaiah xi. 5 and 6 do not help us much. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the leopard of Canto i stands for Luxury, that the cord was the symbol of an order noted for the severity of its rule, and that Dante, having just witnessed the tortures inflicted on the luxurious, might be expected henceforth to lead a life of purity without any further reminder. It is not necessary to carry the symbolism further. Virgil, having need of something to attract Geryon’s attention, uses the cord merely because it has now become superfluous, and because he has nothing else at hand. 9. This is Geryon, in classical mythology a King of Spain, who was slain by Hercules for the sake of his oxen. His position as guardian of the fraudulent is accounted for by the medieval tradition, according to which he enticed strangers into his power and stealthily killed them. Virgil and other classical poets speak of Geryon as a monster with three bodies; but Dante’s description is based rather on Rev. ix, 7, 10, 19. The Rivers of Romagna and the Mouth of the Po in Dante’s time (“Inferno,” xvi and xxvii).

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  But the poore miser fell at length into the hands of unpittifull and cruell fortune: For beeing on a day amongst a great assembly of people, to tell the simple sort their fortune, a certaine Cobler came unto him, and desired him to tel when it should be best for him to take his voyage, the which hee promised to do: the Cobler opened his purse and told a hundred pence to him for his paines. Whereupon came a certaine young gentleman and took Diophanes by the Garment. Then he turning himselfe, embraced and kissed him, and desired the Gentleman, who was one of his acquaintance, to sit downe by him: and Diophanes being astonied with this sudden change, forgot what he was doing, and sayd, O deare friend you are heartily welcome, I pray you when arrived you into these parts? Then answered he, I will tell you soone, but brother I pray you tell mee of your comming from the isle of Euboea, and how you sped by the way? Whereunto Diophanes this notable Assyrian (not yet come unto his minde, but halfe amased) soone answered and sayd, I would to god that all our enemies and evil willers might fall into the like dangerous peregrination and trouble. For the ship where we were in, after it was by the waves of the seas and by the great tempests tossed hither and thither, in great peril, and after that the mast and stern brake likewise in pieces, could in no wise be brought to shore, but sunk into the water, and so we did swim, and hardly escaped to land. And after that, whatsoever was given unto us in recompense of our losses, either by the pitty of strangers, or by the benevolence of our friends, was taken away from us by theeves, whose violence when my brother Arisuatus did assay to resist, hee was cruelly murthered by them before my face. These things when he had sadly declared, the Cobler tooke up his money againe which he had told out to pay for the telling of his fortune, and ran away. The Diophanes comming to himselfe perceived what he had done, and we all that stood by laughed greatly. But that (quoth Milo) which Diophanes did tell unto you Lucius, that you should be happy and have a prosperous journey, was only true. Thus Milo reasoned with me.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  He liked Sophie. He liked the idea of being her friend. But Charles was looking at him, and Lionel could feel that possibility closing off. Charles set the cup on the table. “Where do you sleep?” “I’ll show you,” Lionel said. • • • IN THE MORNING, Lionel left Charles in bed. He rinsed out their cups from last night. Then the French press, which he took apart and cleaned piece by piece and put in the rack to dry. He pushed up the window and propped it open with an old ruler. The cold would help air out the apartment, that stale smell from having left it shut up for almost two weeks. Lionel could still feel Charles’s hands all over him, the sureness of his grip and the grinding pressure of their bodies coming together. He went to the bathroom to brush his teeth, to brush the taste of Charles out of his mouth. By the time he got to the front of the apartment, Charles had rolled over onto his back and was lying there naked, on full display. His body was magnificent. Edges and lines and clear definition. A thatch of pubic hair. His cock was uncut and of medium length, but very thick. Everything about him was proportional. Lionel made more coffee, waiting for Charles to get up, wondering where he’d go after he left, wondering what had brought him here. But as he stood waiting for the coffee to bloom, staring down into its brown mass, the ruler snapped in half. He had used it for years with no problem. He’d had it since he was a kid, when he’d gotten it as a gift from his math camp counselor. All the lines were worn off. Now it had snapped, and for a moment the window hung suspended, as if its mechanism had magically repaired itself or gravity had ceased to function. Then it fell, slamming shut with such force that the glass broke. In cartoonish escalation, the shards fell down into the sink, shattering further. He felt something old and powdery land on his lip, but it was only a bit of dust, a flake of paint perhaps, from the windowsill. “What are you doing over there?” Charles had come into the kitchen. Lionel turned to him. “It’s a mess,” he said. “What?” “I don’t know,” Lionel said, but his heart was beating fast, and his hands shook. He could hardly hold himself still. “Oh, shit.” “I’m fine.” “Sure.” “No, don’t! There’s glass,” Lionel said. Charles had made to cross the room. He was still naked, barefoot. At Lionel’s warning, he drew up short.

• From Escape (2007)

  Tammy, as I would later learn, had gone to her father shortly after Uncle Roy died and demanded that she be allowed to marry an FLDS bishop who was living in Canada. The Canadian FLDS community was far smaller than our community in Colorado City. It had fewer than a thousand members. It began with a small group of converts who left the mainstream Mormon Church to live the principle of plural marriage. Tammy had been in love with the Canadian bishop. When he came down to Uncle Roy’s from Canada, he’d spend a lot of time in the evenings talking to her. Tammy’s father didn’t like him at all. Her father refused to let her think of marrying him and said there was a good man in Colorado City whom she belonged to and with whom she would fulfill the work of God. Tammy was incensed. After a decade of marriage to Uncle Roy, she was now twenty-eight and had never had sex, let alone children. If she was sealed for all eternity to the prophet, why couldn’t she make a life with the man of her dreams? In the end, Tammy buckled under the pressure, was whisked to Salt Lake City, and married Merril late Saturday night. Even though she had been to college and was a teacher, she never mastered the ability to stand up for herself. She had a mouth and would often complain about things no one else would, but Tammy also felt the need to please people. I felt blindsided by the news and said little. Merril took me back to the hotel. Barbara was prancing around, trying to appear as though she was in complete control. Ruth was veering into a nervous breakdown. She blinked uncontrollably, her eyes seemed not to focus, and they danced when she talked. There was little coherence in her words. Her jaw shook with palsy as she spoke. When I arrived, she gave me a hug and in slurred speech said, “For our husband to be given this honor of marrying two new wives is a blessing to us all.” But it was clear she didn’t believe a word of what she was saying. Cathleen was sitting by herself on the bed, her eyes so red from crying they were almost swollen shut. The tension in the room was pulsating. I was eighteen and Cathleen was about twenty. I knew exactly how she felt. Merril announced that he had business to take care of, and he and Barbara left together. I was left with the mess his marriages had created.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  I waltzed into Giorgio’s at six p.m., wearing a starched white shirt with a navy blue bow tie, pressed slacks and a tweed jacket. He needed to see that I was no spring chicken. He had to see that I was every inch a geezer so he could leave me alone. The restaurant was almost empty; the usual evening crowd hadn’t flowed in yet. The kid was sitting by the bar, drinking a glass of wine. To my surprise, he wasn’t wearing an embarrassing T-shirt-and-shorts getup: he sported a pin-striped suit with a vest and pocket watch and his black hair, no longer blond, was combed back, held in place by shiny mousse. No nose ring, either. He looked like a suave Italian from Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather movies—except that he was clearly Hispanic. When he turned and saw me, he stood with an extended hand. “Professor Devane?” “Yes.” I shook his hand and noticed his well-manicured nails. “I’m afraid I don’t know your name—” “Rico Martinez.” “Nice to meet you, Mr. Martinez.” He beamed, and then nodded to the bartender. I turned to the front door. A waiter had posted a sign: CLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY. I turned back. “What’s going on?” “Dr. Devane, if you will.” The young man held up his hand and beckoned forth the wine list. “Everything’s on me tonight.” I barely noticed the waiter. The light from above seemed to turn the menu in my hand white-hot. I squinted just to read the text. “Whatever it is you’re doing, stop right now. Please.” “Why? Am I scaring you, Dr. Devane?” “No. I don’t know what you want from me.” “You.” “Me? This old bag of a man?” He broke into a grin. He had perfect teeth. Not a crooked incisor in sight. “What’s so funny?” “You sure you don’t remember me?” “I teach many students. Year in, year out. I’m afraid you’ll have to refresh my memory. You don’t look eighteen.” “I’m twenty-five now. Seven years ago you told me that I wasn’t fit for your class.” “You’re not the only student I’ve said that to.” “When you said that, it really hurt. You had no idea.” I knew I should say something obligatory like, “I’m sorry.” But I still didn’t recognize him. “I hated you. I hated everything about you. I hated the fact that I was letting a white older man tell me how I should feel about myself.” “I would’ve been fine with you thinking of me as just another privileged white male asshole to knock in your quest for racial equality.” He quietly smiled. “That’s the papi I’d fallen for.” “Come again?” “I’ve cum many, many times over you.” He glanced around before he discreetly gestured jacking off. I was embarrassed. “I’m sorry, but I still don’t remember you.”

• From Escape (2007)

  I noticed during the class that he paid a lot of attention to me. Why was he looking at me? Was it my imagination? No, I realized it wasn’t. He’d ask the class a question and stare at me. He told us we were going to go down the rows and answer the questions in the book. I was second in line. I read the question, answered it, and then looked up. Brian was staring at me but didn’t say anything. Had I gotten the question wrong? I must have looked puzzled, because he snapped out of his reverie, commented that my answer was correct, and moved on to the next student. As the class continued, Brian kept encouraging me to participate. I felt confused by his attention, so I stayed quiet. During our break, Brian said to some of us that he’d send us a study guide for the GMAT class that he’d prepared if we’d give him our e-mail addresses and phone numbers. We all signed up. On another break, I overheard Brian telling someone nearby that he was divorced. After class, several of the students went to the front of the room to chat with him. I felt shy, but I didn’t want to pass up the chance to talk to someone with a degree from Harvard. I drifted up to the front along with everyone else. Brian had his eye on me. But then the dean of the business school came in and invited Brian to lunch. I could see that waiting around to talk with him was a waste of time, so I left and did not look back. It turns out that Brian told everyone he had to leave. After making apologies to the dean, he jumped in his car. Brian could see me walking down the sidewalk on the right. If he left campus, he’d have to turn left. Left meant never getting to know me. He had taken a new job in San Francisco and was already working there. Turning left was the safe decision. But he’d been making those all his life. He turned right. Brian pulled up to me in his BMW and rolled down his window. “Carolyn, I know you don’t know me and this may seem sudden, but would you like to get some lunch with me? You can ride with me or follow me in your own car. Whatever you’re more comfortable with. But I would really like to get to know you.” My heart nearly came to a halt. What a surprise. What a happy surprise. But what should I do? Should I say yes and go to lunch with a total stranger? The safe thing was to say no. But I didn’t. “I’d love to get some lunch with you,” I said, and got in his car.

• From Escape (2007)

  Two weeks later, he wed another young girl. Ally Barlow from Hildale, Utah, was the next in his marrying binge. In less than a year, he’d married seven new wives. He was sixty-eight years old with thirteen wives and more than a hundred children now, including many stepchildren. I think he needed to prove that he could still have any woman he wanted. When Merril wasn’t marrying more wives, he was liquidating assets and building housing in Texas on Warren Jeffs’ compound in Eldorado, which spanned nearly two thousand acres. A few months after he married his under-age brides, he moved them to Texas and destroyed all traces of their ever having lived in Colorado City, presumably so there would be no evidence that could be used against him. I knew I had to find a job to enable me to pay my utility bills that winter. With Harrison and Bryson, it was impossible to work a regular 9-to-5 job. I ended up going to work for a small locksmithing business run by a couple I’d met over the summer who’d once been part of another polygamist community with no ties to the FLDS. Paul and Lodeen had fourteen children and needed help with their bookkeeping. Paul said it was fine to bring Harrison and Bryson with me to work. There was a room downstairs where Harrison could sleep and Bryson could watch cartoons. I took the job with delight. I have a good head for numbers and was put in charge of collecting past-due accounts. Lodeen gave me a big stack of invoices, some of which went back two years. I tracked down phone numbers on the computer and made an endless stream of calls. Payments started coming in. I was earning enough money to pay my bills. There wasn’t a lot left over, but this was the highest ground I’d managed to reach. Once I got the children off to school in the morning, I went to work with the boys. In the afternoons I shuttled kids to one appointment after another. After an appointment for Harrison one afternoon, the ignition on my van froze. I couldn’t turn the key and start it. I called Lodeen to see if anyone was in the shop who could come over and help me. Paul came by. Paul and I had an easy relationship and a lot in common because of our polygamist pasts. That afternoon he told me he had never truly given up the idea of living polygamy but felt the right person had never come along—until he met me. I was stunned. He told me that I would probably never find a man willing to take on a woman with eight children. In his view, polygamy helped solve this kind of problem. He and Lodeen had worked hard and were now in the position of being able to help me. Why should I have to live alone because I’d been dealt a bad hand?

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  Now I realize I've been here before. With the interviewer's neighbor? it amuses me to think. Maybe with his roommate. That would be— … Or— … 1 No, impossible. Yes. The man who opens the door is a man I've been with, anonymously, right in this apartment. Instantly we recognize each other. Identities and splintered memories spiral. The first time, neither had known who the other was. Then—I was a silent street figure. Now—here I am a writer, and there he is the interviewer! Finally, I laugh. “Oh, no!” “Oh, yes,” he says. “Hey, man—…” I begin to lapse into street jargon. Then I say, “At least you won't have to ask me if my work is autobiographical.” We start the interview slowly, adjusting to the fusing realities. He asks me mild questions—about Los Angeles (I say it is perhaps the most exciting city in the world), about New York (I tell him that when I left there, I thought, My God, I'm still alive!). Still slowly, but edging along, he asks me: “Don't you think that now all the blatant sexuality has made Los Angeles less sexy?” I answer: “No. For me the ideal sexiness, finally, is a loose one, not a hidden one. Some people think a tantalizing sexuality is more intriguing. I love going around without a shirt.” I go on to evoke a symbol of repression. I tell him I was on a private beach recently with some very gorgeous people, males and females, tanned, exposed, beautiful, bikinied bodies. Suddenly a figure appeared, a small, wrinkled dinosaur of a man; he was wearing a shirt, shorts, shoes, body hidden almost totally to the brash sun. A woman was with him, and a bodyguard followed behind. The eyes of the sagging-skinned man met ours, invisible guns pointed at us. Ronald Reagan, his wife, and bodyguard passed on. Now the interviewer asks me how old I was when City of Night was published. I try to be cool, but a monster figure of the gay world has been evoked—age. “That would be a way of figuring out how old I am now, and I'm very sensitive about telling my age.” A bad moment. He asks my opinion of the gay liberation movement. “It's done a lot of good, and I am for it.” But I add mentally: When it isn't being used as ultimate cop-out, as it is now, increasingly. The interviewer moves into the mined area of relationships. Well, I have made mild flirtations in that area, and I might still try. I tell the interviewer: “A brilliant psychiatrist friend of mine upheld that what is so alienating about homosexual relationships is that they begin with the intimacy of sex instead of proceeding toward it. To get a relationship going, you have to work back. Perhaps this is the reason so few homosexual relationships last.”

• From Escape (2007)

  Now what? There I was sitting alone in a car with a strange man. What a weird feeling. I had never felt so shy in my entire life. Ever. I was thirty-six years old and on my third date. (My first two dates were awkward non-starters.) This was the first date I’d ever had with someone I found really attractive. Brian mentioned something about his son. I looked at him and said, “Oh, you have a son?” “I do. Two boys, in fact. What about you? Any kids?” he asked. “Yes, I have eight.” Brian started laughing. He thought I was joking. I looked at him because I didn’t get what was so funny. Then it was his turn to look surprised. “You have eight children?” I nodded. Brian looked like he was choking on something. “Seriously, you do not look like you even have any kids. I thought you were joking. Is a sports bar okay for lunch?” I’d never been to a sports bar in my life. I said that sounded great. The mention of my eight children broke the ice. Brian came from a family of six. He said his mother was very beautiful. “Like you. You remind me of my mother in a lot of ways,” he said. Well, that seemed all right. Brian admitted that he had begged off having lunch with the dean so he could try to catch me after class. He said if that had failed, he would have called me with the number he had from the study guide sheet. “You made up the study guide thing just to get my number?” I said, shocked. “No, not exactly. I’m e-mailing everyone a study guide. I just didn’t need their phone numbers.” He smiled. Over lunch I told Brian how I’d ended up with eight children and about my escape and the seemingly never-ending custody battle I’d finally won. Talking to him suddenly felt as easy as breathing and as natural as blinking. No man had ever listened to me as intently as he had. Brian had just gone through a divorce, and in talking we realized we’d both been married for seventeen years, almost to the day—he was married three weeks before I married Merril and divorced two weeks before my escape. Both of us had been divorced for eighteen months, and neither of us had dated seriously since. Brian later said he realized at lunch he wanted to have a relationship with me even though he knew it would turn his life upside down. He was scared but didn’t let that stop him from saying, “Do you want to go see a movie tonight?” “Sure,” I said. “I work in San Francisco but I come to Salt Lake every two weeks to see my sons. I’d like to date you when I’m not seeing my two boys.” I smiled. “Sounds good to me.” He took me back to my car and kissed me goodbye. Really kissed me.

• From Escape (2007)

  I did not think Jeffs would be convicted. At best, I thought he might be convicted on one count. I knew there was a strong possibility that he could be acquitted. Rape cases are tough to prove and this case was even more complex because Jeffs was charged with being an accomplice to rape. Five men and three women sat on the jury. The verdict was announced. Guilty! Both counts! I was shaking. I had to sit down. I felt dizzy and could barely breathe. I was stunned. This was the first time in my life that I had seen justice prevail against the FLDS. A young woman had come forward and told the truth about her life. She was not only heard, she was believed. The morning after the verdict I awoke and felt like I was living in a brand new world. I felt freer than I ever had before. I didn’t think my euphoria over Warren Jeffs’ conviction and sentencing to serve two consecutive terms of five years to life could have been eclipsed, but it was. That happened on April 2, 2008, when the FLDS compound in Eldorado, Texas, which has been run by Merril Jessop since 2004, was raided. I was tipped off about the raid the night before when a newspaper reporter called me around midnight and said something seemed to be happening at the Yearning for Zion Ranch. It now appears the raid was triggered by a woman, posing as a young girl, who called authorities claiming she was being abused on the YFZ Ranch. Over the course of the next several days, police and SWAT teams with semiautomatic weapons moved in and removed about 440 children from the ranch. I had conflicting feelings about the raid. I was thrilled that Texas acted decisively to protect women and children, but I knew the children were no doubt terrified when SWAT teams and law enforcement descended on them. Watching the raid unfold filled me with elation and dread. I had hope that women and children would finally be protected. But what if they were sent back? I know how ruthless the FLDS legal machine can be when it kicks into high gear. Two days after the raid I flew down to Texas with my daughters, LuAnne and Merrilee. I hoped we could meet with some of their half-siblings to reassure them about life on the outside. But because of the ongoing criminal investigation, we were not allowed to see the children in custody. Eventually I learned that life in the compound had become even more severe than I could have imagined. Children were required to get up at 3:30 a.m., put on several layers of clothing, and work in the hot sun all day. The minimal schooling that existed was substandard, and the children’s time with their biological mothers was limited. Toys and playing were not allowed. Children ate mostly carbohydrates and little protein.

• From Untrue (2018)

  Cuckoo for Cuckolds“You look like a classic hotwife,” the direct message to my Instagram account read. Well, maybe, I thought, deleting it without giving it much thought. After all, who hasn’t received unwanted direct messages, sometimes with sexual content or innuendo? “Are you a hotwife?” another DM from yet another stranger asked later that week. Duh, I thought, deleting that one too. And then a third message: “Hi. Are you into the cuckold lifestyle?” This one gave me pause. The cuckold lifestyle? I looked at the profile of the guy who had DM’d me. Ex-military. Clean-cut. His feed was all about sports. He looked macho. But the term “cuckold lifestyle” conjured up the Chaucer I had read as a student—stories like “The Miller’s Tale” and “The Merchant’s Tale,” in which younger women have sex right under the noses of their unsuspecting older and ineffectual in every sense husbands. In both stories, the wife goes unpunished, and the joke is on her clueless spouse, for whom she, the reader, and the narrator alike have contempt. After a bit of Googling, I was back in the realm of Chaucer, except in this case, the husbands are no dupes. They aren’t blind like the knight, the husband in the merchant’s story, or hapless like the carpenter, the husband in the miller’s story. Men into the “cuckold lifestyle” or “hotwifing” are fully in the know. In fact, they actively engineer their own cuckolding, because they are turned on by hearing about or witnessing firsthand their wives’ infidelity. Bucking the script of masculine possession, the man into this practice embraces being married to a woman who is untrue—his hotwife—egging her on to “betrayal” after betrayal because he likes it. And it seems there is no short supply of these men—or the men who fantasize about doing what these men do. This fascinating subset of swinging and kink is the second most commonly searched term by heterosexual porn users on English-language search engines, and researcher Justin Lehmiller found in a survey of four thousand men that 58 percent of them had fantasies about sharing their partner with other men, or being “cucked.” Some men like to be present for the act, even participate in it, while others just like to help set it up and hear about it after.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “I’ll show you,” Lionel said. • • • In the morning, Lionel left Charles in bed. He rinsed out their cups from last night. Then the French press, which he took apart and cleaned piece by piece and put in the rack to dry. He pushed up the window and propped it open with an old ruler. The cold would help air out the apartment, that stale smell from having left it shut up for almost two weeks. Lionel could still feel Charles’s hands all over him, the sureness of his grip and the grinding pressure of their bodies coming together. He went to the bathroom to brush his teeth, to brush the taste of Charles out of his mouth. By the time he got to the front of the apartment, Charles had rolled over onto his back and was lying there naked, on full display. His body was magnificent. Edges and lines and clear definition. A thatch of pubic hair. His cock was uncut and of medium length, but very thick. Everything about him was proportional. Lionel made more coffee, waiting for Charles to get up, wondering where he’d go after he left, wondering what had brought him here. But as he stood waiting for the coffee to bloom, staring down into its brown mass, the ruler snapped in half. He had used it for years with no problem. He’d had it since he was a kid, when he’d gotten it as a gift from his math camp counselor. All the lines were worn off. Now it had snapped, and for a moment the window hung suspended, as if its mechanism had magically repaired itself or gravity had ceased to function. Then it fell, slamming shut with such force that the glass broke. In cartoonish escalation, the shards fell down into the sink, shattering further. He felt something old and powdery land on his lip, but it was only a bit of dust, a flake of paint perhaps, from the windowsill. “What are you doing over there?” Charles had come into the kitchen. Lionel turned to him. “It’s a mess,” he said. “What?” “I don’t know,” Lionel said, but his heart was beating fast, and his hands shook. He could hardly hold himself still. “Oh, shit.” “I’m fine.” “Sure.” “No, don’t! There’s glass,” Lionel said. Charles had made to cross the room. He was still naked, barefoot. At Lionel’s warning, he drew up short. Then he put on his boots, still naked, collected a dustpan and broom, and swept a few glass fragments from the floor. Then he leaned down to inspect what was in the sink, and whistled. “You better get a new one,” he said. With the glass gone, cold air was swirling into the apartment. Lionel saw the air raise goose bumps down Charles’s back and thighs, little ridges of flesh. “Thanks,” he said. “Do you think you got it all?”