Mercy

by Andrea Dworkin

  Himself; when the boys come out, the toy boys, tiny figurines

  made like Him, He has it done to them, sym bolically, the

  penis is sliced so they’re girls to Him; and the toy b o y’ll grow

  up pushing the cut thing in girls who are born cut open big,

  he’ll need to stick it in and stick it in and stick it in, he doesn’t

  like being one o f G o d ’s girls even a little; and it’s a m em ory,

  isn’t it, you were girls to M e at Massada; a humiliation; think

  o f the last ten, nine o f them on their big knees, throats bared,

  one slice, the tenth sticks it up himself, there’s a woman I saw

  in a porn magazine, she did that to herself, she smiled; did

  number ten, the big hero, smile, a coy look at God, heavy

  mascara around the eyes, a wide smile, the sword going in and

  som ehow he fingers his crotch at the same time? The

  Christians w ouldn’t stand for it; they said C hrist’s the last one,

  he died for us so we don’t need to be cut but God wants them

  sliced and they know it so they do it for health or sanitation as

  if it’s secular garbage removal but in their hearts they know ,

  God wants them cut, you don’t get aw ay with not being a girl

  for Him except you w on’t be His favorite girl. They take it out

  on us, all o f them, sliced or threatened, sliced or evading it,

  enlisted or the equivalent o f draft dodgers; manly men;

  fucking the hole God already made; He was there first; there

  are no virgin girls; the toy boys always get used goods. Their

  thing, little next to His, aspires to omnipresence; and Daddy

  watches; a perpetual pornography; blood-and-guts scenes o f

  pushing and hitting and humiliation, the girl on the bed, the

  girl on the floor, the girl in the kitchen, the girl in the car, the

  girl down by the river, the girl in the woods, the girls in cities

  and towns, prairies and deserts, mountains and plains, all

  colors, a rainbow o f suffering, rich and poor, sick and well,

  young and old, infants even, a man sticks it in the mouths o f

  infants, I know such a man; oh, he’s real; an uncle o f mine; an

  adult; look up to him, listen to him, obey him, love him, he’s

  your uncle; he was born in Camden but he left, smart, a big

  man, he got rich and prominent, an outstanding citizen; five

  infants, in the throat, men like the throat, his own children, it

  was a daddy’s love, he did that, a loving daddy in the dark, and

  God watched, they like the throat, the smooth cavity o f an

  infant’s mouth and the tiny throat, a tight passage, men like it

  tight, so tiny; and the suction, because an infant sucks, it pulls

  and it sucks, it wants food but this food’s too big, too

  monstrous, it sucks, it pulls it in, and daddy says to him self it

  wouldn’t suck if it didn’t like it; and Daddy watches; and the

  infant gags, and the infant retches, and the infant chokes; and

  daddy comes; and Daddy comes; the child vomits, chokes,

  panics, can’t breathe, forever, a lifetime on the verge o f

  suffocation. I don’t have much o f a family, I prefer the streets

  frankly to various pieties but sometimes there are these shrieks

  in the night, a child quaking from a crime against humanity,

  and she calls out, sister she says, he sliced m y throat with a

  sword, I remember it but I don’t, it happened but it didn’t, he’s

  there in the dark all the time, watching, waiting, he’s a ghost

  but he isn’t, it’s a secret but w hy doesn’t everyone know? H ow

  does an infant get out from under, Him and him; him; oh, he

  does it for a long time, it begins in the crib, then she crawls, a

  baby girl and all the relatives go ooh and ah and the proud papa

  beams, every night, for years, until the next one is born, two

  years, three years, four years, he abandons the child for the

  next infant, he likes infants, tiny throat, tight suction,

  helpless, tiny, cute thing that seems to spasm whole, you

  know how infants crinkle all up, their tiny arms and their tiny

  legs, they just all bunch up, one m oving sex part in spasm with

  a tight, smooth, warm cavity for his penis, it’s a tiny throat,

  and the infant sucks hard, pulls the thing in. Years later there

  are small suicides, a long, desperate series o f small suicides,

  she’s empty inside except for shadows and dread, sick with

  debilitating illnesses, no one knows the cause or the cure, she

  chokes, she gags, she vom its, she can’t sw allow; there’s

  asthma, anxiety, the nights are saturated with a menace that

  feels real, specific, concrete, but you can’t find it when you

  turn on the light; and eventually, one day or some day, none o f

  us can sw allow ; we choke; we gag; we can’t stop them; they

  get in the throat, deep enough in, artists o f torment; a manly

  invasion; taking a part God didn’t use first. If yo u ’re adult

  before they rape you there yo u ’ve got all the luck; all the luck

  there is. The infants; are haunted; by familiar rapists; someone

  close; someone known; but who; and there’s the disquieting

  certainty that one loves him; loves him. There are these

  wom en— such fine women— such beautiful women— smart

  women, fine women, quiet, compassionate wom en— and

  they want to die; all their lives they have wanted to die; death

  would solve it; numb the pain that comes from nowhere but

  somewhere; they live in rooms; haunted; by a familiar rapist;

  they whisper daddy; daddy, daddy, please; asleep or awake

  they want to die, there’s a rapist in the room, the figure o f a

  man invading, spectral, supernatural, real but not real, present

  but not there; he’s invading; he’s a crushing, smothering

  adversary; it’s some fucking middle-class bedroom in some

  fucking suburb, there aren’t invading armies here but there’s

  invasion, a man advancing on sleeping children, his own;

  annihilation is how I will love them; they die in pieces inside;

  usually their bodies survive; not always, o f course; you want

  God to help them but God w on’t help them, He’s on the other

  side; there are sides; the suicides are long and slow, not

  righteous, not mass but so lonely, so alone; could we gather up

  all the women who were the little girls who were the infants

  and say do it now, end it now, one time, here; say it was you;

  say it happened to you; name names; say his name; we will

  have a Massada for girls, a righteous mass suicide, we could

  have it on any street corner, cement, bare, hard, empty; but

  they’re alone, prisoners in the room with the rapist even after

  he’s gone; five infants, uncle; it makes Auschwitz look small,

  uncle; deep throat, my uncle invented deep throat, a fine,

  upstanding man. I can do the arithmetic; five equals six

  million; uncle pig; uncle good Jew ; uncle upstanding citizen;

  uncle killer fucking pig; but we have a heroic tradition o f

  slaughtering children in the throat; feel the pride. I’ll gather

  them up and show you a righteous suicide; in Camden; home;

  bare, hard, empty cement, hard, gray cement, cement spread

  out like
desert rock, cement under a darker sun, a brooding

  sun, a bloody sun, covered over, burgundy melting, a wash o f

  blood over it; even the sun can’t watch anymore. There were

  brick houses the color o f blood; on hard, gray rock; we come

  from there, uncle, you and I, you before me, the adult; you

  raped your babies in pretty houses, rich rooms; escaped the

  cement; they threw me down on the cement and took me from

  behind; but I’ll bet you never touched a girl when you were a

  homeboy, slob; too big for you, even then, near your own

  size; w e’ll have Massada in Camden, a desolate city, empty

  and bare and hard as a rock; and I will have the sword in m y

  hand and I will kill you myself; you will get down on your big

  knees and you will bare your throat and I will slice it; a suicide;

  he killed himself, the w ay they did at Massada; only this time a

  girl had the sword; and it was against God, not to placate Him.

  Every bare, empty, hard place spawns a you, uncle, and a me;

  homeboy, there’s me and you. The shit escaped; into death;

  the shit ran away; died; escaped to the safe place for bandits,

  the final hideaway where God the Father protects His gang;

  they watch together now, Father and His boy, a prodigal son,

  known in the world o f business for being inventive, a genius

  o f sorts, known among infants as a genius; o f torment;

  destruction; and I’m the avenging angel, they picked me, the

  infants grew up and they picked me; they knew it would take a

  Camden girl to beat a homeboy; you had to know the cement,

  the bare, em pty rock; he was a skeleton when he died, illness

  devoured him but it w asn’t enough, how could it be enough,

  w hat’s enough for the Him mler o f the throat? I know how to

  kill them; I think them dead for a long time; I make them waste

  away; for a long time; I don’t have to touch them; I ju st have to

  know who they are; uncle, the infants told me; I knew. I was

  born in Camden in 1946 down the street from Walt Whitman,

  an innocent boy, a dreamer, one o f G o d ’s sillier creatures, put

  on earth as a diversion, a kind o f decoy, kind o f a lyrical phony

  front in a covert war, a clever trick by rape’s best strategist, he

  had G od-given talent for G od-given propaganda; the poet

  says love; as command; the w ay others say sit to a dog; love,

  children, love; or love children; the poet advocates universal

  passion; as command; no limits; no rightful disdain; humanity

  itself surges, there is a sweep o f humanity, we are waves o f

  ecstasy, the common man, and woman, when he remembers

  to add her; embrace the common man; we are a human fam ily

  consecrated to love, each individual an imperial presence in the

  climactic collective, a sovereign unto himself; touch each

  other, without fear, and he, Walt, w ill touch everyone; every

  one o f us; we all get loved by him, rolled up in him, rolled over

  by him; his thighs embrace us; he births us and he fucks us, a

  patriarch’s vision, we take him in our mouths, grateful; he

  used words to paint great dreams, visionary wet dreams,

  dem ocracy’s wet dreams; for the worker and the whore; each

  and all loved by him; and in his stead, as he’s busy writing

  poems, all these others, the common men, push it in and

  come; I loved him, the words, the dreams; don’t believe them,

  don’t love them, don’t obey the program written into the

  poem, a series o f orders from the high commander o f pain;

  bare the throat, spread the legs, suck the thing; only he was

  shy, a nineteenth-century man, they didn’t say it outright

  then; he said he wanted everyone, to have them, in the poems;

  he wanted to stick it in everywhere; and be held too, the lover

  who needs you, your compassion, a hint o f recognition from

  you, a tenderness from your heart, personal and singular; the

  pitiful readers celebrate the lyric and practice the program, the

  underlying communication, the orders couched in language as

  orgasmic as the acts he didn’t specifically say; he was lover,

  demanding lover, and father; he spread his seed everywhere,

  over continents; as i f his ejaculation were the essence o f love; as

  i f he reproduced him self each time; with his hand he made

  giants; as if we all were his creatures; as i f his sperm had

  washed over the whole world and he begat us, and now he’d

  take us; another maniac patriarch, a chip o ff the old block; the

  epic drama o f a vast possession as i f it were an orgy o f

  brotherly love, kind, tender, fraternite; as if taking everyone

  were gentle, virile but magnanimous, a charity from body to

  body, soul to soul; none were exempt, he was the poet o f

  inclusion; you could learn there were no limits, though you

  might not know the meaning until after they had touched you,

  all o f them, his magnificent masses, each one; you could stay

  as innocent, or nearly, as the great, gray poet himself, until

  yo u ’d done the program; then you’d be garbage somewhere,

  your body literal trash, without the dignity o f a body bag,

  something thrown out, dumped somewhere, sticky from

  sperm, ripped inside, a torn anus, vaginal bruises and tears, a

  ripped throat; the tissue is torn; there’s trauma to the tissue,

  says the doctor, detached, not particularly interested; but the

  tissue is flesh, o f a human, and the trauma is injury, o f a

  human, the delicate lining o f the vagina is flesh, the interior

  lining o f the throat is flesh, not meant for invasion, assault;

  flesh lines the anus; it’s already limned with cracks and

  bleeding sores; mortal fools bleed there, we are dying all the

  time; lo ve’s intense and there will be great, jagged rips, a

  searing pain, it burns, it bleeds, there are fistfuls o f blood,

  valleys o f injury too wide and too deep to heal, and the shit

  comes out, like a child, bathed in blood, and there’s fire, the

  penis pushed in hard all at once for the sake o f the pain, because

  the lover, he likes it; annihilation is how I will love them.

  Y o u ’ll just be loved to death, tears, like cuts, and tears, the

  w atery things; it wasn’t called the C ivil War, or Vietnam; it

  w asn’t a w ar poets decried in lyrics apocalyptic or austere,

  they couldn’t ever see the death, or the wounded soldier, or

  the evil o f invasion, a genocidal policy if I remember right, it’s

  hard to remember; love’s celebrated; it’s party time; hang

  them from the rafters, the loved ones, pieces o f meat, nice and

  raw, after the dogs have had them, clawed them to pieces,

  chewed on their bones; bloody, dirty pieces strung out on

  street corners or locked up in the rapist’s house. One whole

  human being was never lost in all o f history or all o f time; or

  not so a poet could see it or use fine words to say it. Walt sings;

  to cover up the crimes; say it’s love enough; enough. And art’s

  an alibi; I didn’t do it, I’m an artist; or I did do it but it’s art,

  because I’m an artist, we do art, not rape, I did it beautiful, I

  arranged the piece
s so esthetic, so divine; and them that love

  art also did not do it; I support art. Walt could sing, all right;

  obscuring a formal truth; as if a wom an had an analogous

  throat; for song; then they stuff it down; sing then darling.

  The poems were formal lies; lies o f form; bedrock lies; as if the

  throat, pure but incarnate, was for singing in this universal

  humanity we have here, this democracy o f love, for one and

  all; but they stuff it down; then try singing; sing, Amerika,

  sing. I saw this Lovelace girl. I’m walking in Times Square,

  going through the trash cans for food; I roam now, every day,

  all the time, days, nights, I don’t need sleep, I don’t ever sleep;

  I’m there, digging through the slop for some edible things but

  not vegetables because I never liked vegetables and there’s

  standards you have to keep, as to your own particular tastes. I

  am searching for my dog, my precious friend, on every city

  street, in every alley, in every hole they got here where usually

  there’s people, in every shooting gallery, in every pim p’s

  hallway, in every abandoned building in this city, I am

  searching, because she is my precious friend; but so far I have

  not found her; it’s a quest I am on, like in fables and stories,

  seeking her; and if m y heart is pure I will find her; I remember

  Gawain and Galahad and I try to survive the many trials

  necessary before finding her and I am hoping she wasn’t taken

  to wicked, evil ones; that she’s protected by some good magic

  so she w on ’t be hurt or malnourished or used bad, treated

  mean, locked up or starved or kicked; I’m hoping there’s a

  person, half magic, who will have regard for her; and after I’ve

  done all the trials and tribulations she will come to me in a dark

  wood. I’ve got pain, in m y throat, some boy tore it up, I rasp, I

  barely talk, it’s an ugly sound, some boy killed it, as if it were

  some small animal he had to maim to death, an enemy he had

  to kill by a special method, you rip it up and it bleeds and the

  small thing dies slow. It’s a small, tight passage, good for fun,

  they like it because it’s tight, it hugs the penis, there’s no give,