Tenderness

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.

Page 118 of 145 · 20 per page

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Seizing now one of the rods, I stood over him, and according to his direction, gave him in one breath, ten lashes with much good-will, and the utmost nerve and vigour of arm that I could put to them, so as to make those fleshy orbs quiver again under them; whilst he himself seemed no more concerned, or to mind them, than a lobster would a flea-bite. In the mean time, I view intently the effect of them, which to me at last appeared surprisingly cruel: every lash had skimmed the surface of those white cliffs, which they deeply reddened, and lapping round the side of the furthermost from me, cut specially, into the dimple of it, such livid weals, as the blood either spun out from, or stood in large drops on; and, from some of the cuts, I picked out even the splinters of the rod that had stuck in the skin. Nor was this raw work to be wondered at, considering the greenness of the twigs and the severity of the infliction, whilst the whole surface of the skin was so smooth-stretched over the hard and firm pulp of flesh that filled it, as to yield no play, or elusive swagging under the stroke: which thereby took place the more plump, and cut into the quick. I was however already so moved at the piteous sight, that I from my heart repented the undertaking, and would willing had given over, thinking he had full enough; but, he encouraging and beseeching me earnestly to proceed, I gave him ten more lashes; and then resting, surveyed the increase of bloody appearances.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  He moved in for the kill. “We’ll walk to the car,” he said. “I’ll open the door for you, because that’s what I do. We will drive to a great Greek place. Best gyros you’ve ever tasted-open twenty-four hours. You get to choose the music in the car. I’ll open your door, we’ll go inside, get a table by the window. We want the table by the window because the restaurant is across the street from a gym, and the gym is next door to a doughnut shop. And we’ll want to count how many gym goers stop for doughnuts after they work out. We’ll talk or we can just watch the doughnut shop. Whatever you want. But you have to leave the house, Senna. And I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Please.” I was shaking by the time he finished. So violently I had to sit down on the bottom stair, my fingernails bending against the wood. That meant I was considering what he was saying. Actually thinking about leaving the house, wanting to taste the gyros … see the doughnut shop. But not just that, there was something in his voice. He needed to do this. When I looked up, Isaac Asterholder was still where he was. Waiting. “Okay,” I said. It wasn’t like me, but everything had changed. And if he kept showing up for me, I could show up for him. Just this once. It was raining. I liked the cover that rain provided. It protected you from the hard brutality of the sun. It brought things to life, made them flourish. I was born in the desert where the sun and my father almost killed me. I lived in Washington because of the rain, because of how it made my life feel washed of my past. I stared out the window until Isaac handed me his iPod. It was beat-up looking. Well loved. He had the Finding Neverland soundtrack. I pressed play, and we drove without words, from our lips or from our music. The restaurant was called Olive and smelled like onions and lamb. We sat by the window, just as Isaac promised, and ordered gyros. Neither of us spoke. It was enough to be out among the living. We watched people amble on the sidewalk across the street. Gym goers and doughnut shop goers, and just as he promised, sometimes they were one and the same. The shop was called The Doughnut Hole. It had a large picture of a pink frosted doughnut on the storefront with an arrow pointing to the hole in the center. There was a large flashing blue sign that said, Open 24/7. People in the city didn’t sleep. I should live there.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  It’s dark in the kitchen. I don’t want to put the light on and risk Isaac knowing I was in here. If he is trying to avoid me, I’ll help him. But when I look up he’s standing in the doorway watching me. We stare at each other for the longest time. I feel anxious. It looks like he has something to say. I think he’s come to fight some more, but then I see something else in his eyes. He takes the steps to reach me. One … two … three … four. He’s standing in front of my knees. My hair is wild and unruly. I can’t remember the last time I brushed it. It’s grown past where my breasts used to be. Now it’s sort of a shawl across my upper body, so that even when I’m naked I don’t have to see myself. I don’t even bother to hide my white streak behind my ear like I usually do when Isaac is around. It curls in front of my eye, partly obscuring my vision. Isaac pushes my hair over my shoulder and I flinch involuntarily. Then he puts his hands on my knees. Their warmth stings. He pushes outward, spreading my legs, then he takes a step forward until he’s standing between them. He bends his head until our mouths are almost touching. Almost. The fingers on both of my hands are splayed on the tabletop behind me, balancing myself. I can feel the grooves of my carvings. The carvings Isaac helped me make. He doesn’t kiss me. We have never spoken about the kiss we shared when we thought we were dying. He breathes into my mouth as his hands run up the length of my thighs. His hands feel like warm water running across my skin. I cold shiver. My robe is hiked up to the top of my thighs. When his palms leave my legs, I want to cry out, No! I want more of the warmth, but he reaches up and grabs both lapels of my robe, pulling it open and exposing my chest. I’m frozen. Numb. He touches my scars. My barren womanhood. Frozen … frozen … frozen … and then I break open. I gasp and grab his hands, pushing them away. “What are you doing?” He doesn’t answer me. He lifts his hands to my neck. Wherever he touches me there is heat. I roll my head back and his thumbs graze my jaw. “What I want,” he says. I roll my head to the left to try to pull away from him, but he pushes his hand into my hair at the back of my head, and kisses the side of my neck until I’m shivering. He has me at a disadvantage; I’m trying to keep myself upright with one hand and push him away with the other. Eventually, my hand slips out from under me and we collapse on the table.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  After a week, he comes up the stairs with a handful of green bandages. “There’s no infection that I can see around the wound. It’s healing.” I notice that he didn’t say, Healing well. “The bone could still become infected, but we can hope the penicillin will take care of that.” “What’s that?” I ask, nodding toward his hands. “I’m going to put your leg in a cast. Then I can move you to the bed.” “What if the bone doesn’t fuse together properly?” I ask. He’s quiet for a long time as he works with the supplies. “It’s not going to heal properly,” he says. “You’ll most likely walk with a limp for the rest of your life. On most days, you’ll have pain.” I close my eyes. Of course. Of course. Of course. When I look up again, he’s cutting the toes off of a white sock. He fits it over my foot as gently as he can and pulls it up my leg. I force breath from my nostrils to keep from wailing. It must be one of his. The sock. The zookeeper didn’t give me any white socks. He didn’t give me anything white. Isaac does the same thing with a second sock, and then a third, until I have them lined from the middle of my foot to my knee. Then he takes one of the bandages from the bucket of water. It’s not a bandage, I realize. It’s rolls of a fiberglass cast. He starts mid foot, rolling the cast around and around until it runs out. Then he plucks out a new roll and does it again. Over and over until he’s used all five rolls and my leg is fully cast. Isaac leans back to examine his work. He looks exhausted. “Let’s give it some time to dry, then I’ll move you to the bed.” We stay in the attic room, forgetting the rest of the house. Day after day … after day … after day. I count the days we’ve lost. Days I’ll never get back. Two hundred and seventy-seven of them. One day I ask him to drum for me. “With what?” I can’t really see his face—it’s too dark—but I know that his eyebrows are raised and there is a trace of a smile on his lips. He needs this. I need this. “Sticks,” I suggest. And then, “Please, Isaac. I want to hear music.” “Music without words,” he says, softly. I shake my head, though he can’t see me do it. “I want to hear the music you can make.”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Isaac kissed up my neck, behind my ear, my chin, the corner of my mouth. I turned my head when he tried to kiss the other corner, and we met in the middle. Soft lips and his smell. He’d kissed me once before in the foyer of my house, it had been a drumbeat. This kiss was a sigh. It was relief and we were so drunk from it that we clung to each other like we’d been waiting for a kiss like this our whole, entire lives. His hands wrapped around my ribcage, inside of my fleece. Mine were holding his face. He pulled me off the horse. I steered him toward the only bench on the carousel. It was a chariot, curved with a leather seat. Isaac sat. I sat on his lap. “Don’t ask me if I’m sure,” I said. I pulled down the zipper on his pants. I was determined. I was sure. He didn’t move his hands from my waist. He didn’t speak. He waited as I lifted myself up, pulling off my jeans and climbing back onto his lap. I left my panties on. His pants were pushed mid thigh. We were clothed and we were not. Isaac let me do everything, and that’s the way I needed it to be; half concealed, in the cold air, with the ability to climb off and leave if I wanted to. I felt less than I thought I would. I also felt more. There was no fear, just the vibrations of something loud that I didn’t quite understand. He kissed me while we moved. Then once, when it was over. The old man never came back. We zipped our clothes, and walked back up the hill chilled and in a daze. There were no more words between us. The next day I filed a restraining order against him. And that was the last of Isaac Asterholder and me. I try to remember sometimes what his last words to me had been. If he said something as we walked up that hill, or on the car ride home. But all I remember was his presence and his silence. And the slight echo of, and yet I love you. And yet he loved me. And yet I couldn’t love him back. When I wake Isaac isn’t there. I weigh my panic against the pain. I can only focus on one at a time. I choose my pain because it won’t loosen its grip on my brain. I am familiar with heart pain—intense, excruciating heart pain, but I’ve never experienced a physical pain quite this exquisite.

• From Between Us

  Dureau knows she would have had the monetary and cultural capital to get Astrid better medical care than had been available to Liza’s son. Dureau would not have been resigned, or merely prayed to God, because her position in life afforded her to exercise more control. And she could not even begin to imagine resigning in the death of her child, let alone never thinking about her anymore. Liza and Christine Dureau had different emotions, because they lived in different realities. The current wisdom in anthropology is that it is possible to approximate, or sometimes even share, the emotional experiences of individuals from other cultures, but also that you should not be too sure too soon that you do. As one anthropologist points out: “the problem with empathy is not that it involves feelings but that it assumes that first impressions are true.” Managing to understand other people’s emotions is not the same as sharing their experiences. Interestingly, approximating others’ feelings often means understanding how emotional episodes are tied to a context different from one’s own. It means to be aware of the incongruence of your emotions with the emotions of someone else. Christine Dureau eventually gained insight into the motherly love among Simbo women, not by projecting her own notions of love, but by trying to grasp how their love was situated in the conditions of child mortality, poverty, and hardship on the island. Empathy in a cross-cultural setting is unpacking another person’s emotions by tying them to their (social) realities. Importantly, recognizing these differences allows you to see the similarities as well. Even as you realize that you may never experience or do emotions in the same way, there can be resonance with people from other cultures. This resonance means that you humanize another person, trying to find meaning in their emotions, and in this way bridge some of the distance. From Cultural Competence to Humility Joop de Jong is a Dutch transcultural psychiatrist who is one of the driving forces of rethinking the Dutch mental health system to accommodate an increasingly multicultural clientele. He knew of my early work on culture and emotions and asked me in the mid-1990s to contribute to a volume on cross- cultural psychiatry and psychotherapy. How did my work on cultural differences in emotions speak to the psychotherapy and mental health context? I did not know, but the question intrigued me. A flurry of books on migrants had saturated the Dutch market at the time, all telling their white Dutch readers how to understand, and talk to, a growing immigrant population. Attention to diversity and inequality was much needed, then and now, both because of the demonstrated mental health disparities among racial and ethnic minorities, and because of the inadequacy of mental health provisions.

• From Between Us

  Managing to understand other people’s emotions is not the same as sharing their experiences. Interestingly, approximating others’ feelings often means understanding how emotional episodes are tied to a context different from one’s own. It means to be aware of the incongruence of your emotions with the emotions of someone else. Christine Dureau eventually gained insight into the motherly love among Simbo women, not by projecting her own notions of love, but by trying to grasp how their love was situated in the conditions of child mortality, poverty, and hardship on the island. Empathy in a cross-cultural setting is unpacking another person’s emotions by tying them to their (social) realities. Importantly, recognizing these differences allows you to see the similarities as well. Even as you realize that you may never experience or do emotions in the same way, there can be resonance with people from other cultures. This resonance means that you humanize another person, trying to find meaning in their emotions, and in this way bridge some of the distance. From Cultural Competence to Humility Joop de Jong is a Dutch transcultural psychiatrist who is one of the driving forces of rethinking the Dutch mental health system to accommodate an increasingly multicultural clientele. He knew of my early work on culture and emotions and asked me in the mid-1990s to contribute to a volume on cross-cultural psychiatry and psychotherapy. How did my work on cultural differences in emotions speak to the psychotherapy and mental health context? I did not know, but the question intrigued me. A flurry of books on migrants had saturated the Dutch market at the time, all telling their white Dutch readers how to understand, and talk to, a growing immigrant population. Attention to diversity and inequality was much needed, then and now, both because of the demonstrated mental health disparities among racial and ethnic minorities, and because of the inadequacy of mental health provisions. In practice, however, what was known then as “cultural competence” consisted of bits of knowledge about the values, beliefs, and attitudes of ethnic groups. In the U.S., these were the ethno-racial blocs that had been created by the U.S. Census—African American, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Latinx, American Indian and Alaska Native, and White. Clinicians learned to think about these “blocs” in relatively stable, essentializing terms. Cultural competence was treated as set of concrete skills for mental health workers—a domain of expertise to which I had wanted to contribute a fact sheet on emotions. The “clarity” and “competence” that mental health workers once sought has since been replaced by “cultural humility.”

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  80 Some renouncers broke even more completely with the Vedic system and were denounced as heretics by the Brahmins. Two in particular made a lasting impact, and significantly, both came from the gana-sanghas. Destined for a military career, Vardhamana Jnatraputra (c. 599– 527) was the son of a Kshatriya chieftain of the Jnatra clan of Kundagrama, north of modern Patna. At the age of thirty, however, he changed course and became a renouncer. After a long, difficult apprenticeship, he achieved enlightenment and became a jina (“conqueror”); his followers became known as Jains. Even though he went further than anybody else in his renunciation of violence, it was natural for him, as a former warrior, to express his insights in military imagery. His followers called him Mahavira (“Great Champion”), the title of an intrepid warrior in the Rig Veda. Yet his regime was based wholly on nonviolence, one that vanquished every impulse to harm others. For Mahavira, the only way to achieve liberation (moksha) was to cultivate an attitude of friendliness toward everyone and everything. 81 Here, as in the Upanishads, we encounter the requirement found in many great world traditions that it is not enough to confine our benevolence to our own people or to those we find congenial; this partiality must be replaced by a practically expressed empathy for everybody, without exception. If this was practiced consistently, violence of any kind—verbal, martial, or systemic—becomes impossible. Mahavira taught his male and female disciples to develop a sympathy that had no bounds, to realize their profound kinship with all beings. Every single creature—even plants, water, fire, air, and rocks—had a jiva, a living “soul,” and must be treated with the respect that we wish to receive ourselves. 82 Most of his followers were Kshatriyas seeking an alternative to the warfare and structural segmentation of society. As warriors, they would have routinely distanced themselves from the enemy, carefully stifling their innate reluctance to kill their own kind. Jains, like the Upanishadic sages, taught their disciples to recognize their community with all others and relinquish the preoccupation with “us” and “them” that made fighting and structural oppression impossible, because a true “conqueror” did not inflict harm of any kind. Later, Jains would develop a complex mythology and cosmology, but in the early period nonviolence was their only precept: “All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This is the pure, unchangeable law, which the enlightened ones who know have proclaimed.” 83 Unlike warriors who trained themselves to become impervious to the agony they inflicted, Jains deliberately attuned themselves to the pain of the world.

• From Between Us

  They and the rest of Tamalekar’s family spent the evening in quiet talk, with the [ . . . ] man speaking with respect and politeness. The visitor had distinguished himself by bringing a gift of a carton of cigarettes. The evening wore on past the point at which the family usually retired, and when the young man stepped out for a moment [ . . . ], Tamalekar said to his family, “We fago this one because he is calm. Even though we are sleepy, we’ll stay up and talk with him.” Later Tamalekar gave the man one of his valued possessions. The meaning of fago as taking care of someone does not change, but this time the nurturing is prompted by a man, who through his calm and kind behavior (not through his needs), demonstrates having compassion himself. Compassion meets compassion and nurturing; in this case, the act of fago is more reciprocal. Whereas love seeks joyful closeness between autonomous individuals who find each other special, fago is nurturing a person with whom a connection already exists, or else has come to be felt. Typically, fago is an unavoidable response to another person’s needs, whereas love is seeking closeness to another person of your choice, one who has special qualities and who is particularly appreciative of you. To be sure, loving partners will take care of each other in case of need, and fago-ing individuals may find joy in each other (as when the young man from the other island came to visit Tamalekar’s family). Yet the central acts of these two emotions differ, with love achieving mutual admiration, attraction, or longing, and fago achieving the nurturing of connected others in need. Each emotion is “right” because it achieves the most valued relationship goals in the culture. Remember that the Chinese word for love was categorized as a negative emotion, a form of sadness by Chinese participants? One reason may be that Chinese love simply runs a different course—one including the awareness of another person’s suffering, the sadness when life is hard on them, and the effort that goes into need satisfaction, rather than merely describing the bliss of connecting with a special individual. The bad always comes with the good.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Isaac dries his hands on a dishtowel and straddles the bench to face me. “You’re leaking fluid otherwise known as tears. Are you aware of this?” I sniff pathetically. “I just hate croutons so much…” He clears his throat and squashes a smile. “As your doctor I’d advise you to sit up.” I sniff and straighten myself until I am in a sort of upright slump. We are both straddling the bench, now, facing each other. Isaac reaches out both thumbs and uses them to clear my cheeks of tears. He stops when he is cupping my face between his hands. “It hurts me when you cry.” His voice is so earnest, so open. I can’t speak like this. Everything I say sounds sterile and robotic. I try to look away, but he holds my face so that I can’t move. I don’t like being this close to him. He starts seeping into my pores. It tingles. “I’m crying, but I don’t feel anything,” I assure him. He pulls his lips into a tight line and nods. “Yes, I know. That’s what hurts me the most.” After the deal with the F. Cayley print, I take inventory of everything in the house. We could be missing something. I wish I had a pen, some paper, but our single Bic ran out of ink a long time ago… so I have to use my good ol’ memory for this one. There are sixty-three books scattered throughout the house. I’ve picked up each one, flipped through the pages, touched the numbers at the top right corners. I started reading two of them—both classics that I’ve already read—but I can’t get my mind to focus. I have twenty-three light, colorful sweaters, six pairs of jeans, six pairs of sweatpants, twelve pairs of socks, eighteen shirts, twelve pairs of yoga pants. One pair of rain boots—in Isaac’s size. There are six additional pieces of artwork on the walls, other than the F. Cayley; each of the others is by the Ukranian illusionist, Oleg Shuplyak. In the living room is “Sparrows” one of his milder pieces. But scattered across the rest of the house are the blurred faces of famous historical figures, blended almost indecipherably with landscapes. The one in the attic room disturbs me the most. I’ve tried to pry it from the wall with a butter knife, but it’s cemented so firmly I can’t get it to budge. It depicts a hooded man, his outstretched arms wielding two scythes. His mouth gapes and his eyes are two dark, empty holes. At first all you see is the eerie emptiness—the impending violence. Then your eyes adjust and the skull comes into view: the dark sockets of eyes between the scythes, the teeth, which seconds ago were simply a pattern on a garment. My kidnapper hung death in my bedroom.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Then he puts the table back together. When he goes to his room I come down from the carousel room and creep into the kitchen. I’m still in my robe and my legs are cold. I feel naked without my cast. I press the back of my legs to the lip of the table, and hop up. I scoot back until I’m sitting, my legs hanging over the side. My runner’s legs look spindly and weak. A scar runs like a seam across my shin. I trace it lightly with the tip of my finger. I’m starting to look like a stitched-up Emo doll. All I need are the button eyes. I reach up, slipping my hand into the opening at the top of my robe, running my fingers across the skin on my chest. There are scars there too. Ugly ones. I’m used to being disfigured. It feels like parts of me keep being taken; eaten by disease, hacked off, snapped in two. I wonder when my body will become tired of it and just give up. I’ll never be able to run like I used to. I walk with a limp. I haven’t told Isaac, but my leg aches constantly. I like it. It’s dark in the kitchen. I don’t want to put the light on and risk Isaac knowing I was in here. If he is trying to avoid me, I’ll help him. But when I look up he’s standing in the doorway watching me. We stare at each other for the longest time. I feel anxious. It looks like he has something to say. I think he’s come to fight some more, but then I see something else in his eyes. He takes the steps to reach me. One … two … three … four. He’s standing in front of my knees. My hair is wild and unruly. I can’t remember the last time I brushed it. It’s grown past where my breasts used to be. Now it’s sort of a shawl across my upper body, so that even when I’m naked I don’t have to see myself. I don’t even bother to hide my white streak behind my ear like I usually do when Isaac is around. It curls in front of my eye, partly obscuring my vision. Isaac pushes my hair over my shoulder and I flinch involuntarily. Then he puts his hands on my knees. Their warmth stings. He pushes outward, spreading my legs, then he takes a step forward until he’s standing between them. He bends his head until our mouths are almost touching. Almost. The fingers on both of my hands are splayed on the tabletop behind me, balancing myself. I can feel the grooves of my carvings. The carvings Isaac helped me make. He doesn’t kiss me.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The honest Monsieur de Corville had not heard this tale without profound emotion; as for Madame de Lorsange in whom, as we have said, the monstrous errors of her youth had not by any means extinguished sensibility, as for Madame de Lorsange, she was ready to swoon. "Mademoiselle," said she to Justine, "it is difficult to listen to you without taking the keenest interest in you; but, and I must avow it! an inexplicable sentiment, one far more tender than this I describe, draws me invincibly toward you and does make of your ills my very own. You have disguised your name, you have concealed your birth, I beg you to disclose your secret to me; think not that it is a vain curiosity which bids me speak thus to you... Great God! may what I suspect be true?... O Therese! were you Justine?... were it that you would be my sister !" "Justine ! Madame ! 'tis a strange name." "She would have been your age -" "Juliette! is it you I hear?" cried the unhappy prisoner, casting herself into Madame de Lorsange's arms; "... you... my sister!... ah, I shall die far less miserable, for I have been able to embrace you again!..." And the two sisters, clasped in each other's arms, were prevented by their sobs from hearing one another, and found expression in naught but tears. Monsieur de Corville was unable to hold back his own; aware of the overpowering significance of this affair and sensing his involvement in it, he moves into an adjoining room, sits down and writes a letter to the Lord Chancellor, with fiery strokes, in ardent ciphers he paints in all its horror the fate of poor Justine, whom we shall continue to call Therese; he takes upon himself responsibility for her innocence, he will guarantee it under oath; he asks that, until the time her case has been finally clarified, the allegedly guilty party be confined to no other prison but his chateau, and Corville gives his word he will produce her in court the instant the Chief Justice signals his desire to have her appear there; he makes himself known unto Therese's two guards, entrusts his correspondence to them, makes himself answerable for their prisoner; he is obeyed, Therese is confided to him; a carriage is called for. "Come, my too unfortunate creature," Monsieur de Corville says to Madame de Lorsange's interesting sister, "come hither; all is going to be changed; it shall not be said your virtues ever remained unrewarded and that the beautiful soul you had from Nature ever encountered but steel; follow us, 'tis upon me you depend henceforth...."

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  We held hands and we kissed, but any time we spoke to each other, it was done through our interpreters, blond Russian girls who smirked as they translated our words. I suppose Toni and I connected somewhere in the middle of the Aleutians. She kissed my picture on my book before she got up, thanked us for dinner, and went off with the male Latvian delegate from Riga. VI Now it is back to Moscow again, which is still cold and rainy. Moscow across rainy rooftops looks about as dreary as New York does, except the skyline is broken up by huge building cranes. There is an incredible amount of building, it appears, going on all the time in Moscow. There is in New York also, but it’s not so obvious on the skyline. The buildings are not built in solid blocks the way they are in New York. You’ll have perhaps two large apartment houses to a block, set at different angles, with a lot of greenery and perhaps some parks in between. In other words, it appears that quite a bit of thought has been given to urban planning and how people like or need to move about where they are. Both New York and Moscow have a population of about eight million and in Moscow it is possible and pleasant to walk out after dark without fear. Crime on the streets seems not at all a problem in Moscow. The official reason why and the actual reason why may be very different, but it is a fact. I was struck by the sight of many people, even children, walking through the parks after sundown. Earlier, when I had first come to Moscow from the airport, I had noticed quite heavy steady traffic, but there did not appear to be a traffic jam or great delay although this was the time when most people were coming home from work. It seemed quite an achievement in a city of eight million people, and I thought Moscow must be handling her problems of urban transportation in a new and creative way. Of course, when I saw the Metro, I realized why. Not only are the stations spotlessly clean, but the trains are quick and comfortable, and I’d never really thought that it could be an actual joy to ride on the subways. VII It will take a while and a lot of dreams to metabolize all I’ve seen and felt in these hectic two weeks. I haven’t even discussed the close bonding I felt with some of the African writers and how difficult it was to get to know others. I have no reason to believe Russia is a free society. I have no reason to believe Russia is a classless society. Russia does not even appear to be a strictly egalitarian society. But bread does cost a few kopecs a loaf and everybody I saw seemed to have enough of it.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Some part of my brain wants to know how he knows this; I have a snarky question on the tip of my tongue: Did you learn that in medical survival school? But I can’t formulate the words to ask him. “I’m going to sleep in here with you,” he says, sitting on the bed. I open my eyes and stare into the whiteness of the comforter. The color white is so prevalent here. I was growing sick of it when everything went dark. Now I long for it. His weight lifts from the bed as he unrolls me. The minute the last of the blanket falls away, I begin shivering uncontrollably. I stare up at him from my back. He looks ragged. He’s lost so much weight it scares me. Wait. Did I already have that thought? I haven’t looked at myself in weeks. But my clothes—the ones the zookeeper left me—they hang and wilt over me like I’m a child wearing my mother’s things. Isaac leans down and scoops me up. I don’t know where he’s getting his strength. I can barely hold my head up anymore. The blanket is still underneath me. He lays me on the ground in front of the fire and spreads the blanket out around me. I don’t understand what he’s doing. Then my heart starts to pound. Isaac stands over me. I’m between his legs. Our eyes lock as he lowers himself over me; first to his knees, then his elbows. I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I close my eyes and feel his weight, a little at first, then all at once. His body is warm. I moan from the shock of it. I want to wrap myself around him, absorb his heat, but I hold still. He pulls me up just enough to wrap his arms around my back. My eyes are still closed, but I can feel his breath on my face. “Senna,” he says softly. “Hmmm?” “Roll with me.” It takes me a minute to get it. The human brain works like a bad internet connection when it’s freezing. He wants to be wrapped in the cocoon with me. I think. I barely nod. My neck is stiff. He tucks the edge of the blanket around us and I tense myself. I feel brittle, like my bones are made of ice. His weight might crack me. We roll ourselves in the blanket and end up on our sides. I can feel Isaac’s heat pressed against my front, and the fire’s heat licking at my back. I realize he positioned me here on purpose to place me closest to the fire. My hands are on his chest, so I rest my cheek there too. He still smells like spices. I start listing them all in my head: cardamom, coriander, rosemary, cumin, basil… After a few minutes my shivering becomes less. He reaches for my wrist. I don’t know why. I don’t really care. His thumb presses into my skin.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I saw her from my living room window, standing in the same spot I’d left her, staring at my house as if it were something out of a bad dream. The last time I saw her she’d been standing in sunshine, this time it was rain. She had on a white slicker, the rim of it dripping water into her face. I could see the silver streak in her hair plastered to her cheek. I watched her from the window for a few minutes, just to see what she’d do. She seemed rooted to the spot. I decided to go get her. Walking barefoot down my driveway, I sipped my coffee casually, running my tongue over the chip in the rim. A few raindrops dripped into my mug. When I came within a few feet of her I stopped and looked up at the sky. “You like this weather.” It wasn’t a question. “Yes,” she said. I nodded. “Want to come in for some coffee?” Instead of answering me she started walking up the driveway, helping herself to the door. It slammed behind her before I realized she was alone in my house. Was it my imagination, or did she make sure to step on every weed on her way up? She didn’t stop to look around when she walked through the corridor that connected my foyer to the rest of the house. I had several pictures hanging on my walls—art and some family stuff. Normally women stopped to examine each one. I always thought they did it to ease their nerves. She took off her jacket and dropped it on the floor. Puddles formed around it as the rainwater skirted off. She was an odd bird. She walked right to the kitchen like she’d been there a hundred times before, stopping in front of my beat-up Mr. Coffee. She pointed to the cabinet above it, and I nodded. She chose a Dr. Seuss mug—smart girl. I tended to stick to the Walt Whitman with the chip on the rim. I watched her lift the pot from the warmer and pour without looking. She was staring out my window. Right when the liquid reached the rim of the mug, her hand automatically pulled back. I breathed a sigh of relief. She had the weight and timing perfected in that strange little head of hers. When she was done, she leaned back against the counter and looked at me expectantly. “So, the other day…” “What?” I said. “You’re the one that just left.” “It wasn’t the right day.” What the hell type of thought was that? “And today is the right day?” She shrugged. “Maybe. I just felt like coming, I guess.” She ambled over and sat across from me at the worn dinette I’d taken through three relationships. If I ended up with this girl I was going to buy a new table.

• From How to Be a Great Lover (1999)

  This is one of the more favored items ladies buy for their gentlemen. It adds a new dimension to a most favored male pastime, masturbating. It is a translucent pink sleeve that is soft and gently ridged inside—just like us. It is placed snugly onto the erect penis with your choice of water-based lubricant inside, and voila! As one man stated, “In combination with my vivid imagination, three strokes and I was done!” A multipurpose toy, it can be used on him by you, or by himself—either accompanied or solo. Secret from Lou’s Archives For those concerned that masturbation or “Pink Elephants” will replace you, worry not. Ladies, the majority of men masturbate regularly. Masturbation or the use of a Pink Elephant in no way indicates they aren’t sexually satisfied; sometimes, men simply masturbate to relieve a bit of stress. Men have said it is very comforting when they can share these activities with their wives or partners. And some gentlemen enjoy having a spectator. [image file=image_rsrc201.jpg] Pink Elephant The Pink Elephant is an ideal “gift” for those times when one is unavailable or your partner is traveling. I have been told it fits well in shaving kits and computer cases. Proponents of the PE are young mothers with children, tired executives, pregnant ladies, and any other woman who wants to connect with her partner but is either too tired or unable physically to do so. And if you remember the comment about “sex is hard work,” the men in our lives have worn down their batteries as well. One young mother of four, including twins, all under age four, said her husbands original response was, “What is THAT?” and now he says, “Honey, can you get the pink thing?” Says his pleased wife, “This has been a godsend for us.” I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW This toy is a clear silicone-like penis sheath with two texturized surfaces, one for the wearer and one for the recipient. ICSCN is worn by a gentleman to augment his width and, to the delight of ladies, its textured bumps heighten her sensation. The idea behind this product is a custom amongst tribes in southeast Asia where they would make a small incision into the skin on the shaft of the penis and insert bells, small stones, pearls, etc., to enhance their ability to pleasure their partners. As a woman from Seattle said, “Oh, weren’t they considerate?” There is a lining of soft fringe on the inside for him. There is a slight decrease in sensation for the man. Said one male user, “It felt like a thick condom but I wasn’t concerned about losing my erection. The look on her face makes it worthwhile.” BUTT PLUGS AND ANAL BEADS

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I asked him who she was and he told me, “Julia Stone.” It was a literary name. I liked it. He played her entire album, tossing things into a pot he found by himself. The house was dark aside from the kitchen light he stood underneath. It felt quaint, like a life that didn’t belong to me, but I enjoyed watching. When was the last time I had someone over? Not since I bought the house. That was three years ago. There was a long window above my sink that stretched the length of the room. My appliances were all on the same wall, so no matter what you were doing you had a panoramic view of the lake. Sometimes when I was washing dishes I’d get so caught up looking outside, my hand would still and the water would turn cold before I realized that I’d been staring for fifteen minutes. I saw him peering into the darkness as he stood at the stove. The lights from the houses floated like fireflies in ink behind him. I let my eyes leave him and I watched the darkness instead. The darkness comforted me. “Senna?” I jumped. Isaac was next to me. He put a placemat and utensils in front of me, along with a bowl of steaming food, and a glass of something bubbly. I never even noticed. “Soda,” he said, when he saw me looking. “My vice.” “I’m not hungry,” I said pushing the bowl away. He pushed it back and tapped his forefinger on the counter. “You haven’t eaten in three days.” “Why do you care?” It came out harsher than I intended. Everything I said did. I watched his face for a lie, but he just shrugged. “It’s who I am.” I ate his soup. Then he made himself comfortable on my couch and went to sleep. In his clothes. I stood on the stairs and watched him for a long time, his socked feet sticking out of the bottom of the blanket he was using. Eventually I crawled into my bed. I reached out before I closed my eyes, and touched the book on the nightstand. Just the cover.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I was wearing a black fleece that had a zipper down the length of it. Isaac reached for my neck; grabbing the top of the zipper, he pulled it down to my waist. I was so shocked I didn’t have time to react. Minutes ago he had been bare-chested, now I was. If I had nipples they would have peaked in the frigid air. If. I am just scars and pieces of a woman. Isaac has seen me like this. In a sense he made me like this, with his scalpel and steady hands, but I still reached up to cover my chest. He stopped me. Reaching for my waist he lifted me up until I was sitting sideways in the saddle of my pierced horse. He opened my fleece the rest of the way, then he kissed the skin where my breasts used to be. He kissed softly, over the scars. My heart—surely he could feel my pounding heart. My nerve endings had been damaged, but I felt his warm lips and his breath move across my skin. I made a sound. It wasn’t a real sound. It was air and relief. Every breath I’d ever caught came whooshing out of me at once. Isaac kissed up my neck, behind my ear, my chin, the corner of my mouth. I turned my head when he tried to kiss the other corner, and we met in the middle. Soft lips and his smell. He’d kissed me once before in the foyer of my house, it had been a drumbeat. This kiss was a sigh. It was relief and we were so drunk from it that we clung to each other like we’d been waiting for a kiss like this our whole, entire lives. His hands wrapped around my ribcage, inside of my fleece. Mine were holding his face. He pulled me off the horse. I steered him toward the only bench on the carousel. It was a chariot, curved with a leather seat. Isaac sat. I sat on his lap. “Don’t ask me if I’m sure,” I said. I pulled down the zipper on his pants. I was determined. I was sure. He didn’t move his hands from my waist. He didn’t speak. He waited as I lifted myself up, pulling off my jeans and climbing back onto his lap. I left my panties on. His pants were pushed mid thigh. We were clothed and we were not. Isaac let me do everything, and that’s the way I needed it to be; half concealed, in the cold air, with the ability to climb off and leave if I wanted to. I felt less than I thought I would. I also felt more. There was no fear, just the vibrations of something loud that I didn’t quite understand. He kissed me while we moved. Then once, when it was over. The old man never came back.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  This is now the village of roses. We visited a collective farm, went into a house, saw the kindergarten. The woman’s house into which we went was very impressive, as I said to someone later at lunch who asked me what I thought. I said, “She lives better than I do,” and in some ways she did. The collective farm in Gulstan, called the Leningrad Collective, is one of the wealthiest collectives in the area. I will never know the name of the very kind young woman who opened her home to me, but I also will not forget her. She offered me the hospitality of her house, and even though we did not speak the same language, I felt that she was a woman like myself, wishing that all of our children could live in peace upon their own earth, somehow make fruitful the power of their own hands. Through Helen, she spoke about her three children, one of whom was only a nursing infant, and I spoke of my two. I spoke in English and she spoke in Russian, but I felt very strongly that our hearts spoke the same tongue. I was reminded of her a few days later in Samarkand when Fikre, an Ethiopian student at Patrice Lumumba University, and I went shopping in the market. I remember the Moslem woman who came up to me in the marketplace, and she brought her little boy up to me asking Fikre if I had a little boy also. She said that she had never seen a Black woman before, that she had seen Black men, but she had never seen a Black woman, and that she so much liked the way I looked that she just wanted to bring her little boy and find out if I had a little boy, too. Then we blessed each other and spoke good words and then she passed on. There was the accomplished and very eloquent young Asian woman, an anthropology student, she said, who acted as our museum guide in Samarkand and shared her great store of historical knowledge with us. The night that we arrived in Samarkand and again the next day in looking through the museums, I felt that there were many things we were not seeing. For instance, we passed a case where there are a number of coins which I recognized as ancient Chinese coins because I’d used them for casting the I Ching. I asked our guide if these were from China. She acted as if I’d said a dirty word. And she said, “No, these were from right here in Samarkand.” Now obviously they had been traded, and that was the whole point, but of course I couldn’t read the Russian explanation under it, and she evidently took great offense at my use of the word China .

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  While we were standing in front of the reflecting pool having this discussion, a little tow-headed boy sidled up to me with a completely international air, all of ten years old, stood in front of me and with a furtive sideways gesture, flipped his hand open. In the center of his little palm was a button-pin of a red star with a soldier in the middle of it. I was completely taken aback because I did not know what the kid wanted and I asked Helen who brushed the child off and shooed him away so quickly I didn’t have a chance to stop her. Then she told me that he wanted to trade for American buttons. That little kid had stood off to the side and watched all of these strange Black people, and he had managed to peg me as an American because, of course, Americans are the only ones who go around wearing lots and lots of buttons, and he had wanted to trade his red star button. I was touched by the child, and also because I couldn’t help but think that it was Sunday and he was probably hitting all the tourist spots. I’m sure his parents did not know where he was, and I really wondered what his mother would do if she knew. The woman from the Writers’ Union who was doing her book on Negro policy was, I’d say, a little older than I was, probably in her early fifties, and her husband had been killed in the war. She had no children. She offered these facts about herself as soon as we sat down, talking openly about her life, as everybody seemingly does here. I say seemingly because it only goes so far. And she, like my guide and most women here, both young and old, seem to mourn the lack of men. At the same time they appear to have shaken off many of the traditional role-playing devices vis-a-vis men. Almost everyone I’ve met has lost someone in what they call the “Great Patriotic War,” which is our Second World War. I was interviewed by Oleg this evening, one of the officials of the Union of Soviet Writers, the people who had invited me to Russia and who were footing the bill. In my interview with him I learned the hotel that we’re staying in was originally a youth hostel and Oleg apologized because it was not as “civilized,” so he said, as other Moscow hotels.