Andrea Dworkin - The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant

illegitimate authority, expressed in my world by adults, and

find a church. Books were my church but even more my native

land, my place of refuge, my DP camp. I was an exile early on,

but exile welcomed me; it was where I belonged.

35

The Fight

I loved Al en Ginsberg with the passion that only a teenager

knows, but that passion did not end when adolescence did. I

sent him poems when I was in high school and barely

breathed until I heard back from him. He critiqued the poems

I sent on a postcard that I got about three weeks later, though

it seemed like ten years. I thought I would die - he acknowledged me as if I were a writer and we lived in the same world.

In col ege I went to every reading of his that I could. My heart

breathed with his, or so I thought, but I was too shy ever to

introduce myself to him or hang around him until the one

reading after which I did introduce myself. “Call me, ” he said

to me a half dozen times as I was walking backward out of the

large room, backward so that he could keep talking to me.

“Cal me, ” he had said, “but don’t come to New York just to

cal me or you’l drive me mad. ” He had scribbled his phone

number on a piece of paper. “Call me, ” he repeated over and

over. I could have happily died then and there.

I did go to New York just to see him, but when I got to

New York I was too shy to cal him. I'd spend every waking

hour worrying about how to make the cal . I picked a rainy

36

The Fight

night. He answered the phone. “Come on over now, ” he said.

I told him that he was much too busy. I told him that it was

raining. I went anyway, shaking on the wet sidewalks, shaking

on the bus, so nervous on the five flights up to his apartment

that I could barely keep my balance. As always when I was

nervous, I broke into a cold sweat.

He had warned me that he was working on proofs for a

new book of poems and would have very little time for me,

but we spent the whole night talking - well, okay, not al of it

but many hours of it. He then walked me down to the bus

in the rain and told me he loved me. I counted. He told me

eleven times.

I called him one more time many months later. I had a

standing invitation to see him, but I never went back. I stayed

infatuated but I stayed out of his way. I did not know that this

was a shrewd move on my part for the writer I wanted to be.

Being in thrall to an icon keeps you from becoming yourself.

When Woman Hating was published in 1974, I met the

photographer Elsa Dorfman. She was a close friend of Allen’s

and had photographed him and other writers over years, not

days. She photographed me for the first time as a writer. When

Elsa had a baby I was asked to be his godmother and Ginsberg

was his godfather. We were now, metaphysically speaking,

joined in unholy matrimony. And still I stayed away from

him. I did not see him again, since that time in college, until

my godson was bar mitzvahed. By this time I had published

37

Heartbreak

many books, including my work attacking pornography - the

artifacts, the philosophy, the politics.

On the day of the bar mitzvah newspapers reported in huge

headlines that the Supreme Court had ruled child pornography il egal. I was thrilled. I knew that Allen would not be.

I did think he was a civil libertarian. But in fact, he was a

pedophile. He did not belong to the North American Man-

Boy Love Association out of some mad, abstract conviction

that its voice had to be heard. He meant it. I take this from

what Allen said directly to me, not from some inference I

made. He was exceptionally aggressive about his right to fuck

children and his constant pursuit of underage boys.

I did everything I could to avoid Allen and to avoid

conflict. This was my godson’s day. He did not need a political struggle to the death breaking out al over.

Ginsberg would not leave me alone. He followed me everywhere I went from the lobby of the hotel through the whole reception, then during the dinner. He photographed me constantly with a vicious little camera he wore around his neck. He sat next to me and wanted to know details of sexual abuse I

had suf ered. A lovely woman, not knowing that his interest was

entirely pornographic, told a terrible story of being molested

by a neighbor. He ignored her. She had thought, “This is

Al en Ginsberg, the great beat poet and a prince of empathy. ”

Wrong. Ginsberg told me that he had never met an intelligent

person who had the ideas I did. I told him he didn’t get

38

The Fight

around enough. He pointed to the friends of my godson and

said they were old enough to fuck. They were twelve and

thirteen. He said that al sex was good, including forced sex.

I am good at get ing rid of men, strictly in the above-board

sense. I couldn’t get rid of Allen. Finally I had had it. Referring

back to the Supreme Court’s decision banning child pornography he said, “The right wants to put me in jail. ” I said, “Yes, they’re very sentimental; I’d kil you. ” The next day he’d point

at me in crowded rooms and screech, “She wants to put me in

jail. ” I’d say, “No, Allen, you still don’t get it. The right wants

to put you in jail. I want you dead. ”

He told everyone his fucked-up version of the story (“You

want to put me in jail”) for years. When he died he stopped.

39

The Bomb

There is one reason for the 1960s generation, virtually al of

its attitudes and behaviors: the bomb. From kindergarten

through the twelfth grade, every U. S. child born in 1946 or

the decade or so after had to hide from the nuclear bomb.