Mercy

by Andrea Dworkin

  under glass. I f you see what’s in front o f you you see w hat’s

  down the road: someday they’ll just take the children, the pied

  piper o f rape, they’ll ju st use the children, it’s so much easier,

  how it is now is so difficult, so com plex, fun taming the big

  ones and seducing them and raping them but the children are

  tighter, you know; and hurt more, you know; and are so

  confused, you know; and love you anyway, you know. All

  the worshippers will be tolerant o f each other; and they’ll pass

  the little ones on, down the line, so everyone can pray; and the

  courts will let them; because the courts have always let them;

  it’s just big daddy in a dress, the appearance o f neutrality. I

  been living in Times Square, on the sidewalks, I seen all the

  marquees, I studied them, I have two questions all the time,

  w hy ain’t she dead is one and w hy would anyone, even a man,

  think it’s true— her all strung out, all painted, all glossy,

  proclaiming being peed on is what she wants; I do not get how

  the lie flies; or ain’t they ever made love; or ever seen no one

  real; and maybe she’s dead by now; they must think it’s like

  you are born a porn thing; in the hospital they take the baby

  and they say take it to the warehouse, it’s a porn thing. They

  must think it’s a special species; with purple genitals and skin

  made from a pale steel that don’t even feel no pain; or they

  think every girl is one, underneath, and they wait, until we

  turn purple, from cold, or a thin patina o f blood, dried so it’s

  an encasement, like an insect’s carapace. And they get hard

  from it, the porn thing, flat and glossy, dead and slick, and

  after they find something resembling the specimen from

  under the glass and they stick it in; a girl in the rain; five

  infants; some girl. It’s like how Plato tried to explain; the thing

  pure, ideal, as if you went through some magical fog and came

  to a whole world o f perfect ideas and there’s Linda taking it

  whole; and they wander through the pure world putting fifty

  cents down there to cop a feel and five dollars down there, and

  for a hundred you see a little girl buggered, and for fifty you do

  something perfect and ideal to a perfect whore or some perfect

  blow -up doll with a deep silk throat and a deep silk vagina and

  a rough, tight rectum, and you come back through the fog and

  there’s the girl, not quite so purple, and you do it to her; yeah,

  she cries if you hang her or brand her or maim her or even

  probably if you fuck her in the ass, she don’t smile, but you can

  hurt her enough to make her smile because she has to smile

  because if she don’t she gets hurt more, or she’ll try, and you

  can paint her more purple, or do anything really; put things in

  her; even glass or broken glass and make her bleed, you can get

  the color you want; you strive for the ideal. I fuck it up, I say

  the girl’s real, but it don’t stop them; and we got to stop them;

  so I take the necessary supplies, some porn magazines where

  they laminate the women, and I take the stones for breaking

  the glass, I will not have women under glass, and I take signs

  that say “ Free the Women, Free O urselves” and “ Porn Hates

  W omen” and I take a sign that says “ Free Linda” and I have a

  sign that says “ Porn Is Rape” and I take a letter I wrote m yself

  that says to m y mama how sorry I am to have failed at dignity

  and at freedom both, and I say I am Andrea but I am not

  manhood for which, mama, I am glad, because they have gone

  to filth, they are maggots on this earth; and I take gasoline, and

  I’m nearly old for a girl, I’m hungry and I have sores, and I

  smell bad so no one looks at all very much, and I go to outside

  Deep Throat where m y friend Linda is in the screen and I put

  the gasoline on me, I soak m yself in it in broad daylight and

  many go by and no one looks and I am calm, patient, gray on

  gray cement like the Buddhist monks, and I light the fire; free

  us, I start to scream, and then there’s a giant whoosh, it

  explodes more like wind than fire, it’s orange, around me,

  near me, I’m whole, then I’m flames. I burn; I die. From this

  light, later you will see. Mama, I made some light.

  E L E V E N

  April 30, 1974

  (Age 27)

  Sensei is cute but she’s fascist. She makes us bow to the Korean

  flag; I bow but I don’t look. We are supposed to be reverent in

  our hearts but in m y heart is where I rebel. It is more than a

  bow. We bow. We get down on our knees and we bow our

  heads. It’s the opening ceremony o f every class. In karate you

  get down on your knees in a lightning flash o f perfect

  movement so there’s no scramble, no noise; it’s a perfect

  silence and everyone moves as one; the movement itself

  expresses reverence and your mind is supposed to obey, it

  moves with the body, not against it, except for mine, which is

  anarchist from a long time ago and I never thought I’d bow

  down in front o f any fucking flag but I do, in perfect silence

  and sym m etry insofar as my awkward self can manage it; my

  mind’s like a muscle that pulls every time; I feel it jerk and I feel

  the dislocation and the pain and I keep m oving, until I am on

  m y knees in front o f the fucking thing. It’s interesting to think

  o f the difference between a flag and a dick, because this is not a

  new position; with a dick how you get there doesn’t count

  whereas in the dojo all that matters is the elegance, the grace,

  o f the movement, the strength o f the muscles that carry you

  down; an act o f reverence will eventually, says Sensei, teach

  you self-respect, which wasn’t the issue with the dick, as I

  remember. There’s an actual altar. It has on it the Korean flag,

  a picture o f Sensei, and some dried flowers. When I was a child

  I had a huge picture o f Rock Hudson up on the door in m y tiny

  bedroom, on the back o f the door so I would see it when I was

  alone, as if he was there, physically present with me, because

  the picture was so big and real and detailed, o f a real face; I put

  it up with Scotch tape and kissed it good-night, a mixture o f

  heat and loneliness; not quite as I would kiss m y mother if I

  could but with the same intensity I wanted from her, as if she

  could hold me enough, or love me enough, or rock me

  forever; I never understood w hy you couldn’t just bury

  yourself in someone’s arms and kiss until you died; just live

  there, embraced, warm and wet and touched all over. Instead

  there was this photo I cut out o f a magazine, and a lonely bed in

  a lonely house, with mother gone, sick, and father gone, to

  pay doctors. I built up all the love there was in the world out o f

  those lonely nights and when I left home I wasn’t afraid ever to

  touch or be touched and I never abandoned faith that it was

  everything and enough, a thousand percent whole, perfect and

  sensual and true. I thought we were the same, everyone. I

  th
ought Rock could hold me; hold me; as if he were my

  mother, against his breast. O f course, I also liked Tab

  Hunter’s “ Red Sails in the Sunset” ; and Tab Hunter. I was

  indiscriminate even then but it was an optimism and I never

  understood that there was a difference with men, they didn’t

  take the oceanic view; they didn’t want whole, just pieces. I

  thought it would be a small bed like mine, simple, poor, and

  w e’d be on our sides facing each other, the same, and w e’d ride

  the long waves o f feeling as if we all were one, the waves and

  us, w e’d be drenched in heat and sweat, no boundaries, no

  time, and w e’d hold on, hold on, through the great convulsions that made you cry out, and time would be obliterated by

  feeling, as it is. Facing each other and touching we could get

  old and die; then or later; because there’s only now; it didn’t

  matter who, only how it felt, and that it was whole and real

  past any other high or any other truth; I wanted feeling to

  obliterate me and love to annihilate me; don’t ever make a

  wish. There weren’t religious icons in a Jew ish house; only

  movie stars. Sensei says it’s paying respect to her karate

  tradition to kneel down in front o f the Korean flag and her

  picture on the altar but I always wonder what the Koreans

  would think about it; if they’d like a woman elevating herself

  so high. She’s not really a woman, though; and maybe they

  saw the difference and gave her permission, because she’s got a

  male teacher, a karate master, a blackbelt killer as it were, and

  he w ouldn’t brook no vanity. If she were a girl per se she

  couldn’t be so square and fixed, so physically dense, as if

  there’s more o f her per square inch than any other female on

  the planet, because anatomically she’s female, I’m sure,

  although it seems impossible. She’s like a thousand pounds o f

  iron instead o f a hundred pounds o f some petite, cute girl. You

  expect lethal weapons to be big, six feet or more, towering,

  overpoweringly high, casting long, terrifying shadows, with

  muscles as big as bowling balls; so you notice she’s small and

  you can’t figure out how she got the w ay she is except that

  once she must have been a real girl, even in dresses, and so

  maybe you could stop being so curved and soft and flimsy.

  Each inch o f her uses up the space she’s in, introducing weight

  where once there was air; she dislocates space, displaces it, it

  moves and she takes over, she occupies the ground, as if she

  was infantry with a bayonet and the right to kill. She’s nothing

  like a girl. For instance, her shoulders are square, they take up

  space, they are substantial and she don’t make them round or

  underplay them or slump them, they don’t look soft as if you

  could just walk up to her or in a conversation put your arm

  around her, everything’s an edge or a hammer, not a curve.

  She reigns, imperial; butch, m y dear, but transcending the

  domain o f a bar stool, it ain’t role playing, or a pretense, or a

  masquerade; if she were a girl she’d be a little doll; petite; and

  there’d be a bigger male one whose shadow would fall on her

  and bury her alive. She’d live small in perpetual darkness next

  to him. Instead, she’s a certifiable Korean nationalist with an

  altar and a flag who considers a hundred sit-ups an insubstantial beginning, foreplay but, in the male mode, barely

  counting, and she don’t care about the pain. I m yself pretend

  it’s coming from a man, because I know if he was on top o f me

  I w ouldn’t stop; so I try to keep going by turning it into him on

  me; you fuck w ay past pain when a man’s fucking you blind. I

  can do maybe fifteen; I put him on top o f me and I get near

  thirty, maybe twenty-eight; I put him in the corner o f the

  room laughing and I get to thirty-five; after that, Sensei just

  keeps you m oving and you don’t get to stop even if actually

  you think your heart is contracting along with your abdomen

  and it will convulse and cease, still you move, and she sees

  everything, including if you hesitate for half a second or stay

  still for half a second, or try to rest halfw ay between up and

  down because you think she can’t see the difference but she

  sees the molecules in the air and if they ain’t m oving you ain’t

  m oving and her eyes nail you and she’s firm and hard; finally,

  she will say your name to humiliate you; or assign you thirty

  more; and so you keep m oving, the muscles are cramped, all

  twisted up inside, swollen and twisted and convulsing, and

  your heart’s collapsed into your stomach or your stomach into

  your heart and there’s only a bed o f pain in the middle o f you

  that moves, it moves, a half inch o f space over a period o f

  minutes while the others have done five whole sit-ups, six,

  seven, and you feel stupid and weak and cowardly but you

  m ove the teeny, tiny smidgen, you keep m oving, you bounce

  yourself, you use your breath, anything you can get to make

  you m ove so it looks like yo u ’re m oving, and the muscles are

  stuck stiff with pain, swelling in hardened cement, but you

  m ove; barely, but you move; and o f course with m y intellect I

  try to see i f she’s getting o ff on it because if she is that lets me

  o ff the hook, I can walk out self-righteous because she ain’t no

  better than I am, she’s just the other side o f m y coin, m y

  decrepitude, and it’s dominion she’s after, tormenting the

  likes o f me. But she don’t get o ff on it so I keep m oving even

  though I’m barely m oving and you reach a point where if you

  shudder you feel the muscles move and a tremor is distance

  covered; if you shake, the muscles move; and helplessly you

  do shake. Sensei learned to count to a hundred in a school

  pioneered by Stalin; she don’t allow for human flaws, which is

  mental, as he would have agreed; she fixes defects in the mind

  that are expressed as incapacities in the body; it’s right

  thinking that makes the abdomen strong enough to shatter a

  normal man’s fist should he deliver a punch at the top o f his

  form; you can punch Sensei in the gut with everything you got

  and she stands still, straight, tall, she don’t feel nothing in her

  gut but the hitter is hurt. Push-ups is different because women

  can’t do them, because all we get to do in life is carry our

  breasts and shopping, and from childhood they make us stay

  weak in the shoulders but we don’t even know it; and so

  push-ups take forever to learn; and even the best students take

  forever to learn them; to do one is an achievement, and you

  burn with fury that they incapacitated you so much. Sensei can

  do butterfly push-ups, a hundred or a hundred and fifty; it’s

  push-ups but you do them on your fingertips instead o f using

  your whole hand; your hands don’t hit the ground, only the

  tops o f your fingers. I never seen anything like it in m y life. It’s

  an unreal as flapping your wings and actually flying. Y et I seen

  Sensei do it; a hundred ti
mes; she says she can do fifty more. I

  can barely breathe thinking about what it would feel like to do

  it or to be so strong or so agile or so fucking brave, because I’d

  be afraid o f falling; o f breaking m y fingers; o f slipping; o f pain.

  I love it; I live for her to do it; up and down, with the tips o f her

  fingers taking all the weight o f her body going down, then

  lifting her up. I can raise just the top half o f m y body, about

  five times, which is pretty usual and she says that’s how to

  build the muscles and we have to have patience to undo the

  damage o f being made weak; and I see it ain’t just the penis

  they nail you with, they pin you down at both ends, and all the

  strength you could have in the upper part o f your body is

  atrophied as if you was paralyzed your whole life; except you

  w asn’t. I tell m yself that whatever I can take from him,

  w hom ever, I can take for me; me; now; and when I get weak

  and fall back to m y bad old w ays because I never had a me and

  still don’t except by forcing m yself to think so I say I’m doing

  it for her; this me is pretty tenuous but I can take anything for

  him and a fair amount for her and I play with it in m y mind,

  that it’s for her, and I watch m yself with interest, how physical

  pain changes when it is in the guise o f sex or love or infatuation

  or even just seduction, I will get her attention by m oving,

  m oving, ju st a little more, just a little bit more; I pretend this is

  sex but I still never get past sixty and it is because I have wrong

  thinking and a girl’s stupid life. B y sixty I mean sixty o f barely

  m oving; I never got past seventeen actual whole sit-ups and I

  never got to one whole push-up; and I still don’t know w hy

  her fingers don’t break from the butterfly push-ups; and she

  teaches us to make a fist and we practice and m y fingers are too

  stupid and weak even to do that right, I try to fold them under

  so every joint is folded under every other joint so it’s solid and

  hard and not filled with air the w ay girls make fists but my

  fingers w o n ’t m ove right and I can’t make the sections tight