Last Days at Hot Slit

by Andrea Dworkin

  Thus, giving the woman power over intercourse was giving her the power to be equal. Woodhull’s vision was in fact deeply humane, oriented toward sexual pleasure in freedom. For women, she thought and proclaimed (at great cost to herself), freedom must be literal, physical, concrete self-determination beginning with absolute control of the sexual organs; this was a natural right that had been perverted by male dominance—and because of its perversion, sex was for women morbid and degrading. The only freedom imaginable in this act of intercourse was freedom based on an irrevocable and unbreachable female will given play in a body honestly her own. This was an eloquent answer to reading the meaning of intercourse the other way: by its nature, intercourse mandated that the woman must be lesser in power and in privacy. Instead, said Woodhull, the woman must be king. Her humanity required sexual sovereignty.

  Male-dominant gender hierarchy, however, seems immune to reform by reasoned or visionary argument or by changes in sexual styles, either personal or social. This may be because intercourse itself is immune to reform. In it, female is bottom, stigmatized. Intercourse remains a means or the means of physiologically making a woman inferior: communicating to her cell by cell her own inferior status, impressing it on her, burning it into her by shoving it into her, over and over, pushing and thrusting until she gives up and gives in—which is called surrender in the male lexicon. In the experience of intercourse, she loses the capacity for integrity because her body—the basis of privacy and freedom in the material world for all human beings—is entered and occupied; the boundaries of her physical body are—neutrally speaking—violated. What is taken from her in that act is not recoverable, and she spends her life—wanting, after all, to have something—pretending that pleasure is in being reduced through intercourse to insignificance. She will not have an orgasm—maybe because she has human pride and she resents captivity; but also she will not or cannot rebel—not enough for it to matter, to end male dominance over her. She learns to eroticize powerlessness and self-annihilation. The very boundaries of her own body become meaningless to her, and even worse, useless to her. The transgression of those boundaries comes to signify a sexually charged degradation into which she throws herself, having been told, convinced, that identity, for a female, is there—somewhere beyond privacy and self-respect.

  It is not that there is no way out if, for instance, one were to establish or believe that intercourse itself determines women’s lower status. New reproductive technologies have changed and will continue to change the nature of the world. Intercourse is not necessary to existence anymore. Existence does not depend on female compliance, nor on the violation of female boundaries, nor on lesser female privacy, nor on the physical occupation of the female body. But the hatred of women is a source of sexual pleasure for men in its own right. Intercourse appears to be the expression of that contempt in pure form, in the form of a sexed hierarchy; it requires no passion or heart because it is power without invention articulating the arrogance of those who do the fucking. Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men’s contempt for women; but that contempt can turn gothic and express itself in many sexual and sadistic practices that eschew intercourse per se. Any violation of a woman’s body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography. So freedom from intercourse, or a social structure that reflects the low value of intercourse in women’s sexual pleasure, or intercourse becoming one sex act among many entered into by (hypothetical) equals as part of other, deeper, longer, perhaps more sensual lovemaking, or an end to women’s inferior status because we need not be forced to reproduce (forced fucking frequently justified by some implicit biological necessity to reproduce): none of these are likely social developments because there is a hatred of women, unexplained, undiagnosed, mostly unacknowledged, that pervades sexual practice and sexual passion. Reproductive technologies are strengthening male dominance, invigorating it by providing new ways of policing women’s reproductive capacities, bringing them under stricter male scrutiny and control; and the experimental development of these technologies has been sadistic, using human women as if they were sexual laboratory animals—rats, mice, rabbits, cats, with kinky uteri. For increasing numbers of men, bondage and torture of the female genitals (that were entered into and occupied in the good old days) may supplant intercourse as a sexual practice. The passion for hurting women is a sexual passion; and sexual hatred of women can be expressed without intercourse.

  There has always been a peculiar irrationality to all the biological arguments that supposedly predetermine the inferior social status of women. Bulls mount cows and baboons do whatever; but human females do not have estrus or go into heat. The logical inference is not that we are always available for mounting but rather that we are never, strictly speaking, “available.” Nor do animals have cultures; nor do they determine in so many things what they will do and how they will do them and what the meaning of their own behavior is. They do not decide what their lives will be. Only humans face the often complicated reality of having potential and having to make choices based on having potential. We are not driven by instinct, at least not much. We have possibilities, and we make up meanings as we go along. The meanings we create or learn do not exist only in our heads, in ineffable ideas. Our meanings also exist in our bodies—what we are, what we do, what we physically feel, what we physically know; and there is no personal psychology that is separate from what the body has learned about life. Yet when we look at the human condition, including the condition of women, we act as if we are driven by biology or some metaphysically absolute dogma. We refuse to recognize our possibilities because we refuse to honor the potential humans have, including human women, to make choices. Men too make choices. When will they choose not to despise us?

  Being female in this world is having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice. Objectification may well be the most singly destructive aspect of gender hierarchy, especially as it exists in relation to intercourse. The surrender occurs before the act that is supposed to accomplish the surrender takes place. She has given in; why conquer her? The body is violated before the act occurs that is commonly taken to be violation. The privacy of the person is lessened before the privacy of the woman is invaded: she has remade herself so as to prepare the way for the invasion of privacy that her preparation makes possible. The significance of the human ceases to exist as the value of the object increases: an expensive ornament, for instance, she is incapable of human freedom—taking it, knowing it, wanting it, being it. Being an object—living in the realm of male objectification—is abject submission, an abdication of the freedom and integrity of the body, its privacy, its uniqueness, its worth in and of itself because it is the human body of a human being. Can intercourse exist without objectification? Would intercourse be a different phenomenon if it could, if it did? Would it be shorter or longer, happier or sadder; more complex, richer, denser, with a baroque beauty or simpler with an austere beauty; or bang bang bang? Would intercourse without objectification, if it could exist, be compatible with women’s equality—even an expression of it—or would it still be stubbornly antagonistic to it? Would intercourse cause orgasm in women if women were not objects for men before and during intercourse? Can intercourse exist without objectification and can objectification exist without female complicity in maintaining it as a perceived reality and a material reality too: can objectification exist without the woman herself turning herself into an object—becoming through effort and art a thing, less than human, so that he can be more than human, hard, sovereign, king? Can intercourse exist without the woman herself turning herself into a thing, which she must do because men cannot fuck equals and men must fuck: because one price of dominance is that one is impotent in the face of equality?

  To become the ob
ject, she takes herself and transforms herself into a thing: all freedoms are diminished and she is caged, even in the cage docile, sometimes physically maimed, movement is limited: she physically becomes the thing he wants to fuck. It is especially in the acceptance of object status that her humanity is hurt: it is a metaphysical acceptance of lower status in sex and in society; an implicit acceptance of less freedom, less privacy, less integrity. In becoming an object so that he can objectify her so that he can fuck her, she begins a political collaboration with his dominance; and then when he enters her, he confirms for himself and for her what she is: that she is something, not someone; certainly not someone equal.

  There is the initial complicity, the acts of self-mutilation, self-diminishing, self-reconstruction, until there is no self, only the diminished, mutilated reconstruction. It is all superficial and unimportant, except what it costs the human in her to do it: except for the fact that it is submissive, conforming, giving up an individuality that would withstand object status or defy it. Something happens inside; a human forgets freedom; a human learns obedience; a human, this time a woman, learns how to goose-step the female way. Wilhelm Reich, that most optimistic of sexual liberationists, the only male one to abhor rape really, thought that a girl needed not only “a free genital sexuality” but also “an undisturbed room, proper contraceptives, a friend who is capable of love, that is, not a National Socialist…”18 All remain hard for women to attain; but especially the lover who is not a National Socialist. So the act goes beyond complicity to collaboration; but collaboration requires a preparing of the ground, an undermining of values and vision and dignity, a sense of alienation from the worth of other human beings—and this alienation is fundamental to females who are objectified because they do not experience themselves as human beings of worth except for their value on the market as objects. Knowing one’s own human value is fundamental to being able to respect others: females are remade into objects, not human in any sense related to freedom or justice—and so what can females recognize in other females that is a human bond toward freedom? Is there anything in us to love if we do not love each other as the objects we have become? Who can love someone who is less than human unless love itself is domination per se? Alienation from human freedom is deep and destructive; it destroys whatever it is in us as humans that is creative, that causes us to want to find meaning in experiences, even hard experiences; it destroys in us that which wants freedom whatever the hardship of attaining it. In women, these great human capacities and dimensions are destroyed or mutilated; and so we find ourselves bewildered—who or what are these so-called persons in human form but even that not quite, not exactly, who cannot remember or manifest the physical reality of freedom, who do not seem to want or to value the individual experience of freedom? Being an object for a man means being alienated from other women—those like her in status, in inferiority, in sexual function. Collaboration by women with men to keep women civilly and sexually inferior has been one of the hallmarks of female subordination; we are ashamed when Freud notices it, but it is true. That collaboration, fully manifested when a woman values her lover, the National Socialist, above any woman, any one of her own kind or class or status, may have simple beginnings: the first act of complicity that destroys self-respect, the capacity for self-determination and freedom—readying the body for the fuck instead of for freedom. The men have an answer: intercourse is freedom. Maybe it is second-class freedom for second-class humans.

  What does it mean to be the person who needs to have this done to her: who needs to be needed as an object; who needs to be entered; who needs to be occupied; who needs to be wanted more than she needs integrity or freedom or equality? If objectification is necessary for intercourse to be possible, what does that mean for the person who needs to be fucked so that she can experience herself as female and who needs to be an object so that she can be fucked?

  The brilliance of objectification as a strategy of dominance is that it gets the woman to take the initiative in her own degradation (having less freedom is degrading). The woman herself takes one kind of responsibility absolutely and thus commits herself to her own continuing inferiority: she polices her own body; she internalizes the demands of the dominant class and, in order to be fucked, she constructs her life around meeting those demands. It is the best system of colonialization on earth: she takes on the burden, the responsibility, of her own submission, her own objectification. In some systems in which turning the female into an object for sex requires actual terrorism and maiming—for instance, footbinding or removing the clitoris—the mother does it, having had it done to her by her mother. What men need done to women so that men can have intercourse with women is done to women so that men will have intercourse; no matter what the human cost; and it is a gross indignity to suggest that when her collaboration is complete—unselfconscious because there is no self and no consciousness left—she is free to have freedom in intercourse. When those who dominate you get you to take the initiative in your own human destruction, you have lost more than any oppressed people yet has ever gotten back. Whatever intercourse is, it is not freedom; and if it cannot exist without objectification, it never will be. Instead occupied women will be collaborators, more base in their collaboration than other collaborators have ever been: experiencing pleasure in their own inferiority; calling intercourse freedom. It is a tragedy beyond the power of language to convey when what has been imposed on women by force becomes a standard of freedom for women: and all the women say it is so.

  If intercourse can be an expression of sexual equality, it will have to survive—on its own merits as it were, having a potential for human expression not yet recognized or realized—the destruction of male power over women; and rape and prostitution will have to be seen as the institutions that most impede any experience of intercourse as freedom—chosen by full human beings with full human freedom. Rape and prostitution negate self-determination and choice for women; and anyone who wants intercourse to be freedom and to mean freedom had better find a way to get rid of them. Maybe life is tragic and the God who does not exist made women inferior so that men could fuck us; or maybe we can only know this much for certain—that when intercourse exists and is experienced under conditions of force, fear, or inequality, it destroys in women the will to political freedom; it destroys the love of freedom itself. We become female: occupied; collaborators against each other, especially against those among us who resist male domination—the lone, crazy resisters, the organized resistance. The pleasure of submission does not and cannot change the fact, the cost, the indignity, of inferiority.

  MERCY

  1990

  CHAPTER 6: IN JUNE 1967 (AGE 20)

  One night I’m just there, where I live, alone, afraid, the men have been trying to come in. I’m for using men up as fast as you can; pulling them, grab, twist, put it here, so they dangle like twisted dough or you bend them all around like pretzels; you pull down, the asshole crawls. You need a firm, fast hand, a steady stare, calm nerve; grab, twist. First, fast; before they get to throw you down. You surprise them with your stance, warrior queen, quiet, mean, and once your hands are around their thing they’re stupid, not tough; still mean but slow and you can get gone, it takes the edge off how mean he’s going to be. Were you ever so alone as me? It doesn’t matter what they do to you just so you get them first—it’s your game and you get money; even if they shit on you it’s your game; as long as it’s your game you have freedom, you say it’s fun but whatever you say you’re in charge. Some people think being poor is the freedom or the game. It’s being the one who says how and do it to me now; instead of just waiting until he does it and he’s gone. You got to be mad at them perpetually and forever and fierce and you got to know that you got a cunt and that’s it. You want philosophy and you’re dumb and dead; you want true love and real romance, the same. You put your hand between them and your twat and you got a chance; you use it like it’s a muscle, sinew and grease, a gun, a knife; you grab and twist
and turn and stare him in the eye, smile, he’s already losing because you got there first, between his legs; his thing’s in your fist and your fist is closing on him fast and he’s got a failure of nerve for one second, a pause, a gulp, one second, disarmed, unsure, long enough so he doesn’t know, can’t remember, how mean he is; and then you have to take him into you, of course, you’ve given your word; there on the cement or in a shadow or some room; a shadow’s warm and dark and consoling and no one can close the door on you and lock you in; you don’t go with him somewhere unless you got a feeling for him because you never know what they’ll do; you go for the edge, a feeling, it’s worth the risk; you learn what they want, early, easy, it’s not hard, you can ride the energy they give out or see it in how they move or read it off their hips; or you can guide them, there’s never enough blow jobs they had to make them tired of it if worse comes to worse and you need to, it will make him stupid and weak but sometimes he’s mean after because he’s sure you’re dirt, anyone who’s had him in her mouth is dirt, how do they get by, these guys, so low and mean. It’s you, him, midnight, cement; viscous dark, slate gray bed, light falling down from tarnished bulbs above you; neon somewhere rattling, shaking, static shocks to your eye, flash, zing, zip, winding words, a long poem in flickering light; what is neon and how did it get into the sky at night? The great gray poet talked it but he didn’t have to do it. He was a shithead. I’m the real poet of everyone; the Amerikan democrat on cement, with everyone; it wears you down, Walt; I don’t like poetry anymore; it’s semen, you great gray clod, not some fraternal wave of democratic joy. I was born in 1946 down the street from where Walt Whitman lived; the girl he never wanted, I can face it now; in Camden, the great gray city; on great gray cement, broken, bleeding, the girls squashed down on it, the fuck weighing down on top, pushing in behind; blood staining the gravel, mine not his; bullshitter poet, great gray bullshitter; having all the men in the world, and all the women, hard, real, true, it wears you down, great gray virgin with fantastic dreams, you great gray fool. I was born in 1946 down the street from where Walt Whitman lived, in Camden, Andrea, it means manhood or courage but it was pink pussy anyway wrapped in a pink fuzzy blanket with big men’s fingers going coochie coochie coo. Pappa said don’t believe what’s in books but if it was a poem I believed it; my first lyric poem was a street, cement, gray, lined with monuments, broken brick buildings, archaic, empty vessels, great, bloodstained walls, a winding road to nowhere, gray, hard, light falling on it from a tarnished moon so it was silver and brass in the dark and it went out straight into the gray sky where the moon was, one road of cement and silver and night stained red with real blood, you’re down on your knees and he’s pushing you from inside, God’s heartbeat ramming into you and the skin is scraped loose and you bleed and stain the stone under you. Here’s the poem you got. It’s your flesh scraped until it’s rubbed off and you got a mark, you got a burn, you got stains of blood, you got desolation on you. It’s his mark on you and you’ve got his smell on you and his bruise inside you; the houses are monuments, brick, broken brick, red, blood red. There’s a skyline, five floors high, three floors high, broken brick, chopped off brick, empty inside, with gravel lots and a winding cement road, Dorothy tap-dances to Oz, up the yellow brick road, the great gray road, he’s on you, twisted on top of you, his arms twisted in your arms, his legs twisted in your legs, he’s twisted in you, there’s a great animal in the dark, him twisting draped over you, the sweat silver and slick; the houses are brick, monuments around you, you’re laid out dead and they’re the headstones, nothing written on them, they tower over your body put to rest. The only signs of existence are on you, you carry them on you, the marks, the bruises, the scars, your body gets marked where you exist, it’s a history book with the signs of civilized life, communication, the city, the society, belles lettres, a primitive alphabet of blood and pain, the flesh poem, poem of the girl, when a girl says yes, what a girl says yes to, what happens to a girl who is poesy on cement, your body the paper and the poem, the press and the ink, the singer and the song; it’s real, it’s literal, this song of myself, you’re what there is, the medium, the message, the sign, the signifier; an autistic poem. Tattooed boys are your friends, they write the words on their skin; but your skin gets used up, scraped away every time they push you down, you carry what you got and what you know, all your belongings, him on you through time, in the scars—your meanings, your lists, your items, your serial numbers and identification numbers, social security, registration, which one you are, your name in blood spread thin on your skin, spread out on porous skin, thin and stretched, a delicate shade of fear toughened by callouses of hate; and you learn to read your name on your body written in your blood, the book of signs, manhood or courage but it’s different when pussy does it. You don’t set up housekeeping, a room with things; instead you carry it all on you, not on your back tied down, or on your head piled up; it’s in you, carved in, the cold on you, you on cement, sexy abrasions, sexy blood, sexy black and blue, the heat’s on you, your sweat’s a wet membrane between you and the weather, all there is, and you have burns, scars, there’s gray cement, a silver gray under a tarnished, brassy moon, there’s a cement graveyard, brick gravestones, the empty brick buildings; and you’re laid out, for the fucking. Walt was a fool, a virgin fool; you would have been ground down, it’s not love, it’s slaughter, you fucking fool. I’m the field, they fall on me and bruise the ground, you don’t hear the earth you fall on crying out but a poet should know. Prophets are fucking fools. What I figured out is that writers sit in rooms and make it up. Marx made it up. Walt made it up. Fucking fools like me believe it; do it; foot soldiers in hell. Sleep is the worst time, God puts you in a fuck-me position, you can’t run, you can’t fight, you can’t stay alive without luck, you’re in the dark and dead, they can get you, have you, use you; you manage to disappear, become invisible in the dark, or it’s like being hung out to dry, you’re under glass, in a museum, all laid out, on display, waiting for whatever gang passes by to piss on you; it’s inside, they’re not supposed to come inside but there is no inside where they can’t come, it’s only doors and windows to keep them out, open sesame and the doors and windows open or they bash them open and no one stops them and you’re inside laid out for them, come, hurt me now, I’m lying flat, helpless, some fucking innocent naked baby, a sweet, helpless thing all curled up like a fetus as if I were safe, inside her; but there’s nothing between you and them; she’s not between you and them. Why did God make you have to sleep? I was born in Camden; I’m twenty; I can’t remember the last time I heard my name. My name is and will the real one please stand up, do you remember that game show on television, from when it was easy. Women will whisper it to you, even dirty street women; even leather women; even mean women. You have to be careful if you want it from the street women; they might be harder than you, know where you’re soft, see through you, you’re all different with them because maybe they can see through you. Maybe you’re not the hardest bitch. Maybe she’s going to take from you. I don’t give; I take. It’s when she’s on me I hear my name; doesn’t matter who she is, I love her to death, women are generous this way, the meanest of us, I say her name, she says mine, kisses brushing inside the ear, she’s wet all over me, it’s all continuous, you’re not in little pieces, I hear my name like the sound of the ocean in a shell; whether she’s saying it or not. We’re twisted around each other inside slime and sweat and tear drops, we’re the wave and the surf, the undercurrent, the pounding of the tidal wave halfway around the world banging the beach on a bright, sunny day, the tide, high tide, low tide, under the moon or under a black sky, we’re the sand wet and hard deserted by the water, the sand under the water, gravel and shell and moving claws crawling. I remember this one woman because I wanted her so bad but something was wrong, she was lying to me, telling me my lie but no woman lies to me. There’s this woman at night I remember, in a restaurant I go when I’m taking a break, kosher restaurant with old men w
aiters, all night it’s open, big room, plain tables, high ceilings, ballroom high and wide, big, empty feeling, old, old building, in New York, wide downtown street, gray street, fluorescent lights, a greenish light on green walls, oil paint, green, the old men have thick Jewish accents, they’re slow moving, you can feel their bones aching, I sit alone over coffee and soup and she’s there at the next table, the room’s empty but she sits at the table next to me, black leather pants, she’s got black hair, painted black, like I always wanted, and I want her but I’m her prey because she wants a bowl of fucking soup, she’s picked me, she’s coming for me, how did that happen, how did it get all fucked up, she sees me as the mark because I’ve got the food which means I’ve got the money and I can’t go with her now because she has an underlying bad motive, she wants to eat, and what I feel for her is complete sex, so I’m the dope; and I don’t do the dopey part; it’s my game and she’s playing it on me; she’s got muscles and I want to see the insides of her thighs, I want to feel them, I want her undressed, I want her legs around my shoulders, she smiles, asks me how I am; be a fool, tell her how you are. I look right through her. I stare right through her while I’m deciding what to do. I ain’t giving; I take. I want to be with her, I want to be between her legs and all over her and her thighs a vise around my neck; I want my teeth in her; I want her muscles squeezing me to death and I want to push down on her shoulders and I want my thighs crushing down on her, all my weight on her hips, my skin, bluish, on the inside of my thighs feeling her bones; but I’m the mark, that’s how she sees it, and maybe she’s meaner than me, or crazy, or harder, or feels less, or needs less, so she’s on top and she takes; how many times have I done what she’s doing now and did they want me the way I want her; well, they’re stupid and I’m not; it hurts not to take her with me, I could put my hand on her and she’d come, I stare right through her, I look right through her but I’m devouring her at the same time which means she knows I’m a fool; she’s acting harmless but maybe it’s a lie, my instincts say it’s a lie, there’s no harmless women left alive this time of night, not on these streets. You risk too much if you go with a woman who needs less than you do; if you don’t have to, if you have a choice, you don’t take risks—you could lose your heart or your money or your speed; fucking fool who has a choice and doesn’t use it; it’s stupid middle-class girls you have to find or street women past wanting, past ambition, they live on bits of this and pieces of that, they’re not looking for any heavy score, they live almost on air, it’s pat, habit, they don’t need you, but sometimes they like a taste; survival’s an art, there are nuances, she’s a dangerous piece of shit, stunning black eyes, and I’m smitten, and I walk out, look behind me, she came out, watched me, didn’t follow, made me nervous, I don’t often pass up what I want, I don’t like doing it, it leaves an ache, don’t like to ache too long without distracting myself by activity, anything to pass the time, and it makes me restless and careless, to want someone like that; I wanted her, she wanted food, money, most of what happens happens for food, all kinds of food, deep hungers that rock you in their everloving arms, rocked to eternal sleep by what you need, the song of myself, I need; need her; remember her; need women; need to hear my name; wanted her; she wanted food. What’s inside you gets narrow and mean—it’s an edge, it cuts, it’s a slice of sharp, a line at the blade’s end, no surface, no waste, no tease, a thin line where your meanest edge meets the air; an edge, no blade you can see. If you could stomp on me, this is what you’d see—a line, touch it, you’re slivers. I’d be cut glass, you’d be feet. You’d dance blood. The edge of the blade, no surface, just what cuts, a thin line, touch it, draw blood. Inside, nothing else is alive. Where’s the love I dream of. I hole up, like a bug in a rug. There’s women who bore me; wasted time; the taste of death; junkie time; a junkie woman comes to me, long, languid afternoons making love but I didn’t like it, she got beat up by her boyfriend, she’s sincerely in love, black and blue, loving you, and he’s her source; pure love; true romance. Don’t like mixing women with obligation—in this case, the obligation to redeem her from pain. I want to want; I like wanting, just so it gets fulfilled and I don’t have to wait too long; I like the ache just long enough to make what touches it appreciated a little more, a little drama, a little pain. I don’t like no beat-up piece of shit; junkie stooge. You don’t want the edge of the blade to get dull; then you got dullness inside and this you can’t afford. The woman’s got to be free; a beast of freedom; not a predator needing a bowl of fucking soup, not a fool needing a fucking fix; she’s got to give freedom off, exude it, she’s got to be grand with freedom, all swelled up with it, a Madame Curie of freedom, or she’s Garbo, or more likely, she’s Che, she’s got to be a monster of freedom, a hero of loveless love; Napoleon but they didn’t lock her up or she got loose, now, for me; no beat up junkie fool; no beautiful piece looking for a hamburger. There’s magnificent women out here. These lights light you up. You are on Broadway and there are stars of a high magnitude. There’s the queen of them all who taught me—sweet name, Rebecca; ruthless crusher of a dyke; honest to God, she’s wearing a gold lame dress when I meet her in jail when I’m a kid, eighteen, a political prisoner as it were, as I saw myself, and she loves poetry and she sends me a pile of New Yorker magazines because, she says, I’m a poet; and I don’t want her on me, not in jail, I’m too scared, too hurt, but she protects me anyway, and I get out fast enough that I don’t have to do her, and I see her later out here and I remember her kindness, which it was, real kindness, taking care of me in that place, which was why I was treated right by the other inmates as it were; I see her on the street, gold lame against a window, I see her shimmering, and I go with her for thanks and because she is grand, and I find out you can be free in a gold lame dress, in jail, whoring, in black skin, in hunger, in pain, in strife, the strife of the streets, perpetual war, gritty, gray, she’s the wild one with freedom in her soul, it translates into how you touch, what’s in your fingers, the silk in your hands, the freedom you take with who you got under you; you got your freedom and you take theirs for when you are with them, you are a caretaker of the fragile freedom in them, because most women don’t got much, and you don’t be afraid to take, you turn their skin to flames, you eat them raw, your name’s all over them, you wrap them up in you, crush them in you, and what you give is ambition, the ambition to do it big, do it great, big gestures, free—girls do it big, girls soar, girls burn, girls take big not puny; stop giving, child, better to be stole from than to give—stop giving away the little that you got. I stay with her until she’s finished with me, she’s doing her art on me, she’s practicing freedom on me; I’m shaking from it, her great daring, the audacity of her body on mine; she’s free on me and I learn from it on me how to do it and how to be it; flamboyant lovemaking, no apology, dead serious, we could die right after this and this is the last thing we know and it’s enough, the last minute, the last time, the last touch, God comes down through her on me, the good God, the divine God; master lovemaker, lightning in a girl, I’ve got a new theology, She’s a rough Girl; and what’s between my legs is a running river, She made it then She rested; a running river; so deep, so long, clear, bright, smart, racing, white foam over a cliff and then a dead drop and then it keeps on going, running, racing, then the smooth, silk calm, the deep calm, the long, silk body, smooth. I heard some man say I put it in her smooth, smooth was a noun, and I knew right away he liked children, he’s after children, there are such men; but it’s not what I mean; I mean that together we’re smooth, it’s smooth, we’re smooth on each other, it’s a smooth ride; and if I died right after I wouldn’t feel cheated or sorry and every time I’m happy I had her one more second and I feel proud she wants me; and she’ll disappear, she’ll take someone else, but I’ll sit here like a dumb little shit until she does, a student, sitting, waiting at her feet, let her touch me once, then once more, I’m happy near her, her freedom’s holding me tight, her freedom’s on me, around me, climbing insi
de me, her freedom’s embracing me; wild woman; a wild woman’s pussy that will not die for some junkie prick; nor songwriter; nor businessman; nor philosopher. The men are outside, they want to come in, I hear them rattling around, death threats, destruction isn’t quiet or subtle, imagine those for whom it is, safe, blessedly safe; so in my last minutes on this earth, perhaps, I am remembering Rebecca who taught me freedom; I would sit down quiet next to her, wait for her, watch her; did you ever love a girl? I’ve loved several; loved. Not just wanted but loved in thought or action. Wasn’t raped by any of them. I mean, rape’s just a word, it doesn’t mean anything, someone fucks you, so what? I can’t see complaining about it. But I wasn’t hurt by any of them. I don’t mean I wasn’t hurt by love; shit, that’s what love does, it drags your heart over a bed of nails, I was hurt by love, lazy, desperate drinks through long nights of pain without her, hurting bad. Wasn’t pushed around. Saw others who were. It’s not that women don’t. It’s just that it had my name on it, men said pussy or dyke or whatever stupid distortion but I saw freedom, I heard Andrea, I found freedom under her, wrapped around her, her lips on me and her hands on me, in me, her thighs holding on to me; there’s always men around waiting to break in, throw themselves on top, pull you down; but women’s different, it’s a fast, gorgeous trip out of hell, a hundred-mile-an-hour ride on a different road in the opposite direction, it’s when you see an attitude that sets you free, the way she moves breaks you out, or you touch her shoulder and exhilaration shoots through you like a needle would do hanging from your vein if it’s got something good in it; it’s a gold rush; your life’s telling you that if you’re between her legs you’re free—free’s not peaceful and not always kind, it’s fast, a shooting star you ride, if you’re stupid it shakes you loose and hurls you somewhere in the sky, no gravity, no fall, just eternal drift to nowhere out past up and down. You can live forever on the curve of her hip, attached there in sweat and desire taking the full measure of your own human sorrow; you can have this tearing sorrow with your face pushing on the inside of her thigh; you can have her lips on you, her hands pushing on you as if you’re marble she’s turning into clay, an electricity running all over you carried in saliva and spit, you’re cosseted in electric shock, peeing, your hair standing up on end, muscles stretched, lit up; there’s her around you and in you everywhere, the rhythm of your dance and at the same time she’s like the placenta, you breathe in her, surrounded; it’s something men don’t know or they’d do it, they could do it, but instead they want this push, shove, whatever it is they’re doing for whatever reason, it’s an ignorant meanness, but with a woman you’re whole and you’re free, it ain’t pieces of you flying around like shit, it ain’t being used up, you got scars bigger than the freedom you get in everyday life; do it the way you’re supposed to, you got twenty-four hours a day down on your knees sucking dick; that’s how girls do hard time. There’s not many women around who have any freedom in them let alone some to spare, extravagant, on you, and it’s when they’re on you you see it best and know it’s real, now and all, there won’t be anything wilder or finer, it’s pure and true, you see it, you chase them, they’re on you, you get enraptured in it, once you got it on you, once you feel it moving through you, it’s a contagion of wanting more than you get being pussy for the boys, you catch it like a fever, it puts you on a slow bum with your skin aching and you want it more than you can find it because most women are beggars and slaves in spirit and in life and you don’t ever give up wanting it. Otherwise you get worn down to what they say you are, you get worn down to pussy, bedraggled; not bewitched, bothered, bewildered; just some wet, ratty, bedraggled thing, semen caked on you, his piss running down your legs, worn out, old from what you’re sucking, I’m pretty fucking old and I have been loved by freedom and I have loved freedom back. Did you ever have a nightmare? Men coming in’s my nightmare; entering; I’m in, knock, knock. There’s writers being assholes about outlaws; outlaw this, outlaw that, I’m bad, I’m sitting here writing my book and I’m bad, I’m typing and I’m bad, my secretary’s typing and I’m bad, I got laid, the boys say, like their novels are letters home to mama, well, hell’s bells, the boys got laid: more than once. It’s something to write home about, all right; costs fifty bucks, too; they found dirty women they did it to, dirty women too fucking poor to have a typewriter to stuff up bad boy writer’s ass. Shit. You follow his cock around the big, bad city: New York, Paris, Rome—same city, same cock. Big, bad cock. Wiping themselves on dirty women, then writing home to mama by way of Grove Press, saying what trash the dirty women are; how brave the bad boys are, writing about it, doing it, putting their cocks in the big, bad, dirty hole where all the other big, brave boys were; oh they say dirty words about dirty women good. I read the books. I had a typewriter but it was stolen when the men broke in. The men broke in before when I wasn’t here and they took everything, my clothes, my typewriter. I wrote stories. Some were about life on other planets; I wrote once about a wild woman on a rock on Mars. I described the rock, the red planet, barren, and a woman with tangled hair, big, with muscles, sort of Ursula Andress on a rock. I couldn’t think of what happened though. She was just there alone. I loved it. Never wanted it to end. I wrote about the country a lot, pastoral stuff, peaceful, I made up stories about the wind blowing through the trees and leaves falling and turning red. I wrote stories about teenagers feeling angst, not the ones I knew but regular ones with stereos. I couldn’t think of details though. I wrote about men and women making love. I made it up; or took it from Nino, a boy I knew, except I made it real nice; as he said it would be; I left out the knife. The men writers make it as nasty as they can, it’s like they’re using a machine gun on her; they type with their fucking cocks—as Mailer admitted, right? Except he said balls, always a romancer. I can’t think of getting a new typewriter, I need money for just staying alive, orange juice and coffee and cigarettes and milk, vodka and pills, they’ll just smash it or take it anyway, I have to just learn to write with a pen and paper in handwriting so no one can steal it and so it don’t take money. When I read the big men writers I’m them; careening around like they do; never paying a fucking price; days are long, their books are short compared to an hour on the street; but if you think about a book just saying I’m a prick and I fuck dirty girls, the books are pretty long; my cock, my cock, three volumes. They should just say: I Can Fuck. Norman Mailer’s new novel. I Can Be Fucked. Jean Genet’s new novel. I’m Waiting To Be Fucked Or To Fuck, I Don’t Know. Samuel Beckett’s new novel. She Shit. James Joyce’s masterpiece. Fuck Me, Fuck Her, Fuck It. The Living Theatre’s new play. Paradise Fucked. The sequel. Mama, I Fucked a Jewish Girl. The new Philip Roth. Mama, I Fucked a Shiksa. The new, new Philip Roth. It was a bad day they wouldn’t let little boys say that word. I got to tell you, they get laid. They’re up and down these streets, taking what they want; two hundred million little Henry Millers with hard pricks and a mean prose style; Pulitzer prizewinning assholes using cash. Looking for experience, which is what they call pussy afterward when they’re back in their posh apartments trying to justify themselves. Experience is us, the ones they stick it in. Experience is when they put down the money, then they turn you around like you’re a chicken they’re roasting; they stick it in any hole they can find just to try it or because they’re blind drunk and it ain’t painted red so they can’t find it; you get to be lab mice for them; they stick the famous Steel Rod into any Fleshy Hole they can find and they Ram the Rod In when they can manage it which thank God often enough they can’t. The prose gets real purple then. You can’t put it down to impotence though because they get laid and they had women and they fucked a lot; they just never seem to get over the miracle that it’s them in a big man’s body doing all the damage; Look, ma, it’s me. Volume Twelve. They don’t act like human beings and they’re pretty proud of it so there’s no point in pretending they are; though you want to—pretend. You’d like to think they could feel something—sad; or remorse; or something just
simple, a minute of recognition. It’s interesting that you’re so dangerous to them but you fucking can’t hurt them; how can you be dangerous if you can’t do harm; I’d like to be able to level them, but you can’t touch them except to be fucked by them; they get to do it and then they get to say what it is they’re doing—you’re what they’re afraid of but the fear just keeps them coming, it doesn’t shake them loose or get them off you; it’s more like the glue that keeps them on you; sticky stuff, how afraid the pricks are. I mean, maybe they’re not afraid. It sounds so stupid to say they are, so banal, like making them human anyway, like giving them the insides you wish they had. So what do you say; they’re just so fucking filled with hate they can’t do anything else or feel anything else or write anything else? I mean, do they ever look at the fucking moon? I think all the sperm they’re spilling is going to have an effect; something’s going to grow. It’s like they’re planting a whole next generation of themselves by sympathetic magic; not that they’re fucking to have babies; it’s more like they’re rubbing and heaving and pushing and banging and shoving and ejaculating like some kind of voodoo rite so all the sperm will grow into more them, more boys with more books about how they got themselves into dirt and got out alive. It’s a thrilling story, says the dirt they got themselves into. It’s bitterness, being their filth; they don’t even remember right, you’re not distinct enough, an amoeba’s more distinct, more individuated; they go home and make it up after they did it for real and suddenly they ain’t parasites, they’re heroes—big dicks in the big night taming some rich but underneath it all street dirty whore, some glamorous thing but underneath filth; I think even if you were with them all the time they wouldn’t remember you day-to-day, it’s like being null and void and fucked at the same time, I am fucked, therefore I am not. Maybe I’ll write books about history—prior times, the War of 1812; not here and now, which is a heartbreaking time, place, situation, for someone. You’re nothing to them. I don’t think they’re afraid. Maybe I’m afraid. The men want to come in; I hear them outside, banging; they’re banging against the door with metal things, probably knives; the men around here have knives; they use knives; I’m familiar with knives; I grew up around knives; Nino used a knife; I’m not afraid of knives. Fear’s a funny thing; you get fucked enough you lose it; or most of it; I don’t know why that should be per se. It’s all callouses, not fear, a hard heart, and inside a lot of death as if they put it there, delivered it in. And then out of nowhere you just drown in it, it’s a million tons of water on you. If I was afraid of individual things, normal things—today, tomorrow, what’s next, who’s on top, what already has transpired that you can’t quite reach down into to remember—I’d have to surrender; but it drowns you fast, then it’s gone. I’d like to surrender; but to whom, where, or do you just put up a white flag and they take you to throw your body on a pile somewhere? I don’t believe in it. I think you have to make them come get you, you don’t volunteer, it’s a matter of pride. Who do you turn yourself into and on what terms—hey, fellow, I’m done but that don’t mean you get to hurt me more, you have to keep the deal, I made a deal, I get not to feel more pain, I’m finished, I’m not fighting you fucks anymore, I’ll be dead if it’s the way to accomplish this transformation from what I am into being nothing with no pain. But if you get dead and there’s an afterlife and it’s more of the same but worse—I would just die from that. You got all these same mean motherfuckers around after you’re dead and you got the God who made it all still messing with you but now up close—He’s around. You’re listening to angels and you’re not allowed to tell God He’s one maggoty bastard; or you’re running around in circles in hell, imprisoned by your fatal flaw, instead of being here on a leash with all your flaws, none fatal enough, making you a maggoty piece of meat. I want dead to mean dead; all done; finished; quiet; insensate; nothing; I want it to be peaceful, no me being pushed around or pushing, I don’t want to feel the worms crawling on me or eating me or the cold of the wet ground or suffocating from being buried or smothering from being under the ground; or being stone cold from being dead; I don’t want to feel cold; I don’t want to be in eternal dark forever stone cold. Nothing by which I mean a pure void, true nonexistence, is different; it isn’t filled with horror or dread or fear or punishment or pain; it’s just an absence of being, especially so you don’t have to think or know anything or figure out how you’re going to eat or who’s going to be on you next. It’s not suffering. I don’t have suffering in mind; not joy, not pain—no highs, no lows. Just not being; not being a citizen wandering around the universe in a body or loose, ethereal and invisible; or just not being a citizen here, now, under street lights, all illuminated, the light shining down. I hate the light shining down—display yourself, dear, show them; smile, spread your legs, make suggestive gestures, legs wide open—there’s lots of ways to sit or stand with your legs wide open. Which day did God make light? You think He had the street lights in some big storeroom in the sky to send down to earth when women started crawling over sidewalks like cockroaches to stay alive? I think He did. I think it was part of the big plan—light those girls up, give them sallow light, covers pox marks, covers tracks, covers bruises, good light for covering them up and showing them at the same time, makes them look grotesque, just inhuman enough, same species but not really, you can stick it in but these aren’t creatures that get to come home, not into a home, not home, not quite the same species, sallow light, makes them green and grotesque, creatures you put it in, not female ones of you, even a fucking rib of you; you got ones in good light for that. They stick it in boys too; anything under these lights is here to be used. You’d think they’d know boys was real, same species, with fists that work or will someday, but someday isn’t their problem and they like the feel that the boy might turn mean on them—some of them like it, the ones that use the older ones. I read about this boy that was taken off the street and the man gave him hormones to make him grow breasts and lose his body hair or not get it, I’m not sure; it made me really sick because the boy was nothing to him, just some piece of something he could mess with, remake to what he wanted to play with, even something monstrous; I wanted to kill the guy; and I tried to figure out how to help the kid, but I just read it in Time or Newsweek so I wondered if I could find him or not. I guess it depends on how many boys there are being fed hormones by pedophiles. Once it’s in Newsweek, I guess there are thousands. The kid’s around here somewhere; it said Lower East Side; I hate it, what the man did to him. These Goddamn men would all be each other’s meat if they weren’t the butchers. They use fucking to slice you open. It’s like they’re hollow, there’s nothing there, except they make big noise, this unbearable static, some screeching, high-pitched pain, and you can’t see they’re hollow because the noise diverts you to near madness; big lovemaker with fifty dollars to spend, seed to spill making mimetic magic, grind, bang, it’s a boy, a big, bad boy who writes books, big, bad books. I see the future and it’s a bunch of pricks making a literature of fucking, high art about sticking it in; I did it, ma; she was filth and I did it. Only you’ll get a Mailer-Genet beast: I did it, ma, I did it to her, he did it to me. The cement will grow them; sympathetic magic works; the spilled seed, the grinding, bang bang, pushes the fuck out past the bounds of physical reality; it lurks in the biosphere; it will creep into weeping wombs; they’ll be born, the next generation, out of what the assholes do to me; I’ve got enough semen dripping in me for a literary renaissance, an encyclopedia of novellas, a generation of genius; maybe some of them will paint or write songs. Mother earth, magic vessel, the altar where they worship, the sacred place; fifty dollars to burn a candle, or pills, or a meal and money; bang bang ain’t never without consequences for the future of the race. No reason the race should be different from the people in it. There’s no tomorrow I know of. I never seen one that ain’t today. It’s fine to be slutmama to a literary movement; the corporeal altar of sympathetic motherhood to a generation; his loins; my ass. Immo
rtal, anonymous means to his end. It’s what the hippie girls all glittering, flecked, stardust, want: to be procreatrix with flowering hips and tea made from plants instead of Lipton; they recline, posh and simple, all spread out draped in flowing cotton and color; they don’t take money; well, they do, but they don’t say so upfront—from my point of view they are mannerless in this regard; mostly they just hang on, like they have claws, it passes for spiritual, they just sit there until he comes back from wherever he’s gone after coitus has made him triste, they say it’s meditating but it’s just waiting for some guy to show who’s left; they ain’t under the light, they are of it—luminescent fairy things from on high, just down for a fast, ethereal screw. I been to bed with them; usually a man and one of them, because they don’t do women alone—too real for the nitrous oxide crowd, not Buddhistic enough—it’s got an I want right between the legs and it’s got your genitals leading your heart around or vice versa, who the hell knows, and it don’t make the boy happy unless he gets to watch and the hippie girls do not irritate the love-boys by doing things that might not be directly and specifically for them. The hippie boys like bringing another woman into bed. You can shake some coke loose from them if you do it; or money, which they pretend is like nothing but they hold onto it pretty tight. Coke and orange juice is my favorite breakfast; they want you to do the coke with them because it makes them hard and high and ready but I like to take some off with me and do it alone or with someone I pick, not with someone in bed with some silly girl who ought to be a housewife but is seeing the big city and he’s so hip he has to be able to roll over from one to another, dreaming it’s another housewife, all girls are housewives to him; peace, flowers, love, clean my house, bake my bread. They try to tell you they see the real you, the sensitive you, inside, and the real you doesn’t want money—she wants the good fucking he’s got and to make strings of beads for him and sell them in flea markets for him; darling, it’s sad. You convey to the guy that you’re the real thing, what he never thought would be near him, street grime he won’t be able to wash off, and he’s so trembling and overwrought his prick starts shaking. There’s some who do things real, don’t spend their time posturing or preening; they just pull it out without philosophy. There’s this one I had once, with a woman. I was on Demerol because I had an operation; my appendix came out but it had got all infected and it was a big slice in me and then they let me loose with a blood clot because there wasn’t somewhere for me to stay and I didn’t have money or no one to take care of me so they just let me out. My side didn’t seem like it would stay sewed, it felt open, and there was a pain from the clot that was some evil drilling in my shoulder that they called reflexive pain which meant the pain was really somewhere else but I could only feel it in my shoulder. It hurt to breathe. You don’t think about your shoulder or how it moves when you breathe unless some Nazi is putting a drill in it; I saw God the Nazi pushing His full weight on the drill and if I breathed it made more pressure from inside on where the drill was and there wasn’t enough Demerol in the world. So I’m walking around, desperate and dreamy, in pain but liking the pills, and I see this shirt, fucking beautiful shirt, purple and turquoise and shades of blue all in flowers, silk, astonishing whirl of color; and the man’s dark with long hair and a beard, some prototype, no face, just hair; and I take him back but there’s this girl with him too, and she’s all hippie, endlessly expressing herself and putting little pats on my hand, teeny weeny little pats, her hand to mine: expressing affection for another woman; heavy shit. I can barely believe this one’s rubbing her hands on me. And the guy starts fucking, and he’s some kind of monster of fuck, he lasts forever and a day, it’s night, it’s dark, and hours go by, and I see the light coming up, and she and me are next to each other, and he’s in me, then he’s in her, then me, then her, and my side is splitting open and I’m not supposed to be moving around with the clot but you can’t keep your hips still the whole time although my interest comes and goes, at some point the boy takes off the shirt and I’m wondering who he is and why he’s here, and I don’t have to worry about her sentimentality because the boy isn’t seeking variety and he don’t want to watch, this is a boy who wants to fuck and he moves good but he’s boring as hell, the same, the same, and when the pain hits me I am pretty sure I am really going to die, that the clot is loose in my blood somewhere and it’s going to go to my brain, and I’m trying to think this is real glorious, dying with some Olympian fuck, but the pain is some vicious, choked up tangle of blades in my gut, and I try to choreograph the pain to his fuck, and I try to rest when he’s not in me, and I am praying he will stop, and I am at the same time trying to savor every second of my last minutes on earth, or last hours as it turns out, but intellectual honesty forced me to acknowledge I was bored, I was spending my last time bored to death, I could have been a housewife after all; and the light comes up and I think, well, dawn will surely stop him; but he fucks well into daylight, it’s bright morning now with a disagreeably bright sun, profoundly intrusive, and suddenly there’s a spasm, thank the Lord, and the boy is spent, it’s the seventh day and this man who fucks must rest. And I thank God. I do. I say, thank you, Lord. I say, I owe You one. I say, I appear still to be alive, I know I was doing something proscribed and maybe I shouldn’t address You before he even moves off me but I am grateful to You for stopping him, for making him tired, for wearing him out, for creating him in Your image so that, eventually, he had to rest. I can’t move because my insides are messed up. My incision is burning as if there are lighted coals there and I’m afraid to see if it is open or if it will bleed now and my shoulder has stones crushed into it as if some demolition team was crushing granite, reflexive pain from some dead spot, I don’t know where, and I truly think I might not ever move again and I truly think I might have opened up and I truly think I might still die; and I want to be alone; die alone or bleed alone or endure the pain alone; and I’m lying there thinking they will go now when the girl starts pawing me and says stupid, nice things and starts being all lovey dovey like we’re both Gidget and she wants now to have the experience, if you will, of making love with a woman; this is in the too-little-too-late category at best; and I am fairly outraged and astonished because I hurt so much and my little sister in sensitivity thinks we should start dating. So I tell them to go; and she says but he doesn’t like me better, maybe he needs you to be there—needs you, can you imagine—and I’m trying to figure out what it has to do with him, why it’s what he wants when I want them to go; it’s what I want; I never understand why it’s always with these girls what he wants—if he’s there and even if he ain’t in sight or in the vicinity; he had his hours doing what he wants; and she tells me she’s disappointed with me for not being loving and we could all share and this is some dream come true, the most amazing thing that’s ever happened, to her or ever on earth, it’s the proof that everything is possible, and the pain I’m in is keeping me from moving because I can’t even sit up but I’m saying very quiet, get out now. And she’s saying it’s her first time with a woman and she didn’t really get to do anything—tourist didn’t get to see the Eiffel Tower—and I say yes, that’s right, you didn’t get nothing. So she’s sad like some lover who was real left her and she’s handling me like she read in some book, being a tender person, saying everything bland and stupid, all her ideals about life, everything she’s hoped for, and she’s preachy with the morality of sharing and unity and harmony and I expect her to shake her finger at me and hit my knuckles with a ruler and make me stand in a corner for not being some loving bitch. There’s a code of love you have to learn by heart, which I never took to, and I’m thinking that if she don’t take her treacle to another planet I’m going to stand up, no matter what the pain, and physically carry her out, a new little bride, over the threshold to outside. She’s some sobbing ingenue with a delicate smile perpetually on her face shining through tears which are probably always with her and she’s talking about universal love when all the boy did was f
uck us to death as best he could, which in my case was close but no cigar and I couldn’t bring myself to think it was all that friendly; and I had a short fuse because I needed another pill, I was a few behind and I was looking forward to making them up now in the immediate present, I could talk real nice to Demerol and I didn’t want them there for when I got high again; so I said, you go, because he really likes you and you should stay with him and be with him and be good to him, so the dumb bitch leaves with the prince of peace over there, the boy’s already smoking dope so he’s already on another plane taking care of himself which is what he’s really good at; and she’s uncomprehending and she’s mournful that I couldn’t get the love part right but they went, I saw the boy’s turquoise and purple silk shirt float by me and the drippy, sentimental girl in cotton floated out still soliciting love. I never understood why she thought you could ask for it. No one can ask it from me. I never can remember his face; peculiar, since his head was right above me for so long, his tongue in my mouth, he kissed the whole time he fucked, a nice touch, he was in her kissing me or in me kissing her so no one’d get away from him or decide to do something else; I just can’t remember his face, as if I never saw it. He was a Taurus. I stayed away from them after that if I knew a man was one because they stay too long, slow, steady, forever. I never saw such longevity. She was Ellen, some flower child girl; doomed for housework. I’m not. I ain’t cleaning up after them. I keep things as clean as I can; but you can’t really stay clean; there’s too much heat and dirt. It’s a sweltering night. The little nymphs, imps, and pimps of summer flitter about like it’s tea time at the Ritz. There’s been uprisings on the streets, riots, lootings, burning; the air is crackling with violence, a blue white fire eating up the oxygen, it’s tiny, sharp explosions that go off in the air around your head, firecrackers you can’t see that go off in front of you when you walk, in front of your face, and you don’t know when the air itself will become some white hot tornado, just enough to crack your head open and boil your brains. That’s outside, the world. Summertime and the living is easy. You just walk through the fires between the flames or crawl on your belly under them; rough on your knees and elbows. You can be in the street and have a steaming mass, hot heat, kinetic, come at you, a crowd, men at the top of their energy, men spinning propelled by butane, and they bear down on you on the sidewalk, they come at you, martial chaos; they will march over you, you’ll be crushed, bone marrow ground into a paste with your own blood, a smear left on a sidewalk. The crowd’s a monster animal, a giant wolf, huge and frantic, tall as the sky, blood pulsing and rushing through it, one predator, bearing down, a hairy, freaky, hungry thing, bared teeth, ugly, hungry thing, it springs through the air, light and lethal, and you will fucking cringe, hide, run, disappear, to be safe—you will fucking hide in a hole, like some roachy thing you will crawl into a crack. You can hear the sound of them coming, there’s a buzz coming up from the cement, it vibrates and kicks up dust, and somewhere a fire starts, somewhere close, and somewhere police in helmets with nightsticks are bearing down on the carnivorous beast, somewhere close and you can hear the skulls cracking open, and the blood comes, somewhere close there’s blood, and you can hear guns, there’s guns somewhere close because you smell the burning smell, it’s heat rising off someone’s open chest, the singed skin still smoking where the bullet went through; the wolf’s being beat down—shot over and over, wounded, torn open—it’s big manly cops doing it, steel faces, lead boots—they ain’t harassing whores tonight. It looks like foreplay, the way the cops bear down on the undulating mass; I stroke your face with my nightstick; the lover tames the beloved; death does quiet you down. But a pig can’t kill a wolf. The wolf’s the monster prick, then the pigs come and turn the wolf into a girl, then it’s payback time and the wolf rises again. In the day when the wolf sleeps there are still fires; anything can suddenly go up in flames and you can’t tell the difference at first between a fire and a summer day, the sun on the garbage, the hot air making the ghetto buildings swell, the brick bulging, deformed and in places melting, all the solid brick wavy in the heat. At night the crowd rises, the wolf rises, the great predator starts a long, slow walk toward the bullets waiting for it. The violence is in the air; not symbol; not metaphor; it’s thick and tasty; the air’s charged with it; it crackles around your head; then you stay in or go out, depending on—can you stand being trapped inside or do you like the open street? I sleep days. It’s safer. I sleep in daylight. I stay awake nights. I keep an eye out. I don’t like to be unconscious. I don’t like the way you get limp. I don’t like how you can’t hear what goes on around you. I don’t like that you can’t see. I don’t like to be waiting. I don’t like that you get no warning. I don’t like not to know where I am. I don’t like not to know my name. I sleep in the day because it’s safer; at night, I face the streets, the crowd, the predator, any predator, head on. I’d rather be there. I want to see it coming at me, the crowd or anything else or anyone. I want it to look at me and I want a chance. There’s gangs everywhere. There’s arson or fires or wolf packs or packs of men; men and gangs. The men outside my door are banging; they want to come in; big group fuck; they tear me apart; boys’ night out. It’s about eight or nine at night and I’m going out soon, it’s a little too early yet, I hear them banging on the door with knives and fists, I can’t get out past them, there’s only one way out; I can’t get past them. Once night comes it’s easy to seal you in. Night comes and you have the rules of the grave, different rules from daylight, they can do things at night, everyone can, they can’t do in the day; they will break the door down, no one here calls the police, I don’t have a gun, I have one knife, a pathetic thing, I sleep with it under my pillow. I figure if someone’s right on top of me I can split him apart with it. I figure if he’s already on top of me because I didn’t hear him and didn’t see him because I was unconscious and I wake up and he’s there I can stick it in him or I can cut his throat. I figure it gives me time to come to, then I try for his throat, but if I’m too late, if I can’t get it, if he’s somehow so I can’t get his throat, then I can get his back. Or I can finish myself off if there’s no other way; I think about it each time I lie down to sleep, if I can do it, draw the knife across my throat, fast, I try to prepare myself to do it, in my mind I make a vow and I practice the stroke before I sleep. I think it’s better to kill him but I just can’t bear them no longer, really, and it’s unknown if I could do it to me; so fast; but I keep practicing in my mind so if the time comes I won’t even think. It would be the right thing. I don’t really believe in hurting him or anyone. I have the knife; I can’t stand to think about using it, what it would be like, or going to jail for hurting him, I never wanted to kill anybody and I’d do almost anything not to. I know the men outside, they’re neighborhood, this block, they broke in before, in daylight, smashed everything, took everything, they ran riot in here, they tell me they’re coming to fuck me, they say so out on the street, hanging on the stoop; they say so. They’ve broken in here before, that’s when I started sleeping with the knife. Inside there’s too many hours to dawn; too many hours of dark to hold them off; they’ll get in; I know this small world as well as they do, I know what they can do and what they can’t do and once it’s night they can break the door down and no one will stop them; and the police don’t come here; you never see a cop here; there’s no way to keep them out and my blood’s running cold from the banging, from the noise of them, fists, knives, I don’t know what, sticks, I guess, maybe baseball bats, the arsenal of the streets. The telephone’s worthless, they cut the wire when they broke in; but no one would come. This is the loneliest I ever knew existed; now; them banging. There’s things you learn, tricks; no one can hurt me. I’m not some stupid piece of shit. You got a gang outside, banging, making threats. They want to come in; fuck. They’ll kill me; fuck me dead or kill me after. It’s like anything, you have to face what’s true, you don’t get to say if you want to handle it or not, you handle it to stay al
ive. So what’s it to me; if I can just get through it; minimum damage, minimum pain, the goal of all women all the time and it’s not different now. If you’re ever attacked by a gang you have to get the leader. If you get him, disable him, pull him away from the others, kill him, render him harmless, the others are nothing. If you miss him, attack him but miss, wound him, irritate him, aggravate him, rile him, humiliate him without taking him out, you are human waste, excreta. So it’s clear; there’s one way. There’s him. I have to get him. if I can pull him away from them, to me, I have a chance; a chance. I open the door. I think if I grab him between the legs I’m in charge; if I pull his thing. I learn the limits of my philosophy. Every philosophy’s got them. I ain’t in charge. It’s fast. It’s simple. I open the door. It’s a negotiation. The agreement is he comes in, they stay out; he doesn’t bring the big knife he has in with him; it stays outside; if I mess with him, he will hurt me with it and turn me over to them; if anything bad happens to him or if I don’t make him happy, he will turn me over to them. This is consent, right? I opened the door myself. I picked him. I just got to survive him; and tomorrow find a way out; away from here. He comes in; he’s Pedro or Joe or Juan; he swaggers, touches everything, there’s not much left he notes with humor; he wants me to cook him dinner; he finds my knife; he keeps it; he keeps saying what he’ll do to me with it; I cook; he drinks; he eats; he keeps talking; he brags; he talks about the gang, keeps threatening me, what he’ll do to me, what they’ll do to me, aspects of lovemaking the gang would also enjoy and maybe he’ll just let them in now or there’s time after, they’re waiting, right outside, maybe he’ll call them in but they can come back tomorrow night too, there’s time, no need to worry, nice boys in the gang, a little rough but I’ll enjoy them, won’t I? Then he’s ready; he’s excited himself; he’s even fingered himself and rubbed himself. Like the peace boys he talks with his legs spread wide open, his fingers lightly caressing his cock, the denim pulled tight, exerting its own pressure. He goes to the bed and starts to undress and he runs one hand through the hair on his chest and he holds the knife in the other hand, he fingers the knife, he rubs his thumb over it and he caresses it and he keeps talking, seductive talk about how good he is and how good the knife is and I’m going to like them both and he’s got a cross on a chain around his neck and it glistens in his hair, it’s silver and his skin is tawny and his hair on his chest is black and curly and thick and it shines and I’m staring at it thinking it shouldn’t be there, the shiny cross, I am having these highly moral thoughts against the blasphemy of the cross on his chest, I think it is wrong and concentrate on the immorality of wearing it now, doing this, why does he wear it, what does it mean, his shirt is off and his pants are coming off and he is rapturous with the knife in his hand and I look at the cross and I look at the knife and I think they are both for me, he will hold the knife, maybe I can touch the cross, I will try to touch it all through and maybe it will be something or mean something or I won’t feel so frightened, so alone in this life now, and I think I will just touch it, and there’s him, there’s the cross, there’s the knife, and I’m under them and I don’t know, I will never remember, the hours are gone, blank, a tunnel of nothing, and I’m naked, the bell rings, it’s light outside so it’s been five hours, six, there’s a knock on the door, insistent knocking, he says don’t answer it, he says don’t move, he holds the knife against me, just under my skin, the tip just under it, and I try to fight for my life, I say it’s a friend who expects me to be here and will not go away and I will have to answer the door and I won’t say anything and I won’t tell or say anything bad, I will just go to the door to tell my friend to go away, to convince him everything’s fine, and someone’s knocking and he has a deep voice and I don’t know what I will do when I reach the door or who it is on the outside or what will happen; but I’m hurt; dizzy; reeling; can’t feel anything but some obscure pain somewhere next to me or across the room and I don’t know what he’s done, I don’t look at any part of me, I cover myself a little with a sheet, I pull it over me and I don’t look down, I have trouble keeping my head steady on my shoulders, I don’t know if I can walk from the bed to the door, and I think I can open the door maybe and just keep walking but I am barely covered at all and maybe the gang’s outside and you can’t walk naked in a sheet, they’ll just hurt you more; anyone will. I can’t remember and I can barely carry my head up and I have this one chance; because I can’t have him do more; you see? I got up, I put something around me, over me, a sheet or something, just held it together where I could, and I took some steps and I kept whispering to the man with the knife in my bed that I would just get rid of the man at the door because he wouldn’t go away if I didn’t come to the door and really I would just make him go away and I kept walking to the door to open it, not knowing if I would fall or if the man in the bed would stick the knife in me before I got there, or who was on the other side of the door and what he would do; would he run or laugh or walk away; or was it a member of the gang, wanting some. It was cool and clear and light outside and it was a man I didn’t know except a little, a big man, so tall, so big, such a big man, and I whispered to him to help me, please help me, and I talked out loud that I couldn’t come out now for breakfast like we had planned and I whispered to say that I was hurt and that the man inside was a leader of a gang and I indicated the big knife on the window ledge, out of my reach, a huge dagger, almost a sword, that I had got the man to leave outside and I whispered that he was in my bed now with a knife and out loud I tried to say normal things very loud but I was dizzy and I wasn’t sure I could keep standing and the big man caught on quick and said normal things loud, questions so I could answer them and didn’t have to think of new things because I’m shaking and I say the man’s in my bed with a knife and please help me he was with a gang and I don’t know where they are and maybe they’re around and they’ll show up and it’s dangerous but please help me and the big man strides in, he doesn’t take the big knife, I almost die from fear but he just does it, I used my chance and there’s none left, he has long legs and they cover the distance to the bed in a second and the man in my bed is fumbling with the knife and the big man, so big, with long legs, says I’m his; his girl; his; this is an insult to him; an outrage to him; and the man in the bed with the knife says nothing, he grovels, he sweats, he asks forgiveness, he didn’t mean no harm, you know how it is man; and hey they agree it’s just a misunderstanding and they talk and the man in my bed with the knife is sweating and the man who saved me is known to be dangerous, he is known, a known very serious man, a quiet man, a major man, and he says he’s my man and I’m his woman and he don’t want me having no trouble with sniveling assholes and any insult he throws makes the man in my bed with the knife sweat more and grovel more and the big man, the man with the long legs, he speaks very soft, and he says that now the man in the bed with the knife will leave and the man in the bed with the knife fumbles to put his pants on and fumbles to put his shirt on and fumbles to get his shoes on and the big man, the man with the long legs, says quietly, politely, that nobody had ever better mess with me anymore and the man who was in my bed with the knife says yeah and sure and please and thank you and I am some kind of prom queen, bedecked, bejeweled, crowned princess, because the man with the long legs says I am his, and Pedro or Juan or Joe is obsequious and he says he is sorry and he says he didn’t understand and he says he made a mistake and they chat and I’m shaking bad, I’m there covered a little, I’m shaking and I’m not really covered and I’m covered in sweat and I’m trying not to fall down faint and I’m shaking so much I’m nearly naked, I’m hurt, my head falls down and I see my skin, all bruised anywhere you can see as if I turned blue or someone painted me blue, and there’s blood on me but I can’t look or keep my eyes open, I’m just this side of dead but I’m holding on, I’m shaking but I got something covering me somewhere and I’m just not quite dead, I’m keeping something covering me somewhere, and Pedro or Juan or Joe leaves, he le
aves mumbling an apology to the big man and I’m saying thank you to the big man with serious formality, quiet and serious and concentrating, and I’m something that ain’t fresh and new, I’m something that ain’t clean, and I don’t know anything except he’s got to go now because I have to curl up by myself to die now, it’s time, I’m just going to put myself down on the bed, very careful, very slow, on my side with my knees raised a little, curled up a little, and I’m going to God, I am going to ask God to take me in now, I am going to forgive Him and I am going to put aside all my grudges against Him for all what He did wrong and for all the pain I ever had or saw and I am going to ask Him to take me away now from here and to somewhere else where I don’t have to move ever again, where I can be curled up a little and nothing hurts and whatever hurts don’t have to move and that I don’t have to wake up no more but the big man ain’t through and I say later or tomorrow or come back and he says I have to pay my debts and he talks and he threatens and he has a deep voice and he is big and he has long arms and he isn’t leaving, he says, and he is strong and he pulls me down and gets on top of me and says I owe him and he fucks me and I say God You must stop him now but God don’t stop him, God don’t have no problem with this, God rides on the back of the man and I see Him there doing it and the man uses his teeth on me where men fuck and God’s for him and I’m wondering why He likes people being hurt and I’m past hating Him and past Him and I can’t beg Him no more for respite or help or death and the big man has his teeth between my legs, inside me and on the flesh all around, he’s biting, not a little, deep bites, he’s using his teeth and biting into the lips of my labia and I’m thinking this is not happening and it is not possible and it is not true and I am thinking it will stop soon because it must stop soon but it does not stop soon because the man has fucked but it means nothing to him except he had to do it so he did it but this is why he is here, the real reason, this biting in this place, he is wanting to do this other awful thing that is not like anything anyone ever did before and I say this is not happening and even You are not so cruel to let this man do this and keep doing it and not making him stop but the man has long arms and he’s driven, a passionate man, and he holds me down and he has long legs and he uses his arms and legs to keep me pinned down and he is so big, so tall, he can have his face down there and still he covers me to hold me down, my shoulders, my breasts; but my head twists back and forth, side to side, like some loose head of a doll screwed on wrong. He is cutting me open with his teeth, he looks up at me, he bites more, he says lovers’ things, he is the great lover and he is going slow, with his mouth, with his teeth, and then watching my head try to screw itself off my neck; and he gets in a frenzy and there’s no words for this because pain is littler and sweeter and someday it ends but this doesn’t end, will not end, it will never end, it’s dull, dirty, rusty knives cutting my labial lips or the edge of a rusty tin can and it’s inside me, his teeth reaching inside me turning me inside out, the skin, he is pulling me open and he is biting inside me and I’m thinking that pain is a river going through me but there’s no words and pain isn’t a river, there’s just one great scream past sound and my mind moves over, it moves out of my head, I feel it escape, it runs away, it says no, not this, no and it says you cannot but the man does and my mind just fucking falls out of my brains and I am past being anything God can help anyway and He’s making the man stronger, He’s making the man happy, the man likes this, he is liking this, and he is proud to be doing it so good like a good lover, slow, one who lasts, one who takes time; and this is real; this happened and this will last forever, because I am just someone like anyone and there’s things too bad for me and I didn’t know you could be lying flat, blue skin with blood from the man with the knife, to find love again, someone cutting his way into you; and I’m just someone and it’s just flesh down there, tender flesh, somewhere you barely touch and you wouldn’t cut it or wound it; no one would; and I have pain all over me but pain ain’t the word because there’s no word, I have pain on me like it’s my skin but pain ain’t the word and it isn’t my skin, blue with red. I’m just some bleeding thing cut up on the floor, a pile of something someone left like garbage, some slaughtered animal that got sliced and sucked and a man put his dick in it and then it didn’t matter if the thing was still warm or not because the essential killing had been done and it was just a matter of time; the thing would die; the longer it took the worse it would be; which is true. He had a good time. He did. He got up. He was friendly. He got dressed. I wasn’t barely alive. I barely moaned or whispered or cried. I didn’t move. He left. The gang was somewhere outside. He left the door open, wide open, and it was going to be a hundred years before I could crawl enough to close it. There was daylight streaming in. It was tomorrow. Tomorrow had finally come, a long tomorrow, an eternal tomorrow, I’m always here, the girl lying here, can’t run, can’t crawl, where’s freedom now, can’t move, can’t crawl, dear God, help me, someone, help me, this is real, help me; please, help me. I hate God; for making the pain; and making the man; and putting me here; under them all; anyone that wants.