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 Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  The sudden crash in the hall startled them both. “Damnation,” he cursed, setting her from his lap before rising to his feet and striding to the door. Throwing it open, he stuck his head out and found Katie down the hall with a broken pitcher at her feet. Noting the blood that pooled in her palm, he hurried to her side, pulling out his handkerchief as he went. “Poor thing,” he murmured, dabbing at the cut. “It must hurt terribly.” “’Tis nothing. Please . . .” It was the first time Hugh had heard her speak, and her soft, lyrical voice drew his gaze upward. He found her crying. Flustered by her tears, he sought to soothe her. “Charlotte will have you good as new in a moment.” “It’s not that,” she sobbed. “I broke the pitcher.” “That old thing?” he dismissed gruffly. “I shall purchase a dozen more for you when this storm has abated. Then you can break as many as you like.” Katie lifted her face and gave him a grateful, wavering smile. Hugh coughed in embarrassment and looked away, relieved when Charlotte knelt beside them and took the girl’s hand. Straightening, he backed up a step. Charlotte examined the wound. “We must go to the kitchen to tend this.” She offered him a silent apology with her eyes. “You can retire. I’ll manage.” “I’d like to help.” “Truly, there’s nothing you can do but watch. And it’s been a long day. I shall see you tomorrow.” Hugh hesitated a moment before nodding his acquiesce. Charlotte was obviously accustomed to handling her affairs alone, and the dismissal was obvious. He would not be seeing her again tonight. He didn’t understand why he wished to help her carry this burden, and any others she might have. He avoided responsibility whenever possible, and Charlotte was made of stern stuff, he knew. Yet there it was, the unmistakable desire to take care of her. After the two women disappeared around the corner, Hugh entered his suite and locked the door. No longer distracted by his attraction to Charlotte, his thoughts returned to where he was and the situation he was in. Somewhere on this floor, the mad duchess waited. He’d never been a nervous sort. In fact, he was known for his steely concentration, which had stood him in good stead through two duels and had given him a reputation as a man with whom to be reckoned. Because of his even temperament, Hugh found the whole mystery of the decrepit mansion and the legend of the duchess rather thrilling. His life had become a tedious cycle of business meetings, women whose names he couldn’t remember, and fair-weather friends. He was bored of it all, which was the main reason he’d decided at the last moment to visit Julienne.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  The window behind the headboard showed a glimmer of gray. In the other rooms your three brothers, your father, and your Aunt Nora were sleeping. Amanda was in New York. “Was I worse than Michael and the twins?” “Much worse.” She smiled as if she had just conferred a great distinction upon you. “Much, much worse.” The smile twisted into a grimace and she clutched the sheet in her fingers. You begged to give her some morphine. The spasm, passed and you saw her body relax. “Not yet,” she said. She told you how unbearable you were as an infant, always throwing up, biting, crying through the night. “You’ve never been much good at sleeping, have you? Some nights we had to take you out in the car and drive around to get you to sleep.” She seemed pleased. “You were something else.” She winced again and groaned. “Hold my hand,” she said. You gave her your hand and she gripped it harder than you would have imagined she could. “The pain,” she said. “Please let me give you that shot.” You couldn’t stand to see her suffer much longer, felt you were about to collapse. But she told you to wait. “Do you know what this is like?” she said. “This pain?” You shook your head. She didn’t answer for a while. You heard the first bird of morning. “It’s like when you were born. It sounds crazy, but that’s exactly what it’s like.” “It hurt that much?” “Terrible,” she said. “You just didn’t want to come out. I didn’t think I’d live through it.” She sucked breath through her teeth and gripped your hand fiercely. “So now you know why I love you so much.” You were not sure you understood, but her voice was so faint and dreamy that you didn’t want to interrupt. You held her hand and watched her eyelids flicker, hoping she was dreaming. Birds were calling on all sides. You didn’t think you had ever heard so many birds. In a little while she started to talk again. She described a morning in a two-room apartment over a garage in Manchester, New Hampshire. “I was standing in front of a mirror as if I’d never really seen my own face before.” You had to lean down close to hear. “I felt strange. I knew something had happened, but I didn’t know what.” She drifted off. Her eyes were half-open but you could see she was looking somewhere else. The bedroom window was filling with light. “Dad,” she said. “What are you doing here?” “Mom?” She was silent for a time and then, suddenly, her eyes were wide open. Her grip relaxed. “The pain is going away,” she said. You said that was good. The light seemed to have entered the room all at once. “Are you still holding my hand,” she asked. “Yes. I am.” “Good,” she said. “Don’t let go.” HOW IT’S GOINGThe apartment has become very small.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  Both times it had burned. You remember being proud of your mother then for never having submitted to the tyranny of the kitchen, for having other things on her mind. She cut you two thick slices of bread anyway. They were charred on the outside but warm and moist inside. You approach the tattooed man on the loading dock. He stops working and watches you. There is something wrong with the way your legs are moving. You wonder if your nose is still bleeding. “Bread.” This is what you say to him, although you meant to say something more. “What was your first clue?” he says. He is a man who has served his country, you think, a man with a family somewhere outside the city. “Could I have some? A roll or something?” “Get outa here.” “I’ll trade you my sunglasses,” you say. You take off your shades and hand them up to him. “Ray-Bans. I lost the case.” He tries them on, shakes his head a few times and then takes them off. He folds the glasses and puts them in his shirt pocket. “You’re crazy,” he says. Then he looks back into the warehouse. He picks up a bag of hard rolls and throws it at your feet. You get down on your knees and tear open the bag. The smell of warm dough envelops you. The first bite sticks in your throat and you almost gag. You will have to go slowly. You will have to learn everything all over again. ABOUT THE AUTHORThe author of seven novels and two collections of essays on wine, Jay McInerney is a regular contributor to New York, The New York Times Book Review, The Independent and Corriere della Sera . His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy , and Granta . In 2006, Time cited his 1984 debut, Bright Lights, Big City , as one of nine generation-defining novels of the twentieth century. He was the recipient of the 2006 James Beard Foundation’s M.F.K. Fisher Award for Distinguished Writing and his novel The Good Life received the Prix Littéraire at the Deauville Film Festival in 2007. He lives in Manhattan and Bridgehampton, New York. [image file=Image00007.jpg] JayMcInerney.com ALSO BY JAY MC INERNEY AVAILABLE IN VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES BRIGHTNESS FALLS As he maps the fault lines spreading through the once-impenetrable marriage of Russell and Corrine Calloway, and chronicles Russell’s wildly ambitious scheme to seize control of the publishing house at which he works, Jay McInerney creates an elegy for New York in the 1980s. From the literary chimeras and corporate raiders to those dispossessed by the pandemonium of money and power, Brightness Falls captures a rash era at its moment of reckoning and gives reality back to a time that now seems decidedly unreal. Fiction/978-0-679-74532-7 THE GOOD LIFE Corrine and Russell Calloway have survived a separation and are wonderstruck by young twins.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  He considered her greeting, her 192 • The Art of Seduction ing and attractive. Antiquity's other great seducer, Cleopatra, also sent out mixed signals: by all accounts physically alluring, in voice, face, body, and manner, she also had a brilliantly active mind, which for many writers of the time made her seem somewhat masculine in spirit. These contrary qualities gave her complexity, and complexity gave her power. To capture and hold attention, you need to show attributes that go against your physical appearance, creating depth and mystery. If you have a sweet face and an innocent air, let out hints of something dark, even vaguely cruel in your character. It is not advertised in your words, but in your manner. The actor Errol Flynn had a boyishly angelic face and a slight air of sadness. Beneath this outward appearance, however, women could sense an underlying cruelty, a criminal streak, an exciting kind of danger- ousness. This play of contrary qualities attracted obsessive interest. The female equivalent is the type epitomized by Marilyn Monroe; she had the face and voice of a little girl, but something sexual and naughty em- anated powerfully from her as well. Madame Récamier did it all with her eyes—the gaze of an angel, suddenly interrupted by something sensual and flirtatious. Playing with gender roles is a kind of intriguing paradox that has a long history in seduction. The greatest Don Juans have had a touch of prettiness and femininity, and the most attractive courtesans have had a masculine streak. The strategy, though, is only powerful when the underquality is merely hinted at; if the mix is too obvious or striking it will seem bizarre or even threatening. The great seventeenth-century French courtesan Ninon de l'Enclos was decidedly feminine in appearance, yet everyone who met her was struck by a touch of aggressiveness and independence in her—but just a touch. The late nineteenth-century Italian novelist Gabriele d'An- nunzio was certainly masculine in his approaches, but there was a gentle- ness, a consideration, mixed in, and an interest in feminine finery The combinations can be juggled every which way: Oscar Wilde was quite feminine in appearance and manner, but the underlying suggestion that he was actually quite masculine drew both men and women to him. A potent variation on this theme is the blending of physical heat and emotional coldness. Dandies like Beau Brummel and Andy Warhol com- bine striking physical appearances with a kind of coldness of manner, a dis- tance from everything and everyone. They are both enticing and elusive, and people spend lifetimes chasing after such men, trying to shatter their unattainability. (The power of apparently unattainable people is devilishly seductive; we want to be the one to break them down.) They also wrap themselves in ambiguity and mystery, either talking very little or talking only of surface matters, hinting at a depth of character you can never reach.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  There’s so much we don’t know.” “Okay, there have been some girls.” “Really?” She lifted her head up from the pillow. “Mother, I’m not going into details.” “Why not?” “It’s, well, embarrassing.” “I wish people wouldn’t waste their time being embarrassed. I wish I hadn’t. So tell me what it’s like.” You began to forget the way she looked then, and to see her somehow as young, younger than you had ever known her. The wasted flesh seemed illusory. You saw her as a young woman. “Do you really enjoy it,” she asked. “Sure. Yeah, I do.” “You’ve slept with girls you’re not in love with. Isn’t it different if you’re in love?” “Sure, it’s better.” “How about Sally Keegan? Did you sleep with her?” Sally Keegan was your high school prom date. “Once.” “I thought so.” This verification of her intuition pleased her. “What about Stephanie Bates?” Later, she said, “Are you happy with Amanda?” “Yes, I think so.” “For the rest of your life?” “I hope so.” “I was lucky,” Mom said. “Your dad and I have been happy. But it hasn’t always been easy. One time I thought I was leaving him.” “Really?” “We were human.” She adjusted her pillow and winced. “Foolish.” She smiled. The candor was infectious. It spread back to the beginning of your life. You tried to tell her, as well as you could, what it was like being you. You described the feeling you’d always had of being misplaced, of always standing to one side of yourself, of watching yourself in the world even as you were being in the world, and wondering if this was how everyone felt. That you always believed that other people had a clearer idea of what they were doing, and didn’t worry quite so much about why. You talked about your first day of school. You cried and clutched her leg. You even remembered how her plaid slacks felt, the scratchiness on your cheek. She sent you off to the bus—she interrupted here to say she wasn’t much happier than you were—and you hid in the woods until you saw the bus leave and then went home and told her you had missed it. So Mom drove you to school, and by the time you got there you were an hour late. Everybody watched you come in with your little note, and heard you explain that you missed the bus. When you finally sat down you knew that you would never catch up. “Don’t you think everyone feels a little like that?” Then Mom told you she knew all along about the hot-water-on-the-thermometer trick, but let you pretend you were sick whenever you really seemed to need it. “You were a funny boy. An awful baby. A real screamer.” Then she grimaced and for a moment you thought it was the memory of your screaming. You asked her if she wanted the morphine and she said not yet. She wanted to talk, to be clear.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  You lean over and place your free hand on Megan’s shoulder. The silk slides back and forth across her skin as you massage. No bra strap. You look into her eyes. She’s a rare woman. She smiles, reaches out and strokes your hair. “Everything’s going to work out,” she says. You nod. Her face registers a shift of thought, and then she says, “How’s your father doing?” “He’s fine,” you say. “He’s terrific.” You pull her toward you. You slide a hand behind her head and close your eyes as your lips find hers. You press her head against the back of the couch and run your tongue along her teeth. You want to feel her tongue. You want to disappear inside her mouth. She turns her head away and tries to withdraw from your embrace. You reach a hand under her shirt. Gently, she grips your hand and holds it there. “No,” she says. “That’s not what you want.” Her voice is calm and soothing. She is not angry, just determined. When you try to advance your hand she stops it. “Not that,” she says. When you try to kiss her again she holds you off, but she remains on the couch. You feel like water seeking its own level, and Megan is the sea. You put your head in her lap. She strokes your hair. “Calm down,” she says. “Calm down.” “Are you all right now,” Megan asks when you lift your head from her lap. The level of the room keeps changing. All of the surfaces swell and recede with oceanic rhythm. You are not quite all right. You are somewhat wrong. “I think maybe I’ll get up and go to the, uh, bathroom.” This is you speaking. Testing: one, two, three. Megan is helping you to your feet. She holds your elbow as she leads you to the door. “I’ll be right out here if you need me.” The black-and-white tiles on the floor keep moving. You stand in front of the toilet and consider. Do you feel sick? Not exactly. Not yet, anyway. You might as well take a leak, though, as long as you are here. You unzip and aim for the bowl. There is a poster with some kind of print in front of you. You lean forward to read it, and then you lean back, so as not to fall forward. You try to grab hold of the shower curtain as you go down but you can’t get a grip. “Are you all right?” Megan says from the other side of the door. “Fine,” you say. You are mostly in the tub. Only your feet stick out, way down at the far end of your body. It’s not uncomfortable, really, except that you are a little damp around the midsection. You will have to investigate this. Find the source. In a minute. The door opens. Help is on the way.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  “It’s not so bad. I’m okay now, Dylan has a good life. I call that a good deal. How about some dinner?” You would rather fill in the gaps of the story, hear all the details, the shrieks and moans of Bellevue, but Megan is up and she is holding out her hand. In the kitchen she passes you a paring knife and three cloves of garlic which you are supposed to peel. The skin is hard to remove. She explains that it’s easier if you whack them a few times with the blunt edge of the knife. Then she notices the bandage. “What happened to your hand?” “Got caught in a door. No big deal.” Megan goes behind you to wash lettuce in the sink. When you step back to get a better angle on the cutting board your buttocks meet. She laughs. Megan moves around to the stove. She reaches up to an open shelf and pulls down a bottle. “Olive oil,” she says. She pours some in a saucepan and turns on the burner. You pour yourself another glass of wine. “Is the garlic ready,” Meg asks. You have succeeded in peeling two cloves. They look nude. “Not too efficient, are we?” Megan says. She relieves you of the knife and strips the third clove, then chops it all up. “Now we dump the garlic in the pan and let it fry. Meanwhile, I’ll chop the basil while you open the clams. You know how to operate a can opener?” You mostly stand and watch as Meg flashes around the kitchen. She moves you occasionally, whenever you’re in the way. You like the feel of her hands on your shoulders. “Tell me about Amanda,” Megan says over salad. You are sitting at the table in the dining alcove in candlelight. “I get the feeling that something bad happened.” “Amanda is a fictional character,” you say. “I made her up. I didn’t realize this until recently, when another woman, also named Amanda, shed me with a collect phone call from Paris. Do you mind if I open another bottle of wine?” You eventually give Megan the gist of it. She says that Amanda must be enormously confused. You will drink to that.

• From What Are Biblical Values? (2019)

  “My question,” she writes, “was not ‘did it actually happen?’ but do we still have sufficient information and source texts to tell the story of the movement carrying Jesus’ name otherwise , envisioning it as that of a discipleship of equals?”14 Moreover, she argues: “If one cannot prove that wo/men were not members of this group and did not participate in shaping the earliest Jesus traditions, one needs to give the benefit of the doubt to the textual traces suggesting that they did.”15 All of these scholars have contributed greatly to our understanding of the biblical texts, but like most people who have asked questions relating to gender in the Bible, they have been engaged, in their different ways, in a work of advocacy. My objective here is different. It is simply to assess, as dispassionately as possible, what may reasonably be inferred from the biblical text, whether it supports our modern agendas or not. Schüssler Fiorenza calls for an “ethics of accountability,” for taking responsibility for “the ethical consequences of the biblical text and its meanings.”16 But an ethically responsible reading must first of all be clear on what meanings are actually supported by the text. It is not ethically responsible to claim that the Bible condemned slavery, when it manifestly did not. Neither is it ethically responsible to claim that the Bible, in either Testament, advocates a discipleship of equals. If we find a particular biblical position reprehensible, the ethically responsible course is to say so, not to give the benefit of the doubt to whatever positions we find congenial. ADAM AND EVE The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2–3 has had inordinate influence on perceptions of the biblical view of women, both in antiquity and in modern times. Remarkably, we find no reference to it in the Hebrew Bible outside Genesis, but it enters the discussion in the period between the Testaments, notably in the Book of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus), which is included in the Catholic Old Testament and the Protestant Apocrypha. The story looms large in the New Testament. Several points in the story bear on the role of women. One of the oldest arguments for the subordination of women, found already in the New Testament, in 1 Timothy 2:13, is that “Adam was formed first, then Eve.” It has been argued that before the creation of Eve, Adam was undifferentiated, neither male nor female.17 The argument has a certain logic, but it is undercut by the use of the same word, “Adam,” for the male after the creation of Eve. It is “the man” (ha-adam ) who acknowledges Eve as “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone” in Genesis 2:23. That she is taken from Adam’s body (rib) also accords priority to Adam, even reversing the order of nature in the birth process.18 The reversal does not in itself imply the subjection of women in any severe sense, but it establishes a pecking order.

• From Story of the Eye (1928)

  I smoked cigarettes, went through newspapers, and if there were any items about crime or violence, I would read them aloud. From time to time, I would carry a feverish Simone to the bathroom to help her pee, and then I would carefully wash her on the bidet. She was extremely weak and naturally I never stroked her seriously; but nevertheless, she soon delighted in having me throw eggs into the toilet bowl, hard-boiled eggs, which sank, and shells sucked out in various degrees to obtain varying levels of immersion. She would sit for a long time, gazing at the eggs. Then she would settle on the toilet to view them under her cunt between the parted thighs; and finally, she would have me flush the bowl. Another game was to crack a fresh egg on the edge of the bidet and empty it under her: sometimes she would piss on it, sometimes she made me strip naked and swallow the raw egg from the bottom of the bidet. She did promise that as soon as she was well again, she would do the same for me and also for Marcelle. At that time, we imagined Marcelle, with her dress tucked up, but her body covered and her feet shod: we would put her in a bath tub half filled with fresh eggs, and she would pee while crushing them. Simone also day-dreamed about my holding Marcelle, this time with nothing on but her garter-belt and stockings, her cunt aloft, her legs bent, and her head down; Simone herself, in a bathrobe drenched in hot water and thus clinging to her body but exposing her bosom, would then get up on a white enamelled chair with a cork seat. I would arouse her breasts from a distance by lifting the tips on the heated barrel of a long service revolver that had been loaded and just fired (first of all, this would shake us up, and secondly, it would give the barrel a pungent smell of powder). At the same time, she would pour a jar of dazzling white crème fraîche on Marcelle’s grey anus, and she would also urinate freely in her robe or, if the robe were ajar, on Marcelle’s back or head, while I could piss on Marcelle from the other side (I would certainly piss on her breasts). Furthermore, Marcelle herself could fully inundate me if she liked, for while I held her up, her thighs would be gripping my neck. And she could also stick my cock in her mouth, and what not. It was after such dreams that Simone would ask me to bed her down on blankets by the toilet, and she would rest her head on the rim of the bowl and fix her wide eyes on the white eggs . I myself settled comfortably next to her so that our cheeks and temples might touch. We were calmed by the long contemplation.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  induce), taking her hand, lighting her cigarette, escorting her to romantic places, leading her on the dance floor. These were silent movies, and his audiences never got to hear him speak—it was all in his gestures. Men came to hate him, for their wives and girlfriends now expected the slow, careful Valentino treatment. Valentino had a feminine streak; it was said that he wooed a woman the way another woman would. But femininity need not figure in this approach to seduction. In the early 1770s, Prince Gregory Potemkin began an affair with Empress Catherine the Great of Russia that was to last many years. Potemkin was a manly man, and not at all handsome. But he managed to win the empress's heart by the many little things he did, and continued to do long after the affair had begun. He spoiled her with wonderful gifts, never tired of writing her long letters, arranged for all kinds of entertainments for her, composed songs to her beauty. Yet he would appear before her barefoot, hair uncombed, clothes wrinkled. There was no kind of fussiness in his attention, which, however, did make it clear he would go to the ends of the earth for her. A woman's senses are more refined than a man's; to a woman, Yang Kuei-fei's overt sensual appeal would seem too hurried and direct. What that means, though, is that all the man really has to do is take it slowly, making seduction a ritual full of all kinds of little things he has to do for his target. If he takes his time, he will have her eating out of his hand. Everything in seduction is a sign, and nothing more so than clothes. It is not that you have to dress interestingly, elegantly, or provocatively, but that you have to dress for your target—have to appeal to your target's tastes. When Cleopatra was seducing Mark Antony, her dress was not brazenly sexual; she dressed as a Greek goddess, knowing his weakness for such fantasy figures. Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of King Louis XV, knew the king's weakness, his chronic boredom; she constantly wore different clothes, changing not only their color but their style, supplying the king with a constant feast for his eyes. Pamela Harriman was subdued in the fashions she wore, befitting her role as a high-society geisha and reflecting the sober tastes of the men she seduced. Contrast works well here: at work or at home, you might dress nonchalantly—Marilyn Monroe, for example, wore jeans and a T-shirt at home—but when you are with the target you wear something elaborate, as if you were putting on a costume. Your Cin-derella transformation will stir excitement, and the feeling that you have done something just for the person you are with. Whenever your attention is individualized (you would not dress like that for anyone else), it is infinitely more seductive.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  She must have come to feel so powerless, I thought, that the one thing she might have done— pick up the phone and call an ambulance—never even occurred to her. There comes a time when we realize that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow—that, in short, we are all going. So she became impulsive, scared by her inaction into perpetual action. When the Eagle confronted her with expulsion, maybe she blurted out Marya’s name because it was the first that came to mind, because in that moment she didn’t want to get expelled and couldn’t think past that moment. She was scared, sure. But more importantly, maybe she’d been scared of being paralyzed by fear again. “We are all going,” McKinley said to his wife, and we sure are. There’s your labyrinth of suffering. We are all going. Find your way out of that maze. None of which I said out loud to her. Not then and not ever. We never said another word about it. Instead, it became just another worst day, albeit the worst of the bunch, and as night fell fast, we continued on, drinking and joking. — Later that night, after Alaska stuck her finger down her throat and made herself puke in front of all of us because she was too drunk to walk into the woods, I lay down in my sleeping bag. Lara was lying beside me, in her bag, which was almost touching mine. I moved my arm to the edge of my bag and pushed it so it slightly overlapped with hers. I pressed my hand against hers. I could feel it, although there were two sleeping bags between us. My plan, which struck me as very slick, was to pull my arm out of my sleeping bag and put it into hers, and then hold her hand. It was a good plan, but when I tried to actually get my arm out of the mummy bag, I flailed around like a fish out of water, and nearly dislocated my shoulder. She was laughing—and not with me, at me—but we still didn’t speak. Having passed the point of no return, I slid my hand into her sleeping bag anyway, and she stifled a giggle as my fingers traced a line from her elbow to her wrist. “That teekles,” she whispered. So much for me being sexy. “Sorry,” I whispered. “No, it’s a nice teekle,” she said, and held my hand. She laced her fingers in mine and squeezed. And then she rolled over and keessed me. I am sure that she tasted like stale booze, but I did not notice, and I’m sure I tasted like stale booze and cigarettes, but she didn’t notice. We were kissing. I thought: This is good. I thought: I am not bad at this kissing.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  You’re not sure exactly where you are going. You don’t feel you have the strength to walk home. You walk faster. If the sunlight catches you on the streets, you will undergo some terrible chemical change. After a few minutes you notice the blood on your fingers. You hold your hand up to your face. There is blood on your shirt, too. You find a Kleenex in your jacket pocket and hold it to your nose. You advance with your head tilted back against your shoulders. By the time you reach Canal Street, you think that you will never make it home. You look for taxis. A bum is sleeping under the awning of a shuttered shop. As you pass he raises his head and says, “God bless you and forgive your sins.” You wait for the cadge but it doesn’t come. You wish he hadn’t said anything. As you turn, what is left of your olfactory equipment sends a message to your brain: fresh bread. Somewhere they are baking bread. You can smell it, even through the nose-bleed. You see bakery trucks loading in front of a building on the next block. You watch as bags of rolls are carried out onto the loading dock by a man with tattooed forearms. This man is already at work so that normal people can have fresh bread for their morning tables. The righteous people who sleep at night and eat eggs for breakfast. It is Sunday morning and you haven’t eaten since ... when? Friday night. As you approach, the smell of bread washes over you like a gentle rain. You inhale deeply, filling your lungs. Tears come to your eyes, and you feel such a rush of tenderness and pity that you stop beside a lamppost and hang on for support. The smell of bread recalls you to another morning. You arrived home from college after driving half the night; you just felt like coming home. When you walked in, the kitchen was steeped in this same aroma. Your mother asked what the occasion was, and you said a whim. You asked if she was baking. “Learning to draw inferences at college, are we,” you remember her asking. She said she had to find some way to keep herself busy now that her sons were taking off. You said that you hadn’t left, not really. You sat down at the kitchen table to talk, and the bread soon started to burn. She had made bread only two other times that you could recall. Both times it had burned. You remember being proud of your mother then for never having submitted to the tyranny of the kitchen, for having other things on her mind. She cut you two thick slices of

• From What Are Biblical Values? (2019)

  You should know what it is like to be an alien and treat aliens with compassion accordingly.9 Again, when Numbers 15:16 declares, “You and the alien who resides among you shall have the same law and the same ordinance,” it is assumed that aliens must keep the law, but the emphasis of the passage is on the equality of alien and native before the law. To be sure, there are cases in the Hebrew Bible where Israelite or Judean authorities are not hospitable to aliens. Ezra’s insistence that Judeans who had married foreign women must divorce them is a notorious example.10 It is not the case, however, that the biblical record is equally divided on this issue nor that it is arbitrary to choose one point of view as the Bible’s core value.11 The founding experience of Israel in Egypt demands that sympathy for the alien take precedence over other considerations. The sojourn in Egypt was not the only occasion when Israel would know the mind of an alien. After the destruction of northern Israel by the Assyrians, and especially after the conquest of Judah by the Babylonians, the majority of the Israelite/Jewish people lived in Diaspora, scattered outside their homeland. Equally, the experience of Egypt and the Exodus should mean that the Israelites would know the mind of a slave, and the memory of the Exodus is often invoked in this context, too (e.g., Deuteronomy 15:15). There is another, more fundamental reason why people should empathize with slaves and aliens. Job, in his great protestation of innocence, says of his male and female slaves: Did not he who made me in the womb make them? And did not one fashion us in the womb? (Job 31:15) The basic reason for appreciating the common humanity of all, regardless of status, is creation, and that reason is reinforced by the founding experience of Israel in the Exodus. Yet at no point does the Bible condemn the practice of slavery. We find condemnation of abuses, to be sure, but no calls for the abolition of slavery as a social practice. This does not mean that the story of the Exodus is not relevant to social conditions at all, as some would have it, since the situation of most of the people was greatly ameliorated by the transition from slavery to freedom. But it does mean that the Bible falls far short of realizing the potential implications of both creation and Exodus. THE LAWS ON SLAVERY People came to be slaves in the ancient world in basically three ways. They might be born into slavery, they might be captured, whether in war or by kidnapping, or they might become enslaved because they could not pay their debts.12 The discussions of slavery in the Hebrew Bible are primarily concerned with debt slavery. The very first of the ordinances regulating society in the Book of the Covenant, after the altar-law at the end of Exodus 20, is a law about slaves.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  In 1914, Chaplin managed to get the lead in a film short called Making Hermes answered, "and I will he responsible for the a Living. His role was that of a con artist. In playing around with the cos-safety of all divine tume for the part, he put on a pair of pants several sizes too large, then property, and never tell lies, added a derby hat, enormous boots that he wore on the wrong feet, a walk-though I cannot promise ing cane, and a pasted-on mustache. With the clothes, a whole new charac-always to tell the whole truth." • "That would not ter seemed to come to life—first the silly walk, then the twirling of the be expected of you," said cane, then all sorts of gags. Mack Sennett, the head of the studio, did not Zeus with a smile. . . . find Making a Living very funny, and doubted whether Chaplin had a future Zeus gave him a herald's staff with white ribbons, in the movies, but a few critics felt otherwise. A review in a trade magazine which everyone was ordered read, "The clever player who takes the role of a nervy and very nifty to respect; a round hat sharper in this picture is a comedian of the first water, who acts like one of against the rain, and winged golden sandals Nature's own naturals." And audiences also responded—the film made which carried him about money. with the swiftness of the What seemed to touch a nerve in Making a Living, setting Chaplin apart wind. from the horde of other comedians working in silent film, was the almost —ROBERT GRAVES, THE GREEK MYTHS, VOLUME I pathetic naiveté of the character he played. Sensing he was onto something, Chaplin shaped the role further in subsequent movies, rendering him more and more naive. The key was to make the character seem to see the world through the eyes of a child. In The Bank, he is the bank janitor who day-A man may meet a woman and be shocked by her dreams of great deeds while robbers are at work in the building; in The ugliness. Soon, if she is Pawnbroker, he is an unprepared shop assistant who wreaks havoc on a natural and unaffected, her grandfather clock; in Shoulder Arms, he is a soldier in the bloody trenches of expression makes him overlook the fault of her World War I, reacting to the horrors of war like an innocent child. Chaplin features. He begins to find made sure to cast actors in his films who were physically larger than he was, her charming, it enters his subliminally positioning them as adult bullies and himself as the helpless in-head that she might be

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  bread anyway. They were charred on the outside but warm and moist inside. You approach the tattooed man on the loading dock. He stops working and watches you. There is something wrong with the way your legs are moving. You wonder if your nose is still bleeding. “Bread.” This is what you say to him, although you meant to say something more. “What was your first clue?” he says. He is a man who has served his country, you think, a man with a family somewhere outside the city. “Could I have some? A roll or something?” “Get outa here.” “I’ll trade you my sunglasses,” you say. You take off your shades and hand them up to him. “Ray-Bans. I lost the case.” He tries them on, shakes his head a few times and then takes them off. He folds the glasses and puts them in his shirt pocket. “You’re crazy,” he says. Then he looks back into the warehouse. He picks up a bag of hard rolls and throws it at your feet. You get down on your knees and tear open the bag. The smell of warm dough envelops you. The first bite sticks in your throat and you almost gag. You will have to go slowly. You will have to learn everything all over again. ABOUT THE AUTHOR The author of seven novels and two collections of essays on wine, Jay McInerney is a regular contributor to New York, The New York Times Book Review, The Independent and Corriere della Sera. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy, and Granta. In 2006, Time cited his 1984 debut, Bright Lights, Big City, as one of nine generation- defining novels of the twentieth century. He was the recipient of the 2006 James Beard Foundation’s M.F.K. Fisher Award for Distinguished Writing and his novel The Good Life received the Prix Littéraire at the Deauville Film Festival in 2007. He lives in Manhattan and Bridgehampton, New York. JayMcInerney.com

• From What Are Biblical Values? (2019)

  Paul goes on to ask Philemon to welcome Onesimus “as you would welcome me” and to charge anything Onesimus might owe him to Paul’s own account. At least since the time of John Chrysostom (ca. 349–407) commentators have inferred that Onesimus was a runaway slave and that Paul was sending him back to his owner. This view is still defended and remains an interpretive option,35 but in recent years opinion has shifted in favor of the view that he was not technically a fugitive but was at odds with his master in some way and had asked Paul to intercede for him.36 Another suggestion, that Onesimus had been sent to Paul as a messenger or gift-bearer,37 is unsatisfactory, both because he is said to have been formerly useless and because it is necessary for Paul to intercede for him on his return. It has even been suggested that he was not a slave at all but was actually Philemon’s brother “in the flesh.”38 This suggestion is ruled out by verse 16 (“no longer as a slave”).39 There is a parallel in a letter of Pliny where a friend of the owner intercedes for clemency for a freedman who had displeased his master.40 Unlike Paul, Pliny sharply reproved the freedman, but Paul’s situation is different, given the conversion of Onesimus to Christ.41 It seems clear that Onesimus was a slave and that Paul recognized Philemon’s rights over him. It is less clear what Paul wanted Philemon to do. He says that Philemon can have him back “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.” Is this a subtle way of asking Philemon to set Onesimus free?42 He says, “I wanted to keep him with me . . . but I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary.” Is this a subtle way of asking Philemon to let Onesimus return to Paul, to assist him?43 The subtlety of the letter leaves the reader, at least the modern reader, uncertain. Paul stops short of making explicit requests, either for the manumission of Onesimus or for Ones-imus’s transfer to Paul’s service. On any interpretation, he is asking Philemon to view Onesimus as a brother but stops short of saying that he has an obligation to do so. He concludes by saying he is confident that Philemon will do even more than he asks. Martin Luther commented that “this letter gives us a masterful and tender example of Christian love. For we see here how St. Paul takes the part of poor Onesimus and, as best he can, pleads his cause with his master.”44 Modern readers are more likely to note the deference to the slave owner. Paul does not denounce slavery in prophetic tones and does not seem to have regarded it as an intolerable evil. His intercession for Onesimus rests on the fact that both he and Philemon were followers of Christ.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  mont can not only disguise his manipulations but elicit pity and concern. be consciously ridiculed and Playing the victim, he can stir up the tender emotions produced by a sick rejected. . . . Most ad men child or a wounded animal. And these emotions are easily channeled into will confirm that over the love—as the Présidente discovers to her dismay. years the seemingly worst commercials have sold the Seduction is a game of reducing suspicion and resistance. The cleverest best. An effective TV way to do this is to make the other person feel stronger, more in control of commercial is purposefully designed to insult the things. Suspicion usually comes out of insecurity; if your targets feel supe- viewer's conscious rior and secure in your presence, they are unlikely to doubt your motives. intelligence, thereby You are too weak, too emotional, to be up to something. Take this game as penetrating his defenses. far as it will go. Flaunt your emotions and how deeply they have affected —WILSON BRYAN KEY, you. Making people feel the power they have over you is immensely flatter- SUBLIMINAL SEDUCTION ing to them. Confess to something bad, or even to something bad that you did, or contemplated doing, to them. Honesty is more important than virtue, and one honest gesture will blind them to many deceitful acts. Cre- It takes great art to use ate an impression of weakness—physical, mental, emotional. Strength and bashfulness, but one does achieve a great deal with it. confidence can be frightening. Make your weakness a comfort, and play How often I have used the victim—of their power over you, of circumstances, of life in general. bashfulness to trick a little This is the best way to cover your tracks. miss! Ordinarily, young girls speak very harshly about bashful men, but You know, a man ain't worth a damn if he can't cry at the secretly they like them. A right time. little bashfulness flatters a teenage girl's vanity, makes — L Y N D O N BAINES JOHNSON her feel superior; it is her 290 • The Art of Seduction earnest money. When they Keys to Seduction are lulled to sleep, then at the very time they believe you are about to perish from bashfulness, you show We all have weaknesses, vulnerabilities, frailnesses in our mental makeup. Perhaps we are shy or oversensitive, or need attention— them that you are so far whatever the weakness is, it is something we cannot control. We may try to from it that you are quite compensate for it, or to hide it, but this is often a mistake: people sense self-reliant. Bashfulness makes a man lose his something inauthentic or unnatural. Remember: what is natural to your masculine significance, and character is inherently seductive. A person's vulnerability, what they seem therefore it is a relatively

• From Middlesex (2002)

  But more important to a kid: Middlesex had lots of sneaker-sized ledges to walk along. It had deep, concrete window wells perfect for making into forts. It had sun decks and catwalks. Chapter Eleven and I climbed all over Middlesex. Lefty would wash the windows and, five minutes later, my brother and I would come along, leaning on the glass and leaving fingerprints. And seeing them, our tall, mute grandfather, who in anotfier life might have been a professor but in this one was holding a wet rag and bucket, only smiled and washed the windows all over again. Although he never said a word to me, I loved my Chaplinesque papou. His speechlessness seemed to be an act of refinement. It went with his elegant clothes, his shoes with woven vamps, the glaze of his hair. And yet he was not stiff at all but playful, even comedic. When he took me for rides in the car Lefty often pretended to fall asleep at the wheel. Suddenly his eyes would close and he would slump to one side. The car would continue on, unpiloted, drifting toward the curb. I laughed, screamed, pulled my hair and kicked my legs. At the last possible second, Lefty would spring awake, taking the wheel and averting disaster. We didn't need to speak to each other. We understood each other without speaking. But then a terrible thing happened. It is a Saturday morning a few weeks after our move to Middle- sex. Lefty is taking me for a walk around the new neighborhood. The plan is to go down to the lake. Hand in hand we stroll across our new front lawn. Change is clinking in his trouser pocket, just below the level of my shoulders. I run my fingers over his thumb, fascinated 261 by the missing nail, which Lefty has always told me a monkey bit off at the zoo. Now we reach the sidewalk. The man who makes the sidewalks in Grosse Pointe has left his name in the cement: J. P. Steiger. There is also a crack, where ants are having a war. Now we are crossing the grass between the sidewalk and the street. And now we are at the curb.

• From What Are Biblical Values? (2019)

  Here again the story is complicated by the demands of hospitality and the fact that what the people of the city wanted was rape. Again, the rape of a man seems to be regarded as worse than the rape of a woman, but the story does not address the permissibility of consensual relations. Also inconclusive is the evidence for homosexual prostitution in connection with a cult in ancient Israel. Scholars have speculated that sexual acts were performed with a priest or a priestess as a way of ensuring fertility. This whole theory of sacred marriage has fallen into disrepute in recent years, as it rests on dubious evidence. There are however condemnations in the Bible of functionaries called qadesh (male) and qe deshah (female). In Deuteronomy 23:17–18 (Hebrews 23:18–19) we read: None of the daughters of Israel shall be a temple prostitute [qe deshah ]; none of the sons of Israel shall be a temple prostitute [qadesh ]. You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute or the wages of a male prostitute into the house of the LORD your God in payment for any vow, for both of these are abhorrent to the LORD your God. The word qe deshah is also associated with zonah , “prostitute” in Genesis 38:21–22 and Hosea 4:14. The Hosea passage speaks of sacrificing with qe deshoth . The texts give no clear evidence about the role of the qe deshim .23 They had quarters in the Jerusalem temple that were destroyed in Josiah’s purge of the cult (2 Kings 23:7). They appear to have a cultic role that was unacceptable to the biblical authors, but the evidence is too unclear to warrant any firm conclusions about their supposed homosexual activity. The most intriguing story of same-sex love in the Hebrew Bible is undoubtedly that of David and Jonathan. According to 1 Samuel 18:1, “the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” In 1 Samuel 19:1–2, Jonathan warned David that his father Saul planned to kill him because “Jonathan took great delight in David.” In 1 Samuel 20:16–17, Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the Lord seek out the enemies of David.” Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him, for he loved him as he loved his own life. In 1 Samuel 20:30, Saul’s anger was kindled against Jonathan. He said to him: “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness?” Finally, after Saul and Jonathan are killed in battle with the Philistines, David mourns Jonathan: “I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women” (2 Samuel 1:26).

• From What Are Biblical Values? (2019)

  The relationship described in these passages has given rise to an enormous amount of literature but little consensus. Interpretation may often be guided by the interpreter’s predisposition on the question of homosexuality. At no point does the text say explicitly that David and Jonathan had sex. Accordingly, many commentators see here a case of close friendship or male bonding. Martti Nissinen, for example, writes that “it is also possible to interpret David’s and Jonathan’s love as an intimate camaraderie of two young soldiers with no sexual involvement.”24 He notes that there is no distinction of active and passive roles, as we might expect in a sexual relationship. Famous parallels for intimate male friendship are found in the stories of Gilgamesh and Enkidu from Mesopotamia, and Achilles and Patroclus in Homer’s Iliad. Moreover, the rhetoric of love has roots in discourse about treaties and covenants in the ancient Near East. Covenant partners, whether equal or unequal, were said to love each other and referred to each other using language of kinship, such as “brother.”25 “Love” in this context essentially meant “loyalty.” David and Jonathan are explicitly said to have made a covenant in 1 Samuel 20. David appeals to Jonathan to “deal kindly with your servant, for you have brought your servant into a sacred covenant with you” (1 Samuel 20:8). Some commentators consequently suggest that the love has a political dimension: it prepares the way for David to take over the kingdom of Saul.26 Two statements in the text, however, suggest a more emotional or erotic relationship. One is Saul’s complaint that Jonathan has chosen David to his shame and the shame of his mother’s nakedness. It is possible that the shame here arises from Jonathan’s disloyalty to his father and implicitly to the mother who bore him, but it may also have sexual implications. The other is David’s statement that the love of Jonathan was better than the love of women. Nissinen remarks, aptly enough, that “the text thus leaves the possible homoerotic associations to the reader’s imagination.”27 Homosexual love, however, like heterosexual love, is about much more than sex. It is about bonding, fidelity, and emotion, all of which seem to be in evidence in the case of David and Jonathan. Some interpreters assume that the biblical heroes could not have consummated their love because “homosexual acts were condemned in Israelite law (Leviticus 20:13). So David’s apologists would hardly have described him as homosexual or included a piece that described him that way.”28 But this judgment is problematic on two counts. First, as we shall see, the condemnation of homosexual acts is found only in one distinctive strand of biblical law, and it is not at all certain the author or editor of the books of Samuel would have been constrained by it. Second, even Leviticus does not condemn love between males in the emotional sense, and the specific sex acts that are forbidden are a subject of dispute.