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 Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us. Paul Farmer, the renowned physician who has spent his life trying to cure the world’s sickest and poorest people, once quoted me something that the writer Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of broken bones. I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion. We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity. I thought of the guards strapping Jimmy Dill to the gurney that very hour. I thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry. We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken. I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we’ve pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we’ve legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we’ve allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We’ve submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible. But simply punishing the broken—walking away from them or hiding them from sight—only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I shd have gone straight to the house, & darted over to it now to get my medicine case, fumbled to check it & close it, bounded out across the yard. My change of role made it possible for me to push him around, to enter with brusque disinterest into a kind of closeness to him that otherwise wd have remained unattainable—though it beckoned & was approached through a thousand hints & formalities. I tugged him, & he half slithered, to the step’s edge, & tugged at his hands too which were locked with desperate tightness around his leg. The sting was some way below, on the shallow, boyish incline of the calf—just where one would have stung, I thought—& looking pretty nasty. I whipped out the tourniquet & drew it to its tightest notch around his upper leg (I was severe as a matron with that stiff rubber strap). And fussily, necessarily, I shoved back the gathered folds of his djellaba, baring his thighs, glancing at them as well—though with a curiosity almost annulled by the ethical transfiguration I was enabled for a few minutes to undergo. Not so Hassan, however, who had been hovering excitedly behind me, in a state somewhere between despair & delight, & leant forward all helpfully at this point to draw the djellaba up tidily and expose the child’s private parts to his greedy glance—though after a second or two Taha brushed the folds of cloth forward again & gave Hassan, I noticed, a pained, abstracted look. As well he might, for the old lecher had hardly chosen the best moment—indeed it was a prurient piece of advantage-taking, & since it also satisfied a curiosity of my own I admonished him & sent him back indoors, before (& all this was only the matter of seconds) taking my scalpel to the boy’s inflamed leg and cutting out the sting with such delicate suddenness & firmness that he was amazed when I showed it to him between my fingers, & when he sat up & saw the blood trickling down his calf. I squeezed & cleaned & dressed the thing as best I could. Though I had been quick enough, some damage had been done & he was already a little feverish; so I picked him up—he was quite heavy & hung on to my neck with both arms, like a child not fully awoken—& took him in & laid him on the camp-bed in the room next to mine. He is there now, almost better I think, though I have put him to sleep. Hassan has been bringing in meals for us both—Taha cd manage for the first time this evening some broth, & I sat with him & ate some gazelle & some beans—excellently done, though I was stern with the cook & told him Taha was very ill & that he must treat him with consideration & not bother him.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  He was trembling, and I got up so that he could lie down. He stopped crying as his head hit the pillow. I began talking to him softly about trying to make arrangements so he could stay at home and how we needed to find help, and that the problem was that it really wasn’t safe for him to be alone. I could see his eyes drooping as I spoke, and within a matter of minutes he was sound asleep. I’d been with him less than twenty minutes. I pulled his blankets up and watched him sleep. In the hallway, I asked one of the nurses how he’d been doing. “He’s really sweet,” she said. “We love having him here. He’s nice to the staff, very polite and gentle. Sometimes he gets upset and starts talking about prison and death row. We didn’t know what he was talking about, but one of the girls looked him up on the Internet, and that’s when we read what happened to him. Somebody said someone like that is not supposed to be here, but I told them that our job is to help anybody who needs help.” “Well, the State acknowledged that he didn’t do anything wrong. He is innocent.” The nurse looked at me sweetly. “I know, Mr. Stevenson, but a lot of people here think that once you go to prison, whether you belong there or not, you become a dangerous person, and they don’t want to have nothing to do with you.” “Well, that’s a shame.” It was all I could muster. — I left the facility shaken and disturbed. My cell phone rang as soon as I stepped outside. The Alabama Supreme Court had just scheduled another death row prisoner’s execution. One of EJI’s best lawyers was now serving as our deputy director. Randy Susskind interned with us as a law student when he was at Georgetown University and became a staff attorney right out of law school. He proved to be an outstanding litigator and an extremely effective project manager. I called Randy and we discussed what we would do to block the execution, although we both knew that it was going to be difficult to obtain a stay at this stage. I told Randy about my visit with Walter and how painful it had been to see him. We were silent on the phone for a while, something that happens a lot when we talk.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  He looked at her and said, “Yes.” She seemed very excited, her brown eyes as bright as a little child’s. He thanked the cabdriver and gave him some money and followed the girl into one of the tiny cubicles. She was so much more relaxed than the other woman. He didn’t have to explain anything to her. She lay down and touched his face gently. She kissed him and pushed her breasts next to his chest. She felt warm and good. She didn’t seem to notice his pants were still on, or the catheter, the rubber urine bag, or any of that. She loved him, they loved each other on the bed in the little room, for what seemed a very long time. She didn’t care about the war or any of the other things. They laughed and rolled on top of each other, hiding under the blankets, and talked about a lot of things. She told him she had a kid, a little girl, and they lived in the city. It was very lonely she told him and she really didn’t want to do what she was doing, but it was the only way she could make money for herself and her baby. He held her in his arms as if she were his sister as well as his lover. There was a loud knock on the door and the cabdriver yelled in a taunting voice that it was time for him to get out. But she laughed and said something in Spanish and they stayed in bed almost an extra ten minutes over the limit. When she was getting dressed she asked him if he wanted to get married. She told him she loved him very much and wrote down her address on a small piece of paper. “Here. You take this,” she said. She helped him put on his shirt and buttoned each one of the buttons for him. “Come see me tomorrow at four,” she said. “You can live with me. Dinero ,” she said, and he gave her fifteen dollars and she helped him into the chair. All the way back to the village he thought about her and how they would live together and learn each other’s language. He saw them sitting naked in bed together studying their books, the child playing at their feet. But then he began to think she hadn’t really meant it and he didn’t go back the next day at four. He went to a different place and lay with a different girl. * * * He went out almost every night after that, coming in every morning just after the sun came up and sleeping until four in the afternoon. Then he would get up and get ready to go into the city. Rahilio would call a cab for him and he would wait for it outside the gate of the Village of the Sun.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  in place and not skip to Whitney Houston, who was belting out “I’m Every Woman.” I managed to keep the rope moving for about five or six rotations—with girlish double-dutch chants going through my head—before I tripped myself. Ness was talking to Geno and pointed to a ringside box with three lights—green, yellow, red. The Bell. I soon learned that The Bell runs continuously whenever the gym is open. Like a traf fic cop, The Bell dictates the gym’s movements: three minutes of action (green), one minute rest (red). (Yellow means thirty seconds left: better throw your punch!) After two rounds of rope, I nodded to Ness, who sat me down and said, “Give me your hand.” I held out my right hand; he took it and then spread my fin gers apart. He unfurled one of the cotton rolls Geno had given me and began to wrap my hand. It felt odd to have his big brown hand take my pale pink one and gently wrap the mate rial—stronger than gauze, more like swaddling—between my fingers and around my wrist and across my palm. Ness ex plained that wrapping hands is crucial to protect the knuckles. As he wove the cloth between my fingers, stopping occasion ally to test the tightness of the layers, I felt shy, as if we were on a first date. His grip was firm but, in a way, delicate, which surprised me. He finished with my right hand and began with my left, and again, tenderness mixed with the heat I could feel coming off his body. He was preparing me, and once more he warned me about getting the wraps right: too loose, he said, and you can break your own hand throwing a punch. Then Ness showed me how to stand like a boxer, at an an gle, with my left foot planted firmly before me and my right foot skewed. You have to keep your knees slightly bent, he told me, so you can bounce easily and swerve quickly. Hold

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  People laughed and I smiled. An older woman spoke up. It was Armelia Hand. “We don’t have much, Mr. Stevenson, but you have someone we love in your care. Anything we have, you have. These people have broken our hearts,” she said. I began answering questions and listening to comments and testimonials about Walter, the town, race, the police, the trial, and the way the whole family was now being treated by people in the community. The hours passed, and I knew that I had probably exhausted whatever helpful information could be obtained from Walter’s family, but folks still wanted to talk. There seemed to be therapeutic relief in voicing their concerns to me. Before long I heard some hopefulness in their questions and comments. I explained the appeals process and talked about the kind of issues that were already apparent from the record. I began to feel encouraged that some of the information I provided maybe eased their anxiety. We started to joke some, and before I knew it I felt embraced in a way that energized me. An older woman had given me a tall glass of sweet iced tea as I sat there listening and responding to questions. I drank the first glass thirstily because I was a little nervous (the tea was very good). The woman watched me drain the glass and smiled at me with a look of great satisfaction. She quickly filled the glass, and no matter how much or how little I drank, she minded my glass religiously the entire evening. After over three hours, Minnie grabbed my hand and announced that they should let me go. It was close to midnight, and it would take me at least two hours to get to Montgomery. I said my farewells and exchanged hugs with practically everyone in the room before stepping out into the dark night. December is rarely bitter cold in South Alabama during the day, but at night the temperatures can drop, a dramatic reminder that it’s winter, even in the South. Without an overcoat, I cranked up the heat for the long drive home after dropping Minnie and Jackie back at their house. The meeting with the family had been inspiring. There were clearly a lot of people who cared deeply about Walter and consequently cared about what I did and how I could help. But it was also clear that people had been traumatized by what had happened. Several of the people I met weren’t actually related but had been at the fish fry on the day of the crime. They were so deeply disturbed by Walter’s conviction that they, too, had come over when they heard that I was coming. They needed a place to share their hurt and confusion.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  Then I lay awake in my turn, as his breathing slowed, his mouth squashed open against me, the tiny stirring of his moustache hairs on my shoulder. It seemed to have been dumbly agreed that we were back together again. I even believed it myself when we got to my room and we were at each other, just like the first day we met. He said he hadn't come for a fortnight, he'd never gone so long, his cock stood up like a soldier, he wanted me to wank him off so he could admire the sight of such plumes of sperm. "I was saving it for you," he said, and my heart sank, though I pretended to be flattered. Then afterwards each of us took the other and I was utterly enclosed in his unguarded fucker's tenderness—I mean lover's tenderness, I knew he loved me in each strong inward push, his face bobbed down to mine in a cross-eyed blur of passion; he couldn't sense the little clench of denial amid my own shudders and grunts. It was cold by the morning, at least outside the gathered fug of the duvet. I jumped straight into jeans, two vests and my thickest sweater, and he was shivering as he wiped a hole in the window and peered across the misty garden to the dark mass of the school. I felt rather guilty and hugged him from behind and looked out over his shoulder; but there were no ancient rites today, just steam blowing from the kitchen vents and a dull glow of stained glass. It fed a fantasy of power, being fully clothed and holding a naked man in my arms. "What are your plans?" he said mock-formally when he was dressing. It was a notion of his that I always had plans, and that making them constituted one of my main satisfactions; and I was starting to realise that any plans I announced to him were a defence against his own vagueness and that he knew this, and knew that my days in reality were as plotless and inevitable as his own. "My first plan," I said, "is to take you out for some breakfast. You worked hard last night, young man, you deserve it." "And your second plan?" he said, hopping towards me as he tugged on stiffish old socks, contriving to stumble and pull us both back on to the bed. "My second plan is to pack you on to a tram, bus or other public conveyance and get you off to your place of work." He was putting a line of kisses up the side of my neck, pushing me gently backwards, till he lay half-covering me. "And your third plan, Mr Manners?" There was a hint of aggression in this game, which seemed like a distant parody of "witty" sex-talk in an old film-comedy.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I even believed it myself when we got to my room and we were at each other, just like the first day we met. He said he hadn't come for a fortnight, he'd never gone so long, his cock stood up like a soldier, he wanted me to wank him off so he could admire the sight of such plumes of sperm. "I was saving it for you," he said, and my heart sank, though I pretended to be flattered. Then afterwards each of us took the other and I was utterly enclosed in his unguarded fucker's tenderness—I mean lover's tenderness, I knew he loved me in each strong inward push, his face bobbed down to mine in a cross-eyed blur of passion; he couldn't sense the little clench of denial amid my own shudders and grunts. It was cold by the morning, at least outside the gathered fug of the duvet. I jumped straight into jeans, two vests and my thickest sweater, and he was shivering as he wiped a hole in the window and peered across the misty garden to the dark mass of the school. I felt rather guilty and hugged him from behind and looked out over his shoulder; but there were no ancient rites today, just steam blowing from the kitchen vents and a dull glow of stained glass. It fed a fantasy of power, being fully clothed and holding a naked man in my arms. "What are your plans?" he said mock-formally when he was dressing. It was a notion of his that I always had plans, and that making them constituted one of my main satisfactions; and I was starting to realise that any plans I announced to him were a defence against his own vagueness and that he knew this, and knew that my days in reality were as plotless and inevitable as his own. "My first plan," I said, "is to take you out for some breakfast. You worked hard last night, young man, you deserve it." "And your second plan?" he said, hopping towards me as he tugged on stiffish old socks, contriving to stumble and pull us both back on to the bed. "My second plan is to pack you on to a tram, bus or other public conveyance and get you off to your place of work." He was putting a line of kisses up the side of my neck, pushing me gently backwards, till he lay half-covering me. "And your third plan, Mr Manners?" There was a hint of aggression in this game, which seemed like a distant parody of "witty" sex-talk in an old film-comedy. "Well, after that I've got to, er, I've got to do some teaching." He lay very still, and I could feel his heart beating indignantly. "Are you teaching Luc?"

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Speed's support of the students is particularly surprising in view of his extreme vulnerability as a Negro businessman. "There has been," he told me, "much reprisal," but he preferred that I remain silent about the details. Haley drove me to the hotel that he had found for me in one of the two Negro sections of Tallahassee. This section seems to be the more disreputable of the two, judging at least fr om its long, unpaved streets, the gangs of loud, shabby men and women, boys and girls, in fr ont of the barbershops, the poolroom, the Coffee House, the El Dorado Cafe and the Chicken Shack. It is to this part of town that the F.A.M.U. students come to find whisky-this is a dry county, which means that whisky is plentiful and drunkards numerous-and women who may or may not be wild but who are indisputably 628 OTHER ESSAYS available. My hotel is that hotel found in all small Southern towns-all small Southern towns, in any case, in which a hotel f( >r Negroes exists. It is really only a rather large fr ame house, run by a widow who also teaches school in Quincy, a town not far away. It is doomed, of course, to be a very curious place, since everyone fr om N.A.A.C.P. lawyers, visiting church women and unfrocked preachers to traveling pimps and the simply, aimlessly, transiently amorous cannot possibly stay anywhere else. The widow knows this, which makes it impos sible for her-since she is good-natured and also needs the money-to turn anyone away. My room is designed for sleeping-possibly-but not for work. I type with my door open, because of the heat, and pres ently someone knocks, asking to borrow a pencil. But he does not really want a pencil, he is merely curious about who would be sitting at a typewriter so late at night-especially in this hotel. So I meet ]., an F.A.M.U. student who is visiting a friend and also, somewhat improbably, studying for an exam. He is nineteen, very tall and slender, very dark, with extraor dinarily intelligent and vivid brown eyes. It is, no doubt, only his youth and the curious combination of expectancy and vul nerability, which are among the attributes of youth, that cause me to think at once of my younger brothers when they were about his age. He borrows the pencil and stands in the door a moment, being much more direct and curious about me than I am able to be about him.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  Luc stirred against me—the shattered glass's rhythmic tinkling was St Narcissus striking three. He sighed and burbled but seemed not to wake, or if he did he pretended sleep. I eased on to an elbow and studied his face. I could just make out, under the veined and silvery eyelids, the rapid osculations of the eyes that mean dreaming, or in a waking person the secretive reflex when a wish is glimpsed and then denied. I wondered what townscape he was rambling through and who he fell in with in that luminous world of his own invention, that no one but him would ever see and that he himself would prodigally forget. Chapter 18 "I'm afraid he's not back yet. But come in." "Oh." I was a few minutes late myself, delayed perhaps by unease about this meeting as much as by tiredness and a light hangover and the magnificent shock of last night. It made me feel like a kid again, going to call on Dawn's parents, when the outrageous fact of what we did together seemed to bulge upwards like some monstrous erection under the tea-table—one saw the cups begin to tilt . . . I was imagining the weeks to come, the shabby little subterfuges Luc and I would be put to. I thought he'd probably be better at it than me: it was part of his daily reckonings with his mother, whereas I flinched guiltily from cheating her. I followed her into the kitchen. "Where has he gone?" I asked. I'd wanted him to be there as I arrived, very much. "He stayed overnight with the Dhondts, their boy Patrick is a great friend of Luc's from school." A capable subterfuge already. "Oh yes, I've met him. I ran into them at the Town Baths one morning." "It was a rare chance, then. Luc normally hates swimming. He doesn't like anything where you have to take your clothes off. He was so tall as a little boy, and ashamed of being skinny." "I hadn't thought of him as being skinny," I said, as if willing to entertain the idea, still feeling his warm dips and curves in my palms. It was clear to me the whole preoccupation with fatness and weight was the mother's not the son's. "I'm making some coffee, just as usual," she said. Then, "So are you pleased with his progress?" "Oh, he's terribly good," I said. "I'm sure he's right just to concentrate on the Dorset English exam—I know you were worried about it, but I can promise you he'll do well. He's going to do his first big essay for me this week, on Wordsworth and childhood." I beheld its careful pages already, and myself correcting them firmly, reluctantly.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  Come for me, I willed as I felt you tensing again, come for me. I pistoned my hand in and out of your dripping cunt, jack hammering you well beyond the point you thought you would not reach again. The first one was for the dream. The second was all mine. What came after that was yours and yours alone, until you simply could not, and lay dazed and sweat-damp in my arms. The sun was just barely up, the day bluish-gray at the cor ners of the curtains. Pulling the covers back up over you, I bent and kissed you as you lay there, spent and sleepy, eyes glazed. You stroked the side of my face and smiled a little weary smile. I kissed your palm and you blushed, looking amazingly like the pictures I’ve seen of you as a little girl. “You’re getting up now?” you mumbled, letting your eyes close again. “Yes, baby. Time for me to start the day.” “Nnnpfth. Schrec^lich. Morning people.” Your grumbles grew more distant with each syllable. “Go back to sleep,” I replied, “it isn’t morning for you yet.” “Mmmmmmphh,” you sighed in agreement as you rolled over, cocooning yourself in the eiderdown, already asleep again. I stood and walked toward the door, licking my lips to savor the taste of you. How pleasantly ironic, I smiled to my self as I walked naked down the narrow hallway to the shower, feeling my clit burning with quiet impatience, on my way to revisit the juncture of wakefulness and dream. JACK MURNIGHAN Rooster wife is dead; with her dies all the guilt, most of the joy, all the wonder that remained. Dead, she’s like a hole in my memory, or like a light that shines on everything but itself. What’s my mind doing to me? Most the time it’s hard even to remember her face, but damn if I don’t remember the ones before, the one during. Only one; seventy-one years and only one other. I had been married to Eve for what seemed like for ever and then there she was, like a flake of hot fire dropped out of the sky. So innocent and unsuspecting, with eyes made to paint sadness on and an ass that made you want to take her like you take a calf for branding. God, I was double her age plus eleven; no business pulling off those cotton pants with all the damnation that lay beyond. Life’s a shitkicker, all right; all those years faithful as an anchorite and then that. What is a

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  I have assured his future; he does not like Italy; he will be able to realize his dream, which is to return to Gadara and open a school of eloquence there with a friend; he has nothing to lose by my death. And nevertheless the slight shoulder moves convulsively under the folds of his tunic; on my fingers I feel those tender tears. To the last, Hadrian will have been loved in human wise. Little soul, gentle and drifting, guest and companion of my body, now you will dwell below in pallid places, stark and bare; there you will abandon your play of yore. But one moment still, let us gaze together on these familiar shores, on these objects which doubtless we shall not see again. . . . Let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes. . . . TO THE DEIFIED AUGUST HADRIAN SON OF TRAJAN CONQUEROR OF THE PARTHIANS GRANDSON OF NERVA HIGH PONTIFF HONORED FOR THE XXIIND TIME WITH THE TRIBUNICIAN POWER THREE TIMES CONSUL TWO TIMES HAILED IN TRIUMPH FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY AND TO HIS DEIFIED SPOUSE SABINA ANTONINUS THEIR SON DEDICATES THIS MEMORIAL TO LUCIUS AELIUS CAESAR SON OF THE DEIFIED HADRIAN TWO TIMES CONSUL BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE A reconstruction of an historical figure and of the world of his time written in the first person borders on the domain of fiction, and sometimes of poetry; it can therefore dispense with formal statement of evidence for the historical facts concerned. Its human significance, however, is greatly enriched by close adherence to those facts. Since the main object of the author here has been to approach inner reality, if possible, through careful examination of what the documents themselves afford, it seems advisable to offer the reader some discussion of the principal materials employed, though not to present a complete bibliography, which would extend beyond the scope of the present volume. Some brief indication will also be given of the comparatively few changes, all of secondary importance, which add to, or cautiously modify, what history has told us. The reader who likes to consider sources at first hand will not necessarily know where to find the principal ancient texts relating to Hadrian, or even what they are, since most of them come down to us from writers of the late classical period who are relatively little read, and who are ordinarily familiar only to specialists. Our two chief authorities are the Greek historian Dio Cassius and the Latin chronicler known by the name of Spartianus.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I laughed even more. “Well, I guess I try to be.” She took my hands and rubbed my palms. “Well, it hurts to catch all them stones people throw.” She kept stroking my hands, and I couldn’t think of anything to say. I felt unusually comforted by this woman. It would take me nearly five hours to drive back to Montgomery once I got things settled for Mr. Caston and Mr. Carter. I needed to keep moving, but it felt nice sitting there with the woman now earnestly massaging my palms in a way that was so sweet, even though it seemed strange, too. “Are you trying to make me cry?” I asked. I tried to smile. She put her arm around me and smiled back. “No, you done good today. I was so happy when that judge said that man was going home. It gave me goose bumps. Fifty years in prison, he can’t even see no more. No, I was grateful to God when I heard that. You don’t have anything to cry about. I’m just gonna let you lean on me a bit, because I know a few things about stonecatching.” She squeezed me a bit and then said, “Now, you keep this up and you’re gonna end up like me, singing some sad songs. Ain’t no way to do what we do and not learn how to appreciate a good sorrow song. “I’ve been singing sad songs my whole life. Had to. When you catch stones, even happy songs can make you sad.” She paused and grew silent. I heard her chuckle before she continued. “But you keep singing. Your songs will make you strong. They might even make you happy.” People buzzed down the busy corridors of the courthouse while we sat silently. “Well, you’re very good at what you do,” I finally said. “I feel much better.” She slapped my arm playfully. “Oh, don’t you try to charm me, young man. You felt just fine before you saw me. Them men are going home and you were fine walking around here. I just do what I do, nothing more.” When I finally excused myself, giving her a kiss on the cheek and telling her I needed to sign the prisoners’ release papers, she stopped me. “Oh, wait.” She dug around in her purse until she found a piece of wrapped peppermint candy. “Here, take this.” The gesture made me happy in a way that I can’t fully explain. “Well, thank you.” I smiled and leaned down to give her another kiss on the cheek. She waved at me, smiling. “Go on, go on.” W Epilogue alter died on September 11, 2013.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Personable, cheerful, and realistic, she told me that other, less fortunate people with her medical condition were wheelchair-bound and lived in full-time residential institutions. “Almost all of my memories as a child are of me together with my family,” she said. “I was always with them and they took care of me when I was sick. Anything I’ve needed, they try to help. I know they’ll be there for me no matter what happens.” Debbie said that sometimes she wishes she could be more self-sufficient, get out more with her friends, and maybe even marry and have children. A tinge of rebelliousness surfaces in her voice: “Right now I think my parents are too involved in my life. I see a lot of them. I like having them near, but I think they’re too close, and they worry about me and want to know too much. It’s hard to feel like I have a real life separate from them.” Aside from her work, Debbie spends as much time as she can with her network of friends. She’s had two romantic relationships, one in college and another more recently. Wryly, she told me about her father’s pretended nonchalance as he “happened” to drop in on her when she was being picked up by a male friend. “I know they’re overprotective because they’re so used to taking care of me, but puh-leeze, I am thirty-eight years old!” When I asked Debbie how she would have been affected had her parents divorced when she was young, she answered, “I imagine almost everything would have been different.” She envisioned that she would have lived with her mother and sister and seen much less of her father and brothers. Cognizant of how much her parents supported each other in caring for her, she concluded, “I think Mom would have worn herself out taking care of me and then I don’t know what would have happened to her or to me!” Although she saw her parents’ marriage “with much rosier glasses” when she was younger, Debbie feels strongly that their marriage was and is a successful union. “You have to expect to take the bad with the good,” she said, “to make the most of what life gives you and to make your own happiness.” Realizing that her condition placed burdens on her family, Debbie said, “I worry that having me to take care of has kept my parents from doing other things, especially now that Dad has retired. He plays golf and I know that they’d like to travel more. They make sure there’s someone staying here when they do go away, but I know Mom worries about me and she doesn’t like to stay away too long. But they’ve told me all along that I’m a great gift, not a burden. And most of the time I believe them.”

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  My education began, as does everyone's, with the people who 790 OTHER ESSAYS towered m·er me, who were responsible fi:>r me, who were f( mning me. They were the people who loved me, in their fashion-whom I loved, in mine. These were people whom I had no choice but to imitate and, in time, to outwit. One realizes later that there is no one to outwit but oneself. \Vhen I say that I was luckier than the children are today, I am deliberately making a very dangerous statement, a state ment that I am willing, even anxious, to be called on. A black boy born in New York's Harlem in 1924 was born of south erners who had but lately been driven fr om the land, and therefore was born into a southern community. And this was incontestably a community in which every parent was respon sible for every child. Any grown-up, seeing me doing some thing he thought was wrong, could (and did) beat my behind and then can)' me home to my Mama and Daddy and tell them why he beat my behind. Mama and Daddy would thank him and then beat my behind again. I learned respect fi>r my elders. And I mean respect. I do not mean fear. In spite of his howling, a child can tell when the hand that strikes him means to help him or to harm him. A child can tell when he is loved. One sees this sense of con fidence emerge, slowly, in the conduct of the child-the first fr uits of his education. Every human being born begins to be ciPilized the moment he or she is born. Since we all arrive here absolutely helpless, with no way of getting a decent meal or of moving fr om one place to another without human help (and human help exacts a human price), there is no way around that. But this is civi lization with a small c. Civilization with a large Cis something else again. So is education with a small e different from Ed ucation with a large E. In the lowercase, education refers to the relations that actually obtain among human beings. In the uppercase, it refers to power. Or, to put it another way, my f.1thcr, mother, brothers, sisters, lovers, fr iends, sons, daugh ters civilize me in quite another way than the state intends. And the education I can receive fr om an afternoon with Pi casso, or from taking one of my nieces or nephews tn the movies, is not at all what the state has in mind when it speaks of Education. DARK DAYS 79 1 For I still remember, lucky though I was, that reality altered when I started school.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  HANNE BLANK And Early to Rise | o your way of thinking, it isn’t morning until the sun comes up. Even then sometimes it isn’t, for you are loath to ad mit the coming of a new day until you’ve determined that you are ready to be a part of it. I have known you to spend entire mornings, even into the afternoon, lying in bed with your lap top computer, working on some part of your dissertation for hours with the curtains still drawn. Eventually you emerge, as bleary as if you’d been sleeping all the while. “Beautiful morn ing, isn’t it, Lilja?” you call cheerfully into my study as you stumble toward the shower, sometimes as late as two o’clock, finally condescending to formally enter the day. And so for your sake I will say it was the middle of the night, despite the clock on the bedside table that gleamed a red and resolute 5:45 A.M., when I awoke to find you waiting,

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Arthur was seventeen, and came from Stratford East. I had been out all that day, and when I was having dinner with my oldest friend James I nearly told him that I had this boy back home, but swallowed my words and glowed boozily with secret pleasure. James, besides, was a doctor, full of caution and common sense, and would have thought I was crazy to leave a virtual stranger in my home. In my stuffy, opinionated family, though, there was a stubborn tradition of trust, and I had perhaps absorbed from my mother the habit of testing servants and window-cleaners by exposing them to temptation. I took a slightly creepy pleasure in imagining Arthur in the flat alone, absorbing its alien richness, looking at the pictures, concentrating of course on Whitehaven’s photograph of me in my little swimming-trunks, the shadow across my eyes … I was unable to feel anxiety about those electrical goods which are the general currency of burglaries—and I doubted if the valuable discs (the Rattle Tristan among them) would be to Arthur’s taste. He liked dance-music that was hot and cool—the kind that whipped and crooned across the dance-floor of the Shaft, where I had met him the night before. He was watching television when I got in. The curtains were drawn, and he had dug out an old half-broken electric fire; it was extremely hot. He got up from his chair, smiling nervously. ‘I was just watching TV,’ he said. I took my jacket off, looking at him and surprised to find what he looked like. By remembering many times one or two of his details I had lost the overall hang of him. I wondered about all the work that must go into combing his hair into the narrow ridges that ran back from his forehead to the nape of his neck, where they ended in young tight pigtails, perhaps eight of them, only an inch long. I kissed him, my left hand sliding between his high, plump buttocks while with the other I stroked the back of his head. Oh, the ever-open softness of black lips; and the strange dryness of the knots of his pigtails, which crackled as I rolled them between my fingers, and seemed both dead and half-erect. At about three I woke and needed a pee. Dull, half-conscious though I was, my heart thumped as I came back into the room and saw Arthur asleep in the gentle lamplight that fell across the pillows, one arm sticking out awkwardly from under the duvet, as if to shield his eyes.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I thought of him with such tenderness in the shower and the changing-room that I was hardly aware of the bustle around me. I had not been good enough to him. I had often been sarcastic, and used him as a kind of beautiful pneumatic toy. He was the only true, pure, simple thing I could see in my life at the moment, and I wished I was with him, and wanted to thank him, and say I was sorry. I decided I would go up to the Queensberry and hope to catch him before he went out. Then I would go to James, who was true and pure too of course in his way, and worrying about his looming court appearance. I went through the deeply familiar streets and squares, through the equally intimate cooling and soft-fingered evening. Then there were the high plane trees and the bold splashing fountains—my mood escaping all the while from its bleak morning pacings and ambling into a more romantic melancholy. I became somehow picturesque to myself, prone as ever to the aesthetic solution. I was about to go round to the side of the hotel, where I was well enough known now, but I was suddenly tired of my laundryman’s-eye view of life, and swung up the main shrub-flanked steps and into the hall. I had become so used to the back stairs that I was quite surprised to see svelte couples coming down for pre-dinner drinks, others checking in, their anxieties melting as uniformed boys magicked their monogrammed luggage away. One or two people, waiting to meet friends, half-concentrated on the lit showcases where scarves, watches, perfumes and china figurines were displayed, or revolved the squeaking postcard racks, soothed by the customary London views. I loitered too for a minute, charmed—or at least amazed—by all this bought pleasantness. And then I saw a wonderful young man, perhaps about my age, and with just that air of bland international luxury about him, come from the lift and saunter towards the cocktail bar. He was tall and graceful but gave the impression of weighing a great deal; as he approached I was startled by his deep-set brown eyes, long nose and curling lips and his trotting, swept-back hair; as he walked away I took in his maroon mocassins, his immaculate pale cotton trousers, through which the shadow of his briefs could be seen, the cashmere slip cast around his shoulders. I felt he must belong to some notable Latin American family. It hardly required thought to follow him, though I gave him a second or two to get settled. I feared he might have gone to sit at a table or have joined his diplomat father and ragging, adoring younger brothers and sisters. But no, he was perched at the marble curve of the bar, and I was able to greet Simon—all in braid and tumbling his cocktail-shaker—as I took up a convenient high stool.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  We waited in silence for the lift to rattle down. I knew I was failing to make the capable response, and sensed his disconcertment—it was tinged with a panic that he overrode with a fresh avowal: "I can't quite explain how it is that you've helped me so much with all this, but you have—oh, you've helped in a dozen ways with the proofs and your patient work, but that's not quite it." He hesitated. "I've sometimes felt like protracting the catalogue even longer, just to keep you busy and looking after me, to keep us looking after each other." There was a ping! and the doors slid open on to an aroma of cigar-smoke, like the still fresh trace of a wanted man. We stood inside, the doors closed, and after a second or two of ascent Paul kissed me on the cheek and flung his arms around me, banging his briefcase against the small of my back. I stared over his shoulder at my reflection in the lift's steely wall. I found "Printemps" quite sinister, a little smaller than life-size, with a steady grey eye and a torrent of red hair. The right breast was shiny and worn, as if often rubbed, like the burnished toe of a saint, by day-dreaming devotees. The figure ended at the knee and stood on a dulled and chipped get plinth. It gave a troubling sense of merely suspended animation, as though waiting to catch the viewer off-guard. I felt there should be a slot in the base for a coin that would set the head nodding, the eyes rolling, the lower lip and chin dropping and snapping shut; perhaps it would utter a slow, repeating laugh; then it would freeze again, just as it was, with the mockery and promise of its stare and its smile. Chapter 22 It was party time again for the Spanish girls: their voices cut like buzz-saws through the background of guitar-music and chatter. Christmas, of course. And what a lot of friends they had. I looked down into the utter stillness of the back garden, the bare trees, the canal, the rotted water-door of the darkened school. It was only three but the light was going, I couldn't quite find the little statue under the apple-boughs: it pleased me that I'd never been down there and didn't know what it was. Relentless flamenco chords, and the proud rapping on the box of the guitar taken up, stamped out hilariously on the bare floor and sending its tremor through the ancient joists. I felt neglected but at the same time sniffily anti-social, as I sometimes had in childhood, when Charlie's parties had no role for me. I pictured the goings-on like the fake head-tossings and eye-flashings of a sixties "Latin American Fiesta" LP sleeve. There was a knock at the door.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  The illumination of dawn was as nothing compared with the smile which arose on that overwhelmed countenance. Some days later I saw that same smile again, but more hidden, and ambiguously veiled: at supper, Polemo, who dabbled in chiromancy, wished to examine the hand of the youth, that palm which alarmed even me by its astonishing fall of stars. But the boy withdrew it and closed it gently, almost chastely. He intended to keep the secret of his game, and that of his end. We made a stop at Jerusalem. There I took occasion to study the plan for a new capital which I proposed to construct on the site of the Jewish city laid low by Titus. Good administration in Judaea and increasing commerce with the Orient showed the need for developing a great metropolis at this intersection of routes. I had in mind the usual Roman capital: Aelia Capitolina would have its temples, its markets, its public baths, and its sanctuary of the Roman Venus. My recent absorption in passionate and tender cults led me to choose a grotto on Mount Moriah as best suited for celebrating the rites of Adonis. These projects roused indignation in the Jewish masses: the wretched creatures actually preferred their ruins to a city which would afford them the chance of gain, of knowledge, and of pleasure. When our workmen approached those crumbling walls with pickaxes they were attacked by the mob. I went ahead notwithstanding: Fidus Aquila, who was soon to employ his genius for planning in the construction of Antinoöpolis, took up the work at Jerusalem. I refused to see in those heaps of rubble the rapid growth of hatred. A month later we arrived at Pelusium. I arranged to restore the tomb of Pompey there: the deeper I delved into affairs of the Orient the more I admired the political genius of that vanquished opponent of the great Julius. Pompey, in endeavoring to bring order to this uncertain world of Asia, sometimes seemed to me to have worked more effectively for Rome than Caesar himself. That reconstruction was one of my last offerings to History's dead; I was soon to be forced to busy myself with other tombs. Our arrival in Alexandria was kept discreetly quiet. The triumphal entry was postponed until the empress should come. Though she traveled little she had been persuaded to pass the winter in the milder climate of Egypt; Lucius, but poorly recovered from a persistent cough, was to try the same remedy.