Andrea Dworkin - The New Womans Broken Heart

shopping and he tried to run me over with his car. the police came at

the point where he had gotten out of the car after backing me

against a wall and was strangling me and screaming obscenities simultaneously. I refused to press charges. I kept thinking that he was confused and had made a mistake. I thought that every time which,

for an educated woman, was quite an accomplishment, then I went

home and cried and told him I loved him and would do anything for

him and sucked his cock and made dinner, then the next day I got a

stomach virus and had terrible diarrhea and vomiting and when I

asked him to drive me to the doctor he kicked me in the leg midway

between the knee and ankle, the kick sent me flying across the room

whereupon I hit my shoulder against the wall, he went back to sleep,

and I shit in my pants. I lay there for a long time and when I did

finally get up, I limped, dripping shit, into the sunset.

I never did get revenge or anything like that, his new girlfriend

moved in with him right away. I had provoked him she said which,

for an educated woman, was quite an accomplishment, he got tearful whenever he saw me on the street and asked, bertha, why did you leave me. that is, until our day in court, on that day he beat me up,

called me a whore, and told me that he always finished what he

started.

oh, I fucked around for a while after I left, in fact I was one big

fuck around. I had that look men love, utterly used. I had that posture men lust after, flat on my back, also I was poor and usually hungry and fucking was the only way I knew to get a meal.

I didnt actually decide to give up men until almost a year and a

half later. I took a lot of acid and on those nights, or even on afternoons, looking into the void which was located precisely between my legs, I would simply shake and tremble, for 8 hours, or 12 hours, or

however long the acid lasted, I would shake and tremble.

I also had nightmares, somehow all the feelings I didnt feel when

each thing had actually happened to me I did feel when I slept. I

hated going to sleep because then I had to feel. I felt him hit me, and

I felt what it felt like, and christ it felt awful. I would sleep, sometimes with my eyes open, and I would feel it all over, and most of it for the first time. I didnt understand how I had not felt it when it was

happening, but I hadnt, I had felt something else. I had felt almost

nothing, which was something else, when I was sleeping each thing

would happen to me as it had happened and I would feel what I had

not felt.

then I began to feel it when I was awake.

then I decided that though I might never feel better, I didnt want

to feel worse, that was my decision to give up men.

women were the next to go. now that may sound a little nutty since

Im nuts about women, it all began when I was very young, 13 to be

exact, and I had many an amorous night well into adulthood and

even past it. sometimes when he beat me up I went to my next door

neighbor who comforted me kindly with orgasm after orgasm but I

couldnt stay there or think anything through because she was m arried to a man she hated and he was usually there, there didnt seem to be any rest or happiness anywhere in those troubled times.

to tell the truth I gave up women after some very bitter sweet love

affairs which got fucked up because I was still fucking men and was

still very fucked up by men. I was, to tell the truth, one running, festering sore, and I didnt do anyone much good, a lot of women were good to me and I fucked them over time and time again because I

couldnt seem to get anything straight, finally I figured that since I

couldnt do anyone any good I might at least stop doing monumental

harm.

little boys were the last to go. 18, 19, 20. not prepubescent, certainly not. all long and gangly and awkward and ignorant, they never beat me up but they didnt stay hard long either, soon I came to

appreciate that as some sort of good faith, finally though it hardly

seemed worth the effort.

now I was in what all those men writers call “an existential position. ” that, contrary to the lewd images that might be evoked because Im a woman, is when youve given up everything youve ever

tried, or havent tried but definitely had planned on. in my case, being quite taken with the arts, that included having mustard rubbed into whip wounds (Henry Miller), fucking Norman Mailer (Norman

Mailer), and being covered in chocolate and licked clean by a horde

of Soho painters (me).

now the problem with telling you what it means for me, bertha

schneider, to be in an existential position is that I dont have Sartres

credibility. I mean, theres just no emotional credibility that I can call

on. look at Jackie Kennedy for instance, there she was, John dead,

her very very rich, and she didnt have emotional credibility until she

married Onassis. I mean, we all knew right away that she had done

the only thing she could do. I mean, if De Beauvoir hadnt been Sartres mistress, do you think anyone would have believed her at all? or look at Oedipus as another example of emotional credibility, suppose he and his mother had fucked, and it had been terrific, and they had just kept fucking and ruling the kingdom together, whod

believe it, even if it was true, or look at Last Tango in Paris, when

Maria Schneider shot Brando most people didnt believe it at all. how

is it possible, they asked, why did she do that? me I believed it right

away.

so look at me. here I am, bertha schneider, someone not so special

as these things go, right with my heels on the existential edge and my

toes curling over the abyss, no men, no women, no boys, and what I

want to tell you, though you wont believe it at all, is that its better

here than its ever been before, bertha schneiders existential position

is that shes not going to be fucked around anymore, now maybe that

doesnt sound like much to all of you but I call it Day One. I figure

that when my mind and body heal its my mother Im going to get it

on with after all. I always did have a high regard for that woman

although it did get obscured by the necessities of daily life, when I

think of bliss, not to mention freedom, frankly its my ma and me

alone somewhere kissing and hugging and sucking like God intended. and despite the obvious pressures I will not have second thoughts, or be unfaithful, or gouge my eyes out. thats my promise to

posterity.

as for my ex-husband, well I didnt have Marias good sense. Im

told he suffered a lot when I left, oh I dont kid myself, it wasnt out of

love or regard or anything like that, whatever he called it. it was

more like when a limping person dripping shit leaves you, you figure

youre in real trouble and even a Clint Eastwood fan has to notice. I

mean, when the baseball tells the bat to fuck off, the games over and

I for one am never going to forget it.