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 Bad Behavior (1988)

  She smiled and looked at the happy lions snoozing on the designer sheets. He put his hand on hers. “The first night I came here, you were uncertain, kind of shy. You came out and admitted it, you asked me questions. You trusted me. Tonight when you were mad, you didn’t put on a phony smile. You let off steam, told me how you felt. You didn’t treat me like a customer. That’s nice. There’s hardly anybody that’ll be real with you like that anymore. Sometimes even my wife isn’t honest with me.” She looked up from the smiling lions. “You shouldn’t come to prostitutes looking for honesty.” “You’re not a prostitute. Don’t say that about yourself.” “What do you think I am?” “You just happen to be a pretty, sexy girl who, uh—” “I have sex for money.” “Well, all right.” He slapped her thigh nervously. “You’re right. You’re a prostitute.” It sounded so horrible. “But you’re still a wonderful girl.” He grabbed her and snuggled her. “You don’t know me.” “You’re wonderful.” He squeezed her like he wanted to break her ribs. She shoved her pelvis against him, threw her arms and one leg around him and squeezed with all her slippery might. She smiled with half-closed eyes, and bit her grinning lip. He squeezed harder. She jammed her elbows into his sides and he made a meek “whoof” noise. He dropped his arms, panting. “God, you’re strong. How did such a small person get so strong?” She grinned like a wolf. “I dunno.” She let go and rolled off, and padded into the bathroom. He followed her. “Are you a gymnast? A dancer?” “No. I used to work out with weights in school.” She dabbed between her legs with a nubbly white washcloth. “University?” “Yeah.” She grabbed a fat economy-size jar of mentholated mouthwash, threw her head back and dumped a big splash into her mouth. Her cheeks worked vigorously as she sloshed it to and fro. “Do you show your strength in the way you deal with people? I mean, outside of this place?” She spat a green burst of mouthwash into the sink and looked at him. “Yeah. I do.” “How do you make them aware of it?” She leaned against the sink, facing him with her arms behind her, her face thoughtful and soft. “I just...don’t let people sway my thinking. I don’t mold myself to fit what other people think I am.” She came forward and put her arms around him. “It’s interesting that you find strength in women attractive.” “Why?” “Don’t most older men like passive, dependent women?” “Oh, that’s an awful stereotype. Don’t believe it.” “Is your wife a strong woman?” “Yes, she is.” “Is she a lawyer too?” “No. She’s an antiquarian. She’s got a small rare-book business.” “Did you meet her in college?” “Yes.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She hung up rather gratified that she’d slighted and irritated him. She paced a bit more and then settled down in the living area, where she stared into space. She remembered a story she’d read once in which the main character, an older woman who was pining to see a boy she’d likely never see again, found accidental solace in late-night TV, where she saw an actor who looked like an older version of her young heartthrob. Leisha had, after all, wanted to be an actress at one point. Susan found the remote-control unit and flicked on the TV. It was on the pornographic cable station. No one there resembled Leisha. Neither did anyone on Get Smart, Love That Bob or the Japanese horror movie. The last channel she tried revealed a nameless old Italian thing about international espionage, which had a murky, kinky sexual flavor that held her interest for several minutes. And, in fact, there was a dark, intense woman who was playing an intellectual slut. If Leisha had ever become an actress, this was probably the kind of role she’d get, but Susan doubted she had the tenacity to land roles even like this one. She flicked off the TV. It embarrassed her to hold such a low opinion of Leisha’s ability, but it wasn’t a reflection of contempt. Leisha was simply meant to feel and be, not to do. But what an arrogant thing to close off Leisha’s possibilities like that. After all, no one who knew Susan six years before could have predicted exactly where she would wind up, and some people had been surprised. She put her head back on the couch and closed her eyes. She imagined Leisha as an actress in a sci-fi movie, playing a tiny queen in silver lamé. She saw her as a mother in a blue-and-white-checked blouse, kneeling on the floor to play a game with her child. She saw her as an aging hipster in a bar, her eyes made up in flames of black and silver, complaining about her current relationship to whoever would listen. She saw her as a bag lady. Then the images peeled away and she saw her standing in empty space, wearing the tight Capri pants she used to wear, a dreamy, half-smiling girl, her intensity momentarily muted by some inner reflection. She looked at this girl and realized that, with all the falseness and silliness between them, she had cared for her, and been cared for in return. She wanted to talk to her, and tomorrow she would try again. She sat in the living area for almost an hour thinking about what she might say to her, and what Leisha might say back.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Connie looked up. “I understand what you’re saying, but that wasn’t the case with Alice. I never acted vulnerable around her. And actually I don’t really agree with you. I may have done that to you because I responded to you sexually, but in general, I don’t.” Deana shrugged. “Well, I only know what I’ve seen. I’m just trying to come up with an answer for you because you seem so distressed.” She stood and collected the dishes. Her fingers and hands, Constance thought, had an exposed, strangely cold and receptive quality, like the nose of a puppy. As she was watching her clear the table and take the dishes to the kitchen, she could see the many aspects of her lover come forward and shyly recede with each movement; her rigid, stubborn arms, her strong shoulders positioned in a soft, demure curve, her stern chin, her luminous forehead, her odd way of stiffly holding back and gently, curiously moving forward—all spoke of her radial gradations of tenderness, sorrow and radiant, fanlike intelligence. — She woke up in the middle of the night, slumberously thinking of Franklin. “I love you,” he said. “I love you in a way I’ve never loved anyone.” “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “He’s just crazed,” said his friends. “Frank’s hyper, that’s all.” What would happen if she went to his party? Would he fall all over her and rave about how glad he was to see her, then disappear for the rest of the night? Would it hurt her feelings? She imagined Alice standing near a table of ravaged snacks, holding a plastic cup of alcohol, a little hat neatly sitting on her blow-dried head. It wasn’t true that Alice had no unhappiness. She had a schizophrenic mother who lived in a state mental hospital (Alice’s family wasn’t wealthy) and who sometimes didn’t know her. Alice felt that she wasn’t accepted as an artist by her circle, and sometimes would get so upset about it that she’d scream and throw things. “I feel like a piece of shit,” she once said to Connie. Connie turned and put her stomach and breasts against Deana’s warm back. She thought about the first woman she’d had a crush on, a beautiful stripper with black hair and bitter blue eyes. She had gone to see her strip and was irretrievably moved by the resigned but arrogant turn of her strong chin, the way she casually offered and rigidly withheld her body, as well as her tacky black lingerie. “You don’t love women. You’re just trying to live out some kind of porno fantasy invented by men with the corniest props you can find,” a gay woman had told her.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 2: As the Son of God “became man, and was circumcised in the flesh, not for His own sake, but that He might make us to be God’s through grace, and that we might be circumcised in the spirit; so, again, for our sake He was presented to the Lord, that we may learn to offer ourselves to God” [*Athanasius, on Lk. 2:23]. And this was done after His circumcision, in order to show that “no one who is not circumcised from vice is worthy of Divine regard” [*Bede, on Lk. 2:23]. Reply to Objection 3: For this very reason He wished the legal victims to be offered for Him who was the true Victim, in order that the figure might be united to and confirmed by the reality, against those who denied that in the Gospel Christ preached the God of the Law. “For we must not think,” says Origen (Hom. xiv in Luc.) “that the good God subjected His Son to the enemy’s law, which He Himself had not given.” Reply to Objection 4: The law ofLev. 12:6, 8 “commanded those who could, to offer, for a son or a daughter, a lamb and also a turtle dove or a pigeon: but those who were unable to offer a lamb were commanded to offer two turtle doves or two young pigeons” [*Bede, Hom. xv in Purif.]. “And so the Lord, who, ‘being rich, became poor for our [Vulg.: ‘your’] sakes, that through His poverty we [you] might be rich,” as is written 2 Cor. 8:9, “wished the poor man’s victim to be offered for Him” just as in His birth He was “wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger” [*Bede on Lk. 1]. Nevertheless, these birds have a figurative sense. For the turtle dove, being a loquacious bird, represents the preaching and confession of faith; and because it is a chaste animal, it signifies chastity; and being a solitary animal, it signifies contemplation. The pigeon is a gentle and simple animal, and therefore signifies gentleness and simplicity. It is also a gregarious animal; wherefore it signifies the active life. Consequently this sacrifice signified the perfection of Christ and His members. Again, “both these animals, by the plaintiveness of their song, represented the mourning of the saints in this life: but the turtle dove, being solitary, signifies the tears of prayer; whereas the pigeon, being gregarious, signifies the public prayers of the Church” [*Bede, Hom. xv in Purif.]. Lastly, two of each of these animals are offered, to show that holiness should be not only in the soul, but also in the body.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  It was like nursery rhymes; they were two cute girls walking down the street talking harmless nonsense, while all around them the world was in full operation. Desperate vendors displayed miserable items arranged on dirty blankets—T-shirts, ratty sweaters and vinyl belts, wrinkled old magazines, faded books and records. Garbage flapped in the streets and humans walked up and down the sidewalks, on their way to perform hundreds of actions in a remarkably orderly fashion. The sun was evenly warm and pleasant and it seemed as though this was all that anyone could expect out of life. Susan felt an ache of futile tenderness for Leisha and she impulsively reached out and stroked her four serial earrings the way she would pet a cat. It was sometime during her second year in New York that their conversations began to seem like frantic attempts to wring each other for support that neither could give. Leisha became involved with an abusive rock musician. She called Susan, it seemed, only when she was hysterical in a phone booth after a fight with him. When he left her for a singer, Leisha went to Bellevue, was discharged, slit her wrists, went home to Michigan and returned in a state of quasi-hysteria that remained constant for the rest of the time Susan knew her. She immediately moved back in with the musician, who had been dumped by the singer. She was dropped by most of her Michigan friends, who said that she was too self-indulgent and theatrical to cope with. Susan didn’t know if what they said was true or not, but it seemed unkind. She wanted to remain loyal to Leisha, but she was floundering so thoroughly herself that when they talked they seemed like drowning people clinging to each other for life.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He felt a sort of painful fondness. He remembered having a similar feeling when he ran into a girl he’d been crazy about in college and saw that she’d gotten fat and was buying a box of Pampers. It was strange to be having that feeling now for someone he met in a brothel. It was almost a year later when he went into Manhattan one afternoon to do Christmas shopping. The city had a different quality during the day. When he thought of daytime Manhattan, the first thing he imagined was a pretty young woman with dark, wavy hair and an unnatural burst of red on both cheeks, walking down the wide, crowded sidewalks more quickly and sharply than anyone had to, her worn, brightly colored shoes marching in close, narrow steps, her cheap, fashionable jacket open to show her belted waist, her handbag held tightly under her arm, her head turned away from anyone who might look at her, turned so she could skim the window displays as she clipped by, one hand jammed into a pocket of her jacket, nothing swinging loose. And then he thought of a lumbering, middle-aged man in a suit, his glasses on the tip of his nose, a lace of greasy crumbs on his lapels, his briefcase clutched at his side, rolling down the street as fast as his plump body would go, jacket flapping open, his bored eyes skimming quickly over the girl and every other girl like her as he rushed to the office. There was something sad and poignant about this image, but that didn’t prevent him from spending as much time staring at girls as he spent shopping. At the end of the day he’d found only two gifts—a sweater-guard made of twin silver bunnies for a teenaged niece and, for Sylvia, an elegant old-fashioned wristwatch from a Village watch shop. By the time he had found these gifts it was late afternoon and he was hungry. The watch shop was close to a particular café he liked because the food was good and because he enjoyed looking at the strangely dressed young people who often went there. The hostess, a tall girl with a high, perspiring forehead and pleasantly freckled cheeks, smiled as she ran toward him with a long plastic menu, and immediately raced him to a corner table that had yellow flowers in a green bottle on it. “Enjoy,” she panted, and ran off. He shook off his heavy coat and looked over the crowd with relish. He picked up the menu and glanced at the table on his left. From then on the rest of the people in the room became a herd of anonymous colored shapes that could’ve been eating their fingers for all he cared. Jane was sitting next to him.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  IN this parable there are three points to be noted. Firstly, the manifold misery of sinners: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem.” Secondly, is shown the manifold pity of Christ to the sinner: “A certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was; and when he saw him he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two-pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again I will repay thee.” Thirdly, the rule which is given to us for imitation: “Go, and do thou likewise.” I. On the first head it is to be noted, that men incur a fourfold misery when they sin. (1) They are deprived of heavenly glory: “went down from Jerusalem,” &c., Gloss. That man by the falling away of trifling, to miseries, and to the infirmity of this sad and changeable life, descends from the heavenly Jerusalem. The wicked shall hide themselves, “for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of His Majesty,” Isai. 2:19. (2) The wicked are subjected under wicked spirits: “and fell among thieves,” Gloss. In the power of the evil spirits: “and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil who are taken captive by him at his will,” 2 S. Tim. 2:26 (3) They are despoiled of their good possessions: “which stripped him of his raiment,” Gloss. It refers to the garments of spiritual grace: “into a malicious soul wisdom shall not enter; nor dwell in the body that is subject unto sin,” Wisdom 1:4. (4) They are wounded in their natural good things: “and wounded him;” bring wounds upon him, that is, sins, by which the integrity of human nature is violated. “If there were not natural good things vices could not harm them; but now what they do is to take away integrity, beauty, virtue, and salvation” (S. Augustine).

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “I was a regular of hers, and we saw each other on the outside. She had short hair like yours, only hers was orange.” He smiled, as though this disclosed a revealing element that firmly established a relationship between Stephanie and the orange-haired girl. “As a matter of fact, she used this place to collect material for her work. She was extremely bright and very aware of all the contradictions she embodied by being here.” He smiled gently. “She could talk about it endlessly.” She pulled off her skirt and lay down next to him, supporting herself on one elbow. They talked about fiction in The New Yorker and The Atlantic. She ranted against the trendy writers she despised. They talked about dance performances they’d seen. He described a piece at the Dance Theater Workshop in which the dancers waved large Styrofoam animals at each other and rolled around in paint. She thought it sounded idiotic, but felt tender toward his robustly curious delight in this goofy spectacle. “I have a Workshop membership and every now and then I get invited to fabulous parties, where all the boys wear long coats and earrings, and all the girls have hair like yours.” He beamed. She thought: At this rate, I’m not going to have to do anything. They talked about her past, her coldly perfect father, her sad, passive mother, her sister on lithium, her college major, her first romance. He listened gravely. He began to stroke her arm hairs, and then her arm. He had a seductive touch; she moved closer to him and he put his arms around her. He caressed her as if he were trying to discover the places she most inhabited—not romantically, but tenderly, with a sense of exploration. She was not aroused, exactly, but it was pleasant; it had been a long time since anyone had touched her like this. She murmured, “The way you touch reminds me of my mother.” “How so?” “Her touch is very seductive. I don’t even like her, but when she starts to touch me, I suddenly become totally vulnerable to her. It’s frightening.” He liked this a lot. “That’s beautiful,” he said. The intercom buzzed, announcing that they had ten more minutes. She “took care of him” quickly, and they stood to dress. She stuck her feet back in her high heels, and cheerfully tore the sheets off the bed. He zipped up his pants, handed her an extra twenty and told her it had been a relaxing hour. She said yes, actually, it had been for her too, and then trotted off to stuff the wadded-up sheets in a reeking wicker basket. She walked him downstairs, feeling ungainly and knees-out in her tight skirt. She was aware of him looming and lurking darkly behind her as she came under the speculative, moody gaze of three potential Romeos. “And here’s Perry,” said Christine brightly.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  He didn’t have to wait long. He didn’t know if he could have. She stuttered his name, once, and then he was rewarded with the intake of her breath that was often the only sound she made when she came. It was all held in her body, the pulled-tight muscles, her eyes shuttered closed and then opened on his face, the nails that found their place in his skin. And he followed, whispered her name, Madeline, Madeline, into her ear. Into her neck. Into the clover and the dirt and the corn next door and the wind that wasn’t. And most of all, to all the parts of Maddy that met him and matched him, that took him in fully. They stayed, tied together with spent desire and the recovering sound of their breaths. He tried to let his forehead rest to hers but ended up thunking her hard enough that they both said Ow and then started to laugh. When he finally rolled away, it seemed like the sun hadn’t moved at all, as though they’d stopped time in the middle of the field, in the middle of the day. A pinprick at the side of his hip; he swore out loud before he realized what it was. A bee or a pricker. From the sting of it, maybe both. “Aw, baby,” she said. She was trying not to laugh as he rolled on his side, both of them eyeing the rising pink welt on his bare hip. “It was worth it,” he said, as he moved back toward her, letting her head rest in the crook of his arm. The fences could wait. The clover would grow on its own. The bees would do what they did. And the prickers too. Whatever happened, it was worth it to be here, now, surrounded by the sting and the sweet. HONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING Emerald Kim wrestled her armload of groceries through the back door and kicked it shut behind her. Setting the bags on the kitchen counter, she glanced at the blinking light on the answering machine and pressed Play. “Kim, it’s Maria. I’ve been meaning to call you. Drake told me about Terry, and I’m so sorry—we both are. Keep in touch, and if there’s anything I can do, please let me know.” She paused. Kim could picture Maria’s blue eyes shining with sincerity, delicate features emanating concern. “As you may know, Drake’s not altogether certain about his job either at this point. Anyway, feel free to give me a call, Kim. Take care.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  When he got on the highway to Westchester, he used his pushbutton device to roll down the windows and drove too fast. When he arrived home he walked through the entire first floor of his house, turning on all the lights. His wife really was out of town, and he didn’t like to be alone in a dimly lit house. The refrigerator was clean and neatly stacked with food his wife had prepared for him. He got into his pajamas and slippers and made himself a sandwich of cold cuts and mayonnaise. He stood at the kitchen counter and ate the sandwich from a paper plate with a smiling cat face on it. He thought of Lisette lying across the bed like an arrangement of fruit, her shoulder snuggled against her cheek, watching him clean himself in the bathroom with a cheap pink loofah. She had a curious, sober look on her round face. She’s an intelligent girl, he thought. You can see it in her eyes. Why hadn’t he told her that he was a veterinarian? He had never lied to a prostitute before. He made himself a piña colada, with lots of crushed ice and a tiny straw—his wife had left a Dixie cup of red-and-white straws next to the blender—and went to bed. — The next night, he drove into Manhattan to see her again. “Boy, I’m glad to see you tonight,” she said as she clacked into the room with the sheet. “Are you? Why?” He stood to let her crack the sheet above the bed. “Oh, it’s been sort of a bad night. I couldn’t stand to deal with another idiot.” “I’m sure you get some pretty undesirable people in here.” “You said it.” “Nobody violent or anything, I hope?” “No, just stupid.” She floated the sheet down and turned to curl against him. Later, they lay folded together, listening to the sad gurgle of the fish tank. “Look at those poor, dumb things swimming around in there,” she said. “They haven’t got any idea of the filth going on in here.” “What did you mean about the men who come here? When you said they’re…just stupid.” He’d said “stupid” too loud.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She lay on Bobby’s futon and thought of Steve. He was a quiet man whom she considered brilliant. He worked in the public relations department of a magazine neither one respected. They saw each other almost every night, they had keys to each other’s apartment. They had private jokes and several cute nicknames apiece. Sometimes it seemed as if they spoke a language foreign to other people, that there was something closeted and defeated in their closeness. But they made each other happy. There was, in magazine-speak, a “real connection.” She opened her eyes. “Connection” was a vague word when applied to humans. What did it mean? She remembered a man she’d had a short affair with before she’d met Steve. He was a sweet, practical person who never read books, rarely went out, and didn’t seem to care strongly about anything except a few close friends and a martial art he practiced with fanatic zeal. They had nothing in common. In most ways he bored her. Yet when she touched him she felt a sensitivity in his body, a sense of receptivity that she rarely encountered in men. When he held her against his chest, she felt secure and protected in a way that had nothing to do with his muscular body. She felt that they were nourishing each other in some important, invisible way. But they could barely hold a conversation. At times she had thought that this was the only kind of connection you could have with people—intense, inexplicable and ultimately incomplete. During the months that her friendship with Leisha was beginning to wane, she would think, Well, I can’t talk to her and I don’t respect her, but she has a beauty that can perhaps only be appreciated on a nonintellectual level. Like a sudden flame of piercing movement in an unexceptional dancer, or the grace and spirit of an animal. She remembered them walking down St. Marks together doing an acting-class exercise. One person would say something and the other person would repeat it, with slight changes in words or expression. Susan thought it was pointless, but Leisha loved the exercise. “I love to walk down the street and look at people,” began Leisha. “You love to walk down the street looking at people.” “People look at me when I walk down the street.” “You like it when people look at you.” “You like it when people look at you.” “I’m scared when people look at me.” “I’m scared when people look at me.” “But you like it.” “Do you like it?” “It makes me nervous and I pull my earrings.” “You pull your earrings all the time.” “I hate to pull my earrings.” “I want to pet your earrings.” “You want to pet my earrings.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She took off her checked dress, button by button, very neatly. Her body was extremely pretty: white, curvy and plump. When she took off her high heels he saw that her legs were a little too short and her ankles a bit thick, but he liked them anyway. She folded her dress over the aluminum chair and turned to him with an uptilted chin, looking as if she might break into a trot, like a pony. She was proud of her body. Her pride was pitiful in the stupid room. It made him feel superior and tender. He gushed a smile and held out his arms. She met him with a surprisingly strong hug, the pouncing grab of a playful animal. “Goodness, you’re healthy.” She grinned and squeezed him. “What do you want to do?” “We’ll play it by ear. Don’t be nervous. It’s going to be lovely.” The way she touched became unsure. She talked to him as they touched, and her crude, frank words were like pungent flowers against the gray of her shyness. When he touched her hips, he thought he could feel her innermost life on the sensitive surface of her body. — “It was like a honeymoon,” he said to her afterward. “Just like I knew it would be.” “Oh, it was not.” Her face was in the mirror; she was swiping her mouth with lipstick. “Don’t be silly.” “Have you ever been married?” “Uh-uh.” “Then you don’t know what a honeymoon is like.” She was right, though. It wasn’t like a honeymoon at all. — She walked him to the door and he kissed her in front of the other girls. The stretch-pants woman smiled. “Good night, Fred,” she said.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Her neighbor rattled his castanets with ominous urgency. Constance slumped on the miserable old mattress that she and Deana had covered with fabric and large pillows and used as a couch. The mattress depressed her because it was like something that hippies would have in their apartment and because it was the same silly mattress that, in another life, had squeaked and rattled under the various activities of the two thousand and one dates. Yet, somehow she’d become attached to it, even though it was so mushy that when she sat on it, it felt as if her internal organs were collapsing into one another. She collapsed across it now, supporting herself on one elbow planted deeply in the mattress, and surveyed the dustballs collecting under the desk and chair. No matter how often she and Deana swept, these animate-looking things slunk from corner to corner and left their residue on the cats’ whiskers. The late afternoon light filtered in, eerie and faded through the gauzy float of dust, and cast an odd perspective on the room, at least from where she lay, making it look elongated and stark. The splintery floor looked craggy and forsaken with its dead dustball vegetation. The cats, suddenly alert, ran to the door. There were footsteps, a key in the lock: Deana entered, encumbered by the cats. “Boy, the guy downstairs is going bananas today,” she said. She tossed her hair off her forehead with the usual nervous gesture. “Didn’t you feed these guys?” “Yeah, they just got their faces out of the dish two minutes ago.” Connie rolled up and out of the mattress as gracefully as possible and put her arms around Deana’s waist and her head on her shoulder. “What’s this?” Deana tenderly felt the lumps of Connie’s spine, lingering in the spaces between the bones. “Nothing. I was just spacing out and the room was beginning to look like a set for Giant Ants from Pluto or something.” “What?” “I was in a weird mood.” “I guess so.” Deana rubbed her briskly, let go and turned toward the refrigerator. “I’m starving. I have to have some carrots or something.” “What do you want for dinner?” Connie put one foot on the other knee and stood like an aborigine in a textbook photograph. “I was thinking that we could order Chinese food from Empire. I’m too cranky to cook. And you’re too weird to cook, apparently.” She got the bag of carrots out of the refrigerator’s vegetable bin and began scattering the sink with bright orange peels. “Why are you cranky?”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The construction workers at the next table stared at them quizzically. She smiled pleasantly at them and returned her gaze to him. “You don’t know that.” He was so relieved at the ease between them that he put his arm around her as they left the restaurant. She stretched up and kissed his neck. “We just had the wrong idea about each other,” she said. “It’s nobody’s fault that we’re incompatible.” “Well, soon we’ll be in Manhattan, and it’ll be all over. You’ll never have to see me again.” He hoped she would dispute this, but she didn’t. They continued to talk in the car, about the nature of time, their parents and the injustice of racism. She was too exhausted to extract much from the pedestrian conversation, but the sound of his voice, the position of his body and his sudden receptivity were intoxicating. Time took on a grainy, dreamy aspect that made impossible conversations and unlikely gestures feasible, like a space capsule that enables its inhabitants to happily walk up the wall. The peculiar little car became a warm, humming cocoon, like a miniature house she had, as a little girl, assembled out of odds and ends for invented characters. She felt as if she were a very young child, when every notion that appeared in her head was new and naked of association and thus needed to be expressed carefully so it didn’t become malformed. She wanted to set every one of them before him in a row, as she had once presented crayon drawings to her father in a neat many-colored sequence. Then he would shift his posture slightly or make a gesture that suddenly made him seem so helpless and frail that she longed to protect him and cosset him away, like a delicate pet in a matchbox filled with cotton. She rested her head on his shoulder and lovingly regarded the legs that bent at the knee and tapered to the booted feet resting on the brakes or the accelerator. This was as good as her original fantasy, possibly even better. “Can I abuse you some more now?” he asked sweetly. “In the car?” “What do you want to do?” “Gag you? That’s all, I’d just like to gag you.” “But I want to talk to you.” He sighed. “You’re really not a masochist, you know.” She shrugged. “Maybe not. It always seemed like I was.” “You might have fantasies, but I don’t think you have any concept of a real slave mentality. You have too much ego to be part of another person.” “I don’t know, I’ve never had the chance to try it. I’ve never met anyone I wanted to do that with.” “If you were a slave, you wouldn’t make the choice.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The eyes expressed the fatigue and rancor of a small, hardworking person carrying her life around on her back like a set of symbols and circumstances that she could stand apart from and arrange. “Do you think that you’ll stay married?” “Oh, yes. I mean, my marriage with Roger is like...a project I’d never drop. And I want to have children soon.” Connie looked at the sadness in her jaw and the tired eyes, and she wanted to put her arms around Alice, to hold her and comfort her. Then either the face or her perception changed, and she was once again looking at a handsome, self-assured, wealthy woman with polite, curious, impenetrable eyes. “You know that we moved, don’t you? We bought a wonderful co-op in Soho. We’ll be having a party sometime soon. I should invite you.” “Oh, Alice!” A man in a paisley jacket with a smile like a bludgeon swooped toward them and took Alice’s elbow. “I must introduce you to Alex here.... Hi,” he said to Connie. “Are you a painter too?” Connie said no, and Alice waved a tiny good-bye with her fingers and went to meet Alex. Connie walked into the next room with her drink and got a hunk of chocolate cake and stood eating it out of one hand, dropping crumbs on the floor. A man asked her if she was a writer and she got involved in drunken conversations with three different people, in which almost nothing was said. The last was interrupted when Franklin appeared, his eyelids thick and purple, and took her by the arm. “Here’s a woman you’ve just got to meet. She’s incredibly intelligent and she’s a writer for The New Yorker. Cathy! Cathy! This is Constance Weymouth, an incredible writer, one of the most brilliant writers I know. You’ve got a lot to talk about.” An attractive gray-haired woman with large blue eyes stood facing her uncertainly but gamely. Connie shook her hand and they traded magazine gossip until it became apparent that while a great friendship could possibly be forged between them, the present situation precluded it. Two more couples shifted and undulated in the corner, and Connie watched them with a mournful and diffuse concentration. Their flat-footed steps were neither graceful nor dynamic, but their goodwill infused their clumsy gestures—the hand outstretched to squeeze a partner’s hand, the sudden eye contact—with a gentle, faded romance that made Connie want to go home and be with Deana. She found Franklin in the middle of two conversations about sculpture and Libya and said good-bye to him quickly. As she was putting on her coat, Alice turned toward her and smiled, holding a finger up in the paisley man’s face. “Are you leaving?” She came hurriedly across the floor. “Do you want to wait a little while? I’m going soon.” Connie felt an eagerness light in her eyes and then fade.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Ruth cried softly against my stomach. I ran my fingers through her hair. “I wanted him to love me so much. And after that he did. I knew he cared about me before, but I didn’t think he’d be able to accept that I wasn’t growing up to be a man. But after that day we didn’t pretend to hunt anymore. We just went for walks. He loved those hills more than any human being. I was so proud he’d take me up there with him.” She reached for a Kleenex and blew her nose. “Want to hear something funny?” she smiled. “Years later I reminded him about the man we met on the hill and Uncle Dale told me it never happened like that. He said it must have been one of the spirits of the Senecas who walk those hills. I didn’t know if it really happened or not. I do know that something changed between me and Dale that day, and I know it was teal hard for him to admit.” I rolled my head gently against the pillows until I found a place on my skull that didn’t hurt. My eyelids fluttered. “Jess, fight to stay awake, honey. Please. Wake up, Jess.” That’s the last thing I heard her say before I lost consciousness. In the days that followed I drifted in and out of awareness. A woman came into the bedroom with Ruth. Their hands felt reassuring on my body. Ruth propped me up while the woman cleaned a spot on my scalp that hurt real bad. When she was done she wrapped my whole head in gauze. Ruth helped me sit up and urged me to drink through a straw. I saw my Stone Butch Blues 287 blood was everywhere: sponge-print circles on the wall behind the bed, soaked stains in Ruth’s beautiful embroidered pillowcases. As the days passed I could hear the sound of Ruth’s weeping replace the steady hum of her sewing machine. Even in a state of semi-consciousness I knew I asked too much of Ruth this time. My blood was all over her life, and the stains weren’t going to scrub out. One morning I felt her lips on my forehead and opened my eyes. I forgot about my jaw and tried to speak. When I couldn’t, I grabbed my face. She put her hands over mine. “It’s OK, honey. You're getting better. Look at me. Let me see your eyes.” She held my head between her hands as though it was a crystal ball. When I saw her expression I wondered what had made me think I had to ask for her love.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She seemed fully prepared to sit in silence for the entire six-hour drive. He turned on the radio. “Would you mind turning that down a little?” “Anything for you.” She rolled her eyes. Without much hope, he employed a tactic he used to pacify his wife when they argued. He would give her a choice and let her make it. “Would you like something to eat?” he asked. “You must be starving.” She was. They spent almost an hour driving up and down the available streets trying to find a restaurant she wanted to be in. She finally chose a small, clean egg-and-toast place. Her humor visibly improved as they sat before their breakfast. “I like eggs,” she said. “They are so comforting.” He began to talk to her out of sheer curiosity. They talked about music, college, people they knew in common and drugs they used to take as teenagers. She said that when she had taken LSD, she had often lost her sense of identity so completely that she didn’t recognize herself in the mirror. This pathetic statement brought back her attractiveness in a terrific rush. She noted the quick dark gleam in his eyes. “You should’ve let me beat you,” he said. “I wouldn’t have hurt you too much.” “That’s not the point. The moment was wrong. It wouldn’t have meant anything.” “It would’ve meant something to me.” He paused. “But you probably would’ve spoiled it. You would’ve started screaming right away and made me stop.” The construction workers at the next table stared at them quizzically. She smiled pleasantly at them and returned her gaze to him. “You don’t know that.” He was so relieved at the ease between them that he put his arm around her as they left the restaurant. She stretched up and kissed his neck. “We just had the wrong idea about each other,” she said. “It’s nobody’s fault that we’re incompatible.” “Well, soon we’ll be in Manhattan, and it’ll be all over. You’ll never have to see me again.” He hoped she would dispute this, but she didn’t. They continued to talk in the car, about the nature of time, their parents and the injustice of racism. She was too exhausted to extract much from the pedestrian conversation, but the sound of his voice, the position of his body and his sudden receptivity were intoxicating. Time took on a grainy, dreamy aspect that made impossible conversations and unlikely gestures feasible, like a space capsule that enables its inhabitants to happily walk up the wall. The peculiar little car became a warm, humming cocoon, like a miniature house she had, as a little girl, assembled out of odds and ends for invented characters.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  The way he talked, out of the corner of his mouth, for instance, the tough air he put on when talking to a cop, the way he spat in disgust, the peculiar curse words he used, the sentimentality, the limited horizon, the passion for playing pool or shooting craps, the staying up all night swapping yarns, the contempt for the rich, the hobnobbing with politicians, the curiosity about worthless things, the respect for learning, the fascination of the dance hall, the saloon, the burlesque, talking about seeing the world and never budging out of the city, idolizing no matter whom so long as the person showed “spunk,” a thousand and one little traits or peculiarities of this sort endeared him to me because it was precisely such idiosyncrasies which marked the fellows I had known as a child. The neighborhood was composed of nothing, it seemed, but lovable failures. The grownups behaved like children and the children were incorrigible. Nobody could rise very far above his neighbor or he’d be lynched. It was amazing that any one ever became a doctor or a lawyer. Even so, he had to be a good fellow, had to pretend to talk like everyone else, and he had to vote the Democratic ticket. To hear MacGregor talk about Plato or Nietzsche, for instance, to his buddies was something to remember. In the first place, to even get permission to talk about such things as Plato or Nietzsche to his companions, he had to pretend that it was only by accident that he had run across their names; or perhaps he’d say that he had met an interesting drunk one night in the back room of a saloon and this drunk had started talking about these guys Nietzsche and Plato. He would even pretend he didn’t quite know how the names were pronounced. Plato wasn’t such a dumb bastard, he would say apologetically. Plato had an idea or two in his bean, yes sir, yes siree. He’d like to see one of those dumb politicians at Washington trying to lock horns with a guy like Plato. And he’d go on, in this roundabout, matter of fact fashion to explain to his crapshooting friends just what kind of a bright bird Plato was in his time and how he measured up against other men in other times. Of course, he was probably a eunuch, he would add, by way of throwing a little cold water on all this erudition. In those days, as he nimbly explained, the big guys, the philosophers, often had their nuts cut off—a fact!—so as to be out of all temptation. The other guy, Nietzsche, he was a real case, a case for the bughouse. He was supposed to be in love with his sister. Hypersensitive like. Had to live in a special climate—in Nice, he thought it was. As a rule he didn’t care much for the Germans, but this guy Nietzsche was different.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Virginia would spend afternoons with Lily after school. They’d change into jeans and T-shirts and drive into the mountains where they’d gone the first day. Sometimes they’d stop at a Dairy Queen and buy pink-spotted cups of ice cream in melting puddles of syrup. They’d sit on the car hood, slowly swinging their legs and eating the ice cream with pink plastic spoons, talking about the bossy girl in Lily’s home ec class, or the boy she thought was “different.” Virginia spoke about her high school days, when she was beautiful and popular and all the girls tried to be friends with her. She’d give Lily social advice about how to choose her friends. When they’d get to the mountains, they’d leave the car and walk. They’d become quiet and concentrate on the walk. They’d find paths, then break branches from trees and use them to clear their way. Lily would stop to examine plants or insects, her brow taut and puzzled. She’d pick up a lot of things to hold in her pockets, especially chestnuts. She would pick up a chestnut and hold it in her hand for the whole walk, stroking it with her fingers, or meditatively rubbing it across her lower lip. Other times they’d just sit at the kitchen table and drink tea. Virginia was astonished at the things she told Lily during these afternoons. Lily knew things about Virginia that very few other people knew. Virginia did not know why she confided in her. She had been lonely. The afternoon kitchen was sunny and lulling. Lily listened intently. She asked questions. She asked a lot of questions about Magdalen. “But don’t you like Magdalen?” she asked once. “Weren’t there good times when she was growing up?” “Magdalen could be the most lovely, charming child in the world—if she wanted to be. She’d give you the shirt off her back—if she was in the mood. If she was in the mood. But to answer your question, no, I don’t like Magdalen. I love her—I love her dearly—because I’m her mother and I can’t help it. But I don’t like her.” Lily stared at her, pale and troubled. “Don’t you ever repeat that. It’s very private. If Magdalen ever comes to me and says, ‘Mama, Lily says you don’t like me,’ I’ll say you’re lying.” As they talked, Lily rested her elbow on a small pile of schoolbooks. She carried these books to and from school every day. One of them had a split green cover that showed its gray cardboard stuffing and a dirty strip of masking tape running up its broken spine. Whenever Lily heard Jarold pull into the driveway, she would grab her books and leave the room. Jarold would come in and see her cup on the table, its faint sugary crust fresh around the bottom. He’d never say anything, but his mouth got sarcastic.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Give me your address.” He found a scrap of paper—the folded edge of a torn envelope—and scrawled his address in purple pen while the March wind raised his hair in an elegant, multidirectional headdress. A boy walked by in black leather, his bleached hair shaved into one strip down the center of his skull, painstakingly waxed and sculpted into the shape of a dragon’s back. She felt a pang of affection and reassurance, knowing that kids were still doing the same things they’d been doing for years, tinged with a touch of incredulousness that they hadn’t yet been able to think up anything else. “Here.” Franklin looked at her as he pressed the paper into her hand. “And Connie, I want you to know”—his eyes got that vague yet sincere and noble look they took on when he was about to talk about art or something—“I’ve thought about you a lot in the last year or so. I’ve really wanted to see you.” “Yeah?” “Yeah. Really.” His eyes looked so intensely vague, yet so sincere and so noble, she had the sense that the brown orbs could detach from their centers and wander all over his eyeball, slowly, with a certain majesty, each movement expressing the depth of his sincerity. “You could’ve called me.” “Yeah, I could have. But I was too ashamed.” He dropped his eyes and actually did look sincere for a minute. She cupped his face with her hand and kissed his cheek. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. They squeezed each other’s hands, communicated some sexual comradery and goodwill, and then walked away. Well, she thought, it was good to see Franklin, but she certainly wasn’t going to his party. It would be too depressing. It was strange to realize that the depressing part wouldn’t be her memory of his dizzy seduction attempt—she was never romantically interested in him anyway—but the presence of her ex-friend Alice, the mere mention of whose name had plunged her into a slight rancor. She eyed with disaffection and contempt the neatly hatted and booted, dyed and moisturized strangers marching toward her. Alice and Roger had been the first New Yorkers she had met in Manhattan. They had met accidentally, when Constance had sublet their loft with two other girls. She had been very impressed by them. They were so handsome—Roger, blond and tall, his potentially annoying symmetry broken by the stubborn cowlick on the back of his head, and Alice, tiny and sleekly dark, her short hair like the shiny, pleated wings of a beetle, her clothes fully color-coordinated and accessorized—very poised, and apparently secure.