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 Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I have a good memory. I can remember conversations with friends almost word for word, even years after they occur. I remember how platinum blond the hair of my fourth grade teacher was or how I got in trouble for reading in class in the third grade because I was bored. I remember my aunt and uncle’s wedding in Port-au-Prince and how my knee swelled like an orange after I was bitten by a mosquito. I remember good things. I remember bad things. When I have to, though, I can strip my memory bare, and I have done this, at times, when erasure was necessary. I have photo albums taken from my parents’ house, albums swollen with fading pictures of my two brothers and me when we were very young. This was before the digital age, and still, it seems like almost every moment of my life was photographed, and then each picture was developed and meticulously archived. Each album has a big number on it with a circle around that number. In many of the albums there are brief notes with names, ages, places. It’s as if my mother knew these memories needed to be preserved for a reason. She raised my brothers and me with iron will and her own kind of grace. The fierceness of her love for and devotion to us is overwhelming, and this fierceness only grows stronger the older we get. When I was a child, my mother kept these albums in a neat, sequential row, and when one album was filled, she went and bought another album and filled it too. My mother has tried to fill in some of the blanks from my childhood even if she doesn’t realize she’s doing it. She remembers everything, or that’s how it seems, or that’s how it was until I went away to boarding school, at thirteen, and then there was no one there to hold on to my memories for me. My mom still takes pictures of everything and has more than twenty thousand pictures on her Flickr stream, pictures of her life and our lives and the people and places in our lives. At my doctoral defense, there she was, staring at me so proudly, every few minutes picking up her camera to snap a new picture, to capture every possible second of my moment. At a reading for my novel in New York City, there she was again with her camera, taking pictures, documenting another memorable moment. People often notice that I take pictures of every little thing. I say I do it so I won’t forget, so I cannot forget, all the amazing things I see and experience. I don’t explain that memories matter more to me now that my life looks different. But it’s more than that. The ways in which I am my mother’s daughter are infinite.

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

  One woman decided to give herself a “no decline” rule. She reasoned that with so many practical things coming in the way of sex, she would say “yes” to every invitation. “This comes out of my commitment to my partner,” she said. Her partner, she said, knows her well enough to approach her in a way (and at a time) that would work for her. And she knows herself well enough to know that she can “get over the hump of not interested, distracted” to come back to her body and notice the sensations of sexual stirring. (Her partner, a survivor of childhood sexual assault, does not share that practice—in childhood, her entire body was a “no decline” zone.) Make sure you do not sacrifice touch. Maintain your physical connection. Take a massage workshop together. Engaging in nonsexual touch can keep you in a physical connection while taking the pressure off. And speaking of pressure: negotiate—don’t avoid, play the victim, nag, demand, or blame. My girlfriend and I have had numerous talks about what to do about my low sex drive and her through-the-roof sex drive, and we came up with some things that we both were willing to change in order to help the other out. For example, she won’t try to have sex with me every time I kiss her goodnight, and I will try to initiate sex. Take responsibility for your own libido. What turns you on? Buy an erotic novel, rent a DVD. Understand that there are times when you have to create sexual energy in yourself. Take responsibility for your health as well. If you experience a sudden drop in libido, check in with your physician or other healer to make sure there isn’t an organic reason for this. You can also experiment with herbal libido support, like yohimbine, or medical solutions like testosterone patches. (See “Herbal Supplements” in chapter 2, Anatomy and Sexual Response.) Watch out—don’t medicalize the normal fluctuations of desire over a lifetime. The pharmaceutical industry will be only too happy to label your changing libido a sexual dysfunction. Real-life sexual relationships have ebbs and flows. Sex is not consistent: three times per week for the duration of your relationship. If it were, your sex life might not be nearly as interesting and varied. Observe the flow of your internal erotic life—just don’t rely on it to maintain your sexual partnership.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  The cover of my baby album is white with specks of glitter throughout. “It’s a girl!” is emblazoned across the cover. On the first page of this album are my parents’ names, my date of birth, my height and weight, hair and eye color. There are two black imprints of my baby feet with the words “Girl Gay” written above them. I was born at 7:48 in the morning, which is why, I am certain, I am not a morning person. There are blank lines for “exciting memories in baby’s life,” and all of those lines have been filled with my first tiny accomplishments. Apparently I read the alphabet at two and a half years old and could tell time at three. My mother proudly wrote, “Reads almost everything at five years old.” Those are her exact words, written in her neat penmanship, though family lore has me reading the newspaper with my dad about a year and a half before that. For the first five years of my life, my mother recorded my height and weight. I had a big head that was triangular, something that can happen with the firstborn child. My mother says she spent hours smoothing my newborn head into a rounder shape. There was a record of my birth in the Omaha World-Herald, printed on October 28, 1974, thirteen days after my birthday, and the clipped section of the newspaper is stored in this album alongside my original birth certificate and the little card they put on my bassinet in the hospital. My mother was twenty-five and my father was twenty-seven, so young, but, given the era, not as young as many people were when they started families. My name is spelled correctly on my birth certificate, with one n, and the birth certificate is pink. A nuanced cultural understanding of gender did not exist then—girls were pink and boys were blue and that was that. In the very first picture of my mother and me together, she is holding me and her jet-black hair is cascading down her back in a thick ponytail. She looks impossibly young and beautiful. I am three days old. This is actually not the first picture of us together. There is a picture of my mom, hugely pregnant with me, wearing a sassy blue minidress and a pair of chunky heels. Her hair is wild and hanging loose down her back. She is leaning against a car, giving a look to the photographer, my father, the kind of intimate look that makes me want to turn away to afford them some privacy. She put this picture in the album even though she is one of the most private people I know. She wanted me to see this gorgeous image, to know she and my father have always loved each other. These oldest pictures have been in the album so long that they are stuck to the pages. To try and remove the pictures would ruin them.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  As part of their process, Anwen and Sameer also met once together, with Cirioni carefully facilitating. Even though they had spoken before she filed her complaint, seeing Sameer in an official setting made Anwen anxious. Sameer was nervous, too, unsure of how to behave. Anwen wanted answers: Why did you do it? Didn’t you see I was panicked? How do I know you’ll never do this again? Sameer talked about the reading and thinking he had done, the conversations he’d had, the classes he’d taken: “If all this work and awareness doesn’t stick,” he told her, “then there’s no help for me.” Sometimes in our conversations, Sameer would refer to his past self as “younger Sameer” or “freshman Sameer.” I understood that. He was such a different guy now—so reflective, so empathic, so conscious of others’ feelings and comfort. His arc seemed almost too good to be true; I was tempted to write him off as a unicorn. On the other hand, there was nothing about “young Sameer” that hinted such transformation was possible. He had been a regular guy, someone who’d absorbed regular guy ideas, who’d behaved like so many regular guys do. He was not exceptional; if he could change so profoundly, maybe others could as well. “When you realize that you’ve done something terrible, you’re terrified of being judged and ostracized by your friends—to be fair, rightly so. That’s why I’m such a big proponent of restorative justice: I want to believe that people, men especially, have the capability of being kind, empathetic, overall good humans who, if we’re told that we’re doing something wrong, have the ability to step up.” Anwen and Sameer had graduated college by the time we spoke. He was back in California, working as a bartender; she was living in a woodstove-heated cottage in the Pacific Northwest. They still checked in with each other every month or so and expect they’ll always be in touch; although it isn’t the goal or expectation of restorative justice, they’ve come to share an unanticipated intimacy. “It’s pretty cool,” Anwen told me, “and it’s taken years to get there. But I know the worst thing he’s done, and he knows the thing that’s hurt me basically the most in my life. So I’m pretty comfortable talking with him about other things that have been hard. Because I know that he’s taken these steps to become a really understanding, caring, growing individual.”

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  340 The History of Christianity II õ But there, he connected with another Christian named Feng. While Zhang took care of the pigs and Feng worked in the prison apple orchard, they were able to get far enough from the guards to occasionally talk about the gospel with other prisoners or peasants who walked by. õ Zhang and Feng were not part of the Three-Self Movement, but were members of underground house churches: illegal, off-the-books congregations that often met inside someone’s home. When the government banned all official expression of religion, it drove religion underground, and these churches actually grew during the Cultural Revolution. õ Those who found their way to house churches found communities that were much more open to God’s intervention in the world than the Three-Self Movement was: lots of prayers for healings, prophetic dreams, and other miracles. õ These churches have become even more charismatic, or Pentecostal, over time. They also are full of women. As of the early 2000s, about 80 percent of China’s house church members were women. CONCLUSION õ Christianity is spreading in China. It’s hard to get a fix on numbers, since the government has an interest in leaving lots of those underground house churches uncounted and understating the strength of the movement. One 2010 book gave the figures as more than 50 million Protestants and about 17 million Catholics; together, that’s about five percent of the population. õ That may not sound like a lot, but the total number of Christians in China rivals the number of people who are members of the communist party, and may be even greater. Christians are disproportionately represented in China’s leadership class. 341Lecture 34—Chinese Christianity: Missionaries to Mao õ Over the course of about 1,500 years, Westerners tried repeatedly to make Christianity a mass movement in China. They failed until the 20th century, when the spark caught. It seems that Matteo Ricci’s strategy of focusing only on the ruling elite was the wrong idea. The elites were influential, but Christianity became successful in China when it took root outside the centers of power and wealth and became a folk religion—while also finding its way into elite circles. õ Today, Christianity is a genuine indigenous faith in China, growing especially through independent churches that no foreign body (or the government) can control. An interesting example of Christianity’s strength in China is this: In 2006, after the government tore down an illegal church in rural Xiaoshan, members rebuilt it as a stadium-like building in the middle of town that can seat more than 5,000 people. SUGGESTED READING Aikman, Jesus in Beijing. Lian, Redeemed By Fire. Spence, God’s Chinese Son. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER ä What made Christian mission work in China so hard? ä Why did Chinese leaders go to such trouble to stop the spread of Christianity? ä Why did Christianity finally take off in China in the late 20th century after centuries of anemic growth?

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  I have saved many mementos for Iggy, but I admit to tossing away an envelope with about twenty-five ultrasound photos of his in-utero penis and testicles, which a chirpy, blond pony-tailed technician printed out for me every time I had an ultrasound. Boy, he’s sure proud of his stuff, she would say, before jabbing Print. Or, He really likes to show it off! Just let him wheel around in his sac for Christ’s sake, I thought, grimly folding the genital triptychs into my wallet, week after week. Let him stay oblivious—for the first and last time, perhaps—to the task of performing a self for others, to the fact that we develop, even in utero, in response to a flow of projections and reflections ricocheting off us. Eventually, we call that snowball a self (Argo). I guess the cheery way of looking at this snowball would be to say, subjectivity is keenly relational, and it is strange. We are for another, or by virtue of another. In my final weeks, I walked every day in the Arroyo Seco, listing aloud all the people who were waiting on earth to love Iggy, hoping that the promise of their love would eventually be enough to lure him out. As my due date neared, I confided in Jessica, the woman who would be assisting our birth, that I was worried I wouldn’t be able to make milk, as I had heard of women who couldn’t. She smiled and said, You’ve made it already. Seeing me unconvinced, she said, Want me to show you? I nodded, shyly lifting a breast out of my bra. In one stunning gesture, she took my breast into her hand-beak and clamped down hard. A bloom of custard-colored drops rose in a ring, indifferent to my doubts. According to Kaja Silverman, the turn to a paternal God comes on the heels of the child’s recognition that the mother cannot protect against all harm, that her milk—be it literal or figurative—doesn’t solve all problems. As the human mother proves herself a separate, finite entity, she disappoints, and gravely. In its rage at maternal finitude, the child turns to an all-powerful patriarch—God—who, by definition, cannot let anyone down. “The extraordinarily difficult task imposed upon the child’s primary caretaker not only by the culture but also by Being itself is to induct it into relationality by saying over and over again, in a multitude of ways, what death will otherwise have to teach it: ‘This is where you end and others begin.’ Unfortunately, this lesson seldom ‘takes,’ and the mother usually delivers it at enormous cost to herself. Most children respond to the partial satisfaction of their demands with extreme rage, rage that is predicated on the belief that the mother is withholding something that is within her power to provide.”

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  Do you know who that could have been, and why they’re calling here?” “I think it’s my real father, Paul Accerbi.” I wish I could rewind my words . . . but already Addie’s taken them in, trying to calculate the facts. “Well then, how did he get our number, or know Pete’s name?” “I don’t know,” I lie. “Well, actually . . . I may know how.” I tell Addie about the letter, how I’d been watching my father’s name in the phone book for years, praying that he’ll be there for me when I turn eighteen. But Addie’s already lost in tears. “Why did you contact him?” she says. “Aren’t you happy here with us? Don’t we do enough for you? Do you want to leave us?” I stand motionless, watching her pour out emotions that I’ve never seen before—toward me or anyone she knows. “You mean you want me to stay here?” I ask her. And suddenly it’s all too much to bear. I begin shaking. “I didn’t know that I could hurt you,” I tell Addie. “But I need to know who my real father is. I have been curious for years, since I was eleven and he walked into the back of the deli I was working in. He examined me so closely, Addie, and now he actually took the time to find out my phone number and Pete’s name. I know it’s him calling. I just wanted to let him know that I’m okay. That I’m a good kid.” The next day I struggle to concentrate in school and skip my last two classes to come home early so I can sit by the phone and wait. But every time the phone rings, it’s never Paul, and I rush the person off the other end to keep the line open. When Addie arrives home, she says she spoke to social services. “They said that you’re not allowed to meet him alone, and you may not even speak to him on the phone if Pete or I, or Ms. Harvey, are not around. This is a strange man—it’s possible he isn’t your father at all, it could be someone who likes seeing you at Rickel’s or who remembers you from having dated your mother. So they want to avoid you putting yourself in a bad situation with this person without us here to protect you.” As she finishes expressing her concern for me, the ring of the phone busts through the tension. She looks at me. “Regina, let me answer that.” The exchange is curt. “Yes, I am Addie Peterman, the foster mother of Regina Marie. And you are . . . ? And you are . . . ? Mr. Accerbi—” My heart leaps. “—although you refuse to identify yourself, we know who you are.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  Pumping milk is, for many women, a sharply private activity. It can also be physically and emotionally challenging, as it reminds the nursing mother of her animal status: just another mammal, milk being siphoned from its glands. Beyond photographs in breast pump manuals (and lactation porn), however, images of milk expression are really nowhere to be found. Phrases such as colostrum, letdown, and hindmilk arrive in one’s life like hieroglyphs from the land of the lost. So the presence of Steiner’s camera here—and the steadfast stare of her subject—feels jarring and exciting. This is especially so when you consider how photographers such as Goldin (or Ryan McGinley, or Richard Billingham, or Larry Clark, or Peter Hujar, or Zoe Strauss) often make us feel as though we have glimpsed something radically intimate by evoking danger, suffering, illness, nihilism, or abjection. In Steiner’s intimate portrait of Childs, the proposed transmission of fluids is about nourishment. I almost can’t imagine. And yet—while pumping milk may be about nourishment, it isn’t really about communion. A human mother expresses milk because sometimes she can’t be there to nurse her baby, either by choice or by necessity. Pumping is thus an admission of distance, of maternal finitude. But it is a separation, a finitude, suffused with best intentions. Milk or no milk, this is often the best we’ve got to give. Once I suggested that I had written half a book drunk, the other half sober. Here I estimate that about nine-tenths of the words in this book were written “free,” the other one-tenth, hooked up to a hospital-grade breast pump: words piled into one machine, milk siphoned out by another. The phrase “toxic maternal” refers to a mother whose milk delivers poison along with nourishment. If you turn away from the poison, you also turn away from the nourishment. Given that human breast milk now contains literal poisons, from paint thinners to dry-cleaning fluid to toilet deodorizers to rocket fuel to DDT to flame retardants, there is literally no escape. Toxicity is now a question of degree, of acceptable parts per unit. Infants don’t get to choose—they take what they can get, in their scramble to stay alive.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  Consent is imperative, but it is a baseline. As health educator Shafia Zaloom says, consent is what makes sex legal, but it doesn’t make sex ethical, and it doesn’t make sex good. Let’s say a teenager consensually hooks up with his girlfriend’s best friend. Criminal? No. Principled? Likely not. Zaloom, a high school teacher whose own book contains multiple real-life scenarios that adults can work through with teens, tells her students that ethical sex means taking into account the well-being of not only the participants, but others who might be affected by their actions. “Good” sex is not only legal and ethical, but pleasurable and mutually satisfying. For that to be the case, boys must have an accurate conception of female bodies and sexual response. If you can say the word “clitoris” out loud to your son, by all means go for it. If you’d rather poke yourself in the eye with a fork—and many of us would—make sure to provide ample, accurate educational resources (books, websites) on informed, progressive sexuality (for ideas, check out my website: https://www.peggyorenstein.com/positive-sexuality). Along with sexual information, young people (of all genders) say they want more insight from their parents about emotional intimacy: how to begin a relationship, establish mature love, how to avoid being hurt (or perhaps how to accept the potential for growth in pain), how to manage conflict, and how to deal with breakups. You needn’t have had unmitigated success in your own romantic life to drop some wisdom on all of that. “We fuss a lot about ‘the sex talk,’” says Richard Weissbourd, the director of Making Caring Common. “We do not fuss about a far more important talk, which is: How do we talk to our children about the courage and subtlety and discipline and tenderness and tough-mindedness that it really takes to love someone else?” In reality, according to Andrew Smiler, a psychologist specializing in adolescent male behavior, most guys prefer physical intimacy with someone they know, trust, and with whom they feel comfortable. In contrast to the “always down for it” image, Smiler found in his surveys of heterosexual high school students that boys’ greatest motivator for pursuing sex was not physical, but emotional: expressing love or a desire to form a closer relationship with a girl. “Guys say they appreciate having a dating partner,” he told me. “That special person who they know will have their backs no matter what, someone they can talk to about anything, especially the things they feel are off-limits with their male friends. They don’t get that with a one-night stand or random hookups. “As adults—whether parents or teachers or professionals—we might ask boys what kind of sexual experience they want,” he continued. “Not just whether they are looking to have an orgasm, but about the context and quality of that orgasm. If we’re willing to be more vulgar and pointed, we might even ask, Do you want a partner who’s more than just someone to masturbate into?”

• From St. Augustine's Confessions (2004)

  A. Because it is an attempt to describe the infinite, it is a particularly important document in the history of the Christian mystical tradition. B. It is one of the most beautiful passages in the Confessions. 1. The entire description consists of one long sentence. 2. In the attempt to go beyond language, the images are, paradoxically, physical ones. 3. The passage describes the process of going beyond itself by not thinking of itself. 4. It is an important discussion of the nature of time and timelessness and, therefore, prepares us for the more extended discussion of memory and time in Books X and XI. IV. After this meditation, Monica tells her son that she is ready for death. A. She had previously wanted to be buried alongside her husband. B. Now she realizes that this is unimportant. V. Augustine describes his reaction to her death. A. He doesn’t cry, but he describes his own pain at her death by explaining how close he has become to her. B. Augustine wishes us to compare his response to her death to his response to the death of his friend, earlier in the Confessions. Suggested Readings: Cooper, chapter 9. TeSelle, pp. 59–89. Questions to Consider: 1. What are some of the most surprising aspects of the life of Augustine’s mother, as described in Book IX? 2. How do the stories of Augustine’s father and mother remind us of the gap between domestic life in Augustine’s time and in our own? 3. How does Augustine use the death of his mother to illustrate his own spiritual life at this point in his life? ©2004 The Teaching Company. 57

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

  As you get aroused, your nipples become erect and your areolas swell and may darken. Your breasts may seem to get larger. Like your clitoris, an aroused nipple may take a lot of stimulation. You may enjoy more intense nipple play as you approach orgasm. In fact, some women must be extremely aroused to enjoy any nipple play at all. My nipples are extremely sensitive. I can’t even wear clothing with seams there or bump against the edge of a table without feeling uncomfortable. So I have to be sexually stimulated before someone can touch them—but then I want it all, especially sucking—but not hard. How women like their breasts and nipples touched is as individual as how they like their clits touched. It’s not just a matter of whether you prefer light or hard touches, though that’s important. You may be very particular about how you like your breasts touched. You may like the whole breast cupped and the underside caressed and held, or perhaps don’t like the undersides touched at all. Experienced breast-play aficionados can get quite specific in their instructions for nipple stimulation. I prefer delicate touches or licking around the nipple. Almost—but not quite—a tickling feeling. That’s great! Love it!! Mmmmmm… SensitivitySometimes I’m very sensitive and just a gentle stroke will make me shiver or jump. Breast sensitivity changes from day to day, over the course of your menstrual cycle, and over a lifetime. During your period, your breasts swell to their fullest and roundest—and may look quite succulent. Your breasts may be more sensitive in the days leading up to your period or during your period. Both PMS and pregnancy can make you feel as if you have “atomic tits.” New piercings, of course, will make your nipples especially tender. Fibroids can also make breast play painful. Any surgical procedure, such as a breast reduction or breast implants, can result in scar tissue that affects sensitivity. Of course, breast cancer will affect women very individually. Some women lose sensation after treatment, while others experience pain. Two years after my lumpectomy, other people can hardly see the scar even when I point it out. I lost sensitivity in the nipple for a while but it’s back almost full-strength now. I have ongoing irregular nerve pain inside the breast tissue around where the tumor was. Pressure directly on that area of the breast hurts like hell, so positions like lying on top take care. Sometimes if I mention this to a lover she or he seems scared and then avoids touching that breast. I understand but would prefer a more careful touch and inclusion of that breast in our sex play. I loved my breasts before, and I treasure them even more now. Teach Your PartnerI never used to enjoy breast stimulation until I met my current partner. Perhaps no one had a soft or gentle enough touch for me…or maybe I just never allowed myself to feel what I’ve felt with her.

• From Christian Saints

  13. Martín de Porres: Healer of Peru Martín’s Work at El Rosario After several years of medical apprenticeship, Martín entered the Dominican convent of Our Lady of the Rosary, known as El Rosario, as a lay servant and took vows there 9 years later. El Rosario was strictly segregated by rank and by ethnicity. Only those with “pure blood” (that is, European blood) were allowed to study to be ordained as priests and friars, and they occupied the main cloister. The convent could not have operated without the labor of many lay servants and enslaved men. Many worked on El Rosario’s hacienda, a farm outside the city overseen by lay brothers. The extent to which the Catholic Church not only accepted but participated in and enabled the slave trade and abuse of enslaved peoples is shocking to modern eyes, but nonetheless true. The Dominican order, like the rest of the church, purchased enslaved people to work on their lands and used terrible violence against them. Their preachers encouraged and spread racist caricatures and ideas that sought to justify the treatment of Africans and Afro-Peruvians as people of lesser intelligence and worth. As a lay servant, Martín performed only basic tasks: sweeping floors, cleaning bedpans, and counting linens. In recognition of his lifelong performance of these humble duties, he is often depicted with a broom. From the beginning, Martín found ways to make his warmth and kindness felt by those around him. Young novices, who later rose to eminent positions, recalled his kindness to heartsick boys. El Rosario was more than a monastery; it housed a school and an orphanage, provided sanctuary for the odd fugitive, and hosted local religious and social organizations called confraternities. It also operated what we today would call a food bank, soup kitchen, and free clinic. Patients told stories of how, when they were feeling down, Martín would produce an orange from his sleeves with a flourish to make them smile. 99

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

  I turn back to see him pull out his wallet and hand her a $5 bill, then pluck a rose from her pile to present to me. I am moved that he bought a flower from her, as it’s rare I stop for anyone on the street. “She’s just a kid, out here at this hour,” he says. “I always think of my daughters.” “That was nice of you,” I say. “I’m always worried I’m getting hustled.” We are standing under the canopy outside my building now. “Do you want to come up for a little while?” I ask, thinking, if you want to see confidence, I’ll show you confidence. “OK, sure, just for a little while. I have to catch an early train tomorrow to help my friend on his farm,” he says. I lead the way inside, discreetly tucking the red rose alongside me so the doorman doesn’t see it. I know how these doormen gossip and I can only imagine what might be said about my having arrived home late at night in high heels with a red rose and a man who is not my husband. Inside my apartment, I lay the rose on the counter and offer him a glass of wine, though I’m strictly drinking water now, already feeling tipsy. We sit back on the deep couch in the den and soon he is moving closer to me and leaning over to kiss me. His mouth is warm and tastes smoky from the whiskey he had been drinking. I lie back and he presses against me. “I have a huge, lovely bed,” I say. “Shall we move over to it?” He follows me down the hall to my room. He lies back against the mountain of pillows on the made-up bed and I straddle him, opening the front fold of my dress to reveal a lace thong. He lifts my hips so that I’m kneeling and then scoots down the bed so that his head is under me, pulls my thong to the side and flicks his tongue against my clit. It’s been weeks since I’ve been touched and I sigh with the relief of being back in the game. After a few minutes of this, I ask if he has a condom and he replies that he does, yes, but that he would rather do this instead. “Oh,” I say. “Everything OK?” “Yes, I just … it’s just our first date,” he says haltingly. “OK,” I say. “I mean, that’s never stopped me before but carry on.” After I come, he pulls his head back up against the pillows and smiles at me. I close the front of my dress and pull myself on top of him. I feel his stockinged feet with my bare feet, my knees against his knees, my pelvic bones pressed into his.

• From Action (2014)

  This can speak to a diffuse range of considerations: Maybe the third has known one of the players in question since goon-times, or perhaps shares a CSA with another. Most commonly, though, this is going to boil down to good old-fashioned gender essentialism. When I’m closer with the male figure of an equation, I am persuaded that a situation is cool, on the level, and a potentially entertaining passage of a Thursday evening when the female arm of a twosome reaches out to me. Since we’re going to be, for a time, body doubles playing an at least somewhat similar role, no matter how disparate our interpretations of it, I want to know that we’re countrywomen—that we’re each heading into the threesome knowing what the other’s deal is, and how to make her feel good and psychically protected. If you are all three of diverse, or identical, genders, go ahead and dispatch the person who speaks to them most effortlessly about how wild the ninth grade was, or this week’s CSA selection of root vegetables, or whatever point of connection you’ve decided is basis enough for a bout of group sex. (Both topics have worked fine for me in the past.) • Do it with ANOTHER couple. Having sex with another allied force means that everyone is approaching the four-way with just as much to lose!! Hee, I kid—look at it the other way, and you are viewing it correctly. Empathy will come more easily to a couple in your same romantic situation, and close friends might be more considerate of one another’s feelings and careful not to homewreck your shit. • Three strangers or loose acquaintances are least messy after the fact. I love a threesome comprising three randeaux. There are no lingering love-politics about which to have Serious Check-Ins (aka the WORST part of relationships, even though I know it’s, yes, necessary and healthy—hard conversations are the vegetables of romance). Each and all parties are equal, and equally ready to party. • In any case: GET KINDA DRUNK. But not too drunk, doye. • A note on asking a previously platonic friend to take part in a threesome: You’re always going to face some risk of offending someone when you make a pass at them. A unilateral truth: That risk winnows when you hint at your interest and gauge if the other person reciprocates it with genuine curiosity and levelheadedness (rather than going, “Oh, he smiled back—SHAGADELIC”). If they’re freaked out? They have the right to be surprised, but they also have to respect your sexual realité as much as you do theirs, so end the conversation if they decide that a cool way to respond is by insulting or berating you. I have never had that happen, and I hope you don’t either!

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  I asked my favorite bodywork practitioner, Licia Sky, about her practice with traumatized individuals. Here is some of what she told me: “I never begin a bodywork session without establishing a personal connection. I’m not taking a history; I’m not finding out how traumatized a person is or what happened to them. I check in where they are in their body right now. I ask them if there is anything they want me to pay attention to. All the while, I’m assessing their posture; whether they look me in the eye; how tense or relaxed they seem; are they connecting with me or not. “The first decision I make is if they will feel safer face up or face down. If I don’t know them, I usually start face up. I am very careful about draping; very careful to let them feel safe with whatever clothing they want to leave on. These are important boundaries to set up right at the beginning. “Then, with my first touch, I make firm, safe contact. Nothing forced or sharp. Nothing too fast. The touch is slow, easy for the client to follow, gently rhythmic. It can be as strong as a handshake. The first place I might touch is their hand and forearm, because that’s the safest place to touch anybody, the place where they can touch you back. “You have to meet their point of resistance—the place that has the most tension—and meet it with an equal amount of energy. That releases the frozen tension. You can’t hesitate; hesitation communicates a lack of trust in yourself. Slow movement, careful attuning to the client is different from hesitation. You have to meet them with tremendous confidence and empathy, let the pressure of your touch meet the tension they are holding in their bodies.” What does bodywork do for people? Licia’s reply: “Just like you can thirst for water, you can thirst for touch. It is a comfort to be met confidently, deeply, firmly, gently, responsively. Mindful touch and movement grounds people and allows them to discover tensions that they may have held for so long that they are no longer even aware of them. When you are touched, you wake up to the part of your body that is being touched. “The body is physically restricted when emotions are bound up inside. People’s shoulders tighten; their facial muscles tense. They spend enormous energy on holding back their tears—or any sound or movement that might betray their inner state. When the physical tension is released, the feelings can be released. Movement helps breathing to become deeper, and as the tensions are released, expressive sounds can be discharged. The body becomes freer—breathing freer, being in flow. Touch makes it possible to live in a body that can move in response to being moved.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Toward the end of the meal each evening the veilleur de nuit drops in for his bit of cheer. This is the only human being in the whole institution with whom I feel a kinship. He is a nobody. He carries a lantern and a bunch of keys. He makes the rounds through the night, stiff as an automaton. About the time the stale cheese is being passed around, in he pops for his glass of wine. He stands there, with paw outstretched, his hair stiff and wiry, like a mastiff’s, his cheeks ruddy, his mustache gleaming with snow. He mumbles a word or two and Quasimodo brings him the bottle. Then, with feet solidly planted, he throws back his head and down it goes, slowly in one long draught. To me it’s like he’s pouring rubies down his gullet. Something about this gesture which seizes me by the hair. It’s almost as if he were drinking down the dregs of human sympathy, as if all the love and compassion in the world could be tossed off like that, in one gulp—as if that were all that could be squeezed together day after day. A little less than a rabbit they have made him. In the scheme of things he’s not worth the brine to pickle a herring. He’s just a piece of live manure. And he knows it. When he looks around after his drink and smiles at us, the world seems to be falling to pieces. It’s a smile thrown across an abyss. The whole stinking civilized world lies like a quagmire at the bottom of the pit, and over it, like a mirage, hovers this wavering smile. It was the same smile which greeted me at night when I returned from my rambles. I remember one such night when, standing at the door waiting for the old fellow to finish his rounds, I had such a sense of well-being that I could have waited thus forever. I had to wait perhaps half an hour before he opened the door. I looked about me calmly and leisurely, drank everything in, the dead tree in front of the school with its twisted rope branches, the houses across the street which had changed color during the night, which curved now more noticeably, the sound of a train rolling through the Siberian wastes, the railings painted by Utrillo, the sky, the deep wagon ruts. Suddenly, out of nowhere, two lovers appeared; every few yards they stopped and embraced, and when I could no longer follow them with my eyes I followed the sound of their steps, heard the abrupt stop, and then the slow, meandering gait. I could feel the sag and slump of their bodies when they leaned against a rail, heard their shoes creak as the muscles tightened for the embrace. Through the town they wandered, through the crooked streets, toward the glassy canal where the water lay black as coal. There was something phenomenal about it.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  But many primitives are unaware of the father’s role in the procreation of children, who are thought to be the reincarnation of ancestral larvae floating around certain trees, certain rocks, in certain sacred places, and descending into the woman’s body; in some cases, they believe she must not be a virgin if this infiltration is to take place; but other peoples believe that it also takes place through the nostrils or mouth; at any rate, defloration is secondary here, and for mystical reasons the prerogative is rarely the husband’s. The mother is clearly necessary for the birth of the child; she is the one who keeps and nourishes the germ within her, and so the life of the clan is propagated in the visible world through her. This is how she finds herself playing the principal role. Very often, children belong to their mother’s clan, bear her name, and share her rights, particularly the use of the land belonging to the clan. So communal property is transmitted through women: through them the fields and their harvests are reserved to members of the clan, and inversely it is through their mothers that members are destined to a given piece of land. The land can thus be considered as mystically belonging to women: their hold on the soil and its fruits is both religious and legal. The tie that binds them is stronger than one of ownership; maternal right is characterized by a true assimilation of woman to the land; in each, through its avatars, the permanence of life is achieved, life that is essentially generation. For nomads, procreation seems only an accident, and the riches of the earth are still unknown; but the farmer admires the mystery of fertilization that burgeons in the furrows and in the maternal womb. He knows that he was conceived like the cattle and the harvests, and he wants his clan to conceive other humans who will perpetuate it in perpetuating the fertility of the fields; nature as a whole seems like a mother to him; the earth is woman, and the woman is inhabited by the same obscure forces as the earth.1 This is part of the reason agricultural work is entrusted to woman: able to call up the ancestral larvae within her, she also has the power to make fruit and wheat spring from the sowed fields. In both cases it is a question of a magic conjuration, not of a creative act. At this stage, man no longer limits himself to gathering the products of the earth: but he does not yet understand his power; he hesitates between technical skill and magic; he feels passive, dependent on Nature that doles out existence and death by chance. To be sure, he recognizes more or less the function of the sexual act as well as the techniques for cultivating the soil: but children and crops still seem like supernatural gifts; and the mysterious emanations flowing from the feminine body bring forth into this world the riches latent in the mysterious sources of life. Such beliefs are still alive today among numerous Indian, Australian, and Polynesian tribes, and become all the more important as they match the practical interests of the collectivity.2 Motherhood relegates woman to a sedentary existence; it is natural for her to stay at home while men hunt, fish, and go to war. But primitive people rarely cultivate more than a modest garden contained within their own village limits, and its cultivation is a domestic task; Stone Age instruments require little effort; economics and mystical belief agree to leave agricultural work to women. Domestic work, as it is taking shape, is also their lot: they weave rugs and blankets; they shape pottery. And they are often in charge of barter; commerce is in their hands. The life of the clan is thus maintained and extended through them; children, herds, harvests, tools, and the whole prosperity of the group of which they are the soul depend on their work and their magic virtues. Such strength inspires in men a respect mingled with fear, reflected in their worship. It is in women that the whole of foreign Nature is concentrated.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  We have seen that it is possible to escape the temptations of sadism and masochism when both partners recognize each other as equals; as soon as there is a little modesty and some generosity between men and women, ideas of victory and defeat are abolished: the act of love becomes a free exchange. But, paradoxically, it is harder for woman than for man to recognize an individual of the opposite sex as her equal. Precisely because the male caste enjoys superiority, man can hold many individual women in affectionate esteem: a woman is easy to love; she has, first of all, the privilege of introducing her lover to a world different from his own and one that he is pleased to explore at her side; she fascinates, she amuses, at least for a little while; and then, because her situation is limited and subordinate, all her qualities seem like conquests while her errors are excusable. Stendhal admires Mme de Rênal and Mme de Chasteller in spite of their detestable prejudices; the man does not hold a woman responsible for not being very intelligent, clear-sighted, or courageous: she is a victim, he thinks—often rightly—of her situation; he dreams of what she could have been, of what she will perhaps be: she can be given credit, one can grant her a great deal because she is nothing definite in particular; this lack is what will cause the lover to grow tired of her quickly: but it is the source of her mystery, the charm that seduces him and inclines him to feel superficial tenderness for her. It is far less easy to show friendship for a man: for he is what he made himself be, without help; he must be loved in his presence and his reality, not in his promises and uncertain possibilities; he is responsible for his behavior, his ideas; he has no excuse. There is fraternity with him only if his acts, goals, and opinions are approved; Julien can love a legitimist; a Lamiel could not cherish a man whose ideas she detests. Even ready to compromise, the woman has trouble adopting a tolerant attitude. For the man does not offer her a green paradise of childhood, she meets him in this world that is common to both of them: he brings only himself. Closed in on himself, defined, decided, he does not inspire dreams; when he speaks, one must listen; he takes himself seriously: if he does not prove interesting, he becomes bothersome, his presence weighs heavily. Only very young men allow themselves to appear adorned by the marvelous; one can seek mystery and promise in them, find excuses for them, take them lightly: this is one of the reasons mature women find them so seductive. But they themselves prefer young women in most cases. The thirty-year-old woman has no choice but to turn to adult males. And she will undoubtedly meet some who deserve both her esteem and her friendship; but she will be lucky if they do not then display arrogance. The problem she has when looking for an affair or an adventure involving her heart as well as her body is meeting a man she can consider her equal, without his seeing himself as superior.

• From Naked Ambition

  - [Carlos] They photographed together behind her favorite photo shooting place, which was the abandoned mansion of the Firestones, which is actually where the Fontainebleau is now. [pleasant music] - So there was a night that Bunny and Bud and Sammy Davis Jr. came over to my grandparents' house. It goes beyond just a couple of couples hanging out and having fun. [pleasant music] They all felt comfortable just hanging around, you know, my grandmother's nude. It's just like nobody cares. - Bunny was straight in that world. She very much embraced the notion that being a sexual woman gave you an entree into this highly sophisticated society. [pleasant music] - Bunny really kind of skirted two worlds. In fact, you look at some of her books from the 50s and she'll have the nice girl next door. And the next page, it'll be a burlesque performer that was over at Plus Pigalle on the beach. [pleasant music] - You know, I grew up in a farming town in Michigan. I'm a natural dishwater blonde, not very glamorous, kind of very ordinary looking, and I wanted to be the opposite of what I was. I wanted to be like a Hollywood movie star. 18 years old, and went to a place in Anaheim, and walked into this little like blacked out windowed store and it was a fetish store, and it was just like filled with, you know, everything you could imagine. And obviously, a completely different world for me. [upbeat music] That's where I saw my first picture of Bettie Page. There wasn't really anybody that was trying to be the new Bettie Page, so that was kind of the thing that sparked my career. - That never ending appeal of Bettie Page is, how can someone be so sexy and so innocent at the same time? [pleasant music] ♪ I'm gonna take my time Bettie Page was a young woman in the 50s, who moved to New York with big aspirations of maybe being an actress or a model. And ended up being in camera clubs, which were these sort of private pervy clubs where men came to photograph for their photography classes. But, you know, it was women in their underwear in people's living rooms. Bettie was an underground hit. ♪ Take my chance to see you swim and dance ♪ ♪ Make a old man blush - The sorts of magazines that Bettie Page became famous with would be kind of covered in brown paper wrappers, sold behind the counter, and you theoretically had to be of a certain age to buy. I think some people are familiar with Bettie's pinup images, and then there's the bondage stuff from like the Claw Studios. But if you dig even deeper, it gets much racier than that.

• From The Breast Archives (2017)

  - I had this one really amazing and sweet boyfriend, and the first time we were intimate I was doing that funny, awkward dance, and I remember he took my wrists and he separated my arms and put them back on the bed like that, and he looked right in my eyes and he said, "Your breasts are beautiful." Just having someone be positive and read my body language, and I didn't have to communicate the trauma I had had for so many years, and be able to see into me and understand. - When you get something and it's physical and emotional and spiritual, mentally, then you've really got the whole Gestalt. And it's just the best. It's just, like, five minutes I've had an orgasm. I mean, sure, that can be a nice start to the day and release my back. (laughs) But that's not about my breasts then. That's not about the fullness that I feel when I've totally engaged my whole self. - We're multifaceted. We have ovaries. We have wombs. We have vaginas. We have vulvas. We have clitoris. We have right side, left side. We have breasts, we have nipples. And some women will be more inclined to one part than the other, and our differences make us strong. I want to honor that. (soft instrumental music) - The very things that bothered me the most about my breasts have been great for nursing. Oh, my nipples are too big. Well, look how easy it is for the baby to see that. It's so dark and so big. When I'm not nursing, that's a really negative thing, but when I am nursing it's like, oh, it's this great design. They stick out, they're easy to latch onto, they're easy to find, and the babies always love them so much. They pet them and love them, and that's the kinda touch I love. When you have a baby who is nursing on you and they're just petting you and looking at you and smiling, and their eyes are rolling because they're just getting this wonderful, yummy milk and they're seeing their mom, and it's just skin-to-skin connection, that is the sensation I love. - Initially nursing was like, ow! (laughing) I mean, that little one suck and the breast not being used to that. The thing that also is kinda surprising with nursing was, initially, being leaky. So having to, like if I went into town, bring a few changes of clothes because if the milk lets down, there goes the shirt. But ultimately I feel really happy that I was able to do that for my two daughters. Their immune systems are strong. I have a wonderful connection to them, and I feel like they got great nourishment from a physical bonding as well as the antibodies and all the good vitamins, minerals, that the breast milk has to offer.