Andrea Dworkin: The New Womans Broken Heart

sweet things, but sweet doesnt keep you from dying, making love

doesnt keep you from dying unless you get paid, writing doesnt keep

you from dying unless you get paid, being wise doesnt keep you from

dying unless you get paid, facts are facts, being poor makes you face

facts which also does not keep you from dying,

people ask, well, why dont you tell a story the right way, you woke

up then what happened and who said what to whom. I say thats shit

because when you are ass fucking poor every day is the same, you

worry, ok. she had brown hair and brown eyes and she worried,

theres a story for you. she worried when she peed and she worried

when she sat down to figure out how far the SI 1. 14 would go and

what would happen when it was gone and she worried when she took

her walk and saw the pretty tree, she worried day and night, she

choked on worry, she ate worry and she vomited worry and no matter

how much she shitted and vomited the worry didnt come out, it just

stayed inside and festered and grew, she was pregnant with worry,

hows that? so how come the bitch doesnt just sell that ass if shes in

this goddam situation and its as bad as she says, well, the bitch did,

not just once but over and over, long ago, but not so long ago that

she doesnt remember it. she sold it for a corned beef sandwich and

for steak when she could get it. she sold it for a bed to sleep in and it

didnt have to be her own either, she ate speed because it was cheaper

than food and she got fucked raw in exchange for small change day

after day and night after night, she did it in ones twos threes and

fours with onlookers and without, so she figures shes wiggled her ass

enough for one lifetime and the truth is she would rather be dead if

only the dying wasnt so fucking slow and awful and she didnt love

life goddam it so much, the truth is once you stop you stop, its not

something you can go back to once its broken you in half and you

know what it means. I mean, as long as youre alive and you know

what trading in ass means and you stop, thats it. its not negotiable,

and the woman for whom it is not negotiable is anathema.

for example, heres a typical vignette, not overdrawn, underdrawn,

youre done yr days work, fucking, youre home, so some asshole man

thinks thats his time, so he comes with a knife and since hes neighborhood trade you try to calm him down, most whores are pacifists of the first order, so he takes over yr room, takes off his shirt, lays

down his knife, thats yr triumph, the fuck isnt anything once the

knife is laid down, only the fuck is always something, you have to

pretend that you won. then you got to get him to go but hes all comfy

isnt he. so another man comes to the door and you say in an undertone, this fuckers taken over my house, so it turns out man 2 is a hero, he comes in and says what you doing with my woman, and it

turns out man 2 is a big drug dealer and man 1 is a fucking junkie,

so you listen to man 1 apologize to man 2 for fucking his woman, so

man 1 leaves, guess who doesnt leave? right, man 2 is there to stay,

so he figures hes got you and he does, and he fucking tries to bite you

to death and you lie still and groan because you owe him and he

fucking bites you near to death, between yr legs, yr clitoris, he fucking bites and bites, then he wants breakfast, so once you been through it enough, enough is enough.

ah, you say, so this explains it, whores hate men because whores

see the worst, what would a whore be doing with the best, but the

truth is that a whore does the worst with the best, the best undress

and reduce to worse than the rest, besides, all women are whores and

thats a fact, at least all women with more than $11. 14 in the bank,

me too. shit, I should tell you what I did to get the $11. 14. nothing

wrong with being a whore, nothing wrong with working in a sweatshop. nothing wrong with picking cotton, nothing wrong with nothing.

I like the books these jerko boys write. I mean, and get paid for. its

interesting, capital, labor, exploitation, tomes, volumes, journals,

essays, analyses, all they fucking have to do is stop trading in female

ass. apparently its easier to write books, it gives someone like me a

choice, laugh to death or starve to death. Ive always been pro choice,

the ladies are very impressed with those books, its a question of

physical coordination, some people can read and wiggle ass simultaneously. ambidextrous.

so now Im waiting and thinking. Anne Frank and Sylvia Plath leap

to mind, they both knew Nazis when they saw them, at some point,

there were a lot of ass wigglers in the general population around

them wiggling ass while ovens filled and emptied, wiggling ass while

heroes goosestepped or wrote poetry, wiggling ass while women,

those old fashioned women who did nothing but hope or despair,

died, this new woman is dying too, of poverty and a broken heart, the

heart broken like fine china in an earthquake, the earth rocking and

shaking under the impact of all that goddam ass wiggling going off

like a million time bombs, an army of whores cannot fail—to die one

by one so that no one has to notice, meanwhile one sad old whore

who stopped liking it has a heart first cracked then broken by the

ladies who wiggle while they work.

the wild cherries of lust

(for Orisis)

bertha schneider had once been a woman and was now an androgyne. as a woman she had lain for 8 years on her back with her legs open as the multitudes passed by leaving gifts of sperm and spit,

now as an androgyne her legs were still open but at the same time

they ran, jumped, swam, stood up, skipped, and squatted, her

mouth was also open and what nestled there with restless fervor also

found its way to her armpits, under and between her breasts, to the

creases in her neck, to the small of her back as well as the bend of

her elbow, not to mention where the bend of her elbow often found

itself.

bertha had passed 2 years of celibacy before becoming an androgyne. she had fucked during that time in much the way vegetarians eat hamburgers—sometimes and not proudly, yes, she

had been fucked and gutted and ransacked occasionally by sweet

young boys who lived on street comers, yes, she had sucked the cunts

of brilliant, strong, and worthy women with abandon and no small

measure of delight, but all the while she had dreamed herself celibate and had even imagined that she was a virgin again as she once had been—only this time in spirit as well as in body, on purpose instead of by accident.