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 The Argonauts (2015)

  That view. It may have been a pile of rough scrub with a stagnant pond at its top, but for two years, it was our mountain. And then, just like that, I was folding your son’s laundry. He had just turned three. Such little socks! Such little underwear! I marveled at them, made him lukewarm cocoa each morning with as much powder as can fit in the rim of a fingernail, played Fallen Soldier with him for hours on end. In Fallen Soldier he would collapse with all his gear on—sequined chain mail hat, sword, sheath, a limb wounded from battle, tied up in a scarf. I was the good Blue Witch who had to sprinkle healing dust all over him to bring him back to life. I had a twin who was evil; the evil twin had felled him with her poisonous blue powder. But now I was here to heal him. He lay there motionless, eyes closed, the faintest smile on his face, while I recited my monologue: But where could this soldier have come from? How did he get so far from home? Is he badly wounded? Will he be kind or fierce when he awakens? Will he know I am good, or will he mistake me for my evil twin? What can I say that will bring him back to life? Throughout that fall, yellow YES ON PROP 8 signs were sprouting up everywhere, most notably jabbed into an otherwise bald and beautiful mountain I passed each day on my way to work. The sign depicted four stick figures raising their hands to the sky, in a paroxysm of joy—the joy, I suppose, of heteronormativity, here indicated by the fact that one of the stick figures sported a triangle skirt. (What is that triangle, anyway? My twat?) PROTECT CALIFORNIA CHILDREN! the stick figures cheered. Each time I passed the sign stuck into the blameless mountain, I thought about Catherine Opie’s Self-Portrait/Cutting from 1993, in which Opie photographed her back with a drawing of a house and two stick-figure women holding hands (two triangle skirts!) carved into it, along with a sun, a cloud, and two birds. She took the photo while the drawing was still dripping with blood. “Opie, who had recently broken up with her partner, was longing at the time to start a family, and the image radiates all the painful contradictions inherent in that wish,” Art in America explains. I don’t get it, I said to Harry. Who wants a version of the Prop 8 poster, but with two triangle skirts? Maybe Cathy does, Harry shrugged.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  Despite agreeing with Sedgwick’s assertion that “women and men are more like each other than chalk is like cheese, than ratiocination is like raisins, than up is like down, or than 1 is like 0,” it took me by surprise that my body could make a male body. Many women I know have reported something of the same, even though they know this is the most ordinary of miracles. As my body made the male body, I felt the difference between male and female body melt even further away. I was making a body with a difference, but a girl body would have been a different body too. The principal difference was that the body I made would eventually slide out of me and be its own body. Radical intimacy, radical difference. Both in the body, both in the bowl. I kept thinking then about something poet Fanny Howe once said about bearing biracial children, something about how you become what grows inside you. But however “black” Howe might have felt herself becoming while gestating her children, she also remained keenly aware that the outside world was ready and waiting—and all too willing—to reinforce the color divide. She is of her children, and they are of her. But they know and she knows they do not share the same lot. This divide provoked in Howe the sensation of being a double agent, especially in all-white settings. She recalls how, at gatherings in the late ’60s, white liberals would openly converse “about their fear of blacks, and their judgments of blacks, and I had to announce to them that my husband and children were black, before hastily departing.” This scene was not limited to the ’60s. “This event has been repeated so many times, in multiple forms, that by now I make some kind of give-away statement after entering a white-only room, one way or the other, that will warn the people there ‘which side I am on,’” Howe says. “On these occasions, more than any others, I feel that my skin is white but my soul is not, and that I am in camouflage.” Harry lets me in on a secret: guys are pretty nice to each other in public. Always greeting each other “hey boss” or nodding as they pass each other on the street. Women aren’t like that. I don’t mean that women are all back-stabbers or have it in for each other or whatnot. But in public, we don’t nod nobly at each other. Nor do we really need to, as that nod also means I mean you no violence. Over lunch with a fag friend of ours, Harry reports his findings about male behavior in public. Our friend laughs and says: Maybe if I looked like Harry, I’d get a “hey boss” too!

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  It occurred to me that she didn’t even know what had happened, but she still sounded sincere. “What am I going to do?” “You’ll spend Thanksgiving with me, silly. Here.” “So why don’t you go home for vacations?” I asked her. “I’m just scared of ghosts, Pudge. And home is full of them.” fifty-two days before AFTER EVERYONE LEFT; after the Colonel’s mom showed up in a beat-up hatchback and he threw his giant duffel bag into the backseat; and after he said, “I’m not much for saying good-bye. I’ll see you in a week. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do”; and after a green limousine arrived for Lara, whose father was the only doctor in some small town in southern Alabama; and after I joined Alaska on a harrowing, we-don’t-need-no-stinking-brakes drive to the airport to drop off Takumi; and after the campus settled into an eerie quiet, with no doors slamming and no music playing and no one laughing and no one screaming; after all that: We made our way down to the soccer field, and she took me to edge of the field where the woods start, the same steps I’d walked on my way to being thrown into the lake. Beneath the full moon she cast a shadow, and you could see the curve from her waist to her hips in the shadow, and after a while she stopped and said, “Dig.” And I said, “Dig?” and she said, “Dig,” and we went on like that for a bit, and then I got on my knees and dug through the soft black dirt at the edge of the woods, and before I could get very far, my fingers scratched glass, and I dug around the glass until I pulled out a bottle of pink wine—Strawberry Hill, it was called, I suppose because if it had not tasted like vinegar with a dash of maple syrup, it might have tasted like strawberries. “I have a fake ID,” she said, “but it sucks. So every time I go to the liquor store, I try to buy ten bottles of this, and some vodka for the Colonel. And so when it finally works, I’m covered for a semester. And then I give the Colonel his vodka, and he puts it wherever he puts it, and I take mine and bury it.” “Because you’re a pirate,” I said. “Aye, matey. Precisely. Although wine consumption has risen a bit this semester, so we’ll need to take a trip tomorrow. This is the last bottle.” She unscrewed the cap—no corks here—sipped, and handed it to me. “Don’t worry about the Eagle tonight,” she said. “He’s just happy most everyone’s gone. He’s probably masturbating for the first time in a month.” I worried about it for a moment as I held the bottle by the neck, but I wanted to trust her, and so I did.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  “Me, too!” I yelled over my shoulder from the stairs. I had to stuff some toilet paper in my nose and get dressed. Coach gave me a bunch of little gauze nose stoppers. But I’m all out. My nose has been cauterized twice. That seals the vessels for a while, but as the nose continues to get whacked with forearms and be ground into wrestling mats, the vessels break again in new places. Blood runs so close to the surface of the inside of my nose a rapid rise in temperature can turn it loose. Carla was tired from waxing the DeSoto, so I let her sleep till time for work. Besides babysitting, she still sells health foods on weekends at the New Pioneer and she’s going to work full-time over the Christmas vacation. Little Katzenburger idled steadily from her nest in Carla’s nightgown at the foot of the bed. Carla likes it that Cindy’s hair is soft and not lacquered and stacked like spun glass. Women beyond twenty-five have this tendency to look like Christmas decorations. I see them all the time at the hotel, looking like they had their hair done in the bakery. At first Carla was a little dubious about Cindy leaving her little girl with her grandparents. She thought it might not be too wise of Cindy at such an important time for kids as Christmas. I thought the kid maybe suffered from some hideous deformity or childhood disease. Carla called me a maniac and punched me hard in the stomach when I told her that. Cindy spoiled our speculations, however, by bringing the kid over on Christmas Eve to open presents with us. Her name is Willa. The little creature looked okay to me. A pain in the ass, as most toddler types are—giggly and drooly and sporadically weepy—but healthy enough. We kept Katzenburger downstairs. Kids can get pretty physical with baby animals, and we want Katzen to develop strength and sharpen her instincts for survival before we let her out in the world. Besides, she’s about half stuck to that bear. After Cindy brought Willa over, Carla began to think Cindy’s leaving her with her grandparents had just been a courteous gesture in case we might not dig little kids, and probably part of a plan to go slow and easy on Dad. It certainly was courteous. I can stand about fifteen seconds of those cookie-crumbling rug rats. But Carla enjoyed it. She took Willa down to see “the baby Katzen.” She showed her how to get her doll to talk and helped her warm its bottle. She bundled her up and took her out to play in the snow awhile, then pulled her on a short sled ride. I watched them out the window. It wasn’t that bad a time. Carla helped her make a little bed out of wrapping paper and one of my new flannel shirts and Willa went to sleep in it under the Christmas tree.

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  "He watched Charlie's ribs rise and fall through his pale skin. Blond freckles covered his shoulders, his face, his arms, but his chest was polished ivory. He was soft, as if his skin had never seen the weather, and when a bone—an elbow, a kneecap, a rib—showed through, it was like a foreign object poking at a piece of silk."

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  "Fiona gave up on her questions and scooted closer so she could stroke the skin between Yale's eyebrows. He couldn't stand to be touched anywhere else anymore, but that one spot worked. He closed his eyes. … 'And when I couldn't breathe, I was doing it too, but with—you know, with the end of things. And I know I'll wind up doing it again. I'll lie here with my eyes closed, and it feels like, Okay, this is it. This must be it. Only it's not.' … 'That glow of the red light,' she said. 'Do you remember how magical the glow of a red light at night was? As a kid? Just being outside after dark.'"

• From When Breath Becomes Air (2016)

  The hospital staff greeted Paul warmly, as always. But they moved quickly once they saw his condition. After initial testing, they placed a mask over his nose and mouth to help his breathing via BiPAP, a breathing support system that supplied a strong mechanized flow of air each time he inhaled, doing much of the work of breathing for him. Though it helps with respiratory mechanics, BiPAP can be hard work for a patient—noisy and forceful, blowing one's lips apart with each breath like those of a dog with its head out a car window. I stood close, leaning over the gurney, my hand in Paul's as the steady whoosh, whoosh of the machine began.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  Once I wrote a book about domesticity in the poetry of certain gay men (Ashbery, Schuyler) and some women (Mayer, Notley). I wrote this book when I was living in New York City in a teeny, too-hot attic apartment on a Brooklyn thoroughfare underlined by the F train. I had an unusable stove filled with petrified mouse droppings, an empty fridge save for a couple of beers and yogurt peanut honey Balance bars, a futon on a piece of plywood unevenly balanced on milk crates for a bed, and a floor through which I could hear Standcleartheclosingdoors morning, noon, and night. I spent approximately seven hours a day lying in bed in this apartment, if that. Mostly I slept elsewhere. I wrote most everything I wrote and read most everything I read in public, just as I am writing this in public now. I was so happy renting in New York City for so long because renting—or at least the way I rented, which involved never lifting a finger to better my surroundings—allows you to let things literally fall apart all around you. Then, when it gets to be too much, you just move on. Many feminists have argued for the decline of the domestic as a separate, inherently female sphere and the vindication of domesticity as an ethic, an affect, an aesthetic, and a public. I’m not sure what this vindication would mean, exactly, though I think in my book I was angling for something of the same. But even then I suspected that I was doing so because I didn’t have a domestic, and I liked it that way. I liked Fallen Soldier because it gave me time to learn about your son’s face in mute repose: big almond eyes, skin just starting to freckle. And clearly he found some novel, relaxing pleasure in just lying there, protected by imaginary armor, while a near stranger who was quickly becoming family picked up each limb and turned it over, trying to find the wound. Not long ago, a friend came over to our house and pulled down a mug for coffee, a mug that was a gift from my mother. It’s one of those mugs you can purchase online from Snapfish, with the photo of your choice emblazoned on it. I was horrified when I received it, but it’s the biggest mug we own, so we keep it around, in case someone’s in the mood for a trough of warm milk or something. Wow, my friend said, filling it up. I’ve never seen anything so heteronormative in all my life.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “How was the snow?” “Perfect.” —SHE MEETS Mason for breakfast the next morning, then he drives her to the cemetery to visit Irene and Ben. The cemetery is close to Newark Airport, not exactly a peaceful site, but it’s where they wanted to be, with their families and old friends. She places a stone on top of each headstone. Ben Sapphire, the stepgrandfather she came to admire, and Irene Ammerman Sapphire. She misses Irene, her nana, who loved her unconditionally, who taught her, by example, to take another chance on love. Miri wipes the tears from her eyes, then blows her nose. “She gave me her recipe for brisket,” Mason says. “No.” “Yeah, she did. And I passed it on to Rebecca. Every Friday night we have Irene’s brisket. It’s not exactly the same, not quite as good as I remember, but it’s good. I look forward to it.” “Irene would love knowing that.” “She knew.” “You kept in touch with her?” “Holiday cards, the occasional note.” “She never told me.” “She didn’t want to upset the cart. One summer, when she and Ben were vacationing down the shore, she invited me and Rebecca and our kids to lunch.” “I can’t believe she kept you a secret from me!” “She wanted to see for herself that I was happy. She already knew you were.” “She never stopped trying to rescue people, to fix what wasn’t right.” “Rebecca fell in love with her.” “Who didn’t?” She stops, then asks, “You and Rebecca?” “Up and down. But I think we’re going to make it.” “I hope you do.” He checks his watch. “I have to get you to the airport…if you’re really going.” She gives him a you must be kidding look. He shrugs and smiles. They walk back to his car. “I’m glad we got to spend time together.” “I’m glad, too.” She feels satisfied, happy. At the airport he kisses her goodbye in the car. “If someday…” he begins. “Yes, if …But for now…” “I get it,” he says, kissing her one last time. —SHE’S MADE A PLAN to meet Natalie for coffee in the first-class lounge at the airport before their flights. How long has it been since Natalie visited them in Las Vegas? She gave a lecture at the library on “channeling your past lives” during one of her book tours, but that was years ago, and she flew in and out of town quickly, with no time for family. Fern, who’d come in from Shiprock with her girlfriend, Ora, also a doctor on the Navajo reservation, had been disappointed. Now the two of them run a family clinic outside of Las Vegas. Natalie spies her first. “Hey, Brenda Starr …how’s it going?” “Not so bad.” “You look better today. Yesterday, you looked like a corporate executive in that suit.” If Miri thought Natalie would be different now that she’d achieved fame, she was wrong. “How was it seeing Mason again?” she asks.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  When the fire burned past and people could get to them, they found them without a burn on their bodies. They had suffocated because the fire burned all their air. Carla putting the baby food on the manifold reminded me of Trapper Peak. You’d lie in camp in your paper sleeping bag that the forest service gives you, with ashes and soot and fire retardant in your hair, just wishing you could get a hot shower somewhere. And you’d be looking off at the little burning spots on the hill when all of a sudden a tree would just explode. The fire would be burning in the humus and roots, and when the trees reached their kindling temperature they’d go up in a big swoosh and a flame a couple hundred feet high. The sky would get like dawn for a few seconds, then go black again. Katzen had taken her vitamins, eaten some chicken and veggies, and shit way out of her league in terms of both volume and stench before the first deer appeared. We were parked near some trees where the feed and salt are protected from heavy snow. The deer come down from the mountains and across an open field to get their dinner. I was out cleaning Katzen’s pan when I saw five or six whitetails strung out across the field. Carla had to open a window because of Katzen’s bad smell and so an odor of kitty shit and strains of Johann Pachelbel floated from the car into the night. The deer weren’t sure what was going down at their favorite nightspot. The owls and night hawks had been replaced by a more classical, less hygienic group. When I got back in, Carla had things straightened around. Katzen was in the front seat nested in her blanket, sucking away at the leg of her bear. I set her pooping pan on the floor in front of her. In back Carla had set the plastic box of veggies and the tape player on the rear window deck and spread one sleeping bag over the backseat. The other bag was partly over her and partly left for me. I took off my boots and set them on the floor next to Carla’s and climbed carefully over the high old front seat. “Here they come,” I said as Carla handed me a cup of steamy tea. The good smell of the tea and honey was driving out the smell of Katzen’s foul and precocious clinker. I stuck my nose almost in the tea and inhaled the rich soft fragrance. I licked the tea dew off my mustache and pointed so Carla could see the deer. She had to twist around to get a good view, so we changed places. We grunted and tugged and stretched and tunneled and held cups of tea carefully. We fluffed pillows and retucked each other a little and snuggled our feet.

• From When Breath Becomes Air (2016)

  I took meager solace in knowing that William Carlos Williams and Richard Selzer had confessed to doing worse, and I swore to do better. Amid the tragedies and failures, I feared I was losing sight of the singular importance of human relationships, not between patients and their families but between doctor and patient. Technical excellence was not enough. As a resident, my highest ideal was not saving lives—everyone dies eventually—but guiding a patient or family to an understanding of death or illness. When a patient comes in with a fatal head bleed, that first conversation with a neurosurgeon may forever color how the family remembers the death, from a peaceful letting go (“Maybe it was his time”) to an open sore of regret (“Those doctors didn’t listen! They didn’t even try to save him!”). When there’s no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon’s only tool. For amid that unique suffering invoked by severe brain damage, the suffering often felt more by families than by patients, it is not merely the physicians who do not see the full significance. The families who gather around their beloved—their beloved whose sheared heads contained battered brains—do not usually recognize the full significance, either. They see the past, the accumulation of memories, the freshly felt love, all represented by the body before them. I see the possible futures, the breathing machines connected through a surgical opening in the neck, the pasty liquid dripping in through a hole in the belly, the possible long, painful, and only partial recovery—or, sometimes more likely, no return at all of the person they remember. In these moments, I acted not, as I most often did, as death’s enemy, but as its ambassador. I had to help those families understand that the person they knew—the full, vital independent human—now lived only in the past and that I needed their input to understand what sort of future he or she would want: an easy death or to be strung between bags of fluids going in, others coming out, to persist despite being unable to struggle. Had I been more religious in my youth, I might have become a pastor, for it was the pastoral role I’d sought. — With my renewed focus, informed consent—the ritual by which a patient signs a piece of paper, authorizing surgery—became not a juridical exercise in naming all the risks as quickly as possible, like the voiceover in an ad for a new pharmaceutical, but an opportunity to forge a covenant with a suffering compatriot: Here we are together, and here are the ways through—I promise to guide you, as best as I can, to the other side. By this point in my residency, I was more efficient and experienced. I could finally breathe a little, no longer trying to hang on for my own dear life. I was now accepting full responsibility for my patients’ well-being.

• From How to Be a Great Lover (1999)

  In order to be able to give him this very special gift, you must find a position in which you’ll be comfortable. There’s no reason, ladies, to be uncomfortable or cramped into an ungainly posture. The last thing either one of you will appreciate is your getting a charley horse at an inopportune moment. In general, the most comfortable position is for you to be sitting on your knees between his legs. But there are many ways to vary your position and techniques (see below), and I am quite sure that you’ll find the combination that bests suits you and your partner. Here are a couple of seminar favorites: • Have him sit on the bed, slightly propped up by pillows or on the edge; in both positions you are between his legs. • Have him sit in a chair with his legs apart and knees bent, resting on an ottoman. You sit on the floor between his legs with your back supported by the ottoman. This ensures your comfort while providing a clear view of the territory you’ll be working with. • Another popular position is on a staircase, (stairs are not as constricting as a bed or chair). You sit between his legs, on a lower step, which gives you more mobility. Put a pillow behind his back or put him at the very top of the stairs. As one travel agent said, “The only stairs we have are in the front of the house, but whatever. It worked like a charm.” Secret from Lou’s Archives If you use saliva to help lubricate, you could risk ending up with dreaded “desert mouth,” especially if you’ve had wine at dinner, which is a natural dessicant. Remember ladies, you are handling probably the most precious and important part of your gentleman’s anatomy. It’s doubtful there is another part of his body that so defines his perception of his masculinity. Anything you can do that shows respect for the sensitivity of this area, physically and emotionally, will always be most appreciated. And despite the myth that men have penises resembling “rods of steel,” their organs are actually quite tender and delicate, including the skin. This is another reason I am so in favor of using a lubricant either in addition to, or in place of, saliva. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but there is a limitless supply of lubricant and sometimes not enough saliva. THE PERFECT PLACE FOR A HAND JOB

• From Little Women (1868)

  Happy, thoughtful times there in the old study which Jo called 'the church of one member', and from which she came with fresh courage, recovered cheerfulness, and a more submissive spirit. For the parents who had taught one child to meet death without fear, were trying now to teach another to accept life without despondency or distrust, and to use its beautiful opportunities with gratitude and power. Other helps had Jo—humble, wholesome duties and delights that would not be denied their part in serving her, and which she slowly learned to see and value. Brooms and dishcloths never could be as distasteful as they once had been, for Beth had presided over both, and something of her housewifely spirit seemed to linger around the little mop and the old brush, never thrown away. As she used them, Jo found herself humming the songs Beth used to hum, imitating Beth's orderly ways, and giving the little touches here and there that kept everything fresh and cozy, which was the first step toward making home happy, though she didn't know it till Hannah said with an approving squeeze of the hand... "You thoughtful creeter, you're determined we shan't miss that dear lamb ef you can help it. We don't say much, but we see it, and the Lord will bless you for't, see ef He don't." As they sat sewing together, Jo discovered how much improved her sister Meg was, how well she could talk, how much she knew about good, womanly impulses, thoughts, and feelings, how happy she was in husband and children, and how much they were all doing for each other. "Marriage is an excellent thing, after all. I wonder if I should blossom out half as well as you have, if I tried it?, always 'perwisin' I could," said Jo, as she constructed a kite for Demi in the topsy-turvy nursery. "It's just what you need to bring out the tender womanly half of your nature, Jo. You are like a chestnut burr, prickly outside, but silky-soft within, and a sweet kernal, if one can only get at it. Love will make you show your heart one day, and then the rough burr will fall off." "Frost opens chestnut burrs, ma'am, and it takes a good shake to bring them down. Boys go nutting, and I don't care to be bagged by them," returned Jo, pasting away at the kite which no wind that blows would ever carry up, for Daisy had tied herself on as a bob. Meg laughed, for she was glad to see a glimmer of Jo's old spirit, but she felt it her duty to enforce her opinion by every argument in her power, and the sisterly chats were not wasted, especially as two of Meg's most effective arguments were the babies, whom Jo loved tenderly. Grief is the best opener of some hearts, and Jo's was nearly ready for the bag.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  parents. For his beloved mother he bought a pink Cadillac, and to make the house truly a home she could appreciate, he built her a chicken coop in the backyard. 15 As Elvis became the “country squire” of Graceland, middle-class Americans found themselves promoting the merits of suburbia more generally. Vice President Richard Nixon, for one, saw the expanding housing market as a powerful tool in waging Cold War diplomacy. In 1959, the world’s two superpowers agreed to a cultural exchange: the Soviets prepared an exhibit on Sputnik and space exploration, which was put on display in New York City; for its part, the United States chose an earthbound emblem of its national pride, a typical ranch-style home, which was set up in Sokolniki Park for the edification of Russian crowds. 16 Speaking at the opening ceremony in Moscow, Nixon took stock of the thirty-one million American families that owned homes, the forty-four million citizens who drove fifty-six million cars, and the fifty million who watched their own television sets. At this opportunistic moment, the vice president did his best to wear multiple hats, sounding on the one hand like a Madison Avenue ad man, and on the other as a prophet of the new middle class. Either way, he explicitly denied being representative of a shallow materialism. The real wonder of America’s achievement, he professed, was that the “world’s largest capitalist country” had “come closest to the ideal of prosperity for all in a classless society.” These words strike at the heart of the matter. For Nixon, the United States was more than a land of plenty. Democratic in its collective soul, it had nearly achieved a kind of utopia. For the first time in history, capitalism was not the engine of greed, aimed at monopolizing wealth and resources; free enterprise in the 1950s was a magic elixir that was succeeding in erasing class lines, especially through home ownership, or so he wanted it understood. 17 The Nixons sold themselves as the perfect suburban family. Not long before his Moscow trip, the vice president and his family took a trip to Disneyland, which made the front pages. During the 1960 campaign, when Nixon contested John F. Kennedy for the presidency, it was Pat Nixon who praised her husband (and included herself) as the personification of the American dream. In anticipation of her husband’s nomination, she told reporters that their success embodied the promise of the postwar generation, “where people of humble circumstances can go up the ladder through sheer hard work and obtain what they work for.” If she happened to become First Lady, she said, she would be the first “working girl” ever to inhabit the White House. Republican marketers used

• From Little Women (1868)

  They put away their grief, and each did his or her part toward making that last year a happy one. The pleasantest room in the house was set apart for Beth, and in it was gathered everything that she most loved, flowers, pictures, her piano, the little worktable, and the beloved pussies. Father's best books found their way there, Mother's easy chair, Jo's desk, Amy's finest sketches, and every day Meg brought her babies on a loving pilgrimage, to make sunshine for Aunty Beth. John quietly set apart a little sum, that he might enjoy the pleasure of keeping the invalid supplied with the fruit she loved and longed for. Old Hannah never wearied of concocting dainty dishes to tempt a capricious appetite, dropping tears as she worked, and from across the sea came little gifts and cheerful letters, seeming to bring breaths of warmth and fragrance from lands that know no winter. Here, cherished like a household saint in its shrine, sat Beth, tranquil and busy as ever, for nothing could change the sweet, unselfish nature, and even while preparing to leave life, she tried to make it happier for those who should remain behind. The feeble fingers were never idle, and one of her pleasures was to make little things for the school children daily passing to and fro, to drop a pair of mittens from her window for a pair of purple hands, a needlebook for some small mother of many dolls, penwipers for young penmen toiling through forests of pothooks, scrapbooks for picture-loving eyes, and all manner of pleasant devices, till the reluctant climbers of the ladder of learning found their way strewn with flowers, as it were, and came to regard the gentle giver as a sort of fairy godmother, who sat above there, and showered down gifts miraculously suited to their tastes and needs. If Beth had wanted any reward, she found it in the bright little faces always turned up to her window, with nods and smiles, and the droll little letters which came to her, full of blots and gratitude. The first few months were very happy ones, and Beth often used to look round, and say "How beautiful this is!" as they all sat together in her sunny room, the babies kicking and crowing on the floor, mother and sisters working near, and father reading, in his pleasant voice, from the wise old books which seemed rich in good and comfortable words, as applicable now as when written centuries ago, a little chapel, where a paternal priest taught his flock the hard lessons all must learn, trying to show them that hope can comfort love, and faith make resignation possible. Simple sermons, that went straight to the souls of those who listened, for the father's heart was in the minister's religion, and the frequent falter in the voice gave a double eloquence to the words he spoke or read.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  Professor: I can’t stop thinking about the others out there, all those minds that I touched. I could feel them, their isolation, their hopes, their ambitions. I tell you we can start something incredible, Erik. We can help them. Erik Lehnsherr: Can we? Identification, that’s how it starts. And ends with being rounded up, experimented on and eliminated. Professor: Listen to me very carefully, my friend: killing Shaw will not bring you peace. Erik Lehnsherr: Peace was never an option. We bantered good-naturedly, yet somehow allowed ourselves to get polarized into a needless binary. That’s what we both hate about fiction, or at least crappy fiction—it purports to provide occasions for thinking through complex issues, but really it has predetermined the positions, stuffed a narrative full of false choices, and hooked you on them, rendering you less able to see out, to get out. While we talked we said words like nonviolence, assimilation, threats to survival, preserving the radical. But when I think about it now I hear only the background buzz of our trying to explain something to each other, to ourselves, about our lived experiences thus far on this peeled, endangered planet. As is so often the case, the intensity of our need to be understood distorted our positions, backed us further into the cage. Do you want to be right or do you want to connect? ask couples’ therapists everywhere. The aim is not to answer questions, it’s to get out, to get out of it. Flipping channels on a different day, we landed on a reality TV show featuring a breast cancer patient recovering from a double mastectomy. It was uncanny to watch her performing the same actions we were performing—emptying her drains, waiting patiently for her unbinding—but with opposite emotions. You felt unburdened, euphoric, reborn; the woman on TV feared, wept, and grieved. Our last night at the Sheraton, we have dinner at the astoundingly overpriced “casual Mexican” restaurant on the premises, Dos Caminos. You pass as a guy; I, as pregnant. Our waiter cheerfully tells us about his family, expresses delight in ours. On the surface, it may have seemed as though your body was becoming more and more “male,” mine, more and more “female.” But that’s not how it felt on the inside. On the inside, we were two human animals undergoing transformations beside each other, bearing each other loose witness. In other words, we were aging.

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  He touched her arm. He said, “You remember to eat?” Fiona laughed, looked at the guy, laughed again. She said, “Yale .” And she kissed his cheek, a firm kiss that probably left lipstick. To the guy she said, “I have two hundred big brothers.” She might fall over any second. “But as you can see , he’s the preppiest . And look at Yale’s hands. Look at them.” Yale examined his palm; there was nothing wrong with it. “No,” she said, “The back! Don’t they look like paws? They’re furry!” She ran her finger through the dark hairs clustered thickly on the pinky side of his hand. She whispered loudly to the man: “It’s on his feet too!” Then, to Yale, “Hey, did you talk to my aunt?” Yale scanned the room. There were only a few women here, none much over thirty. He said, “At the vigil?” “No , she can’t drive. But you must have talked, because I told her. I told her, like, months ago. And she said she had.” He said, “Your aunt?” “No, my father’s aunt. She loved Nico. Yale, you have to know that. She loved him.” Yale said to the guy, “Get her some food,” and the guy nodded. Fiona patted Yale’s chest and turned away, as if he were the one whose logic couldn’t be followed. He got his refill, almost straight rum, and looked for Charlie. Was that his bearded chin, his blue tie? But the curtain of people closed again, and Yale wasn’t tall enough to see over a crowd. And now Richard dimmed the lights and pulled up a projector screen, and Yale couldn’t see anything but the shoulders and backs boxing him in. Richard Campo, if he had any job at all, was a photographer. Yale had no idea where Richard’s money came from, but it let him buy a lot of nice cameras and gave him time to roam the city shooting candid photos in addition to the occasional wedding. Not long after Yale moved to Chicago, he was sunbathing on the Belmont Rocks with Charlie and Charlie’s friends, though this was before Yale and Charlie were an item. It was heaven, even if Yale had forgotten a towel, even if he always burned. Guys making out in broad daylight! A gay space hidden from the city but wide open to the vast expanse of Lake Michigan. One of Charlie’s friends, a man with wavy, prematurely silver hair and a lime-green Speedo, had sat there clicking away on his Nikon, changing film, clicking again at all of them. Yale asked, “Who’s the perv?” and Charlie said, “He might be a genius.” That was Richard. Of course Charlie saw genius in everyone, prodded them till he discovered their passions and then encouraged those, but Richard really was talented. Yale and Richard were never close—he’d never set foot in the guy’s house till today—but Yale had grown used to him.

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  Richard was always on the periphery, watching and shooting. A good fifteen years older than everyone else in their circle: paternal, doting, eager to buy a round. He’d bankrolled Charlie’s newspaper in the early days. And what had started as a strange quirk had become, in the past few months, something essential. Yale would hear the camera’s click and think, “He got that , at least.” Meaning: Whatever happens—in three years, in twenty—that moment will remain. Someone messed with the record player, and as the first slide displayed (Nico and Terrence toasting last year at Fiona’s twentieth birthday) the music started: the acoustic intro to “America,” the version from Simon and Garfunkel’s Central Park concert. Nico’s favorite song, one he saw as a defiant anthem, not just a ditty about a road trip. The night Reagan won reelection last year, Nico, furious, played it on the jukebox at Little Jim’s again and again until the whole bar was drunkenly singing about being lost and counting cars and looking for America. Just as everyone was singing now. Yale couldn’t bear to join, and although he wouldn’t be the only one crying, he didn’t think he could stay here. He backed out of the crowd and took a few steps up Richard’s stairs, watching the heads from above. Everyone stared at the slides, riveted. Except that someone else was leaving too. Teddy Naples was at Richard’s heavy front door, slipping his suit jacket back on, turning the knob slowly. Usually Teddy was a little ball of kinetic energy, bouncing on his toes, keeping time with his fingers to music no one else could hear. But right now he moved like a ghost. Maybe he had the right idea. If he weren’t trapped on this side of the crowd, Yale might have done the same. Not left , but stepped outside for fresh air. The slides: Nico in running shorts, a number pinned to his chest. Nico and Terrence leaning against a tree, both giving the finger. Nico in profile with his orange scarf and black coat, a cigarette between his lips. Suddenly, there was Yale himself, tucked in the crook of Charlie’s arm, Nico on the other side: the year-end party last December for Charlie’s paper. Nico had been the graphic designer for Out Loud Chicago , and he had a regular comic strip there, and he’d just started designing theater sets too. Self-taught, entirely. This was supposed to have been the prologue of his life. A new slide: Nico laughing at Julian and Teddy, the Halloween they had dressed as Sonny and Cher. Nico opening a present. Nico holding a bowl of chocolate ice cream. Nico up close, teeth shining. The last time Yale saw Nico, he’d been unconscious, with foam—some kind of awful white foam—oozing suddenly from his mouth and nostrils.

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  What about partners? Partnering with someone in the midst of healing from sexual trauma is not easy.Your support and love really can help your partner heal. Just the fact of being loved, over time, with all of her triggers and all of her history, can be healing. Certainly, your steadfast presence can help your partner to learn how to trust. Most importantly, by taking care of yourself—including your sexual fullness—you can stand as a reminder to your partner that sexual wholeness is possible. On a bad day, that will go a long way toward encouraging your partner to stay present for herself. Here are some suggestions for you: • Be authentic.That doesn’t mean being selfish. It means that you remember who you are. What are your concerns? What are your aspirations? • Negotiate sexual frequency, sexual activities, affection, and nonsexual touch. Be proactive. • While you may negotiate a time out from sex—for either of you—remember that your sexual heat is good. It’s good to be sexual. It’s good to want sex, to get horny, to get hot, to feel turned on. • Masturbate. Keep that intimate connection with yourself vital. • Don’t take it personally when your partner gets triggered. You didn’t cause the trauma, and you didn’t do anything “wrong.” For survivors of sexual trauma, it is inevitable that triggers will arise during sex. • Don’t shrink your shared sex life in order to avoid triggers. Keep gently expanding the comfort zone—for both of you. • Develop a trigger plan. The Survivor’s Guide to Sex suggests survivors create a detailed, step-by-step plan for handling triggers during sex. You can create a similar plan for yourself. How do you want to handle triggers that come up for your partner? By listing your options ahead of time, you’ll have more choice in responding to triggers that arise during sex.You can talk about it with your partner and come up with a joint strategy for maintaining your shared erotic life while respecting the need for safety—for both of you.8 • Don’t be a martyr or a savior. You can’t “save” your partner from the pain of healing by sacrificing your own well-being. • Get your own support, including touch. Along with friends, therapists, and discussion groups, support can include massages, bodywork, and hugs from friends. Two helpful resources for both survivors and partners: The Survivor’s Guide to Sex: How to Have an Empowered Sex Life After Childhood Sexual Abuse, by Staci Haines, and her DVD, Healing Sex: The Complete Guide to Sexual Wholeness. Bathe your senses. Aromatherapy candles, sensuous fabrics, dreamy lighting, fresh flowers, music, art…. Engage all your senses to feed your libido. Share your fantasies and invite your partner to share hers. For some women, hearing a sexy story can be just enough stimulation to get the motors humming. On the other hand, some women prefer to keep their fantasies private—a personal source of sexual potency whose power, one woman explained, she doesn’t want to dilute in the telling.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  [image file=image_rsrc2U3.jpg] When I was growing up, my mom spent a lot of time trying to teach me about women. She was always giving me lessons, little talks, pieces of advice. It was never a full-blown, sit-down lecture about relationships. It was more like tidbits along the way. And I never understood why, because I was a kid. The only women in my life were my mom and my grandmother and my aunt and my cousin. I had no love interest whatsoever, yet my mom insisted. She would go off on a whole range of things. “Trevor, remember a man is not determined by how much he earns. You can still be the man of the house and earn less than your woman. Being a man is not what you have, it’s who you are. Being more of a man doesn’t mean your woman has to be less than you.” “Trevor, make sure your woman is the woman in your life. Don’t be one of these men who makes his wife compete with his mother. A man with a wife cannot be beholden to his mother.” The smallest thing could prompt her. I’d walk through the house on the way to my room and say, “Hey, Mom” without glancing up. She’d say, “No, Trevor! You look at me. You acknowledge me. Show me that I exist to you, because the way you treat me is the way you will treat your woman. Women like to be noticed. Come and acknowledge me and let me know that you see me. Don’t just see me when you need something.” These little lessons were always about grown-up relationships, funnily enough. She was so preoccupied with teaching me how to be a man that she never taught me how to be a boy. How to talk to a girl or pass a girl a note in class—there was none of that. She only told me about adult things. She would even lecture me about sex. As I was a kid, that would get very awkward. “Trevor, don’t forget: You’re having sex with a woman in her mind before you’re having sex with her in her vagina.” “Trevor, foreplay begins during the day. It doesn’t begin in the bedroom.” I’d be like, “What? What is foreplay? What does that even mean?”