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 How God Became King (2012)

  But it was left to his son, Christopher, to assemble the bits and pieces that his father had written about the far distant history of Middle-Earth in The Silmarillion (1977) and the massive twelve-volume History of Middle-Earth (1983–96). Happily, we are not in the same position with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Their backstory was written long ago, and it is readily available. But—perhaps to our surprise!—many people, reading the gospels today, read them not only as if that backstory did not exist, but as if there was a different backstory altogether. For people in that position, rediscovering the proper backstory will mean that, like those who return to The Wizard of Oz after reading or experiencing Wicked, they will see the main story itself in a whole new light. The first speaker of our quadraphonic sound system to be turned up is this: the four gospels present themselves as the climax of the story of Israel . All four evangelists, I suggest, deliberately frame their material in such a way as to make this clear, though many generations of Christian readers have turned down the speaker to such an extent that they have been able, in effect, to ignore it. In order to grasp this point we need to take a step back. We need to think about the ways in which the story of Israel was being told at the time . The Strange Story of Israel The story of Israel too is a subject for an entire book. But we can sum it up like this. Israel’s ancient scriptures are framed with a narrative, an unfinished narrative of a certain shape and type. Whether you read the Old Testament as set out in most English Bibles from Genesis to Malachi or whether you read it in the Hebrew canon from Genesis to Chronicles with the prophets in the middle, you are still left with a sense that this story is supposed to be going somewhere, but that it hasn’t gotten there yet. It is an unfinished narrative, an unfinished agenda . Things are supposed to happen that haven’t happened yet. What’s more, the story seems to have become badly stalled.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Such claims gloss over the many people who have exceptional gender expressions (i.e., feminine traits in males and masculine traits in females) in order to fully subsume femininity within femaleness. On the other hand, those who wish to artificialize femininity often characterize it as though it were a unified social program designed to shape women’s personalities and sexualities via a combination of social norms, constructs, and conditioning. The assumption that femininity is one entity makes it easier for those who favor such social explanations to “prove” that femininity is artificial. After all, one needs only to make the case that certain specific aspects of femininity are clearly “man-made” and vary from culture to culture in order to extrapolate that all aspects of femininity are social in origin. Similarly, by showing that certain aspects of femininity are socially imposed on girls and women, one can claim that femininity as a whole is unnatural, or it would not have to be enforced at all. What should be clear by now is that the presumption that femininity is a singular program tends to foster an overly simplistic, all-or-none dichotomy between biological and social explanations for gender differences. Once we let go of the concept of monolithic femininity—and with it, the either/or ideology that plagues nature-versus-nurture debates about gender—it becomes rather apparent that individual feminine traits arise from different combinations of biology and socialization. For instance, during my transition, when I first began to be perceived as female on a regular basis, I was surprised by how often male strangers told me to smile—“Cheer up, things can’t be all that bad,” they’d say. Needless to say, I found these remarks condescending, as nobody dared to tell me that I should smile for them back when I was perceived as male. However, despite my determination not to conform to the suggestions of patronizing strangers, I nevertheless found that, over time, I stopped hearing such comments. Obviously, something had changed. Maybe on an unconscious level, I learned to smile more without realizing it. Or maybe it had to do with another defense mechanism that I’ve learned since living as a woman: making eye contact with strangers less often than I did when I was male, which significantly reduced occurrences of strange men harassing me. These behaviors, which are often considered feminine because women primarily exhibit them, seem to originate as an unconscious response to negotiating one’s way through the world as a woman. In other words, they appear to be primarily or exclusively social in origin. Other aspects of femininity that are clearly social in origin include what I call “feminine fashions”—i.e., qualities that have only recently become associated with, or symbolic of, femininity.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Hey, has anyone ever told you that you look like that actress, what’s her name?” he asks, eyebrows furrowed as he tries to recall the name. “Sarah Jessica Parker? I get that a lot,” I say. “No, not her,” he says. “Elaine from Seinfeld ?” I ask. “I get that a lot too.” “No, no. I was totally in love with her when I was a teenager. She was in The Karate Kid and Cocktail . Elisabeth Shue!” he calls out, finally remembering. When I shake my head no, he calls over the waiter, asking him, “Doesn’t she look exactly like the actress Elisabeth Shue?” The waiter studies me for a long moment, tilting his head and flicking his eyes from my head down my body. “Nah,” he finally says with indifference, “she just looks like another white girl with curly hair,” and walks away. “Ouch. One man thinks I’m an ’80s film goddess, the other thinks I’m just another white girl,” I say. Scott pays the bill and we head outside to the muggy day. He says he is having such a great time that he doesn’t want the date to end and suggests a walk to the East River. He chivalrously offers to carry my tote bag, which is weighed down with two newspapers and a hefty 620-page hardcover novel that I schlep around for subway reading. The path along the river is wide and mostly empty, giving children and dogs ample room to run. A woman walks in our direction with a large, excited dog that suddenly bounds over to me so that I stop short, startled, and back up a few steps. The dog is more playful than menacing but still, for me, intimidating. The woman does not apologize, if anything scowling at me for not greeting her dog warmly. “See, this is what I hate about women with dogs. You don’t have a dog, do you?” he asks. I shake my head. “She let that dog run right up to you. Not everyone wants a dog getting so close to them, but so many women with dogs just let the dogs lead them,” he says. I explain the origin of my fear, that once I was jogging on a quiet country road and a dog came charging at me. I stood still, but every time I started to edge forward, it would get closer to me, baring its teeth. Finally, I heard a voice down the road and the dog went running, but ever since then, whenever a dog comes at me like that, I get nervous. “But why do you refer specifically to women with dogs?” I ask. “Don’t you think it could just as easily be a man with a dog?” “No,” he says definitively. “Single women with dogs are like mothers with children, they think everyone loves their dogs.” “Wait, how did single women get dragged into this?” I ask.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  For example, these days it’s common for people to view being thin as a feminine trait. While femininity and thinness have become almost synonymous in contemporary Western culture, women who were more full-figured were considered the feminine ideal in past eras. Similarly, today most of us grow up believing that pink is undoubtedly the most feminine of colors. In the early 1900s, however, it was more common for people to associate pink with boys and blue with girls. 2 While some feminine traits are predominantly social in origin, others appear to be greatly influenced by biology. One feminine biological trait is being in tune with one’s emotions. Virtually all transsexuals transitioning in the MTF direction report an increased intensity in the way that they experience emotions once they begin taking estrogen; those in the FTM direction report the reverse effect upon taking testosterone. Thus, emotional intensity definitely has a biological basis, as it is greatly influenced by adult hormone levels. Of course, feminine traits that arise from our adult hormonal makeup are relatively easy to categorize as biological, as one can experience the corresponding changes firsthand via hormone therapy. In contrast, other feminine traits that have biological inputs—such as those that may be hardwired into our brains from birth—are more difficult to discern. Two possible examples of this include feminine aesthetic preferences and ways of expressing oneself. Evidence that these tendencies may be hardwired comes from the fact that they typically appear very early in childhood and often in contradiction to one’s socialization (both for children whose parents attempt to raise them in a unisex or gender-neutral fashion, and for boys whose families actively and aggressively steer them away from feminine expression). This indicates that some aspects of feminine verbal and aesthetic expression precede and/or supersede gender socialization. Further, the fact that some feminine male children will often continue to express these exceptional traits well into adulthood despite a lifetime of social conditioning to the contrary shows that these traits cannot be adequately explained by social mechanisms. While feminine verbal and aesthetic expression can surely be influenced or exaggerated by social forces, I would argue that these traits are also driven by intrinsic and deep-seated inclinations that are likely to be the result of biology. Given the way that gender essentialists have distorted biology to justify sexist behaviors and norms, I can understand why some feminists would be hesitant to admit that biology has any role in producing or contributing to behavioral gender differences. However, the idea that gender differences arise solely from socialization and social norms is highly problematic, in that it assumes that our minds are blank slates with absolutely no intrinsic or instinctual gendered or sexual tendencies. This harkens back to views forwarded by extreme behaviorists like B. F. Skinner, who argued that human beings are merely products of their social conditioning.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I don’t expect this night to be my great reprisal and for #3 to become the keeper of my soul, but I can see how these just-right conditions could create a backdrop for an affair that encapsulates the essence of a love that was meant to be. Slipping off the thin straps of my dress, I let it fall down into a dark heap, step out of it onto the creaky wooden floorboards and stand in my strapless bra (yes, that one) and thong. I see the dog standing politely in the hallway as if waiting for an invitation and think oh boy, here we go again , but #3 gently kicks the door closed and tells me to ignore the dog when she starts whining. Progress , I think. We lie naked on his bed and I take note of his body. This is the third man I’ve been with in the past few weeks and, naïve as it may sound, it genuinely surprises me to find each one so different from the one before, and so different from the one I knew as my own for the past few decades. I haven’t thought about men’s bodies for so many years, as if the mere notion of what lay under their clothes had been completely erased from my brain with marriage. This man is tall, sturdy and fit, with hair on his chest and a well-endowed penis embedded in a mess of hair. The men I’ve been with so far have manscaped and I’ve liked it – how it makes them clean and smooth. It strikes me as ironic that women’s pubic hair is slangily called a bush as if offensively uncultivated and in need of landscaping, while men seem to have avoided any kind of moniker associated with nature and flora even though theirs are probably more like overgrown hedges unwinding over a larger region. He reaches over me for a condom in the night table drawer, but once he has it opened, he hesitates. “I’m sorry, I’m nervous,” he says. “It’s really strange to be here with you. I thought my girlfriend and I were going to get married and our breakup has been rough. I haven’t even thought about being with someone else for the past few months. The last thing I expected tonight when I walked into my usual watering hole was to find a beautiful woman in a slinky dress sitting alone.” I’m surprised to hear that he noticed me as I have felt invisible both times I have gone out to bars on my own. I assumed both when #1 and #3 started talking to me, they did so because they stumbled upon me, not because they actively noticed me. In my mind, when I’m alone in public, I am not much more than an apparition.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  #6 is a lovely and decent man, but I’m still smarting from that Saturday morning of feeling unwanted, and I don’t know if I have the patience to wade through the murky waters of his newly single life. Dr. B asks for a few photos of me and in return she sends back one of Mark – he’s nice looking, sporty, has a sweet and genuine smile. He texts me right away and we make a date for the following week. We meet at a small, crowded coffee bar in midtown that is close to his office, and sit on high stools at a narrow bar overlooking the street. He is of medium height and stature, with glasses and thick salt and pepper hair. There is nowhere to hang my coat or bag, so I sit on my soft, fake fur jacket and hold my tote bag in my lap. My jacket is slippery, so every few minutes I have to brace my foot against the base of the stool and push myself back up so as not to slide off. I think I’ve got it down to a subtle routine when he asks me kindly, “Do you always have a hard time sitting still?” I laugh and admit that I am logistically challenged at the moment, and he generously helps me arrange my pile of winter garments onto the tiny counter in front of us. He is fun to talk to, deeply into sports and his kids, well-read and quick to smile. When he invites me to brunch at the apartment that he’s just moved into with his teenage daughter from his first marriage, I readily accept, though I do make a mental note that he’s a few years younger than me and already exiting his second marriage. * With two men now in my life, I come to the inevitable conclusion that my underwear drawer, overstuffed with stretched-out pastel cotton panties and practical bras that once fit, with a few black lace thongs thrown in that have recently seen more than their fair share of action, is no longer adequate. I have long aspired to be the kind of elegant, sophisticated woman who wears matching sets of underwear, and while realistically I know that I have neither the patience nor the finances to make this a reality, I can definitely kick things up a notch. I head to the local outpost of a British lingerie shop, ready to have my breasts manhandled and squeezed into sexy, lacy, overpriced contraptions. I am led to a fitting room by an older woman named Marisol, who eyes and measures me and agrees that my left breast is slightly bigger than my right but is undaunted by it. I confess that I have not bought new bras in longer than I can comfortably say aloud and want some pretty ones that are sexy without being flashy. She nods knowingly and leaves me while she picks some out.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  When dinner is on the table, glistening scallops from the fishmonger at the farmers’ market, a bright green salad, long stems of roasted baby broccoli, fresh focaccia from the Italian market, I stand by the table with my hands pressed together over my heart. He urges me to sit down before the food gets cold. “I will in a minute, I’m just taking it in. It’s always been my dream for a man to cook for me. Sorry to tell you one man beat you to the punch by preparing a lovely picnic for me this summer, but this is next level. I really appreciate it,” I say and am quiet; if I say more, I will cry. Our nights always end the same way, with my going back to his kid-free apartment after dinner if we have eaten out, or straight to the couch and then bed after cleaning the kitchen if he’s cooked for me. He is intrigued and enthralled by how easily I can orgasm and peppers me with questions about my previous liaisons. “Your confidence is a huge turn-on,” he says one night after we have depleted ourselves and are lying naked in his bed. “You have so much power.” I appreciate the compliment and love that this is how he views me, but I clarify that I’m more curious than confident. I’ve slept with twice as many people in the past four months as I did the rest of my life until now, so having sex has become something of a fact-finding mission for me at this point. “Yes, but you have to have enough confidence to get to that point. I don’t have the same insatiable curiosity as you do, maybe because I had so many years as a bachelor before I got married. And honestly, it’s enough for me just to keep up with your sexual appetite,” he says. I laugh and he continues, “No, really. I was forty when I got married. That’s a lot of years of bachelorhood. I’m older than you and you have a ton of energy.” “You’re not that much older than me,” I say. He raises his eyebrows, so I ask, “Wait, how old are you?” “62,” he says. “Oh come on! How old really?” I ask, propping myself up on my elbow, my hair spilling over his bare chest. “62,” he repeats. “No way!” I shriek, my eyes widening. “I’m shocked. You have a six-pack for God’s sake! Are people as old as 62 even capable of having six-packs? You’re my first older man. I’ve slept with men a little older but this is a big age difference. You’re fourteen years older than me!” “I thought you knew my age. Is this an issue for you?” he asks. “No, no, it’s fine, I guess, I’m just surprised. This could be fun, now I get to be the younger woman, like a trophy for you.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  The fact that feminine traits are not female-specific, and that they are separable from one another, is far too often brushed aside when people try to answer the question that unfortunately drives most discussions about femininity: namely, what produces feminine expressions in people? Those who wish to naturalize femininity will often describe feminine traits as though they were bundled in a single biological program that is initiated only in genetic females. Such claims gloss over the many people who have exceptional gender expressions (i.e., feminine traits in males and masculine traits in females) in order to fully subsume femininity within femaleness. On the other hand, those who wish to artificialize femininity often characterize it as though it were a unified social program designed to shape women’s personalities and sexualities via a combination of social norms, constructs, and conditioning. The assumption that femininity is one entity makes it easier for those who favor such social explanations to “prove” that femininity is artificial. After all, one needs only to make the case that certain specific aspects of femininity are clearly “man-made” and vary from culture to culture in order to extrapolate that all aspects of femininity are social in origin. Similarly, by showing that certain aspects of femininity are socially imposed on girls and women, one can claim that femininity as a whole is unnatural, or it would not have to be enforced at all. What should be clear by now is that the presumption that femininity is a singular program tends to foster an overly simplistic, all-or-none dichotomy between biological and social explanations for gender differences. Once we let go of the concept of monolithic femininity—and with it, the either/or ideology that plagues nature-versus-nurture debates about gender—it becomes rather apparent that individual feminine traits arise from different combinations of biology and socialization. For instance, during my transition, when I first began to be perceived as female on a regular basis, I was surprised by how often male strangers told me to smile—“Cheer up, things can’t be all that bad,” they’d say. Needless to say, I found these remarks condescending, as nobody dared to tell me that I should smile for them back when I was perceived as male. However, despite my determination not to conform to the suggestions of patronizing strangers, I nevertheless found that, over time, I stopped hearing such comments. Obviously, something had changed. Maybe on an unconscious level, I learned to smile more without realizing it. Or maybe it had to do with another defense mechanism that I’ve learned since living as a woman: making eye contact with strangers less often than I did when I was male, which significantly reduced occurrences of strange men harassing me. These behaviors, which are often considered feminine because women primarily exhibit them, seem to originate as an unconscious response to negotiating one’s way through the world as a woman.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  COUNTERFACTUALS. At the start of this book we look at those two column faces with their harmonious integration of Jews and God-worshipers and ask two questions. They are not hypothetical questions about what might transpire in the future, but counterfactual questions about what did not transpire in the past. Each is a “what if” that never was. This exercise in virtual history is intended not as academic play, but as mental therapy. Since we know what happened in the past, it is easy to think that it was necessary, that it was fated, that it was providential, that it was inevitable. But what if, for example, Cleopatra and Antony had defeated Octavian and Agrippa at the battle of Actium? What then, what there? Such counterfactual questions and the virtual history derived from them remind us of the contingencies, decisions, and accidents that are always involved in what actually happened. It could always have been otherwise. Our first counterfactual question is this: What if Judaism rather than Christianity had become the religion of Rome? What if the Roman Empire had become Jewish rather than Christian? An immediate answer might be, How absolutely ridiculous! How can you even suggest a Jewish Roman Empire in the face of so much anti-Jewish criticism and contempt, accusation and rejection, libel and slander in Greco-Roman life and literature? But that is precisely why we have asked it, and we now add to it a second question. Do those repeated attacks indicate that Judaism was a joke or a threat, a widely rejected impossibility or a broadly attractive possibility? Did Greco-Roman anti-Semitism indicate Judaism’s too obvious failure or Judaism’s too great success? Note, for example, the oscillation between approval and disapproval when Greeks and Romans discussed Jews and Judaism. A few decades ago, Menahem Stern’s three-volume Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism published all the extant texts with translations and commentaries. It is quite fascinating and very instructive, especially in the light of our two questions, to read straight through his entire collection from beginning to end. Louis Feldman, in his book from which we took an epigraph at the start of this chapter, gave these general statistics on Stern’s collection: “In volume 1, from Herodotus in the fifth century B.C.E. through Plutarch in the first century C.E., 47 notices are favorable (16 percent), 69 are unfavorable (24 percent), and 165 are neutral (60 percent). In volume 2, covering the period from the second through the sixth century, 54 are favorable (20 percent), 61 are unfavorable (21 percent), and 174 are neutral (59 percent)” (498, n. 4). The third volume, by the way, consists of appendixes and indexes. In other words, cumulatively, “According to my count, 101 (18 percent) of the comments by pagans in Stern’s collection are substantially favorable, 339 (59 percent) are more or less neutral, and only 130 (23 percent) are substantially unfavorable” (124).

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Jesus has, all along, been announcing that God’s kingdom was coming. His followers might well have expected that this announcement would lead to a march on Jerusalem, where Jesus would do whatever it took to complete what he had begun. And they were right—but not at all in the sense they expected or wanted. That is what the evangelists are saying through this particular moment in the story. This is how the kingdom is to come, the kingdom of God, which Jesus has been announcing and, as Messiah, inaugurating. This point needs little elaboration in relation to the synoptic gospels, but we may continue to stress it in relation to John, who is not so often seen as a theologian of the “kingdom.” In fact, however, as we have already seen, John 18–19 offers an explosion of dense and detailed kingdom theology, so that when we meet the titulus in John 19:19, we read it with a special and heightened irony, coming as it does at the conclusion of Pilate’s debate with Jesus, on the one hand, and with the Jewish leaders, on the other, about kingdom, truth, power, and Caesar. Jesus, John is saying, is the true king whose kingdom comes in a totally unexpected fashion, folly to the Roman governor and a scandal to the Jewish leaders. In all four gospels, then, there is no drawing back. This is the coming of the kingdom, the sovereign rule of Israel’s God arriving on earth as in heaven, exercised through David’s true son and heir. It comes through his death. The fact that the kingdom is redefined by the cross doesn’t mean that it isn’t still the kingdom. The fact that the cross is the kingdom-bringing event doesn’t mean that it isn’t still an act of horrible and brutal injustice, on the one hand, and powerful, rescuing divine love, on the other. The two meanings are brought into dramatic and shocking but permanent relation. If the baptism and the title on the cross are bookends, holding the narrative together in each of the gospels as the narrative of kingdom achieved through cross and cross achieving kingdom, what about the material in between? Is this strong narrative hint borne out by the major structural markers with which the different evangelists have ordered their material? “You Are the Messiah” The most obvious central marker in both Mark and Matthew is the complex scene at Caesarea Philippi and immediately afterwards (Mark 8:27–9:1; Matt. 16:13–28). Here is the key passage in the shorter version, that of Mark: Jesus and his disciples came to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked his disciples, “Who are people saying that I am?” “John the Baptist,” they said, “or, some say, Elijah. Or, others say, one of the prophets.” “What about you?” asked Jesus. “Who do you say I am?”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Valérie came forward with a smile of welcome. She was not beautiful nor was she imposing, but her limbs were very perfectly proportioned, which gave her a fictitious look of tallness. She moved well, with the quiet and unconscious grace that sprang from those perfect proportions. Her face was humorous, placid and worldly; her eyes very kind, very blue, very lustrous. She was dressed all in white, and a large white fox skin was clasped round her slender and shapely shoulders. For the rest she had masses of thick fair hair, which was busily ridding itself of its hairpins; one could see at a glance that it hated restraint, like the flat it was in rather splendid disorder. She said: ‘I’m so delighted to meet you at last, Miss Gordon, do come and sit down. And please smoke if you want to,’ she added quickly, glancing at Stephen’s tell-tale fingers. Brockett said: ‘Positively, this is too splendid! I feel that you’re going to be wonderful friends.’ Stephen thought: ‘So this is Valérie Seymour.’ No sooner were they seated than Brockett began to ply their hostess with personal questions. The mood that had incubated in the motor was now becoming extremely aggressive, so that he fidgeted about on his chair, making his little inadequate gestures. ‘Darling, you’re looking perfectly lovely! But do tell me, what have you done with Polinska? Have you drowned her in the blue grotto at Capri? I hope so, my dear, she was such a bore and so dirty! Do tell me about Polinska. How did she behave when you got her to Capri? Did she bite anybody before you drowned her? I always felt frightened; I loathe being bitten!’ Valérie frowned: ‘I believe she’s quite well.’ ‘Then you have drowned her, darling!’ shrilled Brockett. And now he was launched on a torrent of gossip about people of whom Stephen had never even heard: ‘Pat’s been deserted—have you heard that, darling? Do you think she’ll take the veil or cocaine or something? One never quite knows what may happen next with such an emotional temperament, does one? Arabella’s skipped off to the Lido with Jane Grigg. The Grigg’s just come into pots and pots of money, so I hope they’ll be deliriously happy and silly while it lasts—I mean the money. . . . Oh, and have you heard about Rachel Morris? They say. . . .’ He flowed on and on like a brook in spring flood, while Valérie yawned and looked bored, making monosyllabic answers. And Stephen as she sat there and smoked in silence, thought grimly: ‘This is all being said because of me. Brockett wants to let me see that he knows what I am, and he wants to let Valérie Seymour know too—I suppose this is making me welcome.’ She hardly knew whether to feel outraged or relieved that here, at least, was no need for pretences.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  The flippers too really looked like fish fins: thick by where I guessed his ankles would be and then fading to a translucency at the bottom. Sheer black. They reminded me of a black bubble-eye fish I had at thirteen who died while my father and I were traveling to visit Annika at college. When we returned home, the fish was floating on her side at the top of the water, the tank stinking. I remember feeling embarrassed and not wanting to show my father she had died. I wasn’t afraid he would blame me for her death, but something about her curvy little body, just floating there, made me feel exposed. It was as though I were lying at the top of the tank, naked and smelling, too intimate an experience to share with my father. I remembered how her tail had already begun disintegrating, and a tiny piece of it had detached and was floating next to her. This is what his flippers looked like. Then something turned in my eye, or the eye of my mind, like when you look at one of those psychedelic posters that can be seen two ways. For a while you look at something one way, but then, all of a sudden, the image flips. Once you see the second way you can’t go back to the first. What I saw was that this was no wet suit at all, but somehow a massive, slimy, heavy tail. It was literally connected to his body. Maybe it was his body? Underneath the cloth were what I assumed might be genitals, then, if he had them? And just below that was an area where the tail, or whatever this was, met his skin. It did not meet in a straight line like the top of a pair of pants, but blended gradually. First there was an area that was mostly skin with a peppering of black scales, like one or multiple birthmarks. From there the scales became more raised, almost like moles or lesions. They began to cluster closer together until they became a solid mass, like rubber or the thick skin of a fish. It looked like time happening, like a wave gradually rolling up on the sand. It was as though whatever this was had happened over time, like some kind of infection—gradually taking over his body. Except this wasn’t an infection. It was like he was part fish. “Are you grossed out?” he asked. “No,” I said. What the fuck was this? Was Theo a mermaid? “Freaked out?” “No. Just shocked and wondering if I’m crazy. How did this happen?” “I was born this way,” he said. “I am what you are thinking I am. Sort of.” “What do you think I think you are?” “A merman.” “Yeah,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I was thinking that.” “I don’t call myself that. None of us think we are that. But to humans we are that.”

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Michael took a deep breath and sighed angrily as he threw the blankets off and followed me out of the room so we wouldn’t disturb Georgia. We went downstairs to our cozy family room, a name that seemed like a cruel joke to me now. “It’s not what you think. You’re acting crazy,” he said, shaking his head in disgust. “Michael, the worst thing you can do is lie to me. If you have any love left for me, you’ll tell me the truth.” “There’s nothing to tell. You’re being ridiculous. It was a fantasy. We didn’t act on it,” he said. “I don’t believe you. I’m begging you to tell me the truth.” “You don’t understand what you read, it was out of context,” he said. “I’m telling you the truth.” “Can you at least admit that you crossed a line in your friendship with her? That whether or not you physically crossed a line, you crossed a line emotionally?” “OK, I crossed a line emotionally. But that’s it.” “How many others have there been?” I asked, my mind lurching back through time, remembering countless business trips and late dinners and missed phone calls. “None!” he insisted indignantly. “I can’t do this with you,” I said. “I know what I read. Until you’re ready to come clean, I will not talk to you. If you won’t respect me by telling me the truth, I’ll have enough respect for myself not to listen to your lies.” With that, I walked back upstairs, my alarm growing with each step that I took without him trying to stop me or offer reasonable explanations. What surreal nightmare had I become ensnared in? Could I go to bed now and pretend this didn’t happen in the morning? I walked straight into our bathroom, which I locked behind me as I went through my night-time washing rituals. My life was exploding in pieces around me, but I was damned if I wasn’t going to floss and brush my teeth. By the time I came out, Michael was back on his side of the bed and I nudged Georgia into the middle so I could climb into my side. I lay there for what felt like hours, my heart pounding and my mind racing. This is our bed , I thought, and this is our child between us. This is our home, this is my husband, our son is asleep upstairs . What, really, had changed? All the physical pieces of our life were exactly the same, but now I was a foreigner in it. When I could no longer bear to hear him breathing across the bed from me, I tucked the blankets carefully around Georgia and slipped across the hall to her room, where I curled up in her canopy bed, her soft yellow blanket tucked under my chin. At the break of dawn, Michael came into the room. “Can I lie with you?” he asked.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  The last thing I expected tonight when I walked into my usual watering hole was to find a beautiful woman in a slinky dress sitting alone.” I’m surprised to hear that he noticed me as I have felt invisible both times I have gone out to bars on my own. I assumed both when #1 and #3 started talking to me, they did so because they stumbled upon me, not because they actively noticed me. In my mind, when I’m alone in public, I am not much more than an apparition. It’s not that I don’t think I’m attractive – I think I’m pretty but not conventionally beautiful, that I have a nice figure but not one that commands attention. I’m petite with a voluminous head of curly hair, neither sleek nor statuesque. When I look at photos of myself, I see a genuine smile, complete with dimples, but one that makes my eyes disappear. So not until now has it occurred to me that I might be attractive according to the literal definition of the word – not necessarily beautiful, but appealing to people – and that that appeal is not because of my hair color or figure or blue eyes but from something as subtle as the way I sit or smile. Or maybe it comes from something I have only just learned about myself: I hold my head high. I’m proud to be myself, to be recovering from this broken mess of a year, to be present and alive when the alternative of closing into myself would have been so much easier and more comfortable. I’m bruised but not shattered as I’ve been regarding myself, my head is most certainly not hanging low, and if I’m not actually a shadow of my former self, can it be that I’m stronger and more capable than I ever knew? #3 is sweet, gentle and, as he has pointed out, nervous. He puts on a brave face and the condom he’s opened and when I orgasm and he doesn’t, he is embarrassed and apologetic. “Please don’t worry,” I say. “I basically forced myself on you, so it’s only fair you weren’t ready for me.” I can’t help noting that this is the second time this has happened, so my track record is starting to take on a troubling pattern: I come, but the men can’t. Is it the condoms? Am I doing something wrong? Is it possible I’ve had it all wrong, thinking men could come on a dime but women had to really work for it? Should I feel the guilt that rises up in me that I am leaving these experiences sexually satisfied but the men are not? “Can I see you again?” he asks. “I need to get my head in the right place. It’ll be better next time, I assure you. I really liked spending time with you.” I nod my head and smile.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  It was as though I were lying at the top of the tank, naked and smelling, too intimate an experience to share with my father. I remembered how her tail had already begun disintegrating, and a tiny piece of it had detached and was floating next to her. This is what his flippers looked like. Then something turned in my eye, or the eye of my mind, like when you look at one of those psychedelic posters that can be seen two ways. For a while you look at something one way, but then, all of a sudden, the image flips. Once you see the second way you can’t go back to the first. What I saw was that this was no wet suit at all, but somehow a massive, slimy, heavy tail. It was literally connected to his body. Maybe it was his body? Underneath the cloth were what I assumed might be genitals, then, if he had them? And just below that was an area where the tail, or whatever this was, met his skin. It did not meet in a straight line like the top of a pair of pants, but blended gradually. First there was an area that was mostly skin with a peppering of black scales, like one or multiple birthmarks. From there the scales became more raised, almost like moles or lesions. They began to cluster closer together until they became a solid mass, like rubber or the thick skin of a fish. It looked like time happening, like a wave gradually rolling up on the sand. It was as though whatever this was had happened over time, like some kind of infection—gradually taking over his body. Except this wasn’t an infection. It was like he was part fish. “Are you grossed out?” he asked. “No,” I said. What the fuck was this? Was Theo a mermaid? “Freaked out?” “No. Just shocked and wondering if I’m crazy. How did this happen?” “I was born this way,” he said. “I am what you are thinking I am. Sort of.” “What do you think I think you are?” “A merman.” “Yeah,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I was thinking that.” “I don’t call myself that. None of us think we are that. But to humans we are that.” “Holy shit,” I said. “This is fucking crazy. So, like, there actually are mer-people? And Sirens?” “Sort of. But not the way you conceive of us. Well, we are sort of the way you conceive of us. I mean, obviously I’m very sexy.” He laughed. “You are!” I said. “Ha, not really. But I mean, we aren’t like the Siren myths and stuff. It’s not like we are trying to kill humans or keep them imprisoned on an island. We aren’t like the way they are in The Odyssey . Homer slandered us. But we do live a long, long time. Youthfully. Hundreds of years.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I wondered how long Jamie had pined for Megan the scientist. Probably for a long time. Maybe they had even started an affair while we were together and he had fantasized about her, wished he could be with her instead of me. But now that he was with her, I had become her and she had become me. We’ve all heard of men who leave their wives for a mistress, only to miss the comfort and predictability of their wife. But I felt certain that this wasn’t the case. He wasn’t missing my predictability. He was wanting me because he could no longer have me. He could tell I was gone and that was a new spell for him. 40.In the morning my phone rang again from the same number that had rung twice the night before. I hadn’t checked the message yet. “Hello, is this Lucy?” It was a male voice. “Yes,” I said. “Who is this?” “This is Arnold Schuman. Claire’s husband.” “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know Claire was still married.” Then I covered my mouth with my hand. Fuck. Who knew what he knew about her dating life? “Well, the papers haven’t been finalized yet, but yes, for all intents and purposes we are no longer together,” he said. “Oh, okay, I’m sorry about that,” I said. “Is everything okay with Claire?” “As a matter of fact no, not right now. Last night she made an attempt on her life. She’s in the psych ward.” “Oh my God,” I said. “It was really bad,” he said. “She took a handful of pills and then tried to hang herself from her closet doorknob. Luckily the kids weren’t there, but some man showed up and broke in. He found her and got her to the hospital. Her boyfriend or something, I’m not sure.” I wondered for a moment which of her men had saved her life. Was it David? Best Buy Dude? Even if it was Ponytail Man, I was genuinely grateful for his existence. “Oh no, poor Claire. I’m so sorry.” “He didn’t take her cell phone so I went to her place and grabbed it to see if I could reach out to some of her friends. I heard your message. Sounds like you aren’t in great shape either.” “I’m totally fine. Fuck, what hospital is she at?” “She’s at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Hospital,” he said. “She is allowed visitors from ten to three. I just saw her for the first time this morning and she is doing well, all things considered. But I think she could really use a shred of normalcy right now, and a friend. She really hates it there, but she’s not getting out anytime soon. I’m going to try to get her to go to treatment for drugs and depression following her stay. Apparently she’d been taking pills again.”

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  In 1862, to mark the canonization of twenty-six missionaries martyred in Japan, Pius invited the entire episcopate to attend a Pentecostal celebration in Rome. The response was encouraging: 323 cardinals, patriarchs, archbishops and bishops, over 4,000 priests, and 100,000 Catholic lay-folk. In 1864, the Pope made a characteristically late-medieval gesture: he published an encyclical, Quanta cura, announcing that the following year would be a jubilee, in which a plenary indulgence might be gained by those strong in the Catholic faith. And by way of an appendix to the encyclical he included a document listing the propositions which a good Catholic was specifically enjoined not to hold. This ‘Syllabus of Errors’ was in fact an index, giving references to various views already condemned in papal speeches, letters, addresses and encyclicals. Its precise status and authority was not, therefore, entirely clear, but in the circumstances it appeared to be a defiant manifesto against the whole of the modern world. Sections 1–7 condemned pantheism, naturalism and absolute rationalism; 8–14 moderate rationalism; 15–18 indifferentism, latitudinarianism, socialism, communism, secret societies, Bible societies and liberal clerical groups. Sections 19–76 set out the rights of the Church, and of the Roman pontiff and his state, in the most uncompromising and triumphalist manner, and any infringements by civil society were roundly condemned. It was wrong to deny the Pope the right to ‘a civil princedom’ or to the use of force to defend it; Catholics were forbidden to accept civil education, or to deny the assertion that the ‘Catholic religion was the sole religion of the state to the exclusion of all others’; and in Section 79 freedom of speech was condemned as leading to ‘corruption of manners and minds’ and ‘the pest of indifferentism’. Finally, Section 80 summarized the document by condemning the assertion that ‘the Roman pontiff can and should reconcile and harmonize himself with progress, with liberalism, and with recent civilization’. The Syllabus was received with astonishment, not to say incredulity by many non-Catholics, and with dismay by liberal Catholics (and a number of bishops). Some governments, notably those of France, Austria and Bavaria, feared that it might be invested with full dogmatical authority at any forthcoming council. There was some attempt, on the part of those Catholics who thought it both theologically possible and socially essential, for the Church to adjust to the modern world, to organize opposition and put the brakes on the headlong progress to triumphalism. Among the leading English laity, the liberal historian Lord Acton, who had extensive academic and political contacts on the Continent, went on a tour of European state archives in the years 1864–8, which awoke him to what he termed ‘the vast tradition of conventional mendacity’, including the willingness of a triumphalist papacy to employ lying and violence to further essentially secular policies. In his travels he was able to consult with the critical Catholic element, especially in Germany.

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

  He wrote to his friend Link: "Suddenly, and while I was occupied with far other thoughts, the Lord has, plunged me into marriage." The manner was highly characteristic, neither saint-like nor sinner-like, but eminently Luther-like. By taking to himself a wife, he wished to please his

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I knew that once I closed WhatsApp, I would never be able to access it again, but I couldn’t get out fast enough. I felt like I had been sucker-punched. Words in the texts were flying at me and gutting me; like passing a car accident and simultaneously wanting to look and avert one’s eyes, I could not stop the image of those words even after I squeezed my eyes shut. In a stupor, I stumbled breathlessly back into the bedroom I had walked out of with the phone what now felt like a lifetime ago. “Michael,” I said sharply, shaking his shoulder and putting my mouth close to his ear, not wanting to awaken Georgia, sleeping so angelically on my side of the bed, hands folded across her chest. “Wake up.” “What’s wrong?” he asked, his eyes flying open with fear. Shaking, I held his phone aloft. “What?” he asked again. “I know everything,” I said, my hand clutching the phone and waving it in front of him. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “Michael, this would be laughable if it wasn’t so horrific. You always say I’m the best detective. You should have known that eventually I would figure it out.” “Figure what out?” “Your affair. I know it all. I know you’re in love with her and want to leave me. I know, I know,” I said, as my voice began to reach a tone of hysteria. Michael took a deep breath and sighed angrily as he threw the blankets off and followed me out of the room so we wouldn’t disturb Georgia. We went downstairs to our cozy family room, a name that seemed like a cruel joke to me now. “It’s not what you think. You’re acting crazy,” he said, shaking his head in disgust. “Michael, the worst thing you can do is lie to me. If you have any love left for me, you’ll tell me the truth.” “There’s nothing to tell. You’re being ridiculous. It was a fantasy. We didn’t act on it,” he said. “I don’t believe you. I’m begging you to tell me the truth.” “You don’t understand what you read, it was out of context,” he said. “I’m telling you the truth.” “Can you at least admit that you crossed a line in your friendship with her? That whether or not you physically crossed a line, you crossed a line emotionally?” “OK, I crossed a line emotionally. But that’s it.” “How many others have there been?”

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  On the first matter, Pope Leo humiliated himself in front of Charles the Frank, swore a series of oaths that he was guiltless of the accusations against him, and was finally allowed to have ‘justified himself’. The second item on the agenda was more momentous. Since the disappearance of the last ‘western’ emperor in 478, the Christian West had acknowledged the emperor in Constantinople as the sole international authority. But his power, if legitimate, was in practice now virtually nonexistent west of the Adriatic. Italy, Gaul and Germany, and Rome itself, were in the possession of the Frankish armies. Was it not an axiom of common sense, as well as a proposition endorsed repeatedly by the Scriptures, that a sovereign should rule as well as reign? Was not the great Charles the effective master of the West? And then, the throne in Constantinople was vacant. Three years before, its tenant had been arrested by his ferocious mother and blinded, and had died of his wounds. Not everyone recognized the ‘empress’; certainly not the Franks, whose own ancient system of laws forbade an inheritance passing to a woman if there were male claimants. There was, therefore, a strong case for Charles to be accorded some form of imperial dignity. He was undoubtedly the greatest monarch in the West, perhaps in the entire world. As Abbot Alcuin, who was in effect his chief adviser, had pointed out, the English had evolved a system under which the most powerful and successful of their many kings was given the title of bretwalda, and exacted homage and obedience from the others. This argument, which presented the imperial idea in Germanic terms which Charles could grasp, was again put forward by Alcuin’s two delegates at the council. And it appears to have proved conclusive. Charles agreed to become western emperor, and ceremonies of homage seem to have been carried out on that day. Two days later, in the great basilica of St Peter’s, Charles and his generals celebrated Christmas, and the Pope insisted on performing a Roman ritual under which he placed a crown on Charles’s head, and then prostrated himself in an act of emperor-worship, the crowd of Romans present calling out a monotonous series of ritual acclamations. Charles was taken aback by this weird, eastern enactment, which was completely alien to anyone coming from north of the Alps, with a Germanic background. And it seemed suspicious to him that the crown, which he had won by his own achievements, should be presented to him by the Bishop of Rome, as though it were in his gift. Charles said afterwards that, if he had known what was to happen, he would have refused to attend mass in St Peter’s that day. When he appointed his own eldest son the successor-emperor some years later, he insisted on placing the crown himself. The disagreement on the coronation ceremony reflected ambiguities about its precise significance which were to echo through European history for centuries.