Mercy

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

thought 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 times; 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

enough. The part I like is breathing. Y ou take all the air in you,

inert stuff, and you exhale like you is threatening God

face-to-face; you push like the air itself could kill. All the air

you took in during fucking, all that Goddamn spastic inhaling,

all that panting like some desperate dog, you shoot out, like

it’s bullets; I got a lot o f air to push out. Then there’s the horse

position, where you take a stance, your legs spread far apart so

your thigh muscles are tearing from the weight o f your whole

body resting on them; your feet are pointed out and your legs

are spread far apart and your knees are bent and pointing out

and the rest o f you is on your thighs, absolutely still, at perfect

silence; and after about five minutes your calf muscles begin to

bear the weight o f your thighs which time makes heavier and

somehow you feel the weight o f your soul and your life in the

muscles in the insides o f your thighs, because if you ’re a girl

you lived there and m em ory’s stored there and the world

banged up against you there, so you undertake to bear the

burden o f it with conscious knowledge, a physical self-

consciousness, a remorseless, aching cognition; and the

history in your body comes alive as the muscles in your thighs

strain under the weight o f your life; the life o f the cell; a

brilliant physical solitude with all o f the self spread out along

the fault line o f the thighs, a bridge o f muscle; and you are

absolutely still, contemplative, in pain, yes, a located pain, a

fierce ache o f recognition and identity; you are still; until

Sensei orders you to relax, which is only slightly less

burdensome but feels like deliverance; and I think to m yself

that everything these thighs took they will get strong enough

to give back; it is a promise I make m yself in horse position to

be able to bear it; it is a promise I make every time over and

over; it is a promise my thighs will remember even if I forget.

Sensei says women got an advantage with the thighs, more

strength than we might expect, because o f the high heels they

make us wear; I got strong thighs because o f the reason under

the reason; I been in horse position on m y back most o f my

life; I like it alone and standing up. Sensei says eat steak but I

can only afford potatoes, or sometimes frozen squash, or

sometimes cheese, or the free bar food, but the men are

unbearable so I don’t do that unless I am ravenous; sometimes

I’m hungry too much. I take double classes twice a week

because I want to be strong; I am dying to be strong; all my

money goes to Sensei and I fail at sit-ups twice in a night and I

fail to do one whole push-up twice in a night, two times a

week; and I have to come up with a stupendous amount o f

money, because it is fifteen dollars a class, so that is fifteen

times four, and Sensei berates me when I say I will have to take

a single class twice a week for a month or two or even three

because I cannot find the money to pay for double classes; I feel

m y serious w ord that this is so is enough but she takes it as if I

am lying or I don’t value her or I don’t have devotion, as if it’s

an excuse; and I feel enraged; because it’s as if she’d turn me out

for her fucking money, if you want it you can get it she says

like any pimp on the street; I am a writer, I am going to hurt

men, I am a serious person; she knows it. Sensei says she’s

never seen anyone with a will like mine but it’s a trick to flatter

me so I’ll be persuaded to get the money for double classes

after I’ve said I can’t and I’m feeling the indignity because I am

pure will and I have not insulted her by uttering one frivolous

word. I am engaged in the serious jo b o f survival and the

creation o f a plan to stop men; hurt them, stop them, kill them;

and I am not some fool who says insubstantial things and I

don’t have money to m ove around, as if I can take it from

something I don’t need, which I feel is an indignity to have to

explain, and I feel rage because she is middle-class in this w ay

that demeans me and the dojo’s in a Victorian brownstone she

owns with her lover, a woman with round shoulders and

sagging breasts who does not do sit-ups or horse position

standing up; there is a sudden horror in my heart, a queasy

feeling o f sickness and dread, because I ask her to be sober and

treat me with honor and she degrades me because o f money

and I cannot forgive it. I am learning that inside something

goes w rong when something w rong happens; I am learning to

follow it, the feeling. I say I write and it is first and I have thirty

dollars I can find, not sixty, and I do not say how much I give

up to give her the thirty because to do so would be demeaning

in m y heart, the sick feeling would come on, and she belittles

me and I leave and I never turn back. D o not mess with me. I

am making a plan in writing to make the men shed tears o f

remorse and I cannot waste m y time with someone insufficient; she has to deserve me too; I want respect; there’s a piece missing in her— what’s hunger, what’s poor; it’s the pieces I

got; I can’t explain how what’s a blind spot in her blindsides

me; I can’t have her talk money to me which she measures one

w ay and I measure in sucking dicks, the economy as I see it,

how long on your knees, how many times, equals a meal,

makes the rent. I ain’t saying it to her, it’s an inchoate rage, but

I turn over inside; Sensei eats shit. I say nothing, because she’s

an innocent, she counts money dry, not drenched in sperm. I

cut her o ff without another word. She is out o f my life. I don’t

look back. I paid, sister, I am paid up in dues well into the next

century, I have clear priorities, she was number two, pretty

high on the fucking list; number one is that I am writing a plan

for revenge, a justice plan, a justice poem, a justice map, a

geography o f justice; I am martial in my heart and military in

my mind; I think in strategy and in poems, a daughter o f

Guevara and Whitman, ready to take to the hills with a cosmic

vision o f what’s crawling around down on the ground; a

daughter with an overview; the big view; a daughter with a

new practice o f righteous rage, against what ain’t named and

ain’t spoken so it can’t be prosecuted except by the one it was

done to who knows it, knows him; I’m inventing a new

practice o f random self-defense; I take their habits and

characteristics seriously, as enemy, and I plan to outsmart

them and win; they want to stay anonymous, monster

shadows, brutes, king pricks, they want to strike like lightning, any time, any place, they want to be sadistic ghosts in the dark with penises that slice us open, they want us dumb and

mute and vacant, robbed o f words, nothing has a name, not

anything they do to us, there’s nothing because w e’re nothing;

then they must mean they want us to strike them down,

indiscriminate, in the night; we require a sign language o f

rebellion; it’s the only chance they left us. Y ou may find me

one who ain’t guilty but you can’t find me two. I have a vision,

far into the future, a plan for an arm y for justice, a girls’ army,

subversive, on the ground, down and dirty, no uniforms, no

rank, no orders from on high, a martial spirit, a cadre o f

honor, an arm y o f girls spreading out over the terrain, I see

them m oving through the streets, thick formations o f them in

anarchy and freedom on cement. I keep practicing horse

position and sit-ups and I kick good; I can kick to the knee and

I can kick to the cock but I can’t kick to the solar plexus and I

can’t kick his fucking head o ff but I can compensate with my

intelligence and with m y right thinking if I can isolate it, in

other words, rescue it from the nightmares; liberate it; deep

liberation. I practice on m y wall to get m y kick higher, never

touching the wall, Zen karate, a new dimension in control and

a new level o f aggression, a new arena o f attack as if I am

walking up the wall without touching it; and I will do the same

to them; Zen killing. M y fist ain’t good enough but m y thighs

needless to say are superb, possibly even sublime, it’s been

noted many times. M any a man’s died his little death there and

I made the mistake o f not burying him when he was exactly

ripe for it, not putting him, whole, under the ground, but I

soaked up his soul, I took it like they always fear, I stole his

essence to in me, it’s protein, I got his molecules; and I never

died. It is more than relevant; it is the point. I never died. I am

not dead. If you use us up and use us up and use us up but don’t

kill us we ain’t dead, boys; a word to the wise; peace now, or

there’s a mean lot o f killing coming. I am torn up in many

places and I am a m oving mountain o f pain, I have tears body

and soul, I am marked and scarred and black-and-blue inside

and out, I got torn muscles in m y throat and blood that dried

there that w o n ’t ever dislodge and rips in m y vagina the size o f

fists and fissures in m y anus like rivers and holes in m y heart, a

sad heart; but I ain’t dead, I never died, which means, boys, I

can march, I want to walk to God on you, stretch you out

under me, a pathway to heaven. And I am real; Andrea one,

two, three, there’s more than one, I am reliably informed; the

raped; Andrea, named for courage, a new incarnation o f

virility, in the old days called manhood and I’m what happens

when it’s fucked; we go by other names, Sally, Jane, whatever;

but I had a prophet for a mama and she named not just a

daughter but a breed, who the girl is when the worm turns;

put Thomas Jefferson in my place, horse position on his back

with a mob o f erect rapists coming and going at will, at their

pleasure; and ask what a more perfect union is; or would be;

from his point o f view; then. Put anyone human where I been

and make a plan; for freedom. I will fill you with remorse

because you fucked me to ground meat and because you buy it

and you sell it and the hole in my heart is commerce to you;

lover, husband, boychick, brother, friend, political radical,

boy comrade; I can’t fucking tell you all apart. Y o u ’re

pouncing things that push it in,. lush with insult or austere with

pain; I don’t got no radio in my stomach like the crazy ones

who get messages to kill and can’t turn it o ff or dislodge it

although you stuck enough in me, they say they hear voices

and they kill, they say they are getting orders and they kill, and

the psychiatrists come in the newspapers and call them long

bad names and go to court and say they didn’t know what they

were doing; but they knew; because everyone knows. The

psychiatrists miss it all but especially that there’s information

everywhere; the radio, the voices, are metaphors used by

poets who dance rather than write it down, poet-killers; action

poems; there’s energy that buzzes, a coherent language o f

noise and static you can learn to read, you don’t need to be

subliterate on this plane, just receive, receive; there’s waves

you can see, you can take a fucking light beam and parse it for

information or you can decode the information in the aura o f

light around a person or a thing; everything’s coded; everything’s whole; it’s all right there, including the future, you can

ju st pull it out, it’s just more information, a buzz, a vibration, a

radiance, even a smell in the air; and we are all one, sweetheart,

which means that i f I’m you I got your secrets including your

dirty little rape secrets and your dirty little what you stick it in

secrets, you can ju st pull the information out o f the air as to

who is evil and what is going on, how it works and what must

be done; you can learn to see it and you can learn to hear it

because you are flowing in an occan o f information and the

information gets amplified by pedestrian events, for instance,

you learn at karate school that they pin you down at both ends,

they got different shoulders from you, which you didn’t

know, and they made yours useless like bound feet, which you

didn’t know; and they nail you, they plug you, the penis goes

right through you on one end and screws you down, fixes you

fast to some hard surface, and the shoulders are like a ton o f

metal dumped on you to keep you flat, it’s information on the

literal level, the pedestrian plane, a reminder o f mechanical

reality or a new lesson in it because girls don’t learn mechanics

or anything else that will help on the physical plane to rebel or

get free so you got to read the cosmic information in the air,

the molecular information, which could even come from

other planets i f you think about it, it could be m oving towards

you on light from far away, and you also got to be a student o f

reality as it is com m only understood. They fill your head with

political theory because it’s useless; it’s dreams you can’t have;

o f dignity that ain’t yours; o f freedom that ain’t intended on

any level for you; you take it to heart; they take you to bed;

heartbreak hotel, the place where the dialectic abandons

reality, leaving her barefoot and pregnant, raped and barefoot;

these are the dreams that break your heart, the difference

between what you wanted from Cam us and what he would

have given you; I always wanted to have a cup o f coffee with

him, on the boulevard; and how these men love whores; the

thinkers, the truck drivers, the students, the cops; how they

love you turned out, shivering in the cold, already undressed

enough; no, they don’t all rape; they all buy. I am an

apprentice: sorcerer or assassin or vandal or vigilante; or

avenger; I am in formation as the new one who will emerge; I

am in a cocoon; but at night, being a girl, I just stroll; I am a girl

who walks the streets at night, back to first principles, how I

grew up, where I lived, my home, cement, gray, stretching

out a thousand miles flat, a plain o f loneliness and despair; my

world; m y bed; my place on earth; I will populate the dark

forever, o f course, night is my country, I belong here, I can’t

get free, I was condemned, exiled from daylight because

survival required facing the dark; I am a citizen o f the night,

with a passport, a mouth used enough, it’s vulgar to say but

inside it changes, the skin gets raw and red and it blisters, it

gets small, tight, white blisters, liquidy blisters, it gets tough

and brown, it gets leathery, it sags in loose red places and there

are black-and-blue marks, and your tongue never touches the

ro o f o f your mouth, instead there’s a layer o f slime, sticky

slime, a white, viscous slime, a m oving cement that never

hardens and never disappears, a near mortar o f awful white

stuff, mucous and slime; you got a mouth crawling on top

with slime; as if it’s worms in you, spermy little worm things

all laid out side by side all in a line lining the ro o f o f your

mouth; a protein shield, if you want to put the best construction on it, because you don’t want his shit shooting to the top

o f your brain anyway, going through the ro of o f your mouth

to your head, you don’t want his molecules absorbed in your

brain, planted there so his molecular reality grow s in some

hemisphere o f your brain, you don’t want him as weeds in

your head, with his D . N . A. rolling all over behind your eyes;

and o f course you try to keep him as high in your mouth as you

can, as close to the front, as little in; always give as little as you

can; not just on principle, as in, give as little o f anything as you

can; but you give as little o f yourself as you can in a literal

sense, not as an abstract concept o f self but as little o f your

mouth as you can; except for the one who rammed it down to

the bottom, into your chest or your lungs or however far he

got, he shattered muscles as if they was glass, splintered them

as i f they was bone, you could feel a smashed larynx

swim m ing in blood, like a dead animal, all bleeding and cut

open, I got a sexy voice now, something hoarse and missing,

an absence, a bare vibration; but he w asn’t a trick, he was a

cute boy, true love and real romance, remember him I instruct

m yself because it’s hard, rape’s hard, remem bering’s hard,

they have to break so much there’s no deep deep enough to

bury it in, they leave you with crushed bones, diced nerves,

live nerves, sliced nerves as if someone took a knife to the

nerve endings themselves, not so they are cut dead but so they

are being sliced each minute o f forever, and they don’t go

dead, there’s not half a second o f numbness or paralysis, the

nerves are open and alive and being hit by the air, exposed, and

the knife is cutting into them thread by thread, they’re stringy

and the knife’s pulling them apart, and you got an acute pain

and a loud scream, high decibels, ringing in your ears, a

torture ringing in your ears, and it don’t let you sleep and you

don’t get forgetfulness, your eyes cry blood and you got open

sores, the lips o f your labia get boils, big boils; you got a

vagina with long, deep tears, an ass that rips open with blood

every time you shit, because it’s the penis again, oversized,

pulling out after haying torn its w ay in; and then you will

remember rape; these are the elements o f m em ory, constant,

true, and perpetual pain\ and otherwise you will forget— we are

a legion o f zombies— because it burns out a piece o f your

brain, it’s the scorched earth policy for the sweetmeat in your

head, the rape recipe, braise, sear, burn bare, there’s a sudden

conflagration on the surface o f your brain, a piece o f one

hemisphere or the other is burned bare, blank, and you lose

w hatever’s there; ju st gone; whatever; so rape’s a tw o-

pronged attack, on your body, in you, on your brain, in you;

on freedom, on memory; you might as well bury yourself in

the backyard, or throw yourself in a trash can, you’re like

some dumb cat or dog that got hit by a car, run over and died;

only they let the shells o f dead girls walk around because hell it

makes no difference to them if what they stick it in is living or

dead; w hat’s left, darling, is fine, according to the formula, a

girl frail and female, a skeleton with a fleshy pudendum, ready

to serve, these girls are ghosts, did you see, did you notice,

where are they, w hy ain’t they here, present, on earth, why

can’t you find them even if you look for them in the light, how

come they don’t know anything or do anything, how come

they ain’t anything, how come they are shaking and flitting

around and apologizing and begging and afraid and drugged

and stupid even if they are smart; how come they are comatose

even when they’re awake? He pushes it in, she pushes it out, a

dead spot in the brain marks the spot, there’s a teeny little

cemetery in her brain, lots o f torched spots, suttee; we bleed

both ends, literal, little strokes every time there’s a rape, time

gone, hours or days or weeks, words gone, self gone, memory

wiped out, severely impaired; I cannot remember— how do

you exist? The skills, the tricks; tie your shoes; wrap ropes

around your heart, or was it your wrists; or was it ankles;

neck; I’d make a list if I could remember; I’d memorize the list

i f someone else would write it down; or I try, I scribble big

letters, confused, misspelled, on the page; or I look at the

words, meaningless, and draw a blank; I make a list,

misspelled words signifying I don’t remember what; or I draw

a picture, I use crayons, o f what? I try to say what I try to

remember; the skills, the tricks, language, yesterday. There

are little rape strokes, erased places in the brain, eruptions o f

blood, explosions, like geysers, it’s flooded, places on the

brain, blood’s acidic, did you ever sit in a pool o f your own

blood, it wears the skin o ff you, chafes, irritates, the skin peels

off; so too in the brain, the skin peels off; I’ve been there, a

poor, dear, quiet thing, naked like a baby, in a river o f blood,

mine, curled up; fetal, as if m y mama took me back. There’s

wounds and you sit in the blood. Why can’t I remember? I am

a stroke victim, a shadow in the night, invisible in the night, a

ghostly thing, in the night, amnesiac, wandering, in the night,

not out to whore, just what’s left, the remains, on the stroll;

taking a walk, pastoral, romantic, an innocent walk, lost in

memories, lost in fog, lost in dark; having forgotten; but I got

muscles packed with memory; hard, thick, solid, from the

positions reenacted, down on m y knees, down on m y back; I

got memories packed in m y bones, because m y brain don’t

make distinctions no more; can’t tell him from him from him;

I have an intuitive dread; o f him and him and him; there’s a

heightened anxiety; I’m a nervous girl, Victorian nerves,

strain, a delicate constitution in the sense that m y brain is frail,

pale; but m y muscles is packed, it’s adrenaline, from fear;

there’s a counterproductive side to creating too much fear, it’s

a meta-amphetamine, it’s meta-speed, it’s meta-coke, it’s

more testosterone than thou, I got a body packed with rage,

you ever seen rage all stored up like a treasure in the body o f a

woman? I don’t need no full capacity brain, as you so

eloquently have insisted; I got sunstrokes in my head, enough

daylight to carry me through any darkness, I am lit up from

inside, a bursting sun; brain light. I am a citizen o f the night,

on a stroll, no dark places keep secrets from me, I am drawn to

them by a secret radiance, the light that emanates from the

human heart, some poor bum, a poor man, poor fucking

drunk somewhere in the shadows hiding his poor drunk heart

in the dark, but I find him, I see the pure light o f his pure heart,

I find him, some asshole, a vagrant, clutching his bottle, and I

like them big, I like them hairy, their skin’s red and bulbous,

all swelled from drinking, they’re mean, they’d kill you for the

fucking bottle they’re clutching to them, sometimes they got

it buried under them, and they’re curled up on cardboard or

newspapers on the street, all secure in the shadows, manly

men, behind garbage cans, hidden in the dark; but the light in

them reaches out to the light in me, my brothers, myself, I

pick on men at least twice my size, I like them with fine

shoulders, wide, real men, I like them six feet or more, I like

them vicious, I pick them big and mean, the danger psyches

me up but what I appreciate is their surprise, which is absolute,

their astonishment, which invigorates me; how easy it is to

make them eat shit; they will always underestimate me,

always, from which I enunciate the political principle, Alw ays

pick on men at least twice your size. This is the value o f

practice as opposed to theory; they’re so easy; so arrogant; so

used to the world always being the w ay they thought it was.

The small ones are harder. The small ones have to learn to

fight early and take nothing for granted, the small, w iry ones

you cannot surprise; when I am a master I will take on the

small, w iry ones; or assign them to someone else, maybe

someone who can step on them, a real tall girl who would get

something out o f it by just treating them like bugs; but now I

take the big ones, and I fucking smash their faces in; I kick

them; I hit them; I kick them blind; I like smashing their faces

in with one kick, I like dancing on their chests, their rheumy

old chests, with my toes, big, swinging kicks, and I like one

big one between the legs, for the sake o f form and symbolism,

to pay my respects to content as such, action informed by the

imperatives o f literature. Sometimes they got knives or

bottles, they’re fast, they’re good, but they are fucking drunk

and all sprawled out, and I like smashing the bottles into their

fucking faces and I like taking the knives, for my collection; I

like knives. I find them drunk and lying down and I hurt them

and I run; and I fucking don’t care about fair; discuss fair at the

U . N .; vote on it; from which I enunciate another political

principle, It is obscene for a girl to think about fair. Every girl

needs a man, gets an itch, the nights are long, I’m restless, it’s

not natural for a girl to be alone, without a man; instead o f

locking the windows and locking the doors and waiting for

one to crawl in I go out to find him; not ladylike but selfdetermining, another girl for choice; a girl needs someone big and strong, a macho man, a streetwise, street tough, street

crazy man, a hero o f freedom, a loose man, unattached, a

solitary poet o f drink and darkness, a city prince; I have always

found that a girl needs a boy. These ones are old and mean;

none o f them’s innocent and who cares? I fucking don’t care.

It’s been justified up m y ass. Besides it’s just sport, recreational

training, some ways to get through the night, means and

methods, because I can’t sleep, because if you go to sleep they

will hurt you, one o f them or some o f them or some other o f

them; whoever these ones hurt, I’m taking her place, whoever

she was, they don’t know us apart, cunt is cunt is cunt, I’m

taking her place now, when I choose, I’m standing in for her

now, when it’s good for me; is it good for you? And there’s

one will stand in for me. There’s anonymous women m oving

through the night; I have m y husband here, right in front o f

me, I have a gun to his head, I pull the trigger, it is an

execution, m y right, any time, any place; his life is mine,

because he hurt me; dreadful; a dreadful hurt. I want him

executed so I can be free o f fear; and if there was justice I could

do it any time, any place; I’d have the gun; I’d have the choice;

I’d have the right. I think I have a twin in the night, some girl

standing in for me; who will just smash his fucking head in. I

think one day they will gather, the women, outside where he

lives, I think there will be thousands o f them, I think it will be a

crowd, a mob, a riot, a revolution, and I think they will chant

his name, and I think they will surround his house, and I think

they will block the city streets for blocks, and I think they will

stop traffic, and I think no one will be able to pass in or out and

they w ill stop the police from getting to him to protect him

because they will stretch for miles and someone, an unknown

someone, will kill him, it will be one and it will be all and no

one will ever know who except for her herself, they will smash

him or shoot him or knife him, or fifty will knife him, or a

hundred, but so it’s final, not making a mistake, they will kill

him good and real and quick, and no one will know who,

because it will be all o f them; for me; do this; for me; and when

an indictment is read they will all stand up; for me; including

the ones who heard me scream and including the ones who

weren’t born yet. M y eyes work. I see. It is not a mystery. If

it’s in front o f you you can see how it works itself out. It’s not

prophecy; it’s simple seeing; what is there; now; naked from

the lies. I see the future, a pretty place. The men make a sex

circus, we are the performing animals. There are hoops o f fire,

we are chained in cages, they whip us to make us jum p: high

enough for them to look under. We jum p, we hop, we spread

our legs; they’ll paint us purple underneath; or shave us so we

look like babies; or put brands on us, or chains through us,

underneath; they’ll hurt us, more; more than now; more;

killing w on ’t be enough; rape will be the good old days, when

it was simple, how they just forced us, in private, or how they

just beat us, with fists, in private, or how they put fingers

inside us, when we were too small, underneath; w e’ll be the

dog-and-pony show; they’ll leash us and they’ll manacle us

and they’ll paint us pink and w e’ll have nostalgia for the good

old days when the living was easy before they grabbed us o ff

the streets in vans and gang-raped us and bashed us with

baseball bats, smashing us not looking where, arms, head,

chest, stomach, legs, and filmed it, and dumped us, some o f us

lived, some o f us died, or before they set dogs on us to fuck us,

and filmed it, or before they cut us open, to ejaculate on us,

and filmed it, or before they started urinating on us, using us

like common toilets, to film it; but I don’t expect to be listened

to or believed, certainly even the simplest things o f an already

distinguished life cannot be believed, I couldn’t say anything

simple in the whole course o f m y actual life and have there be

belief; as if justice for me, from him to me, could count; but I

been through that; m y grievances on that score are between

the lines, at least there, always read the white space; I’m tired

from it and I’m sad; Walt could say blah blah blah this will

come and this will come and this will be and he was venerated

for dreaming, as i f his dreams was true dreams o f a true future;

m y nightmares are true dreams o f a true future. I’m not alone;

though I can’t find them; in the dark raped girls wander;

smashing drunks; sometimes someone sets one on fire; I see

the flames; I smell the carcass; the raped have stopped being

kind, generally speaking, though it’s still a secret. I personally

have done the following. I have blown up several rape

emporiums. I don’t have bombs or explosives but I cannot be

stopped. I steal a car; I back it into the rape emporium when it’s

deserted; I make a fuse to the gas tank; I light the fuse; the

whole thing blows; it’s simple, if a bit extravagant. Any man

will follow any feminine looking thing down any dark alley;

I’ve always wanted to see a man beaten to a shit bloody pulp

with a high-heeled shoe stuffed up his mouth, sort o f the pig

with the apple; it would be good to put him on a serving plate

but yo u ’d need good silver. Y o u ’re the piece o f ass; he’s

invulnerable, o f course; it’s his right, to come after you; so if

he follow s you and you have the urge to smash him to death

he’s asked for it, hasn’t he? I mean, he actually did ask for it.

The arm y o f raped ghosts got together and we marched, we

marched, we marched in Tim es Square and the Tenderloin

and Soho; we marched; everyw here there’s neon w e’ve

marched; we visit the slave auctions; we have the names o f the

pimps, addresses, photos, telephone numbers, social security

numbers; I plaster their neighborhoods with pictures o f them;

I say they are pimps who slaughter wom en for fun and money;

I say he’s at your P . T . A ., he’s with your children; I pursue

him; the army o f raped ghosts stays on his tail; we drive him

out. They hide; they run. One day the women will burn down

Tim es Square; I’ve seen it in m y mind; I know; it’s in flames.

The women will come out o f their houses from all over and

they will riot and they will burn it down, raze it to the ground,

it will be bare cement; and we will execute the pimps. N o

woman will ever be hurt there again; ever; again; it is a simple

fact. I threw blood all over their weaponry; their whips; their

chains; their spiked dildos; their leashes; I have buckets o f

blood, nurses give it to me, raped nurses; and I cover

everything, the slave clothes, the bikinis, the nighties, the

garter belts, and the things they tie you down with and the

things they stick up you and the things they hurt you with,

nipple clips and piercing things; I drench them in blood; I

make them blood-soaked, as is a w om an’s life; I think over

time I will engage in a new art, painting their world blood red

as they have painted mine; simple self-expression, with a

political leaning but neither right nor left per se, the anti-rape

series it will be called, with real life as the canvas; and I will try

to make the implicit explicit; a poet said, make the implicit

explicit; a political theorist said, make the implicit explicit; the

blood o f women is implicit in the weaponry; I will take the

blood o f women implicit in the weaponry and I will make it

explicit; and from this I enunciate another political principle,

which is, The blood o f women is implicit, make it explicit. A

woman I didn’t know with the face o f an angel approached

me. She leaned over. She touched me softly on the shoulder.

She whispered. She had serious and kind eyes. She had a soft

and kind voice. Andrea, she said, it is very important for

women to kill men. I contemplated this, shuddering; I

meditated on it; I breathed in deeply; I drew pictures, stories o f

life with men, with pencils, with crayons; I dreamed; I

understood yes; yes, it is. I enunciated a political principle,

which went as follows: It is very important for women to kill

men. His death, o f course, is unbearable. His death is

intolerable, unspeakable, unfair, insufferable; I agree; I learned

it since the day I was born; terrible; his death is terrible; are you

crazy; are you stupid; are you cruel? He can’t be killed; for

what he did to you? It’s absurd; it’s silly; unjustified; uncivilized; crazed; another madwoman, where’s the attic? He didn’t mean it; or he didn’t do it, not really, or not fully, or not

knowing, or not intending; he didn’t understand; or he

couldn’t help it; or he w on ’t again; certainly he will try not to;

unless; well; he just can’t help it; be patient; he needs help;

sym pathy; over time. Yes, her ass is grass but you can’t expect

miracles, it takes time, she wasn’t perfect either you know; he

needs time, education, help, support; yeah, she’s dead meat;

but you can’t expect someone to change right away, overnight, besides she wasn’t perfect, was she, he needs time, help,

support, education; well, yeah, he was out o f control; listen,

she’s lucky it wasn’t worse, I’m not covering it up or saying

what he did was right, but she’s not perfect, believe me, and he

had a terrible mother; yeah, I know, you had to scrape her o ff

the ground; but you know, she w asn’t perfect either, he’s got a

problem; he’s human, he’s got a problem. Oh, darling, no; he

didn’t have a problem before; now he’s got a problem. I am on

this earth to see that now he has a problem. It is very important

for wom en to kill men; he’s got a problem now. I was in the

courtroom. The walls were brown. The judge wore a long

black dress. G o d ’s name was written on the wall over his head.

There were police everywhere. The rapist smiled; at the

woman. He had kidnapped her. He had held her for nearly

tw o days, or was it four, or were there five o f them, each being

tried separately? He had fucked her over and over, brutally.

He had sliced her with a knife. He had sodomized her. He had

burned her. She shaked; she shivered; she screamed; she cried.

He walked; the ju ry found her guilty. I was in the court. The

walls were gray. He beat the wom an near to death; they were

married; the judge didn’t see the problem; she’s the wife, after

all; the guy walked. T hejudge wore a long black dress. G o d ’s

name was written on the wall above his head. I was in the

courtroom. The walls were green. The judge wore a long

black dress. G od ’s name was written on the wall above his

head. The daddy had raped the kid, over and over, so many

times, she was four, he wanted custody, he got it, it was a

second marriage, the first kid was raped too but the judge

w ouldn’t admit it into evidence, said it was prejudicial, you

know, just because he did it to that one doesn’t prove that he

did it to this one; they keep saying that; with them all; the

beaters and the rapers; just stack the women they did it to

before, the past women, in piles, for garbage collection; don’t

want them to prejudice how we look at him this time, when he

did it to this one w ho’s a slut anyway which isn’t prejudicial

because it is axiomatic; how many times does he get to do it in

his lifetime, to how many, whatever it is he likes doing, a

beater, a raper, o f women, o f children; that’s w hy they don’t

teach girls to count. I want each one followed. I want each one

killed. It is very important for women to kill men. I know girls

whose fathers fucked them; near to death; it’s a deferred death

sentence on her, she does it to herself, later. I know girls who

been banged by thousands o f men; I am one such girl myself. I

know girls who been cut open and fucked in the hole. I know a

girl who was kidnapped by a bunch o f college boys, a

fraternity, and kept for days; used over and over; beat her to

blood and pus; sliced her throat and dumped her; I know her

and I know another woman raped the same w ay, wasn’t

sliced, she escaped; I know so many girls who been kidnapped

and gang-raped you couldn’t fit them into a ballroom; I know

so many girls who been tortured as children you couldn’t fit

them into a ballroom; I know so many girls who was fucked

by their daddies you couldn’t fit them into a ballroom. N o one

cares; how many times can you say raped; it don’t matter and

no one stops them. I throw rocks through the w indows o f rape

emporiums; I destroy business properties o f men who rape; or

men who beat women; if I find out; sometimes I hear her

screaming; there’s screaming all over the cities; it travels up the

air shafts o f apartment buildings; I spray-paint their w indows;

I spray-paint their cars; I go to the courts; I follow them home;

I follow them to w ork; I have an air rifIe; I break their w indows

with it; I am seeking to blind them; the raped women come out

at night, we convene, there’s rallies, marches, sometimes a

mob, we stomp on the rape magazines or we invade where

they prostitute us, where we are herded and sold, we ruin their

theaters where they have sex on us, we face them, we scream

in their fucking faces, we are the women they have made

scream when they choose, when they like it; do you like it

now? We’re all the same, cunt is cunt is cunt, w e’re facsimiles

o f the ones they done it to, or we are the ones they done it to,

and I can’t tell him from him from him; we set fires, to their

stores, to them when they come outside from the Roman

circuses, inside they are set on fire metaphorically, the pimp

uses the woman to make them burn, she’s torn to pieces and

they get hot, outside we introduce the literal; burn, darling,

using girls is hot; we smash bums and we are ready for Mr.

Wall Street who will follow any piece o f ass down any dark

street; now he’s got a problem; it is very important for women

to kill men. We surge through the sex dungeons where our

kind are kept, the butcher shops where our kind are sold; we

break them loose; Am nesty International will not help us, the

United Nations will not help us, the World Court will not

help us; so at night, ghosts, we convene; to spread justice,

which stands in for law, which has always been merciless,

which is, by its nature, cruel. T hey don’t stop themselves, do

they? T hey get scared, even the bouncers at the rape em poriums, it’s inspiring, they ain’t used to mobs o f girls who surge and kick and smash; let alone that we are almost ethereal, so

ghostly, so frail and fucked out, near to death. Y ou see one o f

the big ones afraid and it will inspire you for a thousand years.

A girl alone or any mass o f girls; kicking, pushing, shoving;

you can tear their prisons down where they keep women

caged in; you must, mustn’t you? I have spent some years

searching for words, writing, wanting to write, and I have

spent some years now, writing a plan, a map with words, a

drawing with songs, a geography o f us here, them there, with

lyrics for how to move, us through them, us over them, us

past them; I published the military plan in haiku— Listen/

Huey killed/M e too— and it was widely understood; among

the raped; who do not exist; except in my mind; because they

are not proven to exist; and it is not proven to happen; but still;

we convene. I map out a plan, which I communicate through

gesture, graphs and charts and poems and a dance I do alone

after dark; a stark and violent dance; on his face; the raped will

hear me. They don’t stop themselves, do they? I enunciate a

fundamental political principle; I write it down, in secret; I

enunciate a plan; Stop them. I have looked for words. I have

read books. I have tried to say some simple things that

happened, with borrowed words, or old words, with sad

words, words tacked together shamefully without art. I have

sobbed for wanting words; because o f wanting to say the

simplest things; what he did and what it was, or what it was

like, as if it would matter if it could be said, or said right; I have

sobbed to him saying stop; I have begged person-to-person;

stop. Walt was a poet o f abundance; he had a surfeit o f words;

the ones I struggled for mean nothing, I looked for raped, was

it real, was it Nazis, could it be; how much did it hurt; what

did it signify; I wanted to say, it destroys freedom, it destroys

love, I want freedom, I want love, freedom first, freedom

now; rape rape rape; fucking 0; I found the word, it’s the right

word; fucking 0; no one cares; enough to stop them; stop

them. I will never have easy words; at my fingertips as they

say; but I will stake m y life on these words: Stop them. They

don’t stop themselves, do they? I’m Andrea, which means

manhood, but I do not rape; it is possible to be manly in your

heart, which I have always been, and not rape, I’ve always

liked girls, I’ve made love with many, I’ve never forced

anyone, don’t tell me you can’t, save it for them that don’t

know what it’s like, being with a girl. I was born in 1946, after

Auschwitz, after the bomb, I never wanted to kill, I had an

abhorrence for killing but it was raped from me, raped from

m y brain; obliterated, like freedom. I’m a veteran o f Birkenau

and Massada and deep throat, uncounted rapes, thousands o f

men, I’m twenty-seven, I don’t sleep. They leave the shell for

reasons o f their own. I have no fear o f any kind, they fucked it

out o f me some time ago, it’s neither here nor there, not good

or bad, except girls without fear scare them. I was born in

Camden, on M ickle Street, down from where Walt Whitman

lived, the great gray poet, a visionary, a prophet o f love; and I

loved, according to his poems. I was poor, I never shied away

from life, and I loved. I had a vision too, like his, but I will

never write a poem like his, a song o f myself, I count the

multitudes and so on, the multitudes passed on top o f me,

sticking it in, I lost count. For the record, Walt was wrong;

only a girl had a chance in hell o f being right. A lot o f men on

the B o w ery resemble Walt; huge, hairy types; I visit him

often. It was the end o f April, still cold, a brilliant, lucid cold.

Y ou could feel summer edging its w ay north. Y ou could smell

spring coming. Y ou would sing; if your throat wasn’t ripped.

Y ou r heart would rise, happy; if you wasn’t raped; in

perpetuity. I went out; at night; to smash a man’s face in; I

declared war. M y nom de guerre is Andrea One; I am reliably

told there are many more; girls named courage who are ready

to kill.

Not Andrea: Epilogue

It is, o f course, tiresome to dwell on sexual abuse. It is also

simple-minded. The keys to a woman’s life are buried in a

context that does not yield its meanings easily to an observer not

sensitive to the hidden shadings, the subtle dynamics, o f a self

that is partly obscured, partly lost, yet still self-determining, still

agentic— willful, responsible, indeed, even wanton. We are

seeking for the analytical tools— rules o f discourse that are

enhanced rather than diminished by ambiguity. We value

nuance. Dogma is anathema to the spirit o f inquiry that animates

women’s biography. The notion that bad things happen is both

propagandistic and inadequate. We want to affirm the spiritual

dignity and the sexual bonding we seek to find in women’s lives.

We want a discourse o f triumph, if you will pardon me for being

rhetorically elegant. I have heard the Grand Inquisitor Dworkin

say that, as we are women, such discourse will have to be

ambiguous. She is a prime example, o f course, o f the simple-

minded demogogue who promotes the proposition that bad

things are bad. This axiom is too reductive to be seriously

entertained, except, o f course, by the poor, the uneducated, the

lunatic fringe that she both exploits and appeals to. It is, for

instance, anti-mythological to perceive rape in moralistic terms

as a bad experience without transformative dimensions to it. We

would then have to ignore or impugn the myth o f Persephone,

in which her abduction and rape led, in the view o f the wise

ancient Greeks, to the establishment o f the seasons, a mythologi-

cal tribute, in fact, to the seasonal character o f the menarche. It

is disparaging and profoundly anti-intellectual to concentrate

on the virtual slave status o f women per se in ancient Greece as

if that in and o f itself rendered their mythological insights into

rape suspect. In fact, intercourse, forced or not, is the

precondition for a fertile, fruitful, multiplied as it were,

abundance o f living things, symbolized by the planting and

harvesting seasons. I am, o f course, not allying m yself either

with the right-wing endorsement o f motherhood or fam ily in

making these essentially keen, neutral, and inescapable observations. We cannot say the Greek philosophers and artists, the

storytellers and poets, were wrong, or dismiss them, simply

because some among us want to say that rape is bad or feels

bad or has some destructive effects. In fact, it has not been

scientifically proven that the effects o f rape are worse than the

effects o f gender-neutral assault and we are not willing to stew

in our stigma. As one distinguished feminist o f our own

school wrote some years ago in a left-wing journal o f

socialism, and I am paraphrasing: we should not dwell on rape

at all because to do so negatively valorizes sex; instead we

should actively concentrate on enjoying sex so that, in a sense,

the good can push out the bad; it is sex-negative to continue to

stigmatize an act, a process, an experience, that sometimes has

negative consequences; if we expand sexual pleasure we will,

in fact, be repudiating rape— in consciousness and in practice.

Further, in w om en’s academic circles we reify this perspective

by refusing, for instance, to have cross-cultural or cross-disci-

plinary discussions with those who continue to see themselves

as victims. While we deplore racism and endorse the goals o f

wom en o f color, we do not enter into discussions on the

Holocaust with Je w s or on slavery with Afro-Am ericans

because our theory, applied to their experience, might well be

misunderstood and cause offense. In fact, they will not affirm

the agentic dimensions o f their ow n historical experience,

which, we agree, is essentially an oppressive one. They

denounce and declaim, and we support them in those efforts.

But, as we find transcending affirmative values in wom en’s

experience under patriarchy, so too we can find concrete

examples o f the same dynamic in both Afro-American and

Jew ish experience. Ghetto Jew s from Eastern Europe did,

after all, learn to do physical labor in the concentration

camps— these are skills that have value, especially for those

essentially alien to working-class experience—intellectuals,

scholars, and so on. Jew ish elitism was transformed into a new

physicality, however base and tortured; one can see a foreshadowing o f the new Jew ish state— the shovels and picks o f the stone quarries transposed to the desert. O f course, one

must have some analytical objectivity. Afro-Americans sang

as a creative response to the suffering o f slavery such that

suffering may not be the defining characteristic o f the A fro-

American experience. The creation o f a major and original

musical genre, the blues, came directly out o f the slave

experience. It is absurd to suggest that slavery had no

mitigating or redemptive or agentic dimension to it, that the

oppression per se was merely oppressive. These tautologies

demonstrate how the dogma o f victimization has supplanted

the academic endeavor to valorize theory, which, in a sense,

does not descend to the rather low level o f direct human

experience, especially o f suffering or pain, which are too

subjective and also, frankly, too depressing to consider as

simple subjects in themselves or, frankly, as objects o f

inquiry. We apply our principles on agency, ambiguity, and

nuance exclusively to the experience o f women as women.

There is no outrage in the academy when we develop an

intellectually nuanced approach to rape as there would be, o f

course, if we applied these principles to Jew ish or A fro-

American experience. It is inappropriate for white women to

approach those issues anyway and thus we are insulated from

what I can only presume would be an intellectual backlash

while we support the so-called victims in a political atmosphere that Ronald Reagan created and that is anathema to

us— the cutbacks in civil rights and so on, funding for A fro-

American groups and so on. Then, when we mount our fight

for abortion, which rests firm ly in the affirmative context o f a

w om an’s right to choose, we have the support o f other groups

and so on. Outside w om en’s studies departments our theoretical principles are not used, not understood, and not paid attention to, for which we are, in fact, grateful. T o be held

accountable outside the sphere o f w om en’s studies for the

consequences o f our theoretical propositions would, o f

course, be a stark abridgment o f the academic license we have

w orked so hard to create for ourselves. Simple-minded

feminists, o f course, object to a nuanced approach to rape but

we can only presume that their response to the abduction o f

Persephone would have been to picket Hell. T o understand a

w om an’s life requires that we affirm the hidden or obscure

dimensions o f pleasure, often in pain, and choice, often under

duress. One must develop an eye for secret signs— the clothes

that are more than clothes or decoration in the contemporary

dialogue, for instance, or the rebellion hidden behind apparent

conform ity. There is no victim. There is perhaps an insufficiency o f signs, an obdurate appearance o f conformity that sim ply masks the deeper level on which choice occurs. A real

woman cannot be understood in terms either o f suffering or

constriction (lack o f freedom). Her artifice, for instance, may

appear to signal fear, as if the hidden dynamic is her

recognition that she will be punished if she does not conform.

But ask her. She uses the words o f agency: I want to. Artifice,

in fact, is the flag that signals pride in her nation, the nation o f

wom en, a chosen nationalism, a chosen role, a chosen

femaleness, a chosen relationship to sexuality, or sexualities,

per se; and the final configuration— the w ay she appears— is

rooted neither in biological givens nor in a social reality o f

oppression; she freely picks her signs creating a sexual-

political discourse in which she is an active agent o f her own

meaning. I do not feel— and I speak personally here— that we

need dignify, or, more to the point, treat respectfully on any

level those self-proclaimed rebels who in fact wallow in male

domination, pointing it out at every turn, as if we should turn

our attention to the very men they despise— and what? Do

something. Good God, do what? I do not feel that the marginal

types that use this overblown rhetoric are entitled to valorization. They are certainly not women in the same sense we

are— free-willed women making free choices. If they present

themselves as animals in cages, I am prepared to treat them as

such. We are not, as they say, middle-class, protecting the

status quo. It is not, as they maintain, middle-class to

appreciate the middle way, the normal, the ordinary, while

espousing a theoretically radical politics, left-wing and solidly

socialist. It is not middle-class to engage in intellectual

discourse that is not premised on the urgency o f destroying

western civilization, though certainly we critique it, nor is it

middle-class to have a job. It is not repugnance that tur^s me

away from these marginal types, these loud, chanting,

marching creatures who do not— and here I jest— footnote

their picket signs, these really rather inarticulate creatures who

fall o ff the edge o f the civilized world into a chaotic politics o f

man-hating and recrimination. Indeed, the sick-unto-death

are hard to placate, and I would not condescend to try.

W omen’s biography seeks to rescue from obscurity women

who did not belong there in the first place, women o f

achievement made invisible by an unjust, androcentric

double standard. These are noble women, not in the class

sense, because we do valorize the working class, though o f

course often these women are upper-class, and not in the

moralistic sense, although o f course they often are pure in the

sense o f emblematic. But certainly one need not labor to describe

the muck or the person indistinguishable from it. We affirm

sexually active women, yes. We will not explicate either the

condition or the lives o f sexually annihilated women— they

achieved nothing that requires our attention. The crime o f rape is

not an issue o f sex. It is an issue o f power. To recast it once again,

in a revisionist frenzy, as an issue o f freedom is painfully and

needlessly diversionary. O f course, there is a tradition in

existentialist philosophy o f seeing rape as an expression o f

freedom, a phenomenon o f freedom incarnate as it were, for the

rapist o f course, presumed male, presumed the normative

human. But certainly by now the psychological resonances o f

rape for the raped can best be dealt with in a therapeutic forum so

that the individual’s appreciation o f sex will not be distorted or

diminished— a frequent consequence o f rape that is a real

tragedy. The mechanics o f the two, rape and intercourse, have

an apparent likeness, which is unfortunate and no doubt

confusing for those insufficiently sex-positive. One is the other,

exaggerated, although, o f course, we do not know —pace St.

Augustine— which came first. St. Augustine contends that there

was sexual intercourse in the Garden but without lust, which he

saw as debilitating once he stopped indulging in it. O f course, we

all get older. The philosophical problem is one o f will. Is will

gendered? Clearly Nietzsche’s comprehension o f will never took

into account that he could be raped. Sade postulated that a

woman had a strong will— to be raped and otherwise hurt. It is

the governing pornographic conceit, indistinguishable from a

will to have sex. The problem o f female freedom is the problem

o f female will. Can a woman have freedom o f will if her will

exists outside the whole rape system: if she will not be raped or

potentially raped or, to cover Sade’s odd women, if she will not

rape. Assuming that the rapist qua rapist imposes his will, can

any woman be free abjuring rape, her will repudiating it, or is

any such will vestigial, utterly useless on the plane o f human

reality. Rape is, in that sense, more like housework than it is

like intercourse. He wants the house clean. She does not want

to clean it. Heterosexual imperatives demand that she bend her

will to his. There is, o f course, a sociology to housework

while there is only a pathology to rape. I am dignifying the

opposition here considerably by discussing the question o f

rape at all. Housework, as I showed above, has more to do

with wom en’s daily, ordinary bending o f will to suit a man. I

object to tying rape to wom en’s equality, in either theory or

practice, as if rape defined wom en’s experience or determined

w om en’s status. Rape is a momentary abrogation o f choice.

At its worst, it is like being hit by a car. The politicizing o f it

creates a false consciousness, one o f victimization, and a false

complaint, as if rape is a socially sanctioned male behavior on a

continuum o f socially expressed masculinity. We need to

educate men while enhancing desire. For most men, rape is a

game played with the consent o f a knowledgeable, sophisticated partner. As a game it is singularly effective in amplifying

desire. A m plifying desire is a liberatory goal. We are stuck, in

this epoch, with literalists: the female wallowers and the

feminist Jacobins. It is, o f course, no surprise to see a schizoid

discourse synthesized into a synthetic rhetoric: “ I” the raped

becomes “ I” the Jacobin. As the Jacobins wanted to destroy all

aristocrats, the feminist Jacobins want to destroy all rapists,

which, if one considers the varieties o f heterosexual play,

might well mean all men. They leave out o f their analysis

precisely the sexual stimulation produced by rape as an idea in

the same w ay they will not acknowledge the arousing and

transformative dimensions o f prostitution. To their reductive

minds prostitution is exploitation without more while those

o f us who thrive on adventure and com plexity understand that

prostitution is only an apparent oppression that permits some

women to be sexually active without bourgeois restraints.

Freedom is implicit in prostitution because sex is. Stalinists on

this issue, they see the women as degraded, because they believe

that sex degrades. They will not consider that prostitution is

freedom for women in exactly the same way existentialists

postulated that rape was a phenomenon o f freedom for men—

striking out against the authoritarian state by breaking laws and,

in opposition to all the imperatives o f a repressive society, doing

what one wants. They w on’t admit that a prostitute lives in

every woman. They w on’t admit to the arousal. Instead, they

strategically destroy desire by calling up scenarios o f childhood

sexual abuse, dispossession, poverty, and homelessness. Even

the phallic woman o f pornography has lost her erection by the

end o f the list. Rape as idea and prostitution as idea are o f

inestimable value in sexual communication. We don’t need the

Jacobins censoring our sexual souls. Meanwhile, in the academy

our influence grows while the Jacobins are on the streets,

presumably where they belong if they are sincere. I will keep

writing, applying the values o f agency, nuance, and ambiguity

to the experiences o f women, with a special emphasis on rape

and prostitution. I have no plans to write about the Holocaust

soon, although, I admit, I am increasingly irritated by the

simple-minded formulations o f Elie Wiesel and his ilk. Kvetch,

kvetch. After I get tenure, I will perhaps write an article on the

refusal o f Holocaust survivors to affirm the value o f the

Holocaust itself in their own creative lives. Currently I want

those who are dogmatic about rape and other bad things to keep

their moralisms posing as politics o ff my back and out o f my

bed. I don’t want them in my environment, my little pond. I

w on’t have m y students reading them, respectfully no less, or

m y colleagues inviting them here to speak, to read, to reproduce

simplicities, though not many want to. I like tying up my lover

and she likes it too. I will not be made to feel guilty as if I am

doing something violative. I was that good girl, that obedient

child. Feminism said let go. Y ou can do what a man does. I like

tying her wrists to the bed, I like gagging her, I like dripping hot

w ax on her breasts. It is not the same as when a man does it. She

and I are equals, the same. There is no moral atrocity or political

big deal. I like fantasizing. I like being a top and I like bringing

her to orgasm although I rarely have one myself. I like the sex

magazines, the very ones, o f course, that the Jacobins want to

censor, except for the fact that these magazines keep printing

pictures o f the Jacobins as if they are, in fact, Hieronymous

Bosch pin-ups. One does get angrier with them. One does want

to hurt them , if only to obliterate them from consciousness,

submerge them finally in the deeper recesses o f a more muted

discourse in which they are neither subjects nor objects. One

would exile them to the margins, beyond seeing or sound, but

strangely they are sexualized in the common culture as if they are

the potent women. Everyone pays attention to them and I and

others like me are ignored, except o f course when the publishers

o f the sex magazines ask one or the other o f us to write essays

denouncing them. But then, o f course, one must think about

them. When I’m having sex I find that more and more I have one

o f them under me in my fantasy, I hear her voice, accusing, I

muffle the sound o f her voice with my fist, I push it into my

lover’s mouth, slowly, purposefully, easy now. M y lover thinks

m y intensity is for her. I can’t stand the voice saying I’m wrong. I

really would wipe it out if I could. It makes for angry, passionate

sex, a kind o f playful fury. The Jacobin despises me. I have more

in common with the so-called rapist, the man who makes love

by orchestrating pain, the subtle so-called rapist, the knowing

so-called rapist, the educated so-called rapist, the one who

seduces, at least a little, and uses force because it’s sexy; it is sexy;

I like doing it and the men I know know I like doing it, to a

woman; they are pro-gay. I’m an ally and I will get tenure. I’m

their frontline defense. If I can do it, they can do it. The so-called

rapists in my university are educated men. We like sex and to

each his own. In my mind I have the Jacobin under me, and in

m y nuanced world she likes it. I am not simple-minded. Rape

so-called is her problem, not mine. I have been hurt but it was

a long time ago. I’m not the same girl.

Author’s Note

In a study o f 930 randomly selected adult women in San

Francisco in 1978 funded by the National Institute for Mental

Health, Diana Russell found that forty-four percent o f the

wom en had experienced rape or attempted rape as defined by

California state law at least once. The legal definition o f rape in

California and most other states was: forced intercourse (i. e.

penile-vaginal penetration), intercourse obtained by threat o f

force, or intercourse completed when the woman was

drugged, unconscious, asleep, or otherwise totally helpless

and hence unable to consent. N o other form o f sexual assault

was included in the definition; therefore, no other form o f

sexual assault was included in the statistic. O f the forty-four

percent, fully half had experienced more than one such attack,

the number o f attacks ranging from two to nine. Pair and

group rapes, regardless o f the number o f assailants, were

counted as one attack. Multiple attacks by the same person

were counted as one attack. See Diana E. H. Russell, Sexual

Exploitation: Rape, Child Sexual Abuse, and Workplace

Harassment, Sage Publications, 1984; see also Russell, Rape In

Marriage, Macmillan Publishing C o ., Inc., 1982 and The Secret

Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women, Basic Books,

Inc., Publishers, 1986.

Linda Marchiano, slave name Linda Lovelace, “ star” o f the

pornographic film Deep Throat, was first hypnotized, then

taught self-hypnosis by the man who pimped her, to suppress

the gag response in her throat. She taught herself to relax all

her throat muscles in order to minimize the pain o f deep

thrusting to the bottom o f her throat. She was brought into

prostitution and pornography through seduction and gang

rape, a not uncommon combination. Her lover turned her

over without warning to five men in a motel room to whom

he had sold her without her knowledge. Neither her screams

nor her begging stopped them. She was beaten on an almost

daily basis, humiliated, threatened, including with guns, kept

captive and sleep-deprived, and forced to do sex acts ranging

from “ deep throat” oral sex to intercourse and sodom y to

being penetrated by objects both vaginally and anally to

bestiality. Her escape from sexual slavery and her subsequent

life as a mother, school teacher, and antipornography activist

is a triumph o f the human spirit— part o f an unambiguous

discourse o f triumph. See Linda Lovelace with Mike

M cGrady, Ordeal, Citadel Press, 1980; see also Lovelace with

M cGrady, Out of Bondage, Lyle Stuart Inc., 1986.