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 Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  been corrupted by Lovell’s mistake—in particular, a set of numbers that defined how the guidance platform ought to be aligned with the stars. Once Houston had uploaded the correct values, Lovell began a process of righting the ship, rotating it and sighting on stars, until, after about half an hour, the men understood again how their spacecraft stood in relation to the universe around them, and to home. — It was just after nine o’clock on Christmas night in Houston when Mission Control offered another gift to the astronauts, one they’d been planning for some time. In place of the usual beeps and technical talk, NASA beamed up a recording of “Joy to the World” by Percy Faith and his Orchestra. Anders got a chill when it played; the music seemed to be coming from every direction, almost divine. Then he heard “O Holy Night” by the Norman Luboff Choir, but as the spacecraft turned in barbecue mode, the sound became warped. Anders had become so entranced by the music he’d forgotten to switch over between Apollo 8’s various antennas. Tuned wrongly in space, even Christmas music could become eerie. A few hours later, Anders reported that the crew had seen the Moon only once during its journey home. They were now 150,000 miles from Earth and 90,000 miles from the Moon. Five hours after that, they were 20,000 miles closer to home, and traveling about 3,800 miles per hour. By now, Apollo 8 had been in flight for more than five full days. Borman jokingly told Houston that they should “spread out one of those banners” in the Pacific Ocean splashdown area, and that Apollo 8 would try to “coast through it.” Twenty-four hours remained until scheduled splashdown. — Around five o’clock Houston time on the afternoon of December 26, after almost a full day of uneventful cruising, Apollo 8 reached the halfway point between the Moon and Earth. It had been thirty-seven hours since they left the Moon, but if all went well, it would take just another twenty hours to reach the Pacific Ocean. The astronauts had one television

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  They are putting this crew at risk. And yet there was no escape for any of them. So they stayed, droplets of the Hong Kong flu and who knows what else atomizing into the room. During dinner, Kraft got to talking to Lindbergh about airplanes, a nuts-and-bolts conversation between one of the great original aviators and an old flight test engineer. Seated nearby with the president, Borman stole glances toward Kraft’s table, envying the conversation he was missing. He also noticed that LBJ seemed irascible, describing his annoyance at a press corps—and maybe an entire swath of the American public—whose criticism of his Vietnam policies seemed to have beaten him down. Listening to the president rail against the media, Borman felt empathy for Johnson, not just for the stigma of Vietnam that would attach to his legacy, but for how it must feel to be a man in the final days of his standing, knowing that soon he would never again matter in the way he once had. Chapter Eleven

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  Megan comes out wearing a maroon silk shirt with puffed sleeves which is not open to immediate interpretation. One less button buttoned might mean sexy , but what you see suggests casually dressy . “Sit down,” Megan says, gesturing toward the couch. You both sit. “I like your place,” you say. “It’s small, but I can’t afford to move.” You hope the conversation improves. A few minutes ago you were colleagues headed out for a bite to eat. Now you are a man and a woman alone in a room with a bed. One of the photographs on the end table beside the couch is a large glossy of a younger-looking Megan onstage with two men. “That was my last play. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Bridgeport, Connecticut.” You pick up another picture, a boy with a fishing rod holding a trout, cabin and woods in the background. “Old boyfriend?” Meg shakes her head. She slides across the couch and takes the picture, studying it earnestly. “My son,” she says. “Son? ” Megan nods, looking at the picture. “This was taken a couple of years ago. He’s thirteen now. I haven’t seen him in almost a year, but he’s coming for a visit as soon as school lets out.” You don’t want to appear too inquisitive. This sounds like a dangerous subject. You haven’t heard about a son before. Suddenly Megan seems much less scrutable than you had imagined. She reaches across your chest to put the picture back on the end table. You can feel her breath on your cheek. “He lives with his father in northern Michigan. It’s a good place for a boy to grow up. They do boy things—hunting and fishing. His father’s a logger. When I met him he was an aspiring playwright who couldn’t get his plays produced. It was hard. We were broke and it seemed like everyone else had money. And I wasn’t the greatest wife in the world. Jack—that’s my ex-husband—didn’t want his son growing up in the city. I didn’t want to leave. Of course I didn’t want my son to leave either, but when the decision was made I was in Bellevue stupefied with Librium. Obviously in no position to fight for custody.” You don’t know what to say. You are embarrassed. You want to hear more. Megan sips her wine and looks out the window. You wonder how painful this is for her. “Did your husband commit you?” “He didn’t have much choice. I was raving. Manic depression. They finally figured out a few years ago it was a simple chemical deficiency. Something called lithium carbonate. Now I take four tablets a day and I’m fine. But it’s a little late to become a full-time mother again. Anyway Dylan—that’s my son—has a wonderful stepmother and I see him every summer.” “That’s awful,” you say. “It’s not so bad. I’m okay now, Dylan has a good life. I call that a good deal.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  Icies were suspected by many Black mothers of spreading polio through Harlem, and they were to be shunned, along with public swimming pools. Eventually, the icie-carts were banned from the streets by Mayor La Guardia. Wherever we were, as the shadows of late afternoon began to grow long, we began to wind our way homeward. We both knew that there was only so much we could presume before our freedom would be cut off, and we tried to keep this side of that line. Sometimes we goofed and overstepped some ignored rule, and then Gennie would be decked for a few days. For me at home, punishment was always much more swift and direct and short, and many days that summer my arms and back were sore from whatever handy weapon my mother could lay her hands on to hit me with. When Gennie was decked, I would go over to her house for the day. We sat and talked and drank coffee at the kitchen table, or lay naked on her mother’s sofa bed in the living room and listened to the radio and drank Champale, which the cornerstore man gave Gennie on credit because he thought it was for her mother. Sometimes we visited her grandmother who lived upstairs, and she would let us play her Nat King Cole records. Dance Ballerina dance and do your pirouettes in rhythm with your aching heart Gennie’s mother had raised Genevieve alone from the time she was an infant. Her father had left Louisa before Genevieve was born. I liked Mrs. Thompson. She was young, and pretty, and very reasonable, I thought, compared to my mother. She had been to college and that made her somehow even more acceptable in my eyes. She and Gennie could talk to each other in a way not possible between my mother and me. Louisa seemed very modern. Genevieve and she shared many of the same interests, and the same clothes, and I thought how exciting it must be to have a mother who wore and liked the same kinds of clothes you did. That summer, Genevieve met her father, Phillip Thompson, for the first time. She fell completely under his charming net. He was a quick and bitter man of much wit and little love, who preyed upon whatever admiration he could find. (Genevieve was fifteen when she first met her father. She was two months short of sixteen when she died.) Frequently, Gennie visited Phillip and Ella, the woman with whom he lived. She and Louisa began to fight more and more often over Gennie’s seeing her father. Louisa had worked fifteen years by herself to provide Gennie with a home and food and clothes and schooling. Now suddenly Phillip appeared, handsome and irresponsible, to sweep Gennie off her feet. Louisa Thompson was not a woman to bite her tongue. By the middle of the summer, and with Phillip’s prodding, Gennie decided she wanted to go and live with him and Ella.

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  Julienne opened her eyes and wondered if she’d fainted. She felt boneless, languid with warmth. As she realized the heat came from Lucien, her mouth curved with pleasure. She snuggled closer, and then stilled at the sound of his harshly indrawn breath and the feel of his erection against her thigh. She looked at him in dismay. He was suffering, and she’d been too sated to notice. He rose to his elbow and looked down at her, his face drawn tight. “I have to go.” She lowered her eyes to the hard ridge of his cock. Reaching down, she brushed the outline with a shy, tentative stroke of her fingers. It jerked beneath her touch. He pushed her hand away with a curse, then caught it back and kissed her fingertips to soften his rejection. “You mustn’t touch me, Julienne.” “But I’d like to,” she insisted. Her heart swelled, filled with tenderness for him. “That was so wonderful . . . what you did . . .” His gaze was achingly tender. “I’m glad you thought so.” Julienne pressed her lips to his. His hand slid to her nape, prolonging the kiss. Then he sighed and rolled onto his back. In a fluidly graceful motion, he left the bed. Lucien grabbed up his shirt and dropped it over her head. “Stay with me.” She shoved her arms through the sleeves and gripped his wrist quickly when he turned to leave. “I don’t think I can.” “But you wanted to watch me sleep.” When he hesitated, she pulled the counterpane back in invitation. He was so obviously torn that it touched her heart. Suddenly he blew out the candle and slid in beside her. He curled against her back, his knees behind hers, his lips at her shoulder. She clung to his arms as if she would never allow him to go, which was entirely the way she felt. With his warmth and scent surrounding her, she quickly fell asleep. Chapter Four “Oh, dear, this is dreadful. Absolutely dreadful. We’re ruined. You are ruined! What will we do? We shall be run from our home and—” “Aunt Eugenia, please!” Julienne threw up her hands. “Keep your voice down! The servants will hear you.” Eugenia Whitfield snapped her mouth closed and bit her lower lip. Julienne sank into her brother’s chair in the study of Montrose Hall and crushed his letter in her fist. The soul-deep satisfaction she’d enjoyed since leaving Lucien that morning was gone, replaced by weary resignation. “I am not ruined.” “You spent the night with Lucien Remington!” “Aunt Eugenia!” Eugenia squirmed in misery on the chaise. “I did not spend the night with Lucien Remington. I merely spent the evening in his establishment, which no one aside from you is aware of. I’d prefer to keep it that way, so lower your voice. Please!” “What will we do about Hugh?”

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  It was a strictly homemade job done by a Sufi Muslim on 125th Street, trimmed with the office scissors and looking pretty raggedy. When I came home from school that day my mother beat my behind and cried for a week. Even for years afterward white people would stop me on the street or particularly in Central Park and ask if I was Odetta, a Black folksinger whom I did not resemble at all except that we were both big Black beautiful women with natural heads. Besides my father, I am the darkest one in my family and I’ve worn my hair natural since I finished high school . Once I moved to East Seventh Street, every morning that I had the fifteen cents I would stop into the Second Avenue Griddle on the corner of St. Mark’s Place on my way to the subway and school and buy an english muffin and coffee. When I didn’t have the money, I would just have coffee. It was a tiny little counter place run by an old Jewish man named Sol who’d been a seaman (among other things) and Jimmy, who was Puerto Rican and washed dishes and who used to remind Sol to save me the hard englishes on Monday; I could have them for a dime. Toasted and dripping butter, those english muffins and coffee were frequently the high point of my day, and certainly enough to get me out of bed many mornings and into the street on that long walk to the Astor Place subway. Some days it was the only reason to get up, and lots of times I didn’t have money for anything else. For over eight years, we shot a lot of bull over that counter, and exchanged a lot of ideas and daily news, and most of my friends knew who I meant when I talked about Jimmy and Sol. Both guys saw my friends come and go and never said a word about my people, except once in a while to say, “your girlfriend was in here; she owes me a dime and tell her don’t forget we close exactly at seven.” So on the last day before I finally moved away from the Lower East Side after I got my master’s from library school, I went in for my last english muffin and coffee and to say goodbye to Sol and Jimmy in some unemotional and acceptable-to-me way. I told them both I’d miss them and the old neighborhood, and they said they were sorry and why did I have to go? I told them I had to work out of the city, because I had a fellowship for Negro students. Sol raised his eyebrows in utter amazement, and said, “Oh?

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  “One evening I went to Glenmoore’s room to check on his welfare. His chamber was freezing, since no one could be bothered to light the grate. The chamber pot was full and smelled dreadful. I couldn’t be certain when the last time was that someone had fed him.” Charlotte shuddered at the memory. “And you took care of him,” he finished, feeling a flicker of pride to which he had no claim. “I had to,” she murmured, stroking his palm with her fingertips. “Animals are treated better.” Sliding further atop the bed, Hugh rested against the headboard and pulled her back between his legs, wanting to hold her and offer whatever solace he could. He stroked his hands down her arms and kissed her shoulder. “You are so sweet, Hugh.” She wrapped his arms around her waist. He buried his face in her hair to hide his embarrassment. “Tell me more,” he said gruffly, deflecting the conversation away from him. “Glenmoore was ill but still lucid and sane. He didn’t know who I was, of course, but once I explained, he took my presence in stride, and we spoke at length. I really liked His Grace. He had a sense of humor and a zest for life I admired. I couldn’t leave him to suffer simply because Jared wished to be rid of him—” “Why was his wife not caring for him?” “Glenmoore wasn’t married at the time. He wed not long after I arrived.” Hugh rubbed his lips against her shoulder, frowning. “What woman in her right mind would marry a man in that condition? He had an heir and was unable to produce further issue. She had nothing to gain.” “There are reasons for everything, Hugh.” Charlotte rested her head back against his shoulder. “You must trust that hers were sound.” He snorted in disbelief, then said, “Carding must have been furious when you handed him his congé.” “Oh, he was,” she agreed, snuggling deeper into his embrace. “He ranted and railed, and threatened to destroy me so that no other man would ever have me.” She took a deep breath. “But after the despicable way he treated his father, I wanted nothing further to do with him. I told him to do his worst.” “Bloody hell,” he breathed, impressed. No one defied a duke, let alone a slip of a girl who relied on him to support her. Charlotte laughed. “I’m no martyr, so don’t think that. I was already planning to sever my arrangement with Carding, and I’d saved up enough to live comfortably. Offering to care for Glenmoore afforded me the time to discover what I wanted to do next and to help the old duke at the same time. It seemed a perfect arrangement.” “But something happened to your plans.”

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

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

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

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

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

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

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

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

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

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

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

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

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

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

• From What Are Biblical Values? (2019)

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

• From Story of the Eye (1928)

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

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

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

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

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

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

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

• From What Are Biblical Values? (2019)

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