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.

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• From Vision Quest (1979)

  But I just have the feeling that few of these attractive girls keep time with their own clocks. But Carla had had a baby and she was nineteen and had to be self-sufficient after she left home, so maybe my comparison with the other girls I knew wasn’t fair. Anyway, on that trip to the Columbia I was giddy from more than the memory of scaring the pee out of Dwight Thuringer. I was about half in love. I tried to get her to talk about herself, but all she said was that her father was an insurance executive and her mother was a housefrump, that they were both shithooks, and that her brothers and sisters would turn out exactly the same. “What saved you?” I asked. “Getting pregnant,” she replied. That sobered me up a little. But just then Dylan’s “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” came around on the tape and Carla rocked back and forth and banged on the steering wheel and tapped her free foot in time. The girls I knew were more sedate than that, and right then I realized exactly what it was that fascinated me about Carla. She had the best things I liked about girls and the best things I liked about guys. She was soft and beautiful and made up little animals and could be kind and tender. But she also swore creatively and worked hard at stuff besides her appearance and did what moved her—like leaving home or peeing with the door open or going with a black guy or banging on the steering wheel. Maybe when you get older you begin to appreciate many of the same qualities in the opposite sex as you do in your own. It would be pretty hard to live closely with somebody if you couldn’t like her or him at least for the same reasons you liked all your other friends. Now that Carla and I have been together for a while I can feel this happening in me. We rocked and rolled through the main street of Colville and turned west on 395 to New Kettle Falls and my great-aunt’s place on Gold Creek. We talked about our jobs and the jobs we’d had before, laughing about everything. I told Carla about my job helping the Stern family get in shape. “Last year,” I began, “Mr. Stern, a teacher at school, hired me to teach his family an exercise routine that would get them in shape for summer hiking in the Cascades. They’re probably on Mt. Rainier right now,” I said to add immediacy to the story. “Umm,” Carla replied politely. “What exercises did you teach them?” She was only listening half-intently because the tape had come around to the Dead and “Casey Jones.” “Oh, some pushups and sits and rope skipping and run-a-lap, walk-a-lap. Just stuff everybody already knows. Just stuff to help them build up a little muscle tone.

• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  Romance is an attitudeYou don’t have to wait for your lover to turn up with a bunch of flowers in order to enjoy an intimate moment. Romance is not a single event, but an ongoing attitude. When sitting in the car, reach over and touch his thigh. Leave him a love note on the fridge door. Post a sexy promise on his pillow. Call him at work and tell him you’re thinking of him. These small things add up to something much bigger. Preserve a little mysteryIt might go against popular opinion, but there is no reason to share everything with your lover. He doesn’t need to know that you plan to shave your legs tonight, or every sordid detail of your year abroad. He may be your soul mate and you may have the burning desire to reveal all your secrets, but a little mystery will keep things interesting. Men are usually not so inclined to share—don’t demand every single last detail of his life, but do let him surprise you with the occasional new story. Create your own momentsIf your man prefers a Saturday night in front of the TV to a candlelit dinner for two at a restaurant, there is no reason why the occasion can’t be romantic. Don’t spend hours cooking, just order in or enjoy a gourmet takeout. Dim the lights, snuggle up on the sofa, and enjoy the intimacy. Don’t let the dishes, the phone, the children, the laundry, or mundane thoughts about work interrupt your time together. Make sure you don’t let the TV stop you from showing him some thigh and kissing his neck, and seize the opportunity to seduce him during the commercial break. Use your sense of humorMake your relationship a haven for laughter, silliness, and fun. Whether it is the private nickname you call him, his shower songs, or your special jokes during sex, intimacy is created through these little secrets. Allow room for humor, even during arguments. Have a safe word you can rely on when a disagreement becomes heated—perhaps a reference to your favorite movie or a past joke he made—and agree to use it to defuse the situation. Jokes can’t solve arguments, but every once in a while they can prevent a silly argument from getting any bigger. Make disagreements work for youAccept that even if you and your partner have almost everything in common, you are never going to agree on every single topic. Luckily, these differences of opinion don’t have to get ugly—and sometimes they can even help you create extra passion. Use the heat generated from your political debates to spice up your relationship. A little verbal sparring can be very sexy, especially if you are secretly fantasizing about tearing the other person’s clothes off. Your different beliefs can create excitement in the bedroom. Your relationship can continue to be fun, intimate, and romantic—with the proper nurturing, it should be the most fulfilling and meaningful part of your life.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  O a sandwich and coffee for lunch. He’d eat in his tiny lab, sitting on a high stool, thumbing through the lastest issue of Esquire or one of the other magazines he subscribed to. She brought her lunch from home and ate at her desk, between patients. Recently, Dr. O had asked her about Christina’s boyfriend. She told him Jack McKittrick struck her as a fine young man, an electrician with a good future. He was responsible and mature for his years. “But they’re so young,” Dr. O had said. That was certainly true. Christina just turning eighteen, Jack, what, maybe twenty-one? Daisy liked Jack. She sensed something different about him. And she liked the way he’d treated Christina the few times she’d seen them together. Daisy so wanted the younger generation to enjoy themselves today, for Dr. O’s sake. The annual holiday outing was his idea, and because it was important to him, Daisy did her best to organize the events and tickets. Dr. O needed a good day right now, a day to celebrate life and family and friends, a day without death. So follow Christina’s example, kids, and show some enthusiasm! Two: She should be pleased Steve was reading The Catcher in the Rye, and she would be if she hadn’t selected the same title for his Hanukkah gift, wrapped and waiting in her car. She’d planned to hand the bag with their holiday books to Corinne when they said goodbye at the train station in Elizabeth, so Corinne could put them under the Hanukkah bush. Steve could take it back to the bookshop and exchange it for another book, not that there was another as perfect for him as Catcher. She wondered who had given it to him, or had he taken it out of the library? If so, she should be doubly pleased. But she wasn’t. Three: She needed a stiff drink, the sooner, the better. ChristinaWhen they got back to Elizabeth, Daisy offered Christina a ride home from the train station. It was already dark and Christina was grateful she wouldn’t have to take the bus. When Daisy dropped Christina off at her house, she handed her a wrapped gift. “You might not want to put this one under the tree. It could be too personal.” Christina thanked Daisy and tucked it under her coat. As soon as she was safely in her room, with her back to the door, she ripped the paper off Daisy’s gift. No surprise that it was a book. Daisy bought all her gifts at the Ritz Book Shop, just up the street from the office. Christina didn’t know anyone who bought books the way Daisy did. Once, Christina had asked Daisy why she didn’t use the public library. Daisy said, “Oh, but I do. The bookshop is for books I just have to own.” Daisy didn’t buy just any book. She gave a lot of thought to each of them.

• From The Girls (2016)

  But that’s what I wanted—for even time to feel different and new, washed with special import. Like she and I were occupying the same song. —We were, Russell told us, starting a new kind of society. Free from racism, free from exclusion, free from hierarchy. We were in service of a deeper love. That’s how he said it, a deeper love, his voice booming from the ramshackle house in the California grasslands, and we played together like dogs, tumbling and biting and breathless with sun shock. We were barely adults, most of us, and our teeth were still milky and new. We ate whatever was put in front of us. Oatmeal that gummed up in the throat. Ketchup on bread, chipped beef from a can. Potatoes soggy with PAM. “Miss 1969,” Suzanne called me. “Our very own.” And they treated me like that, like their new toy, taking turns hooking their arms through mine, clamoring to braid my long hair. Teasing me about the boarding school I’d mentioned, my famous grandmother, whose name some of them recognized. My clean white socks. The others had been with Russell for months, or years, even. And that was the first worry that the days slowly melted in me. Where were their families, girls like Suzanne? Or baby-voiced Helen—she spoke sometimes of a house in Eugene. A father who gave her enemas every month and rubbed her calves after tennis practice with mentholated balm, among other dubious hygienic practices. But where was he? If any of their homes had given them what they needed, why would they be here, day after day, their time at the ranch stretching on endlessly? —Suzanne slept late, barely up by noon. Groggy and lingering, her movements at half-speed. Like there would always be more time. By then, I was already sleeping in Suzanne’s bed every few nights. Her mattress wasn’t comfortable, gritty with sand, but I didn’t mind. Sometimes she reached over blindly from sleep to sling her arm around me, a warmth coming off her body like baked bread. I would lie awake, painfully alert to Suzanne’s nearness. She turned in the night so she kicked off the sheet, exposing her bare breasts. Her room was dark and jungly in the mornings, the tar roof of the outbuilding getting bubbly in the heat. I was already dressed but knew we wouldn’t join the others for another hour. Suzanne always took a long time to get ready, though preparation was mostly a matter of time and not action—a slow shrug into herself. I liked to watch her from the mattress, the sweet, blank way she studied her reflection with the directionless gaze of a portrait. Her naked body was humble at these moments, even childish, bent at an unflattering angle as she rummaged through the trash bag of clothes. It was comforting to me, her humanness. Noticing how her ankles were gruff with stubble, or the pin dots of blackheads. Suzanne had been a dancer in San Francisco.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  “Give it to me.” I held the bits of my luxurious life against the good side of my face as she cleaned out the wounds, injecting a beautiful numbness. She said if it hurt, just tell her. The redheaded angel. I loved nurses and hospitals. If only I could just lie inside a wrapping of gauze and have this gentle woman care for me. Katherine Drew, her tag said. “You’re lucky, we’ve got Dr. Singh on tonight,” Katherine Drew said. “His father was a tailor. He does custom work. He’s the best.” Her mouth smiled, but her eyes pitied me. The doctor came in, speaking with a lilt that sounded like joking, a movie I once saw starring Peter Sellers. But Dr. Singh’s brown eyes carried the weight of all the emergencies he had ever seen, the blood, the torn flesh, the fever and gunshots, it was a wonder he could open them at all. He began to sew, starting with my face. I wondered if he was from Bombay, if he knew it was noon there right now. The needle was curved, the thread black. Nurse Drew held my hand. I almost passed out and she brought me apple juice sweet as cough syrup. She told me if they didn’t find the dogs I’d have to come back. Whenever I came close to feeling anything, I asked for another shot. No point in trying to be brave. No Vikings here. On the ceiling of the emergency room was a poster of fish. I wanted to go down under the sea, drift in the coral and kelp, hair like seaweed, ride on a manta ray in silent flight. Come with me, Mother. She loved to swim, her hair like a fan, musical staff for a mermaid’s song. They sang on the rocks, combing their hair. Mother.… My tears flowed from nowhere, like a spring from a rock. All I wanted was her cool hand on my forehead. What else was there ever? Where you were, there was my home. Thirty-two stitches later, Ed made his appearance, gray-faced, baseball cap in hand. “Can she go now? I gotta work in the morning.” The redheaded Nurse Drew held my hand while she gave Ed Turlock instructions about cleaning my sutures with hydrogen peroxide and ordered him to bring me back in two days to check healing, then back in a week to have the stitches removed. He nodded but he wasn’t listening, explaining as he signed the papers that I was only his foster kid, it was a county health plan. We didn’t talk on the ride back. I watched the passing signs. Pic N Save, Psychic Adviser, AA. Hair Odyssey. Fish World. If I were his daughter he would have come with me. But I didn’t want to be his daughter. I was thankful I didn’t possess a single drop of his blood. I cradled the bloody cashmere in my hands.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  We fed the chickens and collected the eggs. We were too late to milk the cow, but we were in time to eat some fresh cream on our breakfast strawberries, which we picked, along with carrots, onions, tomatoes, green beans, corn, and peas. We also dug some spuds and boxed up a few jars of jam and a couple jars of the honey Lola trades eggs to a neighbor for. We mowed the lawn and trimmed it. We cut wood and stacked it. Carla touched me a lot and that reassured me and settled me down. I had gotten pretty excited and nervous thinking about how I could make some moves on her. She was and is more sexually sophisticated than I am. We held hands and walked through the alfalfa to the pond my dad and uncle and cousins had stocked when they were kids. They caught the fish in Gold Creek and ran them down to the pond in buckets. Eastern brook and rainbow grow big in the pond because there’s so much food and no kids to catch them anymore. We sat on the bank and watched the fish and frogs and watersnakes and turtles go on about their business. The pond has grown so green with life I always about half expect to haul in a couple coelacanths or see a trilobite or two squint up at me from the mud. But we didn’t fish. We just talked. We left Lola’s at twilight, promising to come back the next day to drive her to Colville so she could do her shopping. I drove and Carla sat on her side of the seat and looked for deer. She’d seen a DEER CROSSING sign and was determined to spot some. She wasn’t totally ignoring me, though. As I talked about how the deer come out of the woods in the evenings to feed in the fields, every so often Carla would reach over and let her hand rest on my thigh. She didn’t turn to look; she just touched me on the thigh where my jeans were worn thinnest. Sometimes she ran her fingertips along the inseam. Naturally, I had a raging boner. We crossed the bridge over Lake Roosevelt and I looked down, but it had gotten too dark to see the level of the water. We drove south and turned off on the road to the Trout Lake campground. I stopped to wire a big can of beef stew to the exhaust manifold so it would be warm for our dinner. We took off for the campground, and rounding the first curve, we hit a little doe. She must have been standing just on the shoulder of the road, because she jumped square into our right fender. If she’d been very far off the road, she’d have jumped clean over us. It scared Carla because it happened so fast and about two feet from her nose.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  — The Colonel explained it to us on the two-hour car ride south. I was crammed into the backseat because Alaska had called shotgun. She usually drove, but when she didn’t, she was shotgun-calling queen of the world. The Colonel’s mother heard that we were on campus and couldn’t bear the thought of leaving us familyless for Thanksgiving. The Colonel didn’t seem too keen on the whole idea—“I’m going to have to sleep in a tent,” he said, and I laughed. — Except it turns out he did have to sleep in a tent, a nice four-person green outfit shaped like half an egg, but still a tent. The Colonel’s mom lived in a trailer, as in the kind of thing you might see attached to a large pickup truck, except this particular one was old and falling apart on its cinder blocks, and probably couldn’t have been hooked up to a truck without disintegrating. It wasn’t even a particularly big trailer. I could just barely stand up to my full height without scraping the ceiling. Now I understood why the Colonel was short—he couldn’t afford to be any taller. The place was really one long room, with a full-size bed in the front, a kitchenette, and a living area in the back with a TV and a small bathroom—so small that in order to take a shower, you pretty much had to sit on the toilet. “It ain’t much,” the Colonel’s mom (“That’s Dolores, not Miss Martin”) told us. “But y’alls a-gonna have a turkey the size o’ the kitchen.” She laughed. The Colonel ushered us out of the trailer immediately after our brief tour, and we walked through the neighborhood, a series of trailers and mobile homes on dirt roads. “Well, now you get why I hate rich people.” And I did. I couldn’t fathom how the Colonel grew up in such a small place. The entire trailer was smaller than our dorm room. I didn’t know what to say to him, how to make him feel less embarrassed. “I’m sorry if it makes you uncomfortable,” he said. “I know it’s probably foreign.” “Not to me,” Alaska piped up. “Well, you don’t live in a trailer,” he told her. “Poor is poor.” “I suppose,” the Colonel said. — Alaska decided to go help Dolores with dinner. She said that it was sexist to leave the cooking to the women, but better to have good sexist food than crappy boy-prepared food. So the Colonel and I sat on the pull-out couch in the living room, playing video games and talking about school. “I finished my religion paper. But I have to type it up on your computer when we get back. I think I’m ready for finals, which is good, since we have an ank-pray to an-play.” “Your mom doesn’t know pig Latin?” I smirked. “Not if I talk fast.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  “What you doin’ around here?” “Dad read the river was comin’ down, so we came up to take a look. Thought you might like to drive down to the falls with us. This is Carla,” I said. “Carla, this is my grandfather Harry Swain.” “Pleased to meet your acquaintance,” Grandpa Harry said. Carla leaned over me and stuck her good arm out the window and shook with Harry. “My pleasure,” she said. Harry thought that was funny as hell. You could see him laughing all the way as he backed up into his yard. I don’t know if it’s possible, but it seemed as though he was shorter than when we went fishing together at the start of summer. When my dad was a kid, Harry was supposed to have been a little over six feet. But walking behind him to the cabin, I was a good two fingers taller, and I’m only five-eleven. Carla was searching through the junked cars by the creek, where we saw a couple cats go running. Harry unlocked the padlock on his door and we went in. He just has a hole in the wall and a hole in his door and a chain to go through them. I sat on the floor and leaned against the stove and studied the guns and fish poles in the gun rack, as I always do. Harry took a Medihaler out of his shirt pocket and gave himself a couple good blasts down the throat. He breathed deep through his mouth and smiled. “They give me those down ’t the Vets,” he said. “I can fish, hunt, hike these goddman mountains—anything I want. I just carry a couple of these along. I might even feel like doin’ some rasslin’,” he said, and laughed until the crap in his lungs crackled and snapped like a wood fire. He moved his hands like he was milking a cow and rose about two inches off the bed, as though he were going to come for me. “Go find yourself some Indian woman to wrestle with,” I said. “You’d just hurt me, and this is my year to be a hero.” “A hero . . . !” He laughed and coughed up a few cubic centimeters of trench warfare and spit it in his spit can alongside the bed. It’s a good thing he got his emphysema in the war and not just from his homeland air. This way he’s got the Veterans’ Hospital anytime he needs it and he’s got his pension. The State of Washington lets him hunt and fish for free now that he’s over seventy-five, and Dad finds him a cheap old jeep or a pickup when the one he’s got goes too bad for any of us to fix. “How ’bout it?” I asked. “Comin’ down to the falls with us?” “Naw,” Harry said.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  She was grateful that her phone was back on, that her boy was home, that Alaska helped her cook and that I had kept the Colonel out of her hair, that her job was steady and her coworkers were nice, that she had a place to sleep and a boy who loved her. I sat in the back of the hatchback on the drive home—and that is how I thought of it: home—and fell asleep to the highway’s monotonous lullaby. forty-four days before “COOSA LIQUORS’ entire business model is built around selling cigarettes to minors and alcohol to adults.” Alaska looked at me with disconcerting frequency when she drove, particularly since we were winding through a narrow, hilly highway south of school, headed to the aforementioned Coosa Liquors. It was Saturday, our last day of real vacation. “Which is great, if all you need is cigarettes. But we need booze. And they card for booze. And my ID blows. But I’ll flirt my way through.” She made a sudden and unsignaled left turn, pulling onto a road that dropped precipitously down a hill with fields on either side, and she gripped the steering wheel tight as we accelerated, and she waited until the last possible moment to brake, just before we reached the bottom of the hill. There stood a plywood gas station that no longer sold gas with a faded sign bolted to the roof: COOSA LIQUORS: WE CATER TO YOUR SPIRITUAL NEEDS. Alaska went in alone and walked out the door five minutes later weighed down by two paper bags filled with contraband: three cartons of cigarettes, five bottles of wine, and a fifth of vodka for the Colonel. On the way home, Alaska said, “You like knock-knock jokes?” “Knock-knock jokes?” I asked. “You mean like, ‘Knock knock…” “Who’s there?” replied Alaska. “Who.” “Who Who?” “What are you, an owl?” I finished. Lame. “That was brilliant,” said Alaska. “I have one. You start.” “Okay. Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” said Alaska. I looked at her blankly. About a minute later, I got it, and laughed. “My mom told me that joke when I was six. It’s still funny.” — So I could not have been more surprised when she showed up sobbing at Room 43 just as I was putting the finishing touches on my final paper for English. She sat down on the couch, her every exhalation a mix of whimper and scream. “I’m sorry,” she said, heaving. Snot was dribbling down her chin. “What’s wrong?” I asked. She picked up a Kleenex from the COFFEE TABLE and wiped at her face. “I don’t…” she started, and then a sob came like a tsunami, her cry so loud and childlike that it scared me, and I got up, sat down next her, and put my arm around her. She turned away, pushing her head into the foam of the couch. “I don’t understand why I screw everything up,” she said. “What, like with Marya?

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  He or she might also admit that the group or leader manipulated him or her; he or she might offer vivid examples based on criteria previously discussed during the intervention. In my experience when people begin to disclose such potentially damaging information about the group or leader, they have probably decided to move on and leave. Again, no one must say or do anything to apply any pressure to make this declaration. And nothing should be said or implied that might make the individual feel ashamed about whatever information he or she has disclosed. Instead, those present at the intervention must do their best to express unconditional support and affirm the love and friendship they feel and value. The person has suffered enough and quite often, due to the manipulation and abuse of the group or leader, is in a fragile state. Everything must be done to sustain an atmosphere of support and safety, and deference must be given for the sake of the person’s dignity. The goal of an intervention is education, which can form the basis of more independent and informed decision making. Nothing must be done to hinder that process by causing unnecessary emotional distress. Families will frequently ask, “What comes next?” if the intervention is successful. Some former cult members express a desire to follow up through counseling, while others do not. This is an individual choice based on personal reflection and the varying needs of each former member. Family members and others involved must not put undue pressure on the former cult member to seek professional counseling. They may simply suggest that this is a potential possibility or future option. There are very few professionals who have specific experience counseling former cult members. Many former cult members seem to prefer education rather than counseling. That is, they may engage in further research about cults, coercive persuasion, and influence techniques to better understand their experience. Issues former cult members commonly face will be discussed in more detail in the chapter “Moving On.” An intervention is not a “magic bullet” or miracle solution that will somehow fix every problem. Typically, people who leave cults and abusive, controlling relationships will continue to have personal problems just like everyone else. The family and friends of a person who is the focus of an intervention must understand this truth and have reasonable expectations. Net Result The net result of the preparation meeting is that everyone who plans to participate in the intervention fully understands his or her role, specific boundaries and rules, and crucial points that will be covered during the intervention. He or she now has both a meaningful understanding of the process and realistic expectations. By addressing these issues in some depth and answering any related questions, the potential for misunderstandings, conflicts, and needless missteps during the intervention can be greatly reduced and hopefully avoided.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  “Did they break?” “That bastard-assed dwarf Thuringer stole them,” I explain as little Katzenburger crawls inside my coat, curls near my heart, and falls asleep, purring like a diesel, healthier than she appears. “Why would Damon do something like that?” Carla asks as we crunch off toward the hotel. “Vendetta,” I answer. “Otto and I tied him up and hid him under his blankets. He missed practice. Coach didn’t even notice he was gone. If Coach hadn’t sat on him by accident when we started our wrestle-offs, Sausage might never have been discovered. We just wanted to temper his hubris a little.” “But you said he has a tough match on Tuesday.” “It’s not wise to take such things too seriously,” I say. “It’s only a game.” “Someone should knock hell out of you.” Carla smiles. “Somehow I feel that at this very moment just such an act is being planned.” I sink deep into the comfort of our good old car. Katzenburger squeaks. Carla pulls to the curb and examines her, curled in the downy fold of my parka. “She’s not very well,” Carla says, pulling back into traffic. “But she’s better than when we got her.” “When did we get her?” I ask. “Dad brought her home this afternoon. He sent someone up to some valley to deliver a car and Katzen was in the car the guy brought back.” Dad’s Honda dealership is going fairly strong now. About the only people who buy them are college types, Dad says. But there are six colleges around Spokane, so that should give him enough customers to stay in business until a few more of our countrymen decide they’ve got better things to do with their money than spend it on gas. Dad sometimes wishes there were a little American car as good as the Honda he could sell. But I tell him to forget it, that he can’t afford that kind of economic patriotism. During the season I don’t get much time to hang around the store, so I don’t know all his salesmen yet. I do know he sent someone up to the Okanogan Valley to deliver a Honda Civic and pick up an Olds. The reason I know this is because the guy was also supposed to pick up a box of apples from Dad’s mom. She cooks for the pickers in an apple orchard there. The orchard owners are the ones who bought the Civic. Grandma turned them onto Dad. Apple-picking is long over, of course, but she stays up there anyway. Most of our communication takes the form of boxes of apples. Okanogan Grandma is a little like Columbia River Grandpa. They’re separated and they don’t like each other much, but they’re a lot alike. Grandma won’t leave her cabin in the Okanogan, and Grandpa won’t leave his cabin on the upper Columbia. Grandma talks to us in apples, and Grandpa speaks in venison steaks.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  Since we get together so rarely, Dad likes to take his time when he tortures me, to savor my suffering. After half an hour my eyes are wet, my shouts have turned to whimpers and sobs, my gag’s sodden, and he’s growling like a werewolf, low in his throat, chewing one nipple and then the other, giving my flexed pecs more sharp punches, pushing a spit-wet finger up my asshole. It’s come down to agony, his teeth gnawing me raw, but I have no choice but to take it, and besides, I want to take it, I need to take it. I know Dad loves to top me because, unlike a lot of other bottoms he plays with, I can take a huge amount of abuse. I endure (albeit with a helluva lot of gagged noise) whatever he chooses to give me—flogging, tit-work, caning, cropping, whipping—for as long as he cares to continue. I’ve almost never begged him to stop; that’s my achievement, my point of pride. “My little warrior,” Dad calls me. That’s one reason, I think, that he invites me back. That, and because he knows I really care about him. The “buddy” part of “fuckbuddy” is as important for both of us as the “fuck” part. Other boys, he says, some of them just come for the rough sex. Everybody knows he’s the best Top in southwest Virginia, so he has lots of bottoms clamoring to be used. But, according to Dad, half the time he’s the one who feels used. According to Dad, most of them make him feel like a human dildo. My wrists and ankles are rope-chafed by now. Exhausted, I’ve stopped struggling; I’ve surrendered completely. I lie beneath him, thrusting my ass against his probing hand, my teeth sunk in the smelly gag, moaning softly as Dad, snarling, finger-fucks me and shreds my nips. Now he straddles my chest. He’s so turned on that he pumps his dick for only a few minutes before his load spatters my face. Grinning, he rubs his cum over my tape-gag, into my beard, across my forehead. Then he rolls off me and takes my dick in his hand. I’m done in half a minute, squirting on my belly. This might be my favorite part. Dad leaves my mouth taped, leaves me tied hand and foot; he rolls me onto my side, cuddles up against my back, and holds me. He fondles my cum-wet beard, my cum-wet belly hair. “You’re safe, boy,” he whispers. “I’ll take good care of you.”

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  Really, being at home for two weeks was just like my entire life before Culver Creek, except my parents were more emotional. They talked very little about their trip to London. I think they felt guilty. That’s a funny thing about parents. Even though I pretty much stayed at the Creek over Thanksgiving because I wanted to, my parents still felt guilty. It’s nice to have people who will feel guilty for you, although I could have lived without my mom crying during every single family dinner. She would say, “I’m a bad mother,” and my dad and I would immediately reply, “No, you’re not.” Even my dad, who is affectionate but not, like, sentimental , randomly, while we were watching The Simpsons , said he missed me. I said I missed him, too, and I did. Sort of. They’re such nice people. We went to movies and played card games, and I told them the stories I could tell without horrifying them, and they listened. My dad, who sold real estate for a living but read more books than anyone I knew, talked with me about the books I was reading for English class, and my mom insisted that I sit with her in the kitchen and learn how to make simple dishes—macaroni, scrambled eggs—now that I was “living on my own.” Never mind that I didn’t have, or want, a kitchen. Never mind that I didn’t like eggs or macaroni and cheese. By New Year’s Day, I could make them anyway. When I left, they both cried, my mom explaining that it was just empty-nest syndrome, that they were just so proud of me, that they loved me so much. That put a lump in my throat, and I didn’t care about Thanksgiving anymore. I had a family. eight days before ALASKA WALKED IN on the first day back from Christmas break and sat beside the Colonel on the couch. The Colonel was hard at work, breaking a land-speed record on the PlayStation. She didn’t say she missed us, or that she was glad to see us. She just looked at the couch and said, “You really need a new couch.” “Please don’t address me when I’m racing,” the Colonel said. “God. Does Jeff Gordon have to put up with this shit?” “I’ve got an idea,” she said. “It’s great. What we need is a pre-prank that coincides with an attack on Kevin and his minions,” she said. I was sitting on the bed, reading the textbook in preparation for my American history exam the next day. “A pre-prank?” I asked. “A prank designed to lull the administration into a false sense of security,” the Colonel answered, annoyed by the distraction.

• From When Breath Becomes Air (2016)

  My thoughts turned to my father. As medical students, Lucy and I had attended his hospital rounds in Kingman, watching as he brought comfort and levity to his patients. To one woman, who was recovering from a cardiac procedure: “Are you hungry? What can I get you to eat?” “Anything,” she said. “I’m starving.” “Well, how about lobster and steak?” He picked up the phone and called the nursing station. “My patient needs lobster and steak—right away!” Turning back to her, he said, with a smile: “It’s on the way, but it may look more like a turkey sandwich.” The easy human connections he formed, the trust he instilled in his patients, were an inspiration to me. A thirty-five-year-old sat in her ICU bed, a sheen of terror on her face. She had been shopping for her sister’s birthday when she’d had a seizure. A scan showed that a benign brain tumor was pressing on her right frontal lobe. In terms of operative risk, it was the best kind of tumor to have, and the best place to have it; surgery would almost certainly eliminate her seizures. The alternative was a lifetime on toxic antiseizure medications. But I could see that the idea of brain surgery terrified her, more than most. She was lonesome and in a strange place, having been swept out of the familiar hubbub of a shopping mall and into the alien beeps and alarms and antiseptic smells of an ICU. She would likely refuse surgery if I launched into a detached spiel detailing all the risks and possible complications. I could do so, document her refusal in the chart, consider my duty discharged, and move on to the next task. Instead, with her permission, I gathered her family with her, and together we calmly talked through the options. As we talked, I could see the enormousness of the choice she faced dwindle into a difficult but understandable decision. I had met her in a space where she was a person, instead of a problem to be solved. She chose surgery. The operation went smoothly. She went home two days later, and never seized again.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  She would not forget the uniqueness of her son, his singular life. She would not forget that he had a father who loved him, who took him in while she battled cancer. She would not forget that he was the life of the party, that he always had new friends for her to shuttle around in her minivan. And she would have him live on in her work. I told her the verdict angered me. I told her that the idea that someone on that jury thought it plausible there was a gun in the car baffled the mind. She said that she was baffled too, and that I should not mistake her calm probing for the absence of anger. But God had focused her anger away from revenge and toward redemption, she said. God had spoken to her and committed her to a new activism. Then the mother of the murdered boy rose, turned to you, and said, “You exist. You matter. You have value. You have every right to wear your hoodie, to play your music as loud as you want. You have every right to be you. And no one should deter you from being you. You have to be you. And you can never be afraid to be you.” I was glad she said this. I have tried to say the same to you, and if I have not said it with the same direction and clarity, I confess that is because I am afraid. And I have no God to hold me up. And I believe that when they shatter the body they shatter everything, and I knew that all of us—Christians, Muslims, atheists—lived in this fear of this truth. Disembodiment is a kind of terrorism, and the threat of it alters the orbit of all our lives and, like terrorism, this distortion is intentional. Disembodiment. The dragon that compelled the boys I knew, way back, into extravagant theater of ownership. Disembodiment. The demon that pushed the middle-class black survivors into aggressive passivity, our conversation restrained in public quarters, our best manners on display, our hands never out of pockets, our whole manner ordered as if to say, “I make no sudden moves.” Disembodiment. The serpent of school years, demanding I be twice as good, though I was but a boy. Murder was all around us and we knew, deep in ourselves, in some silent space, that the author of these murders was beyond us, that it suited some other person’s ends. We were right. —

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

  When #4 opens the door to his house for me later that day, he is wearing a plush green bathrobe loosely belted around his waist, his skin and hair still damp from the shower. He opens his arms and I step inside them; wordlessly we stand like that, with the pugs running circles around us and the front door open, for longer than I think I've ever hugged anyone before. I rest my head against his chest, he presses his body against mine, and I feel like I might be having a spiritual breakthrough, so strong is my reaction to being touched. Why have I never liked to be hugged before? This is amazing, like someone is holding my heart just so it can beat with a little more ease, the warmth of his body spreading into mine. I have so much to learn about intimacy, I am like an infant learning language. I thought I was unaffectionate and didn't like being touched – Michael always used to marvel at how affectionate I was with our kids when I seemed to physically recoil from everyone else around me – but I do like it, in fact I feel a kind of unexpected peace and comfort wash over me.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Whether we realize it or not, all of us who are close to kids are sex educators, a responsibility that involves so much more than disseminating facts. Of course, it’s helpful when parents give simple, straightforward answers. Also important is well-planned sex education in our schools—beginning in the early elementary grades and expanding for adolescents and young adults. What matter most, however, are the everyday messages we give our kids about their worth, the value of their bodies, and the importance of their sexuality. These messages are communicated most powerfully through touch and direct observation. There is no better sex education, for instance, than observing an obviously affectionate bond between one’s mother and father. Other relatives and intimate family friends should also recognize they have subtle yet valuable contributions to make. Among the advantages of extended families is their ability to compensate for the fact that parents can’t possibly be perfect. An admired older sibling, a grandparent who exudes unconditional love, or a trusted neighbor can often be easier to confide in than one’s own parents. The pivotal sex talk that parents are supposed to have with their kids is all but irrelevant. By the time it takes place, unspoken attitudes are already formed. And unless these discussions are part of an ongoing dialogue, they’re inevitably awkward for everyone involved. Children absorb what we truly believe through our unrehearsed comments and behavior. Sex education at home is cumulative and has little to do with self-conscious discussions and speeches that mostly convey the message that sex is uncomfortable. As crucial as it is that adults create a nurturing environment for children’s sexual development, it’s just as important that we avoid meddling in their sensual and sexual experimentation unless we have reason to believe they might be hurt emotionally or physically. Children have a right to sexual privacy. The process of building their eroticism belongs totally to them. Kids don’t want to be asked about sex play with age-mates or themselves. If these activities are happened upon, however, we can reassure them they’re normal and that they needn’t fear punishment. I have the distinct impression that children who receive such simple reassurances frequently remember them gratefully as adults. It is hazardous folly to believe we can protect our children from exploitation by teaching them to mistrust their sexuality. What they primarily need to know and believe is that they are the guardians of their bodies with the right to enjoy its pleasures and to speak up when touches don’t feel good—whether that means Aunt Helen’s sloppy kisses or a molester’s furtive fondles.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  Our bodies grew stranger, to ourselves, to each other. You sprouted coarse hair in new places; new muscles fanned out across your hip bones. My breasts were sore for over a year, and while they don’t hurt anymore, they still feel like they belong to someone else (and in a sense, since I’m still nursing, they do). For years you were stone; now you strip your shirt off whenever you feel like it, emerge muscular, shirtless, into public spaces, go running—swimming, even. Via T, you’ve experienced surges of heat, an adolescent budding, your sexuality coming down from the labyrinth of your mind and disseminating like a cottonwood tree in a warm wind. You like the changes, but also feel them as a sort of compromise, a wager for visibility, as in your drawing of a ghost who proclaims, Without this sheet, I would be invisible. (Visibility makes possible, but it also disciplines: disciplines gender, disciplines genre.) Via pregnancy, I have my first sustained encounter with the pendulous, the slow, the exhausted, the disabled. I had always presumed that giving birth would make me feel invincible and ample, like fisting. But even now—two years out—my insides feel more quivery than lush. I’ve begun to give myself over to the idea that the sensation might be forever changed, that this sensitivity is now mine, ours, to work with. Can fragility feel as hot as bravado? I think so, but sometimes struggle to find the way. Whenever I think I can’t find it, Harry assures me that we can. And so we go on, our bodies finding each other again and again, even as they—we—have also been right here, all along. For reasons almost incomprehensible to me now, I cried a little when our first ultrasound technician—the nice, seemingly gay Raoul, who sported a little silver sperm-squiggle pin on his white coat—told us at twenty weeks that our baby was a boy, without a shadow of a doubt. I guess I had to mourn something— the fantasy of a feminist daughter, the fantasy of a mini-me. Someone whose hair I could braid, someone who might serve as a femme ally to me in a house otherwise occupied by an adorable boy terrier, my beautiful, swaggery stepson, and a debonair butch on T. But that was not my fate, nor was it the baby’s. Within twenty-four hours of hearing the news, I was on board. Little Agnes would be little Iggy. And I would love him fiercely. Maybe I would even braid his hair! As you reminded me on the drive home from our appointment, Hey, I was born female, and look how that turned out.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  They bring us breakfast of warm rolls from a nearby bakery or Hostess cakes, and sometimes they walk us to the pub for the soup and sandwich lunch special . . . but we always hurry to exit before Cookie parks herself at the bar for the day. As far as caretakers go, I’m partial to Garcia, who looks out for us so well I don’t bother to wonder why he would never date Cookie. He promises that after the horses get used to us, he’ll give us riding lessons. A few days in a row he teaches me to practice saddling up Dixie, a sweet nutmeg mare. After half a dozen lessons in the saddle, Norman, Rosie, and I take turns trotting her around as if she were our own, until one afternoon when both Rosie and the horse find themselves surprised. Apparently Dixie’s being sought after by an overly enthusiastic stud, causing all the farmworkers to crowd around in terror. One runs to rescue Rosie from the reins, while the two horses go on to give us all a lesson in horse mating so thorough I’m tempted to write in to National Geographic . Garcia informs us that Cookie’s been living with a guy from the pub, so for Thanksgiving, the workers call Salvation Army to bring us a warm dinner. When the food arrives, the kids and I slip socks poked with holes over our fingers and open the Styrofoam containers heaped with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce. We scurry to take seats around our trailer’s folding table. “Let’s say grace,” I tell them. We bow our heads as I lead: Bless us O Lord, And these Thy gifts Which we are about to receive from Thy bounty Through Christ, our Lord. Amen. When my sisters first taught me this prayer, they gave me permission to bless myself with the sign of the cross, even though none of us are sure whether I was ever baptized. I watch as Rosie and Norman dig into their dinners, reminding them to chew slowly. After dinner we eat the pumpkin pie the Salvation Army brought us, then we lounge on the floor to play board games with our stomachs so full we can barely move. “Does your belly hurt?” I ask Rosie. “No,” she answers. “It feels delicious.” As the weather continues to chill down, the workers begin to arrive earlier, allowing us to sleep in and stay out of the cold. The three of us begin to spend our days hanging out at the mall, watching shoppers’ carts fill up with gifts as little kids climb onto Santa’s lap. “Do you think Santa will ever bring us presents?” Rosie asks me. “One day, sweetheart. When we stop moving around and we’re finally home for good.” It’s almost Christmas when Cookie shows up again. She says welfare has a room for us in the Los Biandos shelter in Patchogue.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  I take the stairs one at a time, clinging to the rail with one hand and to my boots and rucksack and sweats and teeth with the other. My T-shirt sticks so tight it’s epidermal. Sweat drips from my jock and dots the tile. “Look!” Carla points to the kitten. It’s snuggled up to a little teddy bear I won for Carla arm wrestling at the Whitworth College carnival. And it’s nursing, sucking loudly at the fur on the bear’s foot. “It’s nursing!” I exclaim with tired astonishment. “A surrogate mother,” Carla informs me as the kitten slurps away in contented ignorance. Seems to me like pretty aberrant behavior. But “wow” is all I have energy enough to say on the subject for now. “The DeSoto looks beautiful!” I yell from the shower. The old blue-and-gray couldn’t have looked better when it was new over thirty years ago. “Katzen helped me!” I relax against the shower wall, devouring the applesauce that was waiting for me on the scales. It’s cold and good and the water is hot and good. I weigh 148. My teeth are beginning to emerge from the block of ice in the soap dish. I’m glad to be out of school and off work for a while. I try like hell to fill my life with things to do, but sometimes they get to be too much. I smile at Carla’s name for the kitten. To Carla every cat is Katzen and every dog is Doggels-Doggels. She named the teddy bear Bilbo. Carla’s in bed. She’s pillowed up against the headboard, looking awfully comfortable and cozy in her floppy flannel nightgown, reading a little booklet entitled Your New Kitten . Naked, I bend my knees for the vault into bed. “Eeeeeeh!” Carla gives a little scream, tempered by her consideration for Dad sleeping above us. “The Katzen!” she says, lifting kitten and bear from my intended ground zero and placing them at the foot of the bed. I settle in. Carla turns off the light. We cuddle. “We’re going to have a guest for breakfast,” Carla whispers, pointing to the ceiling. “Is she decent?” I ask. “I didn’t see her. Katzen and I were waxing,” she replies. “Thanks for the applesauce,” I say. “It was good.” “You’re welcome,” Carla says. I tug clumsily at Carla’s nightgown. She pulls it off and flings it. The kitten squeaks. I always get a rush at the sight of Carla naked, even when it’s dark and I can’t really see her. I tremble. We make slow love, lying on our sides, tummy to tummy, like old people probably do. We touch and kiss lightly, practicing our tenderness. I hold her bottom so she doesn’t fall away. It’s just a handful. Once, when we’d only made love a few times, just after I’d come Carla asked me what I was thinking.