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 The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Then suddenly mustering up her courage, she jerked round in the seat and looked at this woman. As their eyes met and held each other for a moment, something vaguely disturbing stirred in Stephen, so that the car made a dangerous swerve. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly, ‘that was rotten bad driving.’ But Angela did not answer. 3 Ralph Crossby was standing at the open doorway as the car swung up and came to a halt. Stephen noticed that he was immaculately dressed in a grey tweed suit that by rights should have been shabby. But everything about him looked aggressively new, his very hair had a quality of newness—it was thin brown hair that shone as though polished. ‘I wonder if he puts it out with his boots,’ thought Stephen, surveying him with interest. He was one of those rather indefinite men, who are neither short nor tall, fat nor thin, old nor young, good-looking nor actually ugly. As his wife would have said, had anybody asked her, he was just ‘plain man,’ which exactly described him, for his only distinctive features were his newness and the peevish expression about his mouth—his mouth was intensely peevish. When he spoke his high-pitched voice sounded fretful. ‘What on earth have you been doing? It’s past two o’clock. I’ve been waiting since one, the lunch must be ruined; I do wish you’d try and be punctual, Angela!’ He appeared not to notice Stephen’s existence, for he went on nagging as though no one were present. ‘Oh, I see, that damn dog of yours has been fighting again, I’ve a good mind to give him a thrashing; and what in God’s name’s the matter with your hand—you don’t mean to say that you’ve got yourself bitten? Really, Angela, this is a bit too bad!’ His whole manner suggested a personal grievance. ‘Well,’ drawled Angela, extending the bandaged hand for inspection, ‘I’ve not been getting manicured, Ralph.’ And her voice was distinctly if gently provoking, so that he winced with quick irritation. Then she seemed quite suddenly to remember Stephen: ‘Miss Gordon, let me introduce my husband.’ He bowed, and pulling himself together: ‘Thank you for driving my wife home, Miss Gordon, it was most kind, I’m sure.’ But he did not seem friendly, he kept glaring at Angela’s dog-bitten hand, and his tone, Stephen thought, was distinctly ungracious. Getting out of the car she started her engine. ‘Good-bye,’ smiled Angela, holding out her hand, the left one, which Stephen grasped much too firmly. ‘Good-bye—perhaps one day you’ll come to tea. We’re on the telephone, Upton 25; ring up and suggest yourself some day quite soon.’ ‘Thanks awfully, I will,’ said Stephen. 4 ‘Had a breakdown or something?’ inquired Puddle brightly, as at three o’clock Stephen slouched into the schoolroom. ‘No—but Mrs. Crossby’s dog had a fight. She got bitten, so I drove her back to The Grange.’ Puddle pricked up her ears: ‘What’s she like?

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  He had no respect for human life, and as emperor he executed his eldest son, his own second wife, his favourite sister’s husband and ‘many others’ on doubtful charges. He was a puritan of sorts, passing laws forbidding concubinage, prostitution of inn servants, and the seduction of slaves, but his private life became monstrous as he aged. He grew fat, was known as ‘the bull-neck’; he may even have suffered from goitre. His abilities had always lain in management, the operation of the mechanics of power; he was a professional arbitrator, a master of the eirenic phrase and the smoothly-worded compromise, but also overbearing, egotistical, self-righteous and ruthless. The public-relations side of his job took over in later years. He showed an increasing regard for flattery, fancy uniforms, personal display and elaborate titles. His nephew Julian said he made himself ridiculous by his appearance – weird, stiff eastern garments, jewels on his arms, a tiara on his head, perched crazily on top of a tinted wig. Bishop Eusebius, his fulsome eulogist, said Constantine dressed thus solely to impress the masses; privately, he laughed at himself. But this contradicts much other evidence, including Eusebius’s own. Vain and superstitious, Constantine may have embraced Christianity because it suited his personal interests, and his growing megalomania. There was a Caesaro-papalist flavour about his regime. Many of his ecclesiastical arrangements indicate that he wanted a state Church, with the clergy as civil servants. His own role was not wholly removed from that of the pagan God-emperor – as witness the colossal heads and statues of himself with which he littered his empire – though he preferred the idea of a priest-king. Eusebius says he was present when Constantine entertained a group of bishops and suddenly remarked: ‘You are bishops whose jurisdiction is within the church. But I also am a bishop, ordained by God to oversee those outside the church.’ Constantine does not seem to have acquired any knowledge of Pauline theology but, again according to Eusebius, he apparently imbibed some of Origen’s more grandiose ideas and secularized them, seeing himself as the chief divine instrument. Thus, said Eusebius, he ‘derived the source of imperial authority from above’; he was ‘strong in the power of the sacred title’. Constantine was especially beloved of Christ and ‘by bringing those whom he rules on earth to the only-begotten and saving Word, renders them fit subjects for Christ’s kingdom’; he is ‘interpreter of the word of God’, a ‘powerful voice declaring the laws of truth and godliness to all who dwell on earth’, ‘the appointed pilot of the mighty vessel whose crew it is his aim to save’.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘In this frame of mind, I was on my way hither when God, who alone knows best how to measure our needs, being stirred as I believe by His compassion, set before my eyes the person He decreed should be my husband. The one I refer to is the young man’ – and she pointed to Alessandro – ‘whom you see standing here at my side. It may well be that he is less pure-blooded than a person of royal birth, but both in bearing and in character he is a worthy match for any great lady. He, therefore, is the man I have taken; it is him alone that I want, and no matter what my father or anyone else may have to say on the subject, I will never accept any other. The ostensible aim of my journey has thus been removed. But I desired to complete it, for two reasons: firstly, to meet Your Holiness and visit the venerable and sacred places in which this city abounds; and secondly, so that through your good offices I could make public, before you and the whole world, the marriage that Alessandro and I have contracted with God as our only witness. What is pleasing to God and to me should not be disagreeable to you, and I therefore beg you in all humility to give us your blessing, armed with which, since you are God’s vicar, we should be more certain of His entire approval. And thus we may live our lives together, till death us do part, to the greater glory not only of God but also of yourself.’ On hearing that his wife was the daughter of the King of England, Alessandro could scarcely contain his astonishment and happiness. But the two knights were even more astonished, and they were so furious that they would have done Alessandro an injury, and possibly the lady as well, if they had been anywhere else but in the Pope’s presence. The Pope, for his part, was greatly astonished both by the lady’s attire and by her choice of a husband. But he realized there was no turning back, and decided to grant her request. He could see, however, that the knights were seething with rage, and so first of all he pacified them and reconciled them with Alessandro and the lady, then he gave orders for what was to be done.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Now it so happened that not long afterwards, the Catalan docked in Alexandria with a cargo which included some peregrine falcons that he was taking to the Sultan. These he duly delivered, after which he was occasionally invited to dine at the royal table, and the Sultan, on observing the ways of Sicurano, who was still in attendance upon him, was greatly impressed with the youth and asked the Catalan if he would allow him to keep him. Although he was loath to let him go, the Catalan gave his consent, and it was not very long before Sicurano’s able performance of his duties had earned him the same degree of favour and affection from the Sultan that he had enjoyed with his previous master. Now, at a certain season of the year, it was the custom to hold a trade-fair within the Sultan’s domain at Acre, where merchants, both Christian and Saracen, used to congregate in large numbers. And in order to protect the merchants and their merchandise, the Sultan always used to send, in addition to his other officials, one of his court dignitaries with a contingent of guardsmen. And so it was that when the time for the fair drew near, the Sultan thought that he would send Sicurano to discharge this function, as he already had an excellent knowledge of the language; and this he did. Sicurano duly arrived in Acre, therefore, as captain in charge of the special guard whose duties were to protect the merchants and their merchandise. And as he went round on tours of inspection, discharging his functions with diligence and skill, he came across a number of merchants from Sicily, Pisa, Genoa, Venice and other parts of Italy, with whom he readily made friends out of a nostalgic feeling for the country of his birth. Now, it so happened that on one of these occasions, having dismounted at the stall of some Venetian merchants, in the midst of various other valuable objects he caught sight of a purse and an ornamental belt, which he promptly recognized as his own former belongings. Concealing his astonishment, he politely asked who owned them and whether they were for sale. One of the merchants attending the fair was Ambrogiuolo of Piacenza, who had arrived there on a Venetian ship with a large quantity of goods, and on hearing that the captain of the guard was asking who owned the articles in question, he stepped forward, grinning all over his face. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘these things belong to me, and they are not for sale. But if you like them, I will gladly make you a present of them.’ When Sicurano saw him laughing, he suspected that the fellow had somehow seen through his disguise, but keeping a straight face, he asked: ‘Why do you laugh? Is it because you see me, a soldier, inquiring about these female commodities?’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Meanwhile, the Abbot quietly rose from his bed in the middle of the night, and with the assistance of a Bolognese monk whom he trusted implicitly and who had arrived that same day from Bologna, he dragged Ferondo from the tomb and moved him into a vault, totally devoid of any light, which served as a place of confinement for monks who had broken their vows. Having removed the clothes Ferondo was wearing and dressed him in a monastic habit, they left him lying on a bundle of straw until such time as he should come to his senses. And in the meantime, unbeknown to anyone else, the Bolognese monk waited for Ferondo to come round, having been told what to do by the Abbot. Next day, the Abbot, accompanied by one or two of his monks, called on the lady to pay her his respects, and found her dressed in black and full of woe. After offering her a few words of comfort, he quietly reminded her of her promise, and the lady, having caught sight of another fine ring on the Abbot’s finger, and realizing that she was now a free agent, unhindered by Ferondo or anyone else, told him that she was ready to honour it and arranged for him to call there after dark that evening. After dark, therefore, the Abbot decked himself out in Ferondo’s clothes and set off for her house accompanied by his monk. Having spent the whole night in her arms with enormous pleasure and delight, he returned a little before matins to the abbey, and from then on he went regularly- back and forth on the same errand. It occasionally happened that people would chance upon the Abbot as he wended his way to and fro, and they concluded that it must be Ferondo’s ghost, wandering through the district doing penance. So that, in the course of time, various strange legends grew up among the simple countryfolk, and some of these reached the ears of Ferondo’s wife, who was not mystified in the slightest. When Ferondo recovered his senses, without having the faintest idea where he was, the Bolognese monk burst in upon him brandishing a bunch of sticks; and with a terrifying roar, he seized hold of him and gave him a severe thrashing. Weeping and howling, Ferondo kept repeating the same question: ‘Where am I?’ ‘You are in Purgatory,’ replied the monk. ‘What?’ said Ferondo. ‘Do you mean to say I am dead, then?’ ‘You certainly are,’ said the monk; whereupon Ferondo started bemoaning his fate and weeping over the plight of his wife and child, coming out with the most extraordinary statements imaginable. The monk then brought him some food and drink, and Ferondo gasped with astonishment, saying: ‘Do dead people eat?’

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

  When he closes his eyes, gasps and then collapses on top of me, I feel nothing so much as relief. He rolls off me, pulling off the used condom and disposing of it in the bathroom. When he returns, he lies next to me on the bed so that we are now both on our backs, staring up at the ceiling. “You’re quite flexible,” he says, smiling and glancing at me. “Clearly doing yoga or a lot of stretching.” “Nah, just having a lot of sex,” I say with a coy smile. “Ha, OK then. Speaking of a lot of sex, I haven’t told you about the sex party yet,” he says. “Oh yes, I’ve been waiting for a full report. Please start at the very beginning, when you walked in the door with your blue cashmere sweater. Was everyone else already naked?” “Not at all, in fact it kind of felt like a support group. We sat in a circle and went around the room saying what we wanted to get out of the night,” he says. “And when they said what they wanted, was it like a sharing circle? Hi, my name is Laura, I live in NYC, have three kids, my favorite ice cream is Breyers vanilla, and I’m hoping to have three spectacular orgasms tonight?” I ask. “Take out the part about ice cream and add to the orgasms that you’re hoping to get fucked by two men simultaneously and you’ll get a little closer to the circle,” he says. He tells me that he confessed that this was his first time and he was looking forward to observing and participating, but that other people were very specific and graphic about fantasies and S&M, sex toys, blindfolds and whips, women on women, men on men, threesomes, foursomes and anal sex. I nod along, my eyes wide, as he continues that they split into groups depending on what they wanted, but that it was understood that he was going to be with the hostess since she invited him to be part of her fantasy of being with multiple men at the same time, while her husband went off with his girlfriend. “That kind of defeats the point of the group sex party, doesn’t it?” I say. “True, well maybe his fantasy was having sex with his girlfriend while his wife was being gang-banged in the bedroom next door,” he says and I blanch, but maintain my determination to understand the logistical set-up, asking if there were enough rooms for everyone.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Then she took him by the hand, and led him up to the main room of her house, from whence, without another word, she passed with him into her bedroom, which was all fragrant with roses, orange-blossom and other pleasant odours. There he saw an exquisite curtained bed, a large number of dresses hanging from pegs, as is the custom in those parts, and other very beautiful, expensive looking objects. He had never seen such finery before, and was firmly convinced that the lady must be nothing less than a genuine aristocrat. Having made him sit by her side on a chest at the foot of the bed, she began to address him as follows: ‘Andreuccio, I am quite sure you must be astonished at me for embracing you like this and bursting into tears, for you do not know me and it may be that you have never even heard of me before. But you are now to hear something that will possibly increase your astonishment, for the fact is that I am your sister. I have always longed to meet all of my brothers, and now that God has been good enough to allow me to see one of them, I shall no longer die disconsolate when the time comes for me to depart this life. But in case you know nothing of this, I will tell you all about it. ‘Pietro, who is my father as well as yours, lived for many years in Palermo, as I suppose you may have heard. Being a good and amiable man, he was greatly loved there, and he is still loved there to this day by those who knew him. But of all his profound admirers, none loved him more than my mother, who was a widowed lady of gentle birth. Indeed, she loved Pietro so deeply, that she abandoned all fear of her father, her brothers and her good name, and their friendship became so intimate that it led to the birth of the person you see here now, sitting beside you. ‘When I was still a little girl, Pietro’s business called him away from Palermo and he returned to Perugia, leaving my mother and me to fend for ourselves, and as far as I have been able to discover, he never gave either of us another thought. For this reason, but for the fact that he was my father, I would be inclined to reproach him bitterly, considering (to say nothing of the affection he should have had for me, his own daughter, born neither of a serving-wench nor of any low-class woman) the ingratitude he displayed towards my mother. For she, prompted by her unswerving devotion, surrendered herself body and soul to this man, without so much as knowing who he was.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘even if I were in my native city, and not in yours, I count myself the sort of friend who would never do anything that was contrary to your wishes, either in the present instance or in any other. Besides, I am more than ever bound to respect your wishes in this matter inasmuch as you have wronged one of yourselves, for this young woman comes neither from Cremona nor Pavia, as many people may possibly have supposed, but from Faenza, though neither she nor I nor the person who entrusted her to my care ever discovered whose daughter she was. Hence I am fully prepared to do as you ask.’ The worthy men were surprised to learn that the girl was a native of Faenza, and having thanked Giacomino for taking so generous a view of the matter, they asked him to be so kind as to explain how she had come under his control, and how he knew that she was from Faenza. Giacomino said to them: ‘Guidotto da Cremona, who was a friend and comrade of mine, informed me on his deathbed that when this town was captured by the Emperor Frederick, and everything was being plundered, he and his companions entered a house and found it full of booty. All the inhabitants had fled except for this girl, who would be about two years old at the time, and as he was going up the stairs, she called him “father”. He felt sorry for the child, and together with all the valuables from the house, he took her with him to Fano. And in Fano, as he lay dying, he appointed me her guardian and bequeathed to me everything he possessed, on the understanding that when she grew up I would see that she was married, handing over his fortune to her by way of dowry. She is now of marriageable age, but I have not yet succeeded in finding a suitable husband for her. The sooner I can do so the better, for I’ve no wish to suffer the things I suffered last night all over again.’ One of the people present was Guiglielmino da Medicina, who had been with Guidotto at the time of this escapade, and remembered quite clearly whose house Guidotto had plundered. Seeing the owner of the house standing there with the others, he went up to him and said: ‘Bernabuccio, do you hear what Giacomino says?’ ‘Yes,’ said Bernabuccio, ‘and I was just thinking about it, because during those upheavals I lost a little girl of the age that Giacomino mentioned.’ ‘Then it must be the same girl,’ said Guiglielmino, ‘for I was once in a place where I heard Guidotto describing the house he had looted, and I recognized it as yours. Try and remember whether the child had any mark by which you could identify her, and get them to look for it. I am certain you will find that she is your daughter.’

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  the earth; here was no question of nuance, of political tactic, of give or take, compromise and manoeuvre, but a final conflict between absolute good and absolute evil. In credal terms, Frederick was strictly orthodox, though his wide reading, knowledge of the world – especially the East and Islam – had bred in him a spirit of speculative tolerance. But papal propaganda, concocted not by hack clerical scribes but by the popes personally, presented the head of the earthly society as incarnate wickedness. Frederick, the Pope claimed, had turned a holy altar in an Apulian church into a public latrine, he had used churches as brothels and had practiced sodomy openly; blasphemed by calling Christ, Moses and Mohammed ‘three impostors’; denied the Virgin Birth; and said of the Eucharist: ‘How long will this hocus-pocus continue?’ He was ‘a beast filled with blasphemous words . . . with the feet of a bear, the mouth of an outraged lion, the rest of the body shaped like a panther . . . the creator of lies, oblivious of modesty, untouched by the blush of shame . . . a wolf in sheep’s clothing . . . a scorpion with a sting in its tail . . . A dragon formed to deceive us . . . the hammer of the earth.’ He wanted to turn the whole world into a desert, and rejoiced when he was called Antichrist. He denied the faith, and his aim was to smash up Christian doctrine. He was ‘the master of cruelty . . . the corrupter of the whole world . . . a poisonous serpent . . . the fourth beast in the book of Daniel, whose teeth are of iron and whose nails are of brass’. From the twelfth century we can date the beginnings of anti-papal literature, inspired by the deepening gulf between the claim to spiritual (and therefore material) power, and the spiritual poverty of so many of its own actions. If the Church had a monopoly of education, it had never really possessed a monopoly of literature. Or, to put it another way, the secular element in society found expression even if the hand was strictly a cleric’s. A long line of thought and half-memory stretched back to the imperial Roman concept of earthly authority before the total impress of Christianity was received. In a way, reversion to imperial Rome was one line of escape from an all- enclosing, compulsory Christian society. In the tenth century, shortly after the revival of the imperial title by Otto I at Rome in 962, a nun from the royal monastery of Gandersheim, Hrotswitha, produced a number of ideological verse-histories, and six ‘dramas’ in metrical prose, supposedly to provide a Christian alternative to Terence, which included Gallicanus , set in the court of Constantine. In the latter part of the twelfth century, we have an imperial Staufen propaganda play, the Ludus de Antichristo , written for Frederick Barbarossa – Otto of Freising may have had a hand

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

  We bickered within the range of what I thought was expected and normal for a long- married couple, we loved and often adored each other, we had just moved into our “forever” home, we traveled and loved spending time together with our kids. We often poked fun at each other’s peculiarities (the animalistic way he tore into his grapefruit standing over the sink every morning, the way I chewed apples like a horse). I was proud of his professional success – and of having been by his side as he built it – and I still delighted in his ability to be playful, optimistic, and sometimes flat-out zany. For decades, he had been my perfect counterbalance: an embracer of change and the unknown when I resisted both, and able to find the glass half-full when I seemed only to find it half-empty. In exchange, I had given him freedom to come and go as he worked long and unpredictable hours, showing unwavering faith and support in all his endeavors. Most importantly, after his having bounced around countless New York City apartments as the only child of divorced, bohemian parents, I had made him a home, one that looked and smelled and felt like a warmly shared space in which a loving family lived. My closest friends are astounded. Some friends who are slightly less close comment, “You never know what goes on behind closed doors.” This hits me like a slap in the face, as if we had been putting on a front the whole time, as if who we really were as a couple was different from who we appeared to be. I understand that these friends want to believe there was a sinister story unfolding at home so that this event could make some sort of sense, but I am as shocked as they are, so how can I offer reasonable explanations? How can I reassure them that their own marriages won’t fall prey to this trauma too? I had always been the advice columnist of our group, the one friends had referred to as “Dear Laura”, ready and able to dispense advice and resources. If this could happen to me, it seemed reasonable to assume that it could happen to any of them too. I have been selective with whom I have shared my tale of woe but still, word spreads. One day I run into an acquaintance who has been battling cancer. She has lost her lustrous, cascading curls and now a colorful silk scarf frames her face.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Now that she was fully informed about his family and the names of his various relatives, the young woman devised an ingenious plan for achieving her object. On arriving home, she gave the old woman enough work to occupy her for the rest of the day, so that she could not keep her appointment with Andreuccio. Then she took aside a maidservant of hers, to whom she had given a thorough grounding in affairs of this sort, and towards evening she sent her to the inn where Andreuccio was staying. On arriving at the door of the inn, she happened to run across our hero, who was by himself, and she asked him where she could find Andreuccio. When he told her that he was the very man, she drew him aside and said: ‘Sir, there is a gentlewoman of this city who would be glad of a few words with you, if you have no objection.’ When he heard this, Andreuccio immediately assumed, on looking himself up and down and thinking what a handsome fellow he was, that the woman must have fallen in love with him, as though he were the only good-looking youth at that time to be found in Naples. So he readily agreed, and asked where and when the lady would like to see him. ‘You may come whenever you wish, sir,’ said the maid. ‘She is waiting for you at her house.’ ‘Lead the way then,’ Andreuccio promptly replied. ‘I’ll follow you.’ And without leaving any message at the inn, off he went. The maid conveyed him to the lady’s house, which was situated in a quarter called The Fleshpots,1 the mere name of which shows how honest a district it was. But Andreuccio neither knew nor suspected anything of all this, being of the opinion that he was on his way to see a gentlewoman in a perfectly respectable part of the city. Eventually, with the maid leading the way, they arrived at the lady’s house, and Andreuccio went boldly in. The maid had already hailed her mistress with the words ‘Andreuccio’s here!’, and as he mounted the stairs he saw the lady coming out on the landing to receive him. She was still very young, tall in stature, with a very beautiful face, and her clothes and jewellery were a model of good taste. Just before Andreuccio reached her, she opened her arms wide and descended three steps to meet him. Then she clasped him round the neck and remained for some time without speaking, as though hindered by a surge of powerful emotion. Finally, her eyes filling with tears, she kissed his brow and said, in a somewhat faltering voice: ‘Oh, Andreuccio my dear, how delighted I am to see you.’ Not knowing what to make of this barrage of affection, he replied, in tones of deep astonishment: ‘My lady, the pleasure is mine.’

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

  He admits that he is nervous about the party and not sure what to expect, but that he has been dating a woman who is in an open marriage and that she has been trying to get him to come to one of these parties she and her husband host every month. He hasn’t met the husband yet and all he knows is that there’s a regular group of people who attend and they pair off depending on what they’re looking for. “Well, this is definitely out of my comfort zone, so I have no advice for you,” I say. “Yeah, mine too,” he says laughing. Having just loosened the reins on my policy about monogamy, I am now facing the opposite extreme, but who am I to judge? Maybe if Michael and I had had an open marriage, we would still be married, or maybe a sex party is the greatest thing ever. I can’t imagine myself being so comfortable in a group that I could just let go, but who knows? If I’ve learned nothing else from this past year, it’s that there’s a lot less I know for sure than I thought I knew. #8 promises to report back to me, and I advise that he work hard to try and get the details down as I will have a lot of questions. I stand to use the restroom and his eyes shoot down my body, linger, and then slowly work their way back up to my face. “You look good in tight jeans,” he says. “You have sex party on the brain,” I say and saunter off, knowing he is watching me. When we part on the corner a few minutes later, bundled back into layers of winter clothes, he leans down to kiss me goodbye and I stand on my tiptoes so that I can put my hand behind his neck. The kiss, outside a row of brownstones whose Christmas lights are still twinkling, is a vast improvement over the subway kiss. As he heads down to the subway and I walk toward home, my phone rings. It’s #6, who has likely waited what seemed to him like an appropriate amount of time before checking up on me. For all his encouragement that I go off and live my life freely, I suspect it’s not a comfortable position for him to be in, just as he fairly pointed out it wouldn’t be for me if the tables were turned. When I pick up the phone, he barely says hello before asking me about my date. “It was nice, thank you for asking. Are you checking up on me?” I say. “Yes and no. You left your stuff here – the soup I had packed up for you.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Since they were alone in a very remote part of the house (the lady being quite disarmed by the pilgrim’s appearance of saintliness), Tedaldo drew forth a ring which he had religiously preserved and which the lady had given him on their last night together, and held it out for her to see, saying: ‘Do you know this ring, madam?’ The lady recognized it at once. ‘I do indeed, sir,’ she replied. ‘I gave it long ago to Tedaldo.’ The pilgrim thereupon stood up straight, and having thrown off his cloak and removed his hood, he addressed her in a Florentine accent, saying: ‘And do you know me, too?’ When the lady saw that it was Tedaldo, she was utterly astonished, and began to tremble with fright, as though she were seeing a ghost. Far from rushing forward to welcome a Tedaldo who had returned from Cyprus, she shrank back in terror from a Tedaldo who had seemingly risen from the grave. ‘Do not be afraid, my lady,’ he said. ‘I really am your Tedaldo. I am alive and well, and whatever you and my brothers may believe, I never died and was never murdered.’ Somewhat reassured by the sound of his voice, the lady looked at him more closely, and having convinced herself that he really was Tedaldo, she burst into tears, flung her arms about his neck, and kissed him, saying: ‘Tedaldo, my sweet Tedaldo, you are welcome!’ ‘My lady,’ said Tedaldo, after embracing and kissing her, ‘there is no time now to exchange more intimate greetings. I must go and arrange for Aldobrandino to be restored to you safe and sound, and trust that you will hear good news of my endeavours before tomorrow evening. Indeed, I fully expect by tonight to hear that he is safe, in which case I should like to come and tell you all about it in a more leisurely way than I have time for at present.’ Donning once again his pilgrim’s cloak and hood, he kissed the lady a second time, assured her that everything would be all right, and left her. He then proceeded to the place where Aldobrandino, more preoccupied with the dread of his impending doom than with the hope of his future release, was being held prisoner. And having been admitted to Aldobrandino’s cell by the prison-warders, who assumed that he had come to minister to the condemned man, he sat down beside him, saying: ‘Aldobrandino, I am a friend, sent here to save you by God, who has been moved to pity by your innocence. If, therefore, out of reverence to Him you will grant me the trifling favour that I am about to ask of you, it is certain that by tomorrow evening, instead of languishing here under sentence of death, you will hear the news of your acquittal.’

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  This book will explore the attitudes that Jesus and his followers took toward marriage, family, procreation, and celibacy, and thus toward “human nature” in general, and the controversies these attitudes sparked as they were variously interpreted among Christians for generations—or for millennia, depending on how one counts. It will also show how men and women who converted to Christianity often adopted attitudes toward sexuality that their families and friends considered bizarre. Moreover, I shall further speculate on how we have come to take for granted the set of attitudes about sexuality and human nature arising from “Judeo-Christian culture,” attitudes that many people today take to be normal and obvious but that were, in the context of early Christian times, anything but normal and, from the anthropologically informed perspective of our own contemporaries, anything but obvious. JESUS AND HIS FOLLOWERS, at the beginning of what came to be called the Christian Era, took up startlingly different attitudes toward divorce, procreation, and family from those that had prevailed for centuries among most of their fellow Jews. So powerful were these challenges to convention that they precipitated, or at least accompanied, the birth of a new religious movement. Despite Jesus’ radical message—or perhaps because of it—the movement quickly spread throughout the Roman world and within three centuries came to dominate it. As the Christian movement emerged within the Roman Empire, it challenged pagan converts, too, to change their attitudes and behavior. Many pagans who had been brought up to regard marriage essentially as a social and economic arrangement, homosexual relationships as an expected element of male education, prostitution, both male and female, as both ordinary and legal, and divorce, abortion, contraception, and exposure of unwanted infants as matters of practical expedience, embraced, to the astonishment of their families, the Christian message, which opposed these practices.

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

  I didn’t really expect him to be here and am surprised and nervous. He gestures to the enclosed seat. I drop my sandals and climb in, asking how he got to the beach since I can’t picture him in a car, which seems too ordinary for him. He takes a long inhale of the joint he is holding and passes it to me, but I shake my head. Now that I’m trying to see him as a real person and not just the demi-god of my dreams, I’m curious too to know his real name. He makes me promise that I won’t laugh at it. “Ephraim,” he says. “A Biblical name. Does anyone still call you that?” I ask. “My mother,” he says. “And how did you come to be known as Blaze?” I say. “How do you think, Mama?” he says laughing and before I can answer his lips are on mine, so soft and pillowy that I want to bite them. His breath is a combination of cigarettes and weed, and I can smell cologne on his skin, which I find touching – an indication that he put himself together for me. He lies me back and looks meaningfully at me as he pulls my dress down and throws it to the side, so that I am lying naked except for a pale pink thong, which he also pulls down and throws to the side of the chair. I watch him closely but don’t speak. He tells me that he’s been watching me for a long time and then his lips are all over my body, working their way from my nipples down my torso, resting on my still-hairless pubic triangle. “Mama, you have fat pussy lips!” he says, laughing. “I don’t know how to take that. Is that a compliment or an insult?” I ask. “I have no insults for you,” he says, burrowing his face between my legs. After a few minutes, he pulls himself up and unbuttons his shorts, reaches into his pocket and holds up a condom, saying, “No baby Blazes.” He thrusts into me and it takes me only a moment to come, but now he is energetically pumping, so much so that sweat is dripping from his long braids onto my face and along my neck. He pulls out to turn me around onto my hands and knees, but realizes the condom has fallen off. He pats the mattress and uses his phone as a flashlight, but we can’t find it. “It’s inside of you,” he says. My eyes widen; in panic, I envision myself in a clinic as doctors do a scavenger hunt inside of me to find the missing condom.

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

  He explains that the apartment was pretty big and that all rooms were used, even the open living room and the kids’ bedrooms. “I wonder how the kids would feel if they knew that. My kids would drop dead on the spot, they would feel so violated,” I say, mortified. His answer, that her kids know that she and her husband have an open marriage so maybe wouldn’t be as scandalized as mine, is a reminder to me that he doesn’t have kids of his own. I prod him to keep going with the story, now that they’ve moved into a bedroom with other men. “So she wanted to have a dick in her mouth while she was being fucked from the front and back,” he says. “I didn’t know that could be done. Did someone call shotgun for the front position?” I ask. “No, she told us where to go. She had been with the other two men before, so they knew what to do. I was on the bottom and she was on top of me and then another man was on top of her. And the third guy was right behind my head so she could put him in her mouth.” “Whoa!’ I say, finally and genuinely speechless. “Yeah,” he agrees. We are quiet for a moment. “Did you like it?” I ask. “Because that’s several comfort zones away from one’s average sexual encounter.” “I felt really uncomfortable being with two other naked men. I’ve never been with men sexually before. And the guy above my head was very close to me and I was hyperaware of him, so that was awkward. And then the worst part, I can’t even say it,” he says. I wait silently. There’s no way I’m not getting the rest of this story out of him so I figure if the silence is uncomfortable enough, he will break it eventually. “Well, the guy on top was really short, remarkably short, but he had a huge dick. Huge. The ratio of the size of it to the size of his body was jarring,” he says. “I could feel him while I was inside of her. I mean, it’s just a thin wall between her ass and her pussy, and I’m inside her pussy and I can feel him moving inside of her. It was too much for me. I’m glad I tried it, but I never need to do it again.” “Was there any part of it that you enjoyed?” I ask. “Honestly, not really,” he says laughing. “It reduced sex to something that felt purely animalistic. I like this woman, but this isn’t for me. I haven’t spoken to her since the party. I think she knows it spooked me. By the way, if you saw her you would be shocked. She looks quite prim and proper.

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

  We talk about school dances and our college days, our families and the challenges of being a single parent. My mouth drops open when he tells me that on nights he has his kids, he feeds them packets of ramen noodles or boxes of Kraft mac and cheese. I tell him I know he can do better and promise to send him some simple, no-fail recipes. As the sky outside begins to fade, he asks if I’m hungry but assures me he’s not offering anything from his understocked pantry. I pause and look down at his penis, which is soft against his thigh, and pause as I ponder it. The skin along the shaft is smooth and looks like a hood and I startle to realize this is the first uncircumcised penis I have ever seen. It reminds me of a turtle inside its shell and when I now touch it, running the edge of my nail along the shaft, it hardens until it has emerged from its shell. I am too shy to do what I really want, which is to tell him this is my first close-up with an uncircumcised penis, and to more closely examine it, so I settle for another round of sex and then agree we can go eat dinner. He asks if I want to take a shower; I guess the washcloth clean-up was a first- time customer special only. Remembering that I am going right from him to #3 and scrubbing myself clean of one man before I see the next seems like the polite thing to do, I head to his daughter’s bathroom to use her shower while he gets into the shower in his bathroom. We drive into town for dinner, to a restaurant that he insists has the best steak, and we stand in the dimly lit hallway to the dining room as we wait for the host to set a table. We gaze at each other with playful smiles; he looks to his left and then to his right and seeing no one coming, leans across the hallway to give me a quick kiss. When we sit at the small table, he takes the candle, vase and the salt and pepper shakers from the center of the table, moving each object one at a time to the table next to ours, and then reaches across the now-empty space for my hands, which he holds. There is something boyish and endearing about him, his gestures intentional and confident. “Oh, I almost forgot!” I say excitedly. “There’s a weekend in September when I have the whole weekend free. Maybe you can arrange not to have your kids that weekend and we can do something?” “Sure, great,” he says. “Hang on, let me see which weekend it is,” I say, scrolling through the calendar on my phone.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Marchese and Stecchi thought this a splendid idea, so all three of them promptly left the inn and went to a lonely spot, where Martellino contorted not only his hands, fingers, arms and legs, but also his mouth, his eyes and the whole of his face, becoming such a horrifying spectacle that no one would have taken him for anything other than a genuine case of hopeless and total bodily paralysis. In this state he was taken up by Marchese and Stecchi, and they headed for the church, with pity written all over their faces, humbly beseeching all those blocking their path to make way, for the love of God. They persuaded people to move without any trouble, and in brief, to the accompaniment of almost continuous cries of ‘Make way! Make way!’, and with all eyes turned in their direction, they arrived at the place where the body of Saint Arrigo was lying. There were some gentlemen standing round the body, and they quickly took hold of Martellino and laid him across it, so that it might help him regain the use of his limbs. Martellino lay there motionless for a while, with all eyes fixed upon him to see what would happen. Then, like the skilled performer that he was, he began to go through the motions of straightening out one of his fingers, then a hand, then an arm, and so on until he had unwound himself completely. When the people saw this, they applauded Saint Arrigo so rowdily that a roll of thunder would have passed unnoticed. Now it happened that there was a Florentine standing nearby, and although he was very well acquainted with Martellino, he had failed to recognize him when he was first led in, because of the grotesqueness of his appearance. But when he saw him standing up straight, he knew at once who it was, and he burst out laughing and said: ‘God damn the fellow! Who would have thought, to see him arriving, that he was not really paralysed at all!’ ‘What?’ exclaimed a number of Trevisans, who had overheard the Florentine’s words. ‘Do you mean to say he was not paralysed?’ ‘Heaven forbid!’ the Florentine replied. ‘He has always stood as straight as the rest of us. But as you could see just now, he has this extraordinary knack of disguising himself in any manner he chooses.’ There was no need to say any more, for on hearing this they forced their way to the front, and began to shout: ‘Take hold of that blaspheming swindler! He comes here pretending to be a cripple, poking fun at our Saint and making fools of us when he wasn’t really crippled at all!’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Eventually, Masetto, being unable to cope with all their demands, decided that by continuing to be dumb any longer he might do himself some serious injury. And so one night, when he was with the Abbess, he untied his tongue and began to talk. ‘I have always been given to understand, ma’am,’ he said, ‘that whereas a single cock is quite sufficient for ten hens, ten men are hard put to satisfy one woman, and yet here am I with nine of them on my plate. I can’t endure it any longer, not at any price, and as a matter of fact I’ve been on the go so much that I’m no longer capable of delivering the goods. So you’ll either have to bid me farewell or come to some sort of an arrangement.’ When she heard him speak, the lady was utterly amazed, for she had always believed him to be dumb. ‘What is all this?’ she said. ‘I thought you were supposed to be dumb.’ ‘That’s right, ma’am, I was,’ said Masetto, ‘but I wasn’t born dumb. It was owing to an illness that I lost the power of speech, and, praise be to God, I’ve recovered it this very night.’ The lady believed him implicitly, and asked him what he had meant when he had talked about having nine on his plate. Masetto explained how things stood, and when the Abbess heard, she realized that every single one of the nuns possessed sharper wits than her own. Being of a tactful disposition, she decided there and then that rather than allow Masetto to go away and spread tales concerning the convent, she would come to some arrangement with her nuns in regard to the matter. Their old steward had died a few days previously. And so, with Masetto’s consent, they unanimously decided, now that they all knew what the others had been doing, to persuade the people living in the neighbourhood that after a prolonged period of speechlessness, his ability to talk had been miraculously restored by the nuns’ prayers and the virtues of the saint after whom the convent was named, and they appointed him their new steward. They divided up his various functions among themselves in such a way that he was able to do them all justice. And although he fathered quite a number of nunlets and monklets, it was all arranged so discreetly that nothing leaked out until after the death of the Abbess, by which time Masetto was getting on in years and simply wanted to retire to his village on a fat pension. Once his wishes became known, they were readily granted.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Next morning, Messer Ricciardo saw Paganino and engaged him in conversation, losing no time in getting on friendly and familiar terms with him, while Paganino, pretending not to know who he was, waited to see what he was proposing to do. At the earliest opportunity, Messer Ricciardo disclosed the purpose of his visit as concisely and politely as he could, then asked Paganino to hand the lady over, naming whatever sum he required by way of ransom. ‘Welcome to Monaco, sir,’ replied Paganino, smiling broadly. ‘And as to your request, I will answer you briefly, as follows. It is true that I have a young lady in my house, but I couldn’t say whether she is your wife or some other man’s wife, for I do not know you, and all I know about the lady is that she has been living with me for some time. I have taken a liking to you, however, and since you appear to be honest, I will take you to see her, and if you are indeed her husband, as you claim to be, she will no doubt recognize you. If she confirms your story and wants to go with you, you are such an amiable sort of fellow that I am content to leave the amount of the ransom to your own good judgement. But if your story isn’t true, it would be dishonest of you to try and deprive me of her, for I am a young man and no less entitled than anyone else to keep a woman, especially this one, for she is the nicest I ever saw.’ ‘Of course she is my wife,’ said Messer Ricciardo. ‘You will soon be convinced when you take me to see her, for she will fling her arms round my neck immediately. I could ask for nothing better than the arrangement you suggest.’ ‘In that case,’ said Paganino, ‘let us proceed.’ And so off they went to Paganino’s house, where they entered a large room and Paganino sent for the lady, who came in from another room, composed in appearance and neatly dressed, and walked over to where the two men were standing. But she took no more notice of Messer Ricciardo than if he were some total stranger coming into the house as Paganino’s guest. On seeing this, the judge was greatly astonished, for he had been expecting her to greet him with a display of frenzied rejoicing. ‘Perhaps,’ he thought, ‘the melancholy and prolonged suffering to which I have been subjected, ever since I lost her, have wrought such a change in my appearance that she no longer knows who I am.’ He therefore addressed her as follows: