Yearning

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 In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “They moved away.” “Do you miss them?” “Yes, I do.” They pulled up to Miri’s house. “Thanks for the ride,” she called, getting out of the car. “My pleasure, Miss Mirabelle.” Dr. O was everyone’s favorite, which is why Miri couldn’t help wishing she had a father just like him. Somewhere Miri had a father but she didn’t know where. What kind of guy leaves his seventeen-year-old pregnant girlfriend and never even sees his baby? She’d asked Rusty more than once when she was little, “Where is my daddy? Who is my daddy?” She could tell, even then, Rusty wasn’t going to answer that question. [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00006.jpg] [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00006.jpg] JOY TO THE WORLDDEC. 15 — The blanket of snow dumped on Elizabeth over the past two days seems not to have deterred bundle-laden shoppers. With Christmas lights strung across streets, stores gaily decorated for the season, and the ever-present sound of carols, shoppers seemed bent on proving they could have a good time no matter what the weather. Leaving their cars behind because of dangerous driving conditions, they waited last night for buses downtown on Broad Street, contributing to the heavy burden already placed on public transportation during and after Friday’s snowstorm. “It’s Christmas,” said Myrtle Carter, trying to balance her packages while keeping track of two young children. “Joy to the world, and all that.” 2 [image "image" file=Image00005.jpg] [image file=Image00005.jpg] MiriSunday was frigid, gray and windy. At Newark Airport a new low of six degrees was recorded at 7 a.m. But Miri, asleep in her bed under a puffy quilt, didn’t give two figs about the weather. She was dreaming of the mystery boy she’d danced with last night. She was good at that, at deciding what she’d dream about, then doing it. When her alarm went off at 8 a.m. she reached out and turned it off. She threw on her robe and hustled to the kitchen where she prepared two eggs boiled exactly three minutes, dark rye toast slathered with butter, fresh-squeezed orange juice and coffee with real cream and two sugars. She decorated the tray with a paper doily and a flower plucked from the arrangement on the hall table, a gift from Rusty’s boss and his wife. Her mother’s real name was Naomi, but because of her auburn hair, which was long and thick, everyone called her Rusty. People turned to stare when she walked by, as if maybe she was a movie star. Too bad Miri didn’t get her mother’s hair or her green eyes. Nobody stared when she walked by. When she presented the breakfast tray, Rusty acted all surprised, like she’d forgotten it was her birthday. Miri thought about the bed jackets displayed at Nia’s. If she had had the money she’d have bought one so Rusty could have breakfast in bed in style on her birthday. “That was delicious,” Rusty said when she’d finished her breakfast.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  All the whole history shall be painted upon the wall of our house, thou shalt be renowned throughout all the world. And it shall be registred in the bookes of Doctours, that an Asse saved the life of a young maiden that was captive amongst Theeves: Thou shalt be numbred amongst the ancient miracles: wee beleeve that by like example of truth Phryxus saved himselfe from drowning upon the Ram, Arion escaped upon a Dolphin, and that Europa was delivered by the Bull. If Jupiter transformed himselfe into a Bull, why may it not be that under the shape of this Asse, is hidden the figure of a man, or some power divine? While that the Virgin did thus sorrowfully unfold her desires, we fortuned to come to a place where three wayes did meet, and shee tooke me by the halter, and would have me to turne on the right hand to her fathers house: but I (knowing that the theeves were gone that way to fetch the residue of their pillage) resisted with my head as much as I might, saying within my selfe: What wilt thou doe unhappy maiden? Why wouldst thou goe so willingly to hell? Why wilt thou runne into destruction by meane of my feet? Why dost thou seek thine own harme, and mine likewise? And while we strived together whether way we might take, the theeves returned, laiden with their pray, and perceived us a farre off by the light of the Moon: and after they had known us, one of them gan say, Whither goe you so hastely? Be you not afraid of spirits? And you (you harlot) doe you not goe to see your parents? Come on, we will beare you company? And therewithall they tooke me by the hatter, and drave me backe againe, beating me cruelly with a great staffe (that they had) full of knobs: then I returning againe to my ready destruction, and remembering the griefe of my hoofe, began to shake my head, and to waxe lame, but he that led me by the halter said, What, dost thou stumble? Canst thou not goe? These rotten feet of thine ran well enough, but they cannot walke: thou couldest mince it finely even now with the gentlewoman, that thou seemedst to passe the horse Pegasus in swiftnesse. In saying of these words they beat mee againe, that they broke a great staffe upon mee. And when we were come almost home, we saw the old woman hanging upon a bow of a Cipresse tree; then one of them cut downe the bowe whereon shee hanged, and cast her into the bottome of a great ditch: after this they bound the maiden and fell greedily to their victuals, which the miserable old woman had prepared for them.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I see now that what I wanted was to be loved by men and to love them back but not to be a homosexual. For I was possessed with a yearning for the company of men, for their look, touch and smell, and nothing transfixed me more than the sight of a man shaving and dressing, sumptuous rites. It was men, not women, who struck me as foreign and desirable and I disguised myself as a child or a man or whatever was necessary in order to enter their hushed, hieratic company, my disguise so perfect I never stopped to question my identity. Nor did I want to study the face beneath my mask, lest it turn out to have the pursed lips, dead pallor and shaped eyebrows by which one can always recognize the Homosexual. What I required was a sleight of hand, an alibi or a convincing act of bad faith to persuade myself I was not that vampire. Perhaps—yes, this must be it—perhaps my homosexuality was a symptom of some other deeper but less irrevocable disorder. That’s what Dr. O’Reilly thought. After I’d confessed all, he pressed his hankie to his glistening forehead, gnawed his raw lips and said with a dramatic air of boredom, “But none of that matters at all. In here, you’ll find”—the traveling blue eyes stopped meandering across the ceiling and fixed me—“that we’ll ignore your acting out and concentrate on your real conflicts.” How thrilling to discover one had depths, how consoling to find them less polluted than the shallows, how encouraging to identify the enemy not as a fissure in the will but as a dead fetus in the specimen jar of the unconscious. My attention was being paternally led away from the excruciating present to the happy, healthy future that would be enabled by an analysis of the sick past, as though the priest had nothing to do but study sorry old books and make bright forecasts, the present not worthy of notice. Since Dr. O’Reilly was a very famous analyst, his fees were high; since he considered me to be acutely ill, he decided I had to see him three times a week; the result was a staggering monthly bill. My mother agreed to pay half the cost, but my father refused my request. He couldn’t find any good reason for me to be in therapy, nor was he at all convinced that therapy worked. “It’s just a bunch of crap,” he said over the phone. “I thought sending you to Eton was supposed to straighten you out.”

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Sex now seemed a strange thing to me, a social rite that registered, even brought about shifts in the balance of power, but something that was more discussed than performed, a simple emission of fluid that somehow generated religious, social and economic consequences. What I daydreamed of was a lover who would be older than I, richer and more influential, but also companionable. He would prize me for my sexuality, which was at once my essence and also an attribute I was totally unfamiliar with, like the orphan’s true name, a magical identity he knows nothing of until the very moment of revelation. The name ennobles the orphan, just as one’s sexual nature confers a previously undivined but achingly anticipated human nature upon love’s candidate. I knew I was worthless and at the same time I was convinced somebody would find me worthy, would worship me for this sexual allure so foreign to my understanding yet so central to my being. Although I lived surrounded by people and regularly visited a psychoanalyst, it never entered my mind to discuss with anyone my fantasies, those in which the Belgian soldier or a silver-haired stranger in a dove-gray suit seated in his Silver Cloud took me away and married me. For other boys, who can legally marry their fantasies, marriage itself must seem less magical. It is, after all, a ceremony they will eventually go through. But for me, who’d never even read about the sort of union I longed for, marriage became more and more impossible, a transubstantiation as eerie and irreversible as death. Perhaps by framing this ideal and funereal homosexual marriage in a prospect of poisonous flowers, I was making it more and more remote, thereby putting off the day when I’d have to decide whether I myself was a homosexual or not. Of course I wanted to love a man and to be heterosexual; the longer I could delay sorting out this antinomy the better. I didn’t go home for Thanksgiving but spent the long weekend with the Scotts. They took the opportunity to introduce me to Father Burke, their “confessor,” and spiritual guardian. Rachel had told me that he regularly wrote her long letters full of counsel and prayer, although he lived only some fifty or sixty miles away and she and DeQuincey saw him often. Father Burke also wrote Quince long letters, which Quince would never show to Rachel. Father Burke had taken over the poorest, oldest, most backward parish in the state: a mortification, I suppose. In his unheated, shabby little church he officiated at several services a day. He was famous, at least to the Scotts, for his short, lucid sermons—“Worthy of Boussuet,” DeQuincey assured me, “little miracles of theology and common sense.”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Trapped in bed, his hearing became more acute. He could now pick up conversations in the other room, where people were not trying to put on a pleasant show in front of him. And soon he noticed a peculiar pattern—in a conversation people were rarely direct. A sister could spend minutes beating around the bush, leaving hints to others about what she really wanted—such as to borrow an article of clothing or hear an apology from someone. Her hidden desire was clearly indicated by her tone of voice, which gave emphasis to certain words. Her hope was that the others would pick this up and offer what she desired, but often the hints were ignored and she would be forced to come out and say what she wanted. Conversation after conversation fell into this recurring pattern. Soon it became a game for him to guess within as few seconds as possible what the sister was hinting at. It was as if in his paralysis he had suddenly become aware of a second channel of human communication, a second language in which people expressed something from deep within themselves, sometimes without being aware of it. What would happen if he could somehow master the intricacies of this language? How would it alter his perception of people? Could he extend his reading powers to the nearly invisible gestures people made with their lips, their breath, the level of tension in their hands? One day several months later, as he sat near a window in a special reclining chair his family had designed for him, he listened to his brother and sisters playing outside. (He had regained movement in his lips and could speak, but his body remained paralyzed.) He wanted so desperately to join them. As if momentarily forgetting his paralysis, in his mind he began to stand up, and for a brief second he experienced the twitching of a muscle in his leg, the first time he had felt any movement in his body at all. The doctors had told his mother he would never walk again, but they had been wrong before. Based on this simple twitch, he decided to try an experiment. He would focus deeply on a particular muscle in his leg, remembering the sensation he had before his paralysis, wanting badly to move it, and imagining it functioning again. His nurse would massage that area, and slowly, with intermittent success, he would feel a twitch and then the slightest bit of movement returning to the muscle. Through this excruciatingly slow process he taught himself to stand, then take a few steps, then walk around his room, then walk outside, increasing the distances. Somehow, by drawing upon his willpower and imagination, he was able to alter his physical condition and regain complete movement. Clearly, he realized, the mind and the body operate together, in ways we are hardly aware of. Wanting to explore this further, he decided to pursue a career in medicine and psychology,

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Monday. Rainy morning. “Ces matins gris si doux …” My white pajamas have a lilac design on the back. I am like one of those inflated pale spiders you see in old gardens. Sitting in the middle of a luminous web and giving little jerks to this or that strand. My web is spread all over the house as I listen from my chair where I sit like a wily wizard. Is Lo in her room? Gently I tug on the silk. She is not. Just heard the toilet paper cylinder make its staccato sound as it is turned; and no footfalls has my outflung filament traced from the bathroom back to her room. Is she still brushing her teeth (the only sanitary act Lo performs with real zest)? No. The bathroom door has just slammed, so one has to feel elsewhere about the house for the beautiful warm-colored prey. Let us have a strand of silk descend the stairs. I satisfy myself by this means that she is not in the kitchen—not banging the refrigerator door or screeching at her detested mamma (who, I suppose, is enjoying her third, cooing and subduedly mirthful, telephone conversation of the morning). Well, let us grope and hope. Ray-like, I glide in thought to the parlor and find the radio silent (and mamma still talking to Mrs. Chatfield or Mrs. Hamilton, very softly, flushed, smiling, cupping the telephone with her free hand, denying by implication that she denies those amusing rumors, rumor, roomer, whispering intimately, as she never does, the clear-cut lady, in face to face talk). So my nymphet is not in the house at all! Gone! What I thought was a prismatic weave turns out to be but an old gray cobweb, the house is empty, is dead. And then comes Lolita’s soft sweet chuckle through my half-open door “Don’t tell Mother but I’ve eaten all your bacon.” Gone when I scuttle out of my room. Lolita, where are you? My breakfast tray, lovingly prepared by my landlady, leers at me toothlessly, ready to be taken in. Lola, Lolita! Tuesday. Clouds again interfered with that picnic on that unattainable lake. Is it Fate scheming? Yesterday I tried on before the mirror a new pair of bathing trunks.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I had a cup of hot flavorless coffee, bought a bunch of bananas for my monkey, and spent another ten minutes or so in a delicatessen store. At least an hour and a half must have elapsed when this homeward-bound little pilgrim appeared on the winding road leading to Chestnut Castle. The girl I had seen on my way to town was now loaded with linen and engaged in helping a misshapen man whose big head and coarse features reminded me of the “Bertoldo” character in low Italian comedy. They were cleaning the cabins of which there was a dozen or so on Chestnut Crest, all pleasantly spaced amid the copious verdure. It was noon, and most of them, with a final bang of their screen doors, had already got rid of their occupants. A very elderly, almost mummy-like couple in a very new model were in the act of creeping out of one of the contiguous garages; from another a red hood protruded in somewhat cod-piece fashion; and nearer to our cabin, a strong and handsome young man with a shock of black hair and blue eyes was putting a portable refrigerator into a station wagon. For some reason he gave me a sheepish grin as I passed. On the grass expanse opposite, in the many-limbed shade of luxuriant trees, the familiar St. Bernard dog was guarding his mistress’ bicycle, and nearby a young woman, far gone in the family way, had seated a rapt baby on a swing and was rocking it gently, while a jealous boy of two or three was making a nuisance of himself by trying to push or pull the swing board; he finally succeeded in getting himself knocked down by it, and bawled loudly as he lay supine on the grass while his mother continued to smile gently at neither of her present children. I recall so clearly these minutiae probably because I was to check my impressions so thoroughly only a few minutes later; and besides, something in me had been on guard ever since that awful night in Beardsley. I now refused to be diverted by the feeling of well-being that my walk had engendered—by the young summer breeze that enveloped the nape of my neck, the giving crunch of the damp gravel, the juicy tidbit I had sucked out at last from a hollow tooth, and even the comfortable weight of my provisions which the general condition of my heart should not have allowed me to carry; but even that miserable pump of mine seemed to be working sweetly, and I felt adolori d’amoureuse langueur, to quote dear old Ronsard, as I reached the cottage where I had left my Dolores.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  During our field trips I’d sit beside him in a hardwood pew or stand close to him under a dusty chandelier as men’s voices chanted behind the iconostasis and I felt as though I were already Mr. Pouchet’s lover and why not, for he was as much a superfluous man as I was an excluded boy. Every morning at six he was out on the track running through the mist, stopwatch in hand, puffs of vapor issuing from his mouth, but surely he was running down. I had no idea how old he was (twenty-something), but doubtless he was declining physically. Here he comes, blood drained from his dark cheeks, lips purple and open to reveal wet, white teeth, legs lean and slightly bowed, the calves compact, not bulging, his whole body so intelligent that despite its hairiness nothing about it suggests an animal. He’s the cautious, isolated man who sleeps alone, rises before dawn, runs, irons his chinos, pares his beautiful nails that haven’t a single ridge or moon in them but that seem built up out of layer after layer of clear lacquer, who never seems to have a headache or hangover, who’s a well-maintained machine but idling, idling, who approaches each new experience (the iconostasis doors break open and the black nave floods over with candlelight: Christ is risen) in a spirit of mildly detached curiosity, and yet nothing has touched him. He is vulnerable and he’s untouched. He is a man to whom something is about to happen. In the meantime he sits under the buzzing fluorescent lamp over his desk in his dorm room and grades algebra quizzes. Between the first and second hour in the study hall in the evening the boys have ten free minutes. A bell rings, they explode out of their rooms, toilets flush, four guys are pounding a fifth where the stairs turn and Mr. Pouchet winds the gold wristwatch he received for high school graduation not so many years ago, stands and looks out his window across the courtyard at the opposite windows filled with yellow light and the coming and going of the upper formers. Mr. Pouchet is waiting. His mind is open, patient, expectant. Perhaps he’s the Buddhist, perhaps the Buddha, and if he doesn’t focus on this state of grace, then that oblivion is proof he’s blessed.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I was always reading and often writing but both were passionately abstract activities. Early on, I had recognized that books pictured another life, one quite foreign to mine, in which people circled one another warily and with exquisite courtesy until an individual or a couple erupted and flew out of the salon, spangling the night with fire. I had somehow stumbled on Ibsen and that’s how he struck me: oblique social chatter followed by a heroic death in a snowslide or on the steeple of a church (I wondered how these scenes could be staged). Oddly enough, the “realism” of the last century seemed to me tinglingly farfetched: vows, betrayals, flights, fights, sacrifices, suicides. I saw literature as a fantasy, no less absorbing for all its irrelevance—a parallel life, as dreams shadow waking but never intersect it. I thought that to write of my own experiences would require a translation out of the crude patois of actual slow suffering—mean, scattered thoughts and transfusion-slow boredom—into the tidy couplets of brisk, beautiful sentiment, a way of at once elevating and lending momentum to what I felt. At the same time I was drawn to … What if I could write about my life exactly as it was? What if I could show it in all its density and tedium and its concealed passion, never divined or expressed, the dull brown geode that eats at itself with quartz teeth? The library downtown had been built as an opera house in the last century. Even in grade school I had haunted the library, which was in the same block as my father’s office. The library looked up like a rheumy eye at a pitched skylight over which pigeons whirled, their bodies a shuddering gray haze until one bird settled and its pacing black feet became as precise as cuneiform. The light seeped down through the stacks that were arranged in a horseshoe of tiers: the former family balcony, the dress circle, the boxes, on down to the orchestra, still gently raked but now cleared of stalls and furnished with massive oak card files and oak reading tables where unshaved old men read newspapers under gooseneck lamps and rearranged rags in paper sacks. The original stage had been demolished, but cleats on the wall showed where ropes had once been secured.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  Their backyard wedding, in August of 1959, had a feeling of inevitability. It was inevitable, she later realized, because she had been programmed to want certain things. Despite the fact that her high school yearbook listed her single most important ambition as “college,” she was acutely aware that her degree in elementary education was actually a backup plan. Her mom, Essie Sussman, would have been mortified if she’d used it. In the shorthand of New Jersey’s Jewish mothers, work was something a woman did when she couldn’t find a husband to take care of her. And of course Judy could find a husband—she was smart, bubbly, pretty. A good girl, if a bit of a flirt, with slim hips and a glinting, movie-star smile. When she had her first baby, a daughter she named Randy, in her early twenties, she had fulfilled her greater purpose according to contemporary standards. Her son, Lawrence, who they called Larry, followed soon after, in 1963. By then, the Blumes had moved into a lovely new house in the affluent suburb of Scotch Plains, New Jersey. The four-bedroom home, which sat on nearly an acre of grassy land, had an airy front porch and a two-car garage. It was a twelve-minute drive from her mother. Judy framed her college diploma—already, school was starting to feel so far away—and hung it over the washing machine. The family was thriving. As John Blume’s wife, Judy frequented the local country club, taking tennis and golf lessons so she could go along with his hobbies, and enjoyed steak dinners at restaurants with crisp white tablecloths. She had to admit, she wanted for nothing. So what was that tug at the pit of her stomach? A hunger, gnawing and painful, like she was empty. The sexual revolution was well underway, but it hadn’t yet made it to Scotch Plains. The first Playboy magazine, with Marilyn Monroe in a black swimsuit beaming on the cover, had gone to press in 1953. Elvis rocked and rolled his hips on the Ed Sullivan Show just a few years later, in 1956. The birth control pill was approved for contraceptive use in 1960, and the Supreme Court’s 1965 decision in Griswold v. Connecticut protected the rights of married couples to use it. Sex was in the air—or at least on the airwaves. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones topped the charts. Ponytailed schoolgirls watched the Beatles perform with desire shooting out of their eyes. But in Scotch Plains, it was as if the 1950s had never ended. Even though it closed out its seven-year TV run in 1963, everyone was still playacting Leave It to Beaver . The men went to work every morning. The wives watched the kids, cooked dinner, and cleaned. If they were lucky enough to have free time, they gossiped and browsed clothing racks.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O X X I V Beatrice appeals to the saints in the starry heaven to give Dante to drink from the heavenly table to which they have been summoned. The divine grace which gives him a foretaste of their feast is their warrant, his immeasurable longing is his claim, and their unbroken enjoyment of that knowledge which he desires makes it easy for them to give. The saints respond joyously to her appeal and in groups of circling lights reveal their varying measures of ecstasy. Peter comes out from the brightest group in answer to Beatrice’s prayer. She addresses him as the representative of that Faith by which he himself once walked upon the sea, and to which heaven owes all its citizens; and urges him to test Dante as to Faith. Dante prepares himself, as for examination, and Peter questions him. Dante founds his confession upon the definition in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Faith is the substance or foundation upon which hope is reared, and the basis of the argument by which the reality of unseen things is established. His own faith is unquestioning. It is based on Scripture which is authenticated by miracle. And if one should question the miracles he must face the yet greater miracle of the spread of Christianity without miracle. Peter further demands to hear the positive content of Dante’s faith and the specific warrant for it. Dante declares his faith in God, defined first in Aristotelian phrase as the unmoved mover whom the heaven loves and longs for, and then as three Persons in one Essence. For the first belief proofs are drawn from the Physics and Metaphysics as well as from Scripture, for the second from Scripture alone. All else is secondary. Peter signifies his delight in Dante’s confession by circling him thrice. “O FELLOWSHIP elect to the great supper of the blessed Lamb, who feedeth you in such fashion that your desire ever is fulfilled; 1 if by the grace of God this man foretasteth of that which falleth from your table ere death prescribe the time to him, give heed to his unmeasured yearning and bedew him somewhat: ye drink ever of the fountain whence floweth that on which his thought is fixed.” Thus Beatrice: and those glad souls made themselves spheres upon fixed poles, outflaming mightily like unto comets. And even as wheels in harmony of clock-work so turn that the first, to whoso noteth it, seemeth still, and the last to fly, so did these carols 2 with their differing whirl, or swift or slow, make me deem of their riches.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  “No—Edusa Gold—the gal who coaches us.” “I was not referring to her. Who exactly concocted that play?” “Oh! Yes, of course. Some old woman, Clare Something, I guess. There was quite a crowd of them there.” “So she complimented you?” “Complimented my eye—she kissed me on my pure brow”—and my darling emitted that new yelp of merriment which—perhaps in connection with her theatrical mannerisms—she had lately begun to affect. “You are a funny creature, Lolita,” I said—or some such words. “Naturally, I am overjoyed you gave up that absurd stage business. But what is curious is that you dropped the whole thing only a week before its natural climax. Oh, Lolita, you should be careful of those surrenders of yours. I remember you gave up Ramsdale for camp, and camp for a joyride, and I could list other abrupt changes in your disposition. You must be careful. There are things that should never be given up. You must persevere. You should try to be a little nicer to me, Lolita. You should also watch your diet. The tour of your thigh, you know, should not exceed seventeen and a half inches. More might be fatal (I was kidding, of course). We are now setting out on a long happy journey. I remember—” 16I remember as a child in Europe gloating over a map of North America that had “Appalachian Mountains” boldly running from Alabama up to New Brunswick, so that the whole region they spanned—Tennessee, the Virginias, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, appeared to my imagination as a gigantic Switzerland or even Tibet, all mountain, glorious diamond peak upon peak, giant conifers, le montagnard émigré in his bear skin glory, and Felis tigris goldsmithi, and Red Indians under the catalpas. That it all boiled down to a measly suburban lawn and a smoking garbage incinerator, was appalling. Farewell, Appalachia! Leaving it, we crossed Ohio, the three states beginning with “I,” and Nebraska—ah, that first whiff of the West! We travelled very leisurely, having more than a week to reach Wace, Continental Divide, where she passionately desired to see the Ceremonial Dances marking the seasonal opening of Magic Cave, and at least three weeks to reach Elphinstone, gem of a western State where she yearned to climb Red Rock from which a mature screen star had recently jumped to her death after a drunken row with her gigolo. Again we were welcomed to wary motels by means of inscriptions that read: “We wish you to feel at home while here. All equipment was carefully checked upon your arrival. Your license number is on record here. Use hot water sparingly. We reserve the right to eject without notice any objectionable person. Do not throw waste material of any kind in the toilet bowl. Thank you. Call again. The Management. P.S. We consider our guests the Finest People of the World.”

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  But Daisy said she’d cover for her. She told Christina to have a good day, told her she deserved a good day. They set out on Saturday morning in Jack’s truck, only to find out, when they reached Elkton, there was now a forty-eight-hour waiting period. Christina begged the clerk to make an exception. “Please,” she cried, “you don’t understand…” “I think I do, dear,” the clerk said. They bought their license for a dollar, arranged for a pastor to marry them on Wednesday, April 2, because Christina would not marry on April Fool’s Day, paid five dollars in advance for a corsage, then drove back home. On Wednesday, Christina skipped school. She’d write a note tomorrow about having a twenty-four-hour virus. All the girls were coming down with it. She wore her sheer white blouse, full black taffeta skirt, heels and her best jewelry—a small gold cross around her neck, which Yaya and Papou had given her for her sixteenth birthday, and an ankle bracelet from Jack. This was, after all, her wedding day. After the brief ceremony conducted by one of the marrying parsons, the witnesses threw rice. She kept twisting the slim gold band from Goldblatt Jewelers on her finger, a ring she wouldn’t be able to wear in public. Jack wanted to have sex before they started out for home, so they stopped at Boyd’s motel and spent nine dollars on a room. But she was too scared to let go and enjoy it even though he used a rubber. After, they stopped at a diner for lunch. She ordered something called “Wedding Cake” for dessert, a white layer cake with lemon filling. Actually, it was pretty good. That night she pressed her wedding corsage in her scrapbook, hid her ring under the false bottom of her jewelry box and cried herself to sleep. A week later she got her period. [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00036.jpg] [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00036.jpg] NO HOME LIFE FOR FLUETMARCH 26 — Joseph O. Fluet, the government’s chief airline crash investigator for this area, hasn’t been able to spend much time at his home in Great Neck, N.Y. According to his wife, he’s been there for only two hours in the last month. Fluet is staying at the Elizabeth Carteret hotel. The lonesome Mrs. Fluet says she’s weaving a rug to pass the time. 27 [image "image" file=Image00005.jpg] [image file=Image00005.jpg] MiriOn most days Irene picked up the afternoon mail, but she was away for two weeks in Miami Beach with Ben Sapphire. Rusty tried to get her to promise to call home every night so she’d know Irene was okay, but Irene laughed at the idea. “Don’t worry, darling, I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.” “I’ll look after her like she’s a queen,” Ben promised.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I mention the constant music because, to my mind at least, it served as an invisible link between my father and me. He never discussed music beyond saying that the German Requiem was “damn nice” or that the violin and cello concerto was “one hell of a piece,” and even these judgments he made with a trace of embarrassment; for him, music was emotion, and he did not believe in discussing feelings. His real love was the late Brahms, the piano Intermezzi and especially the two clarinet sonatas. These pieces, as unpredictable as thought and as human as conversation, filled the house night after night. He could not have liked them as background music to work to, since their abrupt changes of volume and dynamics must have made them too arresting to dismiss. I never showered with my dad, I never saw him naked, not once, but we did immerse ourselves, side by side, in those passionate streams every night. As he worked at his desk and I sat on his couch, reading or daydreaming, we bathed in music. Did he feel the same things I felt? Perhaps I ask this only because now that he’s dead I fear we shared nothing and my long captivity in his house represented to him only a slight inconvenience, a major expense, a fair to middling disappointment, but I like to think that music spoke to us in similar ways and acted as the source and transcript of a shared rapture. I feel sorry for a man who never wanted to go to bed with his father; when the father dies, how can his ghost get warm except in a posthumous embrace? For that matter, how does the survivor get warm? Kevin hated music. When he was horsing around with his little brother, he’d fall back into the silliness of boyhood. Like all boys, they loved cracking stupid jokes that became funnier and funnier to them the more they were repeated. The opera singers especially tickled them (strangely enough, considering their mother was a singer) and they’d jounce along with warbling falsettos, holding their right hands on their stomachs and rolling their eyes. I was chagrined by this clowning because I’d already imagined Kevin as a sort of husband. No matter that he was younger; his cockiness had turned him into the Older One. But this poignantly young groom I couldn’t reconcile with the brat he had become today. Perhaps he wanted to push me away. In the afternoon everyone except Kevin and me left on a boat ride. We went swimming off the dock. Clouds had covered the sun, gray clouds with black bellies and veins of fiery silver. After a while they blew away and released the late sun’s warmth. We were standing side by side.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I wanted to run through surf or speed off with a brilliant blond in a convertible or rhapsodize on a grand piano somewhere in Europe. Or I wanted the white and gold doors to open as my loving, true but not-yet-found friends came toward me, their gently smiling faces lit from below by candles on the cake. This longing for lovers and friends was so full within me that it could spill over at any provocation—from listening to my own piano rendition of a waltz, from looking at a reproduction of two lovers in kimonos and tall clogs under an umbrella shielding them from slanted lines of snow or from sensing a change of seasons (the first smell of spring in winter, say). Once, when I was Kevin’s age, I’d wanted my father to love me and take me away. I had sat night after night outside his bedroom door in the dark, crazy with fantasies of seducing him, eloping with him, covering him with kisses as we shot through space against a night field flowered with stars. But now I hated him and felt he was what I must run away from. To be sure, had he pulled the car off the highway right now and turned to say he loved me, I would have taken his hand and walked with him away from the stunned vehicle that creaked as it cooled, our only spoor the sparks flying from Dad’s cigar. Kevin took my hand. He was sitting next to me in the dark. I had scooted forward on the cushion to give the others more room. Now our linked hands were concealed between his leg and mine. Just as I’d almost given up on him with his Vaseline, he placed that hot hand in mine. I could feel the calloused pads on his palm where he’d gripped the bat. Outside, the half-moon sped through the tall pines, spilled out across a glimpse of water, hid behind a billboard, twinkled faintly in the windows of a train, one window still lit and framing the face of a woman crowned by white hair. Dogs barked, then stopped as the trees came quicker and quicker and pushed closer to the winding road. Only here and there could a house light be seen. Now none. We were in the deep forest. The change from scattered farms to dense trees felt like an entry into something chilled and holy, a packed congregation of robed and mitered men whose form of worship is to wait in a tense, century-long silence. Kevin had made me very happy—a gleeful, spiteful happiness. Here we were, right under the noses of these boring old grown-ups, and we were two guys holding hands. Maybe I wouldn’t have to run away. Maybe I could live here among them, act normal, go through the paces—all the while holding the hand of this wonderful kid. Back in the basement, we three undressed under the glaring Ping-Pong light.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  A Midwesterner, as her late husband had also been, she had lived in coy Ramsdale, the gem of an eastern state, not long enough to know all the nice people. She knew slightly the jovial dentist who lived in a kind of ramshackle wooden chateau behind our lawn. She had met at a church tea the “snooty” wife of the local junk dealer who owned the “colonial” white horror at the corner of the avenue. Now and then she “visited with” old Miss Opposite; but the more patrician matrons among those she called upon, or met at lawn functions, or had telephone chats with—such dainty ladies as Mrs. Glave, Mrs. Sheridan, Mrs. McCrystal, Mrs. Knight and others, seldom seemed to call on my neglected Charlotte. Indeed, the only couple with whom she had relations of real cordiality, devoid of any arrière-pensée or practical foresight, were the Farlows who had just come back from a business trip to Chile in time to attend our wedding, with the Chatfields, McCoos, and a few others (but not Mrs. Junk or the even prouder Mrs. Talbot). John Farlow was a middle-aged, quiet, quietly athletic, quietly successful dealer in sporting goods, who had an office at Parkington, forty miles away: it was he who got me the cartridges for that Colt and showed me how to use it, during a walk in the woods one Sunday; he was also what he called with a smile a part-time lawyer and had handled some of Charlotte’s affairs. Jean, his youngish wife (and first cousin), was a long-limbed girl in harlequin glasses with two boxer dogs, two pointed breasts and a big red mouth. She painted—landscapes and portraits—and vividly do I remember praising, over cocktails, the picture she had made of a niece of hers, little Rosaline Honeck, a rosy honey in a Girl Scout uniform, beret of green worsted, belt of green webbing, charming shoulder-long curls—and John removed his pipe and said it was a pity Dolly (my Dolita) and Rosaline were so critical of each other at school, but he hoped they would get on better when they returned from their respective camps. We talked of the school. It had its drawbacks, and it had its virtues. “Of course, too many of the tradespeople here are Italians,” said John, “but on the other hand we are still spared—” “I wish,” interrupted Jean with a laugh, “Dolly and Rosaline were spending the summer together.” Suddenly I imagined Lo returning from camp—brown, warm, drowsy, drugged—and was ready to weep with passion and impatience.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  She would be, figuratively speaking, wagging her tiny tail, her whole behind in fact as little bitches do—while some grinning stranger accosted us and began a bright conversation with a comparative study of license plates. “Long way from home!” Inquisitive parents, in order to pump Lo about me, would suggest her going to a movie with their children. We had some close shaves. The waterfall nuisance pursued me of course in all our caravansaries. But I never realized how wafery their wall substance was until one evening, after I had loved too loudly, a neighbor’s masculine cough filled the pause as clearly as mine would have done; and next morning as I was having breakfast at the milk bar (Lo was a late sleeper, and I liked to bring her a pot of hot coffee in bed), my neighbor of the eve, an elderly fool wearing plain glasses on his long virtuous nose and a convention badge on his lapel, somehow managed to rig up a conversation with me, in the course of which he inquired, if my missus was like his missus a rather reluctant get-upper when not on the farm; and had not the hideous danger I was skirting almost suffocated me, I might have enjoyed the odd look of surprise on his thin-lipped weather-beaten face when I drily answered, as I slithered off my stool, that I was thank God a widower. How sweet it was to bring that coffee to her, and then deny it until she had done her morning duty. And I was such a thoughtful friend, such a passionate father, such a good pediatrician, attending to all the wants of my little auburn brunette’s body! My only grudge against nature was that I could not turn my Lolita inside out and apply voracious lips to her young matrix, her unknown heart, her nacreous liver, the sea-grapes of her lungs, her comely twin kidneys. On especially tropical afternoons, in the sticky closeness of the siesta, I liked the cool feel of armchair leather against my massive nakedness as I held her in my lap. There she would be, a typical kid picking her nose while engrossed in the lighter sections of a newspaper, as indifferent to my ecstasy as if it were something she had sat upon, a shoe, a doll, the handle of a tennis racket, and was too indolent to remove. Her eyes would follow the adventures of her favorite strip characters: there was one well-drawn sloppy bobby-soxer, with high cheekbones and angular gestures, that I was not above enjoying myself; she studied the photographic results of head-on collisions; she never doubted the reality of place, time and circumstance alleged to match the publicity pictures of nakedthighed beauties; and she was curiously fascinated by the photographs of local brides, some in full wedding apparel, holding bouquets and wearing glasses.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  In the twenty-first century, we must read this work not as a tract for that painfully titled option “the Gay Life Style” but as an account of the one young man most eager to forswear his homosexuality. And, no, this is not just “a phase,” his rabid denial. The book ends with definitive proof of his adult effectiveness, of his profound ambivalence concerning his unchosen sexuality. That foregone predisposition is visible to everyone else in the book; is visible alas in every line of its own exquisite expression. And here rests the source of much of this work’s humor. But movements, never known to get a joke, simply take what they need, extracting from whatever new work appears the vitality required for current propagandists needs. This novel’s importance for the Stonewall-era gay forces rested largely in its view that sexual exploration can be an absolute good. Set before the hideously corrective advent of AIDS, the book’s youthful exploratory sexuality is here seen as a valid “occupation,” almost an art form. It is not considered simply the naughty, harshly judged “preoccupation” that America’s prevailing culture found so pathological in gay men’s enviable (and therefore troubling) multiple partners. But what the Movement seems to have missed, what makes reencountering this work such a tonic pleasure now that the fever heat of its political application has abated, is the far-ranging detachment of the sprightly invert-convert at its center. The analytic couch mentioned above is being approached by a boy most eager for the fastest possible “cure.” The whole motor of this refreshingly non-politically correct work is the heterosexual escape fantasy of a child who’s terminally gay in his every molecule and synapse. The latent heterosexual. Very latent. I do wish White had given his alluring-repellent narrator a proper name. I suspect his young narrator would, by now, have entered the national lexicon, an alternative roomie-companion to poor straight Holden Caulfield. The anonymous hero acts out his desire to be more than merely gay—carries it clear through to the book’s strange yet somehow inevitable Gethsemane ending. The Liberationists, in their joy at the forthrightness of the book’s sex—thrilling for its time and still startling in its full-frontal geometry and detail—overlooked how our boy protagonist’s most fervent wish is always for Grosse Pointe normalcy. Such longed-for blandness, even if it’s kinky as his father’s brand, might seem a gross and pointless death wish. But that’s precisely what the lad wants. He longs to remain in the country club’s cozy dining room. He dreads being banished to a dishwashers’ underworld that might constitute his sole means of support, his enforced self-disgusted subject matter. That could not be made plainer than in the following sustained analogy:

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  me: None of that makes a dent in my loneliness. I have no man. I have no child. me: But you know that children are no antidote to loneliness. me: I know. me: And you know that children only belong to their parents temporarily. me: I know. me: And you know that men and women can never wholly possess each other. me: I know. me: And you know that you’d hate to have a man who possessed you totally and used up your breathing space…. me: I know—but I yearn for it desperately. me: But if you had it, you’d feel trapped. me: I know. me: You want contradictory things. me: I know. me: You want freedom and you also want closeness. me: I know. me: Very few people ever find that. me: I know. me: Why do you expect to be happy when most people aren’t? me: I don’t know. I only know that if I stop hoping for love, stop expecting it, stop searching for it, my life will go as flat as a cancerous breast after radical surgery. I feed on this expectation. I nurse it. It keeps me alive. me: But what about liberation? me: What about it? me: You believe in independence? me: I do. me: Well then? me: I suspect I’d give it all up, sell my soul, my principles, my beliefs, just for a man who’d really love me…. me: Hypocrite! me: You’re right. me: You’re no better than Adrian! me: You’re right. me: Doesn’t it bother you to find such hypocrisy in yourself? me: It does. me: Then why don’t you fight it? me: I do. I’m fighting it now. But I don’t know which side will win. me: Think of Simone de Beauvoir! me: I love her endurance, but her books are full of Sartre, Sartre, Sartre. me: Think of Doris Lessing! me: Anna Wulf can’t come unless she’s in love…what more is there to say? me: Think of Sylvia Plath! me: Dead. Who wants a life or death like hers even if you become a saint? me: Wouldn’t you die for a cause? me: At twenty, yes, but not at thirty. I don’t believe in dying for causes. I don’t believe in dying for poetry. Once I worshipped Keats for dying young. Now I think it’s braver to die old. me: Well—think of Colette. me: A good example. But she’s one of very few. me: Well, why not try to be like her? me: I’m trying. me: The first step is learning how to be alone…. me: Yes, and when you learn that really well, you forget how to be open to love if it ever does come. me: Who said life was easy? me: No one. me: Then why are you so afraid of being alone? me: We’re going round in circles. me: That’s one of the troubles with being alone.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Pim watched Pippa suck in the concoction. J’ai toujours admiré I’oeuvre ormonde du sublime Dublinois. And in the meantime the rain had become a voluptuous shower. “Look,” she said as she rode the bike beside me, one foot scraping the darkly glistening sidewalk, “look, I’ve decided something. I want to leave school. I hate that school. I hate the play, I really do! Never go back. Find another. Leave at once. Go for a long trip again. But this time we’ll go wherever I want, won’t we?” I nodded. My Lolita. “I choose? C’est entendu?” she asked wobbling a little beside me. Used French only when she was a very good little girl. “Okay. Entendu. Now hop-hop-hop, Lenore, or you’ll get soaked.” (A storm of sobs was filling my chest.) She bared her teeth and after her adorable school-girl fashion, leaned forward, and away she sped, my bird. Miss Lester’s finely groomed hand held a porch-door open for a waddling old dog qui prenait son temps. Lo was waiting for me near the ghostly birch tree. “I am drenched,” she declared at the top of her voice. “Are you glad? To hell with the play! See what I mean?” An invisible hag’s claw slammed down an upper-floor window. In our hallway, ablaze with welcoming lights, my Lolita peeled off her sweater, shook her gemmed hair, stretched towards me two bare arms, raised one knee: “Carry me upstairs, please. I feel sort of romantic to-night.” It may interest physiologists to learn, at this point, that I have the ability—a most singular case, I presume—of shedding torrents of tears throughout the other tempest. 15 The brakes were relined, the waterpipes unclogged, the valves ground, and a number of other repairs and improvements were paid for by not very mechanically-minded but prudent papa Humbert, so that the late Mrs. Humbert’s car was in respectable shape when ready to undertake a new journey. We had promised Beardsley School, good old Beardsley School, that we would be back as soon as my Hollywood engagement came to an end (inventive Humbert was to be, I hinted, chief consultant in the production of a film dealing with “existentialism,” still a hot thing at the time). Actually I was toying with the idea of gently trickling across the Mexican border—I was braver now than last year—and there deciding what to do with my little concubine who was now sixty inches tall and weighed ninety pounds. We had dug out our tour books and maps. She had traced our route with immense zest.