Tenderness

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen rested her elbow on the mantelpiece and stood gazing at Mary with her chin on her hand. As she did so she was struck once again by the look of youth that was characteristic of Mary. She looked much less than her twenty-two years in her simple dress with its leather belt—she looked indeed little more than a schoolgirl. And yet there was something quite new in her face, a soft, wise expression that Stephen had put there, so that she suddenly felt pitiful to see her so young yet so full of this wisdom; for sometimes the coming of passion to youth, in spite of its glory, will be strangely pathetic. Mary rolled up the stockings with a sigh of regret; alas, they would not require darning. She was at the stage of being in love when she longed to do womanly tasks for Stephen. But all Stephen’s clothes were discouragingly neat; Mary thought that she must be very well served, which was true—she was served, as are certain men, with a great deal of nicety and care by the servants. And now Stephen was filling her cigarette case from the big box that lived on her dressing table; and now she was strapping on her gold wrist watch; and now she was brushing some dust from her coat; and now she was frowning at herself in the glass for a second as she twitched her immaculate necktie. Mary had seen her do all this before, many times, but to-day somehow it was different; for to-day they were in their own home together, so that these little intimate things seemed more dear than they had done at Orotava. The bedroom could only have belonged to Stephen; a large, airy room, very simply furnished—white walls, old oak, and a wide, bricked hearth on which some large, friendly logs were burning. The bed could only have been Stephen’s bed; it was heavy and rather austere in pattern. It looked solemn as Mary had seen Stephen look, and was covered by a bedspread of old blue brocade, otherwise it remained quite guiltless of trimmings. The chairs could only have been Stephen’s chairs; a little reserved, not conducive to lounging. The dressing table could only have been hers, with its tall silver mirror and ivory brushes. And all these things had drawn into themselves a species of life derived from their owner, until they seemed to be thinking of Stephen with a dumbness that made their thoughts more insistent, and their thoughts gathered strength and mingled with Mary’s so that she heard herself cry out: ‘Stephen!’ in a voice that was not very far from tears, because of the joy she felt in that name. And Stephen answered her: ‘Mary—’

• From How God Became King (2012)

  The same was true too for the person who was to speak about Jesus’s death. Even at that tender age we knew not only that it was important to say “he died for our sins,” but to push a little bit farther and ask how that happened, how it made sense. For myself, that is, so to speak, where I came in: my earliest memory of personal faith was when, as a very small boy, I was overwhelmed, reduced to tears, by the thought that Jesus died for me. What the cross says about the love of God has always been central and vital for me. I don’t think we schoolboys quite grasped the range of what is called “atonement theology.” But we knew there were some important questions to look at and some important and central beliefs to grasp hold of. So too with the resurrection. And, indeed, the second coming. Again, I’m not sure we went very deep or even necessarily explored the most helpful biblical passages. But these were thrilling topics. There was plenty to talk about, plenty to chew over, plenty to make us not only think hard, but also celebrate the excitement of believing in Jesus and of trying to live as a Christian. But what about that question in the middle—my question? Why did Jesus live? What, in other words, about the bit between the stable and the cross? There were, after all, Christmas carols and other hymns that took Jesus straight “from his poor manger to his bitter cross.” Did it matter that, according to the four gospels, he had a short period of intense and exciting public activity at the latter end of his life? What truth could we learn from it? Why did it have to be like that? Does it matter that he did all those things, that he said all those things, that he was all those things? Would it have made any difference if, as the virgin-born son of God, he had been plucked from total obscurity and crucified, dying for our sins, without any of that happening? If not, why not? I realized then, and have realized increasingly in recent years, that many Christians read the gospels without ever asking those questions. Adapting a phrase from a well-known book on management, The Empty Raincoat,* such readers experience the four gospels as an empty cloak. The outer wrapping is there—Jesus’s birth, death, and resurrection. But who is inside the cloak? What did Jesus do in between? Is there anybody there? Does it matter?

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I looked around the living room. There were pictures of Dominic everywhere: Dominic on the beach in Malibu with his ears blowing back, Dominic dressed as a bumblebee on Halloween, Annika cradling Dominic as a little puppy, her face serene and dreamlike. Dominic himself now had his head in my lap and was looking up at me from under his dog brow. “I’m going to do better,” I said to him, scratching his white diamond. “I promise. From now on it’s only going to be you and me. As soon as I get back from this date.” 17.I got to the Ace at five and had time to kill. I decided I would go up to the roof and maybe try to think about my book a little bit. Once again, I’d somehow shoved Sappho under a man: multiple men this time. I’d come to Venice to purge the influence of dick on my life and had wound up becoming Helen of Troy. What would Sappho think? The advisory committe said the thesis draft was due by fall semester. Did that mean the beginning of the semester? Day one? I knew that it did. But I pretended I had some wiggle room: that I could just pop in there on Halloween, draft in hand, like, Sorry for the delay! and my funding would go on. I’d always been scared not to finish the thesis but maybe even more scared to finish it. What would happen then? Would I apply for teaching jobs in other cities? I had thought that maybe I would, in the hopes that it would make Jamie ask me to stay—that the catalyst of my moving somewhere else would make him finally step up. But somewhere in my mind, I always knew he wouldn’t. I hadn’t wanted to face that. On the Ace roof there was flamenco music playing, or bossa nova or something. It all seemed so contemporary and pleasant. The sun was setting and I ordered a white wine. Was this how everything was now? Just nice? I wondered if other people felt comfortable within niceness, or whether they didn’t even notice that things were nice. Maybe they expected everything to be nice. Maybe nice was like air to them.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I could have sat there all day and had my fortune told until someone predicted what I wanted to hear—that I was getting back together with Jamie, that he was coming back to me—so I quickly pulled away. I looked at the crystals. I would have loved to buy rose quartz, giant hunks of it, hundreds and hundreds of dollars’ worth. I wanted to make a circle around me; do some ritual shit with rose petals; burn vanilla, gardenia, and strawberry incense to attract love. Instead I bought a sparkly raw chunk of amethyst in the palest purple, which was said to bring peace and stability. There was also a table where magic candles were sold: red for love and passion, green for money. I bypassed the love candle and selected an egg-colored one for clearing and needed change. Maybe I could just burn the past year away. — At home I ate pad thai and drank white wine, fed Dominic, and gave him his medicine. I’d known nothing about dogs before him—how or where to pet them—but he was patient with me, and I’d soon discovered his favorite places to be touched. His entire head was brown with the exception of two white patches: one a white stripe down the center of his forehead, which I stroked gently with one finger and called his angel mark, and the other a diamond shape on the back of his neck, an arrow pointing as if to say, Scratch me here . This was the area that he could not reach with his paws, and, when scratched, would lull him right to sleep. We would play a game where he gazed at me lovingly, trying to keep his brown eyes open, his lids growing heavy, then popping open, then heavier and heavier until they were sealed shut: just two stitches lined with little lashes. When he rolled over onto his back and showed me his white underside, it meant that it was time for a belly rub. Sometimes I would get crazy like I was waxing a car, Dominic pawing joyfully at the air, fur flying, tongue out, and panting. Other times I would gently stroke and kiss the softness there, relishing his scent, which was somehow reminiscent of a warm roast chicken. My favorite place to kiss him was smack in the center of one of his big floppy ears. I could tell that he didn’t like to be touched there, but he made the supreme sacrifice and allowed me to drape those delicious suede pancakes over my face. The other area I loved was the crook of his neck, just under the jaw, where his skin was soft and loose. Somehow—perhaps through the wear of the collar, or simply with time—he had gone hairless there, so that what was left was only the creamiest of baby skin. I spent most of my time with him with my head burrowed in that spot.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “Hi,” I said, spooning up against him, my hands wrapped around his warm belly. He snuggled in closer to me as though I had been there all along, sighed a few times, then rolled over onto his back so I could rub him down. Somehow, this small moment felt more intimate than anything I had done with Garrett. I kissed his doggy cheek and he yawned in my face, a long, pronounced yawn showing all of his teeth and the speckled roof of his mouth. He was so completely himself, could not be anything other than himself, and would never understand why I might want to be anything other than me. It would be silly to him, crazy even. We were as we were and that was it. At sundown I went out to the rocks. The sunset was pink and orange, with the silhouettes of the palms etched into it. Stars were beginning to appear too, between me and the Santa Monica Mountains. I don’t know why but I started singing. I thought of the Sirens in The Odyssey, their island, how they called the men to them. The men were intoxicated by desire and drowned. What exactly were the Sirens? Were they mermaids? Sea deities connected to death, to be sure, but how did they get the men to do what they wished? Was it only their voices that called men forth or did they have some other kind of power? It seemed manipulative. Maybe they needed group therapy for romantic obsession. I also thought about Sappho, how her poems were actually songs. How she sang her poems and played the lyre. Most likely it was a sparse accompaniment, though we can only guess what the music sounded like. Theo had been right, it wasn’t really doable to bullshit about Sappho. Just because some historians projected their own garbage onto her, it didn’t mean I had to project mine. What had drawn me to her in the first place was a feeling, the visceral experience of the words, emotion carried by syllables. How the hell had this led me to theory, the opposite of feeling? I suppose I was scared of feeling. Also, you couldn’t get university money for feeling. Now I had to pretend the spaces left blank in her text were intentional. I could theorize this into being, hopefully convincing readers that the poems could be read in this way. It was true, we didn’t want to project our narratives onto her work. Academically, my conceit was interesting enough. But there was no way to deny that something beautiful and magical had once accompanied the poems and now was lost forever. The nothingness had once been full of music.

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

  He wears his heart on his sleeve as I often do and is kind, honest, empathetic and well-read. He is a left-leaning vegan Democrat (we depart here – I could never give up cheese, butter or ice cream) who won’t even kill a mosquito (we depart here too – I kill mosquitoes with fervor) and lives comfortably, but not luxuriously. For years I have questioned Michael’s insatiable need to always have more, bigger, better while I often buy clothing second-hand and love nothing more than a cabinet full of mismatched chipped china picked up at yard sales. #3 has strong beliefs and adheres to them, which impresses me. We spend the entire afternoon in bed until the intensity of the light from outside begins to fade. We have sex multiple times, reaching for each other in between conversations that ramble from our families to gardening to our favorite books. We make each other laugh and I like how when he laughs it is with a heartiness that makes me feel I said something truly witty. “I better feed you,” he finally says with a sigh. “I promised lunch and now it’s almost dinner and I think we’ve missed the concert.” “Yes, good idea. I’m famished,” I say. In the kitchen he directs me to sit on a wooden stool at the counter while he busies himself preparing salads and slicing freshly baked nine-grain bread. I watch intently, more than a little overwhelmed at being cared for this way. I ask for a job, but he shakes his head. Swinging my feet from my perch on the high stool and tapping my fingers on the butcher block in front of me, I ask again, telling him sitting still is not in my wheelhouse and is making me anxious. Laughing, he hands me a bowl of lemons and instructs me to juice them so that he can make us lemonade. My mind is officially blown. I can think of nothing sweeter and more sincere than a man making me fresh lemonade. My voice catches in my throat. “I think this may be the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me,” I say quietly. “Thank you.” “This?” he sweeps his arm across the counter. “This is very simple and it’s being served hours late, after I’ve practically starved you.” “No, really. Don’t underestimate yourself. No man has ever prepared a meal for me before. This is so lovely. I mean it. Thank you.” “Come on. I’m sure your husband or another man made you a few decent meals over the years,” he says. “No, none. The kitchen has always been solely my domain. Trust me. I’m touched and grateful.” Truthfully, the kitchen has been more than just my domain.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Jesus once again takes the initiative in the conversation, introducing the discussion of different types of “kingdoms.” “My kingdom isn’t the sort that grows in this world,” he says (18:36). (We note here that the regular translation, “My kingdom is not of this world,” has contributed to, and in its turn also generated, multiple misreadings of all four gospels, appearing to suggest that Jesus’s “kingdom” is straightforwardly “otherworldly.” The Greek for “of this world” is ek tou kosmou toutou; the ek, meaning “out of” or “from,” is the crucial word.) There is no question but that Jesus is speaking of a “kingdom” in and for this world. The steady buildup, over the previous chapters, of sayings, already noted, about “the ruler of this world” being judged and cast out and about the world being overcome make it clear that in the events now unfolding we are to see the ultimate showdown between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of the world brought to sharp focus in Jesus and Pilate. Part of John’s meaning of the cross, then, is that it is not only what happens, purely pragmatically, when God’s kingdom challenges Caesar’s kingdom. It is also what has to happen if God’s kingdom, which makes its way (as Jesus insists) by nonviolence rather than by violence, is to win the day. This is the “truth” to which Jesus has come to bear witness, the “truth” for which Pilate’s worldview has no possible space (18:38). It is at once exemplified, dramatically, by Jesus taking the place of Barabbas the brigand (18:38–40). This is the “truth” to which Jesus bears witness—the truth of a kingdom accomplished by the innocent dying in place of the guilty. And, in the broader Johannine perspective, we discover that the only word to do justice to this kingdom-and-cross combination is agape, “love.” The death of Jesus is the expression of God’s love, as the famous verse in John 3:16 makes clear. For John, it is also the expression of Jesus’s own love: “He had always loved his own people in the world; now he loved them right through to the end” (13:1). And, with that, John introduces the powerful and tender scene in which Jesus washes his disciples’ feet. In between these two, we find the “good shepherd” discourse, where the mutual love between Jesus and the father leads directly to Jesus’s vocation to “lay down his life for the sheep” (10:15).

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

  He produces a tube of coconut lotion from his bag and instructs me to lie down, saying it is his sole mission to take care of me. I remind him about my rib and he promises to be gentle. He is methodical, making sure not to miss a spot on my body and to give equal treatment to both sides. Every couple of minutes, he asks me how he is doing. I suggest that the only improvement would be if he could stop talking, that we should keep this professional. Ever since I got a massage when I was at a spa with Jessica and the masseuse made me open my eyes to look at a photo she kept in her pocket of a sighting she insisted she had of the Virgin Mary, I have believed silence during a massage is key. “I don’t want to get a bad Yelp rating. If I give you a happy ending, will you give me more or less stars?” “Depends how happy it is. Now shhhhh,” I say, closing my eyes again. When he has worked all the way down to my toes, his hands make their way back up my legs, slowly, teasingly, as he massages my inner thighs and finally puts his finger inside of me. He lingers there until I roll onto my back, sucking in my breath in pain as I do, having forgotten about my rib. He strokes his erect penis against me, starting to enter but then pulling out and telling me to hold on so he can get a condom, but his penis, warm and hard, is still pressing against me. “Please, no condom, I just want to feel you inside of me,” I say. He pauses and looks hard at me. “Promise that you’ll be safe with any other partner you may have?” he asks. “Yes, I promise, everyone else will use a condom,” I say. “Please.” This man is so methodical, inflexible with his routine and self-made rules, that I know what I am asking requires him to take a leap of faith, to trust me and to go outside his comfort zone. He asks again if I absolutely promise. I solemnly vow that I will and he pushes hard inside of me, both of us inhaling sharply at the same moment. The condoms are essential, but there is no denying that they dull the sensation for both of us. This skin-to-skin contact feels totally different, and I can tell that he feels it too. Whatever relationship is developing between us has just been kicked up a notch, as this particular degree of intimacy will be reserved for just the two of us, even if we date and sleep with other people. * On Monday morning, I call Lauren for advice on how to get rid of #7. “Is this a real question? You broke a rib in his bathroom while he lay passed out drunk on his bed.

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

  For years I have attempted to express my love to Michael through food, cooking his favorite meal of paella on his birthday and elaborate Indian curries, homemade chicken soup, Korean stir-fried noodles, and spanakopita for weeknight meals, leaving a plate of food on the counter for him to eat when he came home late and the rest of us had already eaten and cleaned up. He had exuberantly praised my cooking, always insisting the kids take notice of the healthy and creative meals I attempted. I was not physically demonstrative like he was and sometimes even pulled back when he kissed me hello, but food was a love language I had mastered, so it was a shocking blow when he told me recently that he would have traded all of my meals for some tenderness and affection from me. I had wept in response, insisting those meals were my tangible displays of the tenderness and affection he craved. He had shaken his head sadly, reiterating that it wasn’t what he had wanted, leaving me bereft and mystified. If that was the love I had to give and I had thought it had been enough but it wasn’t even close, what did I understand about loving people the way they needed to be loved? Would what I have to give be adequate for anyone? Now, watching #3 spread a faded gingham tablecloth on the picnic table outside, setting the vase of wildflowers in the center, bringing out his pitcher of lemonade and plates of salads and bread, I feel a stolen piece of myself being gifted back to me. Making someone a meal, it does count for something. What I gave Michael before he wholeheartedly rejected it, that counted for something too. We face each other at the picnic table and are shy again. We’ve spent hours naked in his bed, but facing each other now, eating, is yet another form of intimacy. I am barefoot and, as the ducks waddle under the table looking for scraps, they nibble on my toes. I’m squeamish about it so I swing my feet up onto the bench, realizing in horror that what I thought was mud squished between my toes is actually duck poop. Too embarrassed to call attention to it, I pull a handful of grass and try to wipe it off surreptitiously, but the blades of grass are narrow and flimsy, no match for runny duck poop, so now it’s streaking across my fingers and I can’t eat for fear that I will get E. coli by accidentally consuming it. I finally give up on both eating and cleaning my toes and walk around the table to sit on the bench next to #3 for a moment. “This day with you was absolutely delightful. And I know the planning and preparation of this meal doesn’t mean much to you, but it means everything to me. Also, I urgently need to wash my feet.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Instead I bought a sparkly raw chunk of amethyst in the palest purple, which was said to bring peace and stability. There was also a table where magic candles were sold: red for love and passion, green for money. I bypassed the love candle and selected an egg-colored one for clearing and needed change. Maybe I could just burn the past year away. — At home I ate pad thai and drank white wine, fed Dominic, and gave him his medicine. I’d known nothing about dogs before him—how or where to pet them—but he was patient with me, and I’d soon discovered his favorite places to be touched. His entire head was brown with the exception of two white patches: one a white stripe down the center of his forehead, which I stroked gently with one finger and called his angel mark, and the other a diamond shape on the back of his neck, an arrow pointing as if to say, Scratch me here . This was the area that he could not reach with his paws, and, when scratched, would lull him right to sleep. We would play a game where he gazed at me lovingly, trying to keep his brown eyes open, his lids growing heavy, then popping open, then heavier and heavier until they were sealed shut: just two stitches lined with little lashes. When he rolled over onto his back and showed me his white underside, it meant that it was time for a belly rub. Sometimes I would get crazy like I was waxing a car, Dominic pawing joyfully at the air, fur flying, tongue out, and panting. Other times I would gently stroke and kiss the softness there, relishing his scent, which was somehow reminiscent of a warm roast chicken. My favorite place to kiss him was smack in the center of one of his big floppy ears. I could tell that he didn’t like to be touched there, but he made the supreme sacrifice and allowed me to drape those delicious suede pancakes over my face. The other area I loved was the crook of his neck, just under the jaw, where his skin was soft and loose. Somehow—perhaps through the wear of the collar, or simply with time—he had gone hairless there, so that what was left was only the creamiest of baby skin. I spent most of my time with him with my head burrowed in that spot. I could have lived there. After we’d both had dinner, I touched the candle I’d purchased, rubbing my fingers up and down it, saying a little prayer for happiness. I said a prayer to the gods I wasn’t sure if I believed in—that I doubted even existed. I actually felt like the prayer was saying me.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  When he took Viagra she could always tell and she blamed it on the idea that he was no longer really attracted to her. So she had started having sex with younger men. At first it hadn’t seemed like a problem, but recently she was afraid that she would get caught and it would destroy her marriage. She had been getting sloppier with it: having sex in the back of her Mercedes SUV, compulsively sending text messages from her own phone. She could no longer stay off her phone for more than a few minutes, even during her daughter’s piano recital, and that scared her. She felt devastated when she could not get the attention of the young men in her orbit. Or, when she got their interest, they would have sex and she wouldn’t hear from them after. I felt excited by her situation. She was a little older than me and looked like the kind of woman who had never been ignored. With her long blond-streaked hair, large breasts, doe legs, and warm skin, she had probably always gotten all the attention she could need. But now she was seeing what age could do, what those of us who never looked like goddesses had always felt. Now she was mortal like the rest of us. “I’ve been going down on the tennis pros,” she said, in a way that was sort of proud, but also terrified. “I can’t seem to stop. But I keep getting hurt. I’ve done it with two of them, more than once. The older one is twenty-seven. It started out that we would just go get frozen yogurt and talk. Then one day we took one car and ended up having sex in a parking lot, and it started from there. The younger one is—he’s twenty-three. I bet the older one told the younger one that I was…a cougar or something. It’s embarrassing. I don’t need them to be in love with me, I just want them to be there for me when I get in touch. It hurts when I try to contact them and they don’t text back. Then I see them at the tennis club and they remember what I look like, and suddenly they want something. So I hear from them again. It’s always the same. But I don’t know how to stop.” “That’s the dopamine talking,” said Chickenhorse. “You want your high. Is it that you don’t know how to stop or you don’t want to stop?” “It’s that I can’t,” said Diana. Suddenly I felt a wave of compassion for her. I knew what it was like. I thought about what Claire said, about being careful to stay away from the freaks or else you become a freak. Diana was so hot and polished—the wealth pouring out of her Spandex—with her diamond rings, chypre fragrance, and golden highlights. Did she see everyone at the meeting as sad and pathetic?

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I was oddly intrigued by her positivity in the face of the abyss, as though I were an anthropologist encountering a new culture for the first time. But when she quoted E. E. Cummings in an attempt to say that we could only be ourselves, I decided she was stupid. Also, she used the words radical acceptance a lot. I didn’t want to radically accept anything. When I returned to Phoenix I wanted everything to be radically different. I didn’t like her. But compared to the disaster that was the rest of the group, Dr. Jude seemed like a winner. Our youngest member was Amber: mid-twenties, built like a female wrestler, sweatpants covered in dog hair. Amber had been in the group longest and was furthest along in terms of “doing the work” in the personal growth and love department. She made sure we all knew that. Immediately, in my mind I called her Chickenhorse, as her head was long and horse-shaped but she had a beaky nose and big pink gums that resembled a chicken’s comb and wattles. She seemed to get aroused by telling all of us we were wrong. Dr. Jude had encouraged Chickenhorse to start dating again, but she had not yet begun. Instead, she focused on problematic interactions she had with people in her life. “My boss is emotionally abusive. He’s victimizing me,” she said. “Can you tell us more?” asked Dr. Jude. “I can’t explain it, it’s just a feeling,” she said. “And as the victim, I don’t think I should have to explain myself.” “Understandable,” said Dr. Jude. “It’s my truth. And I’m afraid to bring it up to his supervisors, because this is what happened with my last boss too. He was another abuser; there’s a pattern of abuse. When I came forward about it at my last job, everyone started gaslighting me by acting like I’m the crazy one.” Chickenhorse also found herself in a similar altercation at home. Apparently she had “tattled” on her neighbors to the landlady for playing their music too loud. She left voicemails for the landlady every day for two weeks in addition to knocking on their door every night and yelling that nine p.m. was too late to make any noise of any kind. Now her landlady was accusing her of trying to start a rift in the building. She was trying to evict her for harassment, which was unfair, because it was she who had been harassed by their music. This, too, was her truth. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened to get Chickenhorse in here—only that it involved a married man and a restraining order. I wondered if she’d ever broken anyone’s nose.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I wondered if perhaps they all looked the same and he’d eventually grown bored of them. Maybe that was why he wanted a land woman with calluses on her feet, plain as I was. I was nothing like Aphrodite. But maybe that was the point. “You’re not going to abandon me now that you know what you know,” he said. “Are you?” “Me? No!” I was delighted. Did it take a mythological deformity to find a gorgeous man who was as needy as I was? “Good,” he said. He put my chin in his hand and gave me a wet kiss. I could smell the difference between the top and bottom of him. His head, shoulders, and neck had a clean smell, a fleshy, wet-skin smell. He smelled human, but better. Once in a while, the scent of his bottom half would waft up and it smelled like a fish market—not exactly dead fish, the way my fish-tank emergency had smelled in my youth, but it smelled like blood, the ocean, shit, seaweed…a little like pussy, actually. I felt almost as though his bottom half were some sort of pussy, although it was phallic in shape. Maybe because he was insecure about it, and I had always felt insecure about my pussy. Maybe it was because in seeing it, this part of him, the part he had concealed, I was, in a way, entering him. I thought about dominance and submission—how in some ways he had been the submissive one in eating my pussy. Yet in other ways I was dependent on him emotionally now that I had let him see me like that: splayed, surrendered, thrusting in his face. I was attached to him more than before, because I had opened for him like that. Maybe he felt that of me. Maybe he needed that before he could show me his tail. I wondered what was underneath that sash around his pelvis. I wondered if he had a cock. Did fish have cocks? “May I touch you?” I asked. He nodded. We began kissing again and I ran my hands through his hair, tickling the back of his neck. I rubbed his chest, smooth as a sculpture, fingering each of the nipples. I wanted to tease him, treat him like a girl a little bit, because I still felt vulnerable and also because I knew, somehow, he would like it. His nipples hardened like pellets under my fingers and he gasped. I touched his stomach. It was so smooth, not cut or built, but not roly-poly either. A little soft, full, but also firm. It was existing. He existed. His arm muscles felt stronger than his abdominal muscles and I wondered if this had something to do with the way he swam. He had no hair on his stomach or pubic hair sticking out up over the sash.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  It’s always the same. But I don’t know how to stop.” “That’s the dopamine talking,” said Chickenhorse. “You want your high. Is it that you don’t know how to stop or you don’t want to stop?” “It’s that I can’t,” said Diana. Suddenly I felt a wave of compassion for her. I knew what it was like. I thought about what Claire said, about being careful to stay away from the freaks or else you become a freak. Diana was so hot and polished—the wealth pouring out of her Spandex—with her diamond rings, chypre fragrance, and golden highlights. Did she see everyone at the meeting as sad and pathetic? Did I look as sad and pathetic to Diana as the other women looked to me when I came in? But after group she came up to me in the parking lot. “You seem like you’re the only one there who isn’t totally insane,” she said. “I wouldn’t bet on that.” I laughed. “Can I call you? If I have questions about what to do?” “Sure,” I said. “I don’t know that I will have the answers. But I can listen.” I saw the sadness in her eyes and the mess of it all. I saw her delusions and the way that things started between her and the older tennis pro as just friends. It was like Theo: you wanted to believe they liked you as a friend. She pretended that’s what it was, because if she admitted to herself what it really was at first she would have never gotten in his car. And she had needed to get in his car. “I’m just afraid of getting worse,” she said. “My son has a friend. He is sixteen and gorgeous. And I see the way he looks at me. I used to think it wasn’t that, it couldn’t be that.” “You’re so beautiful,” I said. “How could it not be that?” “Thank you,” she said. “But I’m…you should see the young girls at their high school. I thought there could simply be no way. But now that I’ve been with Ryan, the younger tennis pro, well, I realize what it is with my son’s friend. I’m not going to go there. At least, I don’t think I would go there. But it scares me that I feel tempted.” “Wow,” I said. “That’s heavy.” “Yeah,” she said. “I didn’t want to admit that to the group. I didn’t want to say I’ve thought about, you know, having sex with my son’s friend…I didn’t say it, because…it would be very illegal. I don’t know what the group’s policy is on that. If someone is tempted to do something illegal, are they forced to report it?” “I don’t know,” I said. “But your secret is safe with me. Do you feel any better now even just telling me?” “Not really,” she said. 32. Dominic was not doing well.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Or maybe I did feel sad. Was I angry about the bathroom itself? I wanted him to like me in the same way that I wanted him not to have a girlfriend. Or I wanted him to like me more than the girlfriend, to care a little more. I knew this was not the nature of the one-night stand. I knew that what I wanted was something that couldn’t exist. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t something I wanted. 21. At home I found a sleeping Dominic. “Hi,” I said, spooning up against him, my hands wrapped around his warm belly. He snuggled in closer to me as though I had been there all along, sighed a few times, then rolled over onto his back so I could rub him down. Somehow, this small moment felt more intimate than anything I had done with Garrett. I kissed his doggy cheek and he yawned in my face, a long, pronounced yawn showing all of his teeth and the speckled roof of his mouth. He was so completely himself, could not be anything other than himself, and would never understand why I might want to be anything other than me. It would be silly to him, crazy even. We were as we were and that was it. At sundown I went out to the rocks. The sunset was pink and orange, with the silhouettes of the palms etched into it. Stars were beginning to appear too, between me and the Santa Monica Mountains. I don’t know why but I started singing. I thought of the Sirens in The Odyssey, their island, how they called the men to them. The men were intoxicated by desire and drowned. What exactly were the Sirens? Were they mermaids? Sea deities connected to death, to be sure, but how did they get the men to do what they wished? Was it only their voices that called men forth or did they have some other kind of power? It seemed manipulative. Maybe they needed group therapy for romantic obsession. I also thought about Sappho, how her poems were actually songs. How she sang her poems and played the lyre. Most likely it was a sparse accompaniment, though we can only guess what the music sounded like. Theo had been right, it wasn’t really doable to bullshit about Sappho. Just because some historians projected their own garbage onto her, it didn’t mean I had to project mine. What had drawn me to her in the first place was a feeling, the visceral experience of the words, emotion carried by syllables. How the hell had this led me to theory, the opposite of feeling? I suppose I was scared of feeling. Also, you couldn’t get university money for feeling.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Suddenly I wanted to stay. For maybe the first time in my life, I didn’t want to abandon an uncomfortable feeling. I wanted to give her motherly love in the way she had tried to give me motherly love. Hers had always been from a distance, but it was there. And I wanted to give her motherly love in the way that she couldn’t give me motherly love: by staying, even when it was uncomfortable. Wasn’t it time that I showed up for her? I also wanted to give her love in the sisterly way I had given Claire and Diana love. The group had taught me how to do that, imperfectly, but I knew what it was now. You just sat there with someone and listened. That was all you had to do. I wondered if Diana had finished fucking her way through all the tennis pros—if she had moved on to her son’s friend. Or if she was doing better again. I thought about Claire and wondered if I stayed in Venice how long we would stay friends. How long she would stay alive. Had I chosen her as a friend because she had an end date too? I wanted to leave my suitcase at the foot of her stairs, sit down beside my sister, and tell her that I would stay for as long as she needed me. I wanted to put my arms around her and thank her for needing me, for being unafraid to share the same space. I wanted to thank her for asking, risking that rejection. But that magnet kept pulling me out. It was as though what was to come was already written and I was just fulfilling my part of the story. And so I held on to my suitcase firmly, and all I could say was, “I’ll come back. I promise, soon, I’ll be back.” I walked down a few houses with my suitcase so she and Steve couldn’t see me. Then I turned around toward the beach. Was this my last walk? The wind was blowing and it was cold. Annika hadn’t told me how cold Venice could be before I got there, even in summer. It was something I had to figure out for myself. With the wind blowing, the beach houses looked warm and inviting. From the outside they made it look so easy to be alive on Earth, to hunker down all cozy and warm. I wondered if it felt that way for the people inside them, like a relief to be out of the elements. Or did they quickly forget about the chill outside and take the warmth for granted? I sat on the rocks waiting for Theo. As I looked at my suitcase again, it filled me with sadness. How was I going to get underwater and stay there? What did he mean when he said he would help me?

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ‘Oh, but yes,’ smiled Mademoiselle Duphot, ‘I teached her. She was terribly naughty over her dictée; she would write remarks about the poor Henri—très impertinente she would be about Henri! Stévenne was a queer little child and naughty—but so dear, so dear—I could never scold her. With me she done everything her own way.’ ‘Please tell me about that time,’ coaxed Mary. So Mademoiselle Duphot sat down beside Mary and patted her hand: ‘Like me, you love her. Well now let me recall— She would sometimes get angry, very angry, and then she would go to the stables and talk to her horse. But when she fence it was marvellous—she fence like a man, and she only a baby but extrémement strong. And then. . . .’ The memories went on and on, such a store she possessed, the kind Mademoiselle Duphot. As she talked her heart went out to the girl, for she felt a great tenderness towards young things: ‘I am glad that you come to live with our Stévenne now that Mademoiselle Puddle is at Morton. Stévenne would be desolate in the big house. It is charming for both of you this new arrangement. While she work you look after the ménage; is it not so? You take care of Stévenne, she take care of you. Oui, oui, I am glad you have come to Paris.’ Julie stroked Mary’s smooth young cheek, then her arm, for she wished to observe through her fingers. She smiled: ‘Very young, also very kind. I like so much the feel of your kindness—it gives me a warm and so happy sensation, because with all kindness there must be much good.’ Was she quite blind after all, the poor Julie? And hearing her Stephen flushed with pleasure, and her eyes that could see turned and rested on Mary with a gentle and very profound expression in their depths—at that moment they were calmly thoughtful, as though brooding upon the mystery of life—one might almost have said the eyes of a mother. A happy and pleasant visit it had been; they talked about it all through the evening. CHAPTER 411B urton, who had enlisted in the Worcesters soon after Stephen had found work in London, Burton was now back again in Paris, loudly demanding a brand-new motor. ‘The car looks awful! Snub-nosed she looks—peculiar—all tucked up in the bonnet;’ he declared. So Stephen bought a touring Renault and a smart little landaulette for Mary. The choosing of the cars was the greatest fun; Mary climbed in and out of hers at least six times while it stood in the showroom. ‘Is it comfortable?’ Stephen must keep on asking, ‘Do you want them to pad it out more at the back? Are you perfectly sure you like the grey whip-cord? Because if you don’t it can be re-upholstered.’ Mary laughed: ‘I’m climbing in and out from sheer swank, just to show that it’s mine. Will they send it soon?’

• From The Pisces (2018)

  She took it, but instead of standing up, she brought me down to the floor to sit with her. With our backs pressed against the wall I held her hand with both of my hands. I softly stroked her skin, so that it was warmed. I felt nervous doing this, as though I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate. Why wouldn’t it be appropriate? We were sisters, after all. It was such a small act, but it felt so intimate. It was the gentleness and surety of the way I touched her hand that made me feel strange, as though I didn’t know I knew how to do this. I wondered who or what inside me was doing it. It was motherly, almost. “Do you want me to play with your hair?” I asked her. “Yes,” she said. I put my knees up so she could lean against them. Then I rubbed the back of her neck and the scalp area behind her ears. “Mmmm, that feels nice,” she said. “Lie back,” I said, folding my legs into a cross-legged position. She put her head in my lap and closed her eyes. I traced each of her eyelids with my pointer fingers. I softly rubbed her eyebrows and between them, moving in circles up to her forehead and slowly tickling her scalp. I became less aware of time passing. I seemed to drift in and out of myself for a little while, as though the act of giving this sweet nurture somehow relieved me of having to be a person—or made being a person bearable. But every time I’d almost let go of myself completely, disappear into the experience, I remembered that I had somewhere else I was supposed to be. I didn’t want to remember. I wanted to forget all about my plan. But I felt that I had to go through with it, as though some other part of me that was not my head or my heart—more like an internal magnet—was grabbing me and pulling me toward another magnet. “I’m going to have to go,” I said to her, giving her one final pat on the head. “Where are you going?” she asked, looking up at me. “The airport,” I said. “My cab will be here in a moment or two.” “The airport?” “Yes, I booked my ticket.” “Oh no, don’t go,” she said. “I felt like I should leave you guys alone.” “No, I don’t want that!” she said. “Please stay. Steve is at work all day and it’s going to be so lonely without Dominic. I’m scared to be alone.” “I can’t,” I said, standing up. “I have to get back to the university.” “But I need you,” she said.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Now I was crying because it felt like a miracle—not only that I would want to live at all but that I actually could. The time I cried the most was the day at dawn when he fucked me in the ass. The ass fucking did not hurt, or not in a way that made me wince. I did not cry from pain. This ass fucking was the tenderest fuck I could ever have imagined. Earlier on, when we were whispering to each other on the rocks, he had said, “I want to make you feel things you’ve never imagined and explore places you didn’t think could be explored.” “Oh yeah?” I had asked. “Yes,” he had said. “Like deep inside your asshole.” I’d laughed. But this was romantic. It felt like a loss of virginity in some way, and completely opposite what had happened in the hotel bathroom with Garrett. For one thing I was lying on my back, not doggy-style. Also, Theo licked my asshole a lot first. I was scared, of course, that it wouldn’t taste very good: as much as I washed before I saw him. I was afraid but he softly licked and sucked it, making me come with his finger gently rubbing my clit. I kept coming on his fingers, when he also put one in my asshole and kissed me from my belly to my neck to my face. Then he kissed my mouth and forehead. His cock was so hard it pushed all the way out of his foreskin, already glistening, straining for me. I grabbed him and it was warm and pulsing. “Are you ready?” he asked, and I nodded. He nudged my cheeks apart and opened my asshole slowly. First he put the tip of his dick inside me while continuing to rub my clit gently with the hand he hadn’t used to stroke my cheeks and crack. Maybe he knew about urinary tract infections? Could mermaids get them too? I loved his dick moving slowly in and out of my ass, a new intimacy. I never imagined that anal sex could be loving. I never thought of it as an intimate act, one of trust, only a pornographic and brutal one. So I cried a lot, but not because it hurt. 45. I didn’t mention Dominic to Theo again. It was taking more and more pills per day to keep the dog relaxed and asleep, and I went to three different vets to get more prescriptions. In an odd way I had become a drug addict of sorts, like Claire after all—going from doctor to doctor to get the pills. Only I wasn’t getting high on the medication itself, but on the time and intimacy with Theo that it afforded me. “We travel a lot,” I heard myself say to the veterinarian. “I’m going to be touring through Europe and I can’t bear to leave him home with a sitter. He’s my child, basically.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The most prolific of the mediaeval Latin poets is Adam of St. Victor, d. about 1180. He was one of the men who made the convent of St. Victor famous. He wrote in the departments of exegesis and psychology, but it is as a poet he has enduring fame. Gautier, Neale and Trench have agreed in pronouncing him the "foremost among the sacred Latin poets of the Middle Ages"; but none of his hymns are equal to Bernard’s hymns,2096 the Stabat mater, or Dies irae. Many of Adam’s poems are addressed to Mary and the saints, including Thomas à Becket. A deep vein of piety runs through them all.2097 Hymns of a high order and full of devotion we owe to the two eminent theologians, Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas. Of Bonaventura’s sacred poems the one which has gone into many collections of hymns begins, — Recordare sanctae crucis qui perfectam viam ducis. Jesus, holy Cross, and dying. Three of Thomas Aquinas’ hymns have found a place in the Roman Breviary. For six hundred years two of these have formed a part of the ritual of Corpus Christi: namely, — Pange, lingua, gloriosi corporis mysterium, Sing, my tongue, the mystery telling, And Lauda, Zion, salvatorem. Zion, to thy Saviour singing.2098 In both of these fine poems, the doctrine of transubstantiation finds full expression. No other two hymns of ancient or mediaeval times have received so much attention as the Dies irae and the Stabat mater. They were the product of the extraordinary religious fervor which marked the Franciscan order in its earlier period, and have never been excelled, the one by its solemn grandeur, and the other by its tender and moving pathos. Thomas of Celano, the author of Dies irae,2099 was born about 1200, at Celano, near Naples, and became one of the earliest companions of Francis d’Assisi. In 1221 he accompanied Caesar of Spires to Germany, and a few years later was made guardian, custos of the Franciscan convents of Worms, Spires, Mainz, and Cologne. Returning to Assisi, he wrote, by commission of Gregory IX., his first Life of St. Francis, and later, by command of the general of his order, he wrote the second Life. The Dies irae opens with the lines, — Dies irae, dies illa solvet saeclum in favilla, teste David cum sibylla. In the most familiar of the versions, Sir Walter Scott freely reproduced the first lines thus:— That day of wrath, that dreadful day, When heaven and earth shall pass away, What power shall be the sinner’s stay? How shall he meet that dreadful day?