David Wallace - Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Q.

‘What she knows is that the totally most terrible degrading thing that she ever could have even imagined happening to her has really happened to her now. And she survived. She’s still here. I’m not saying she’s thrilled, I’m not saying she’s thrilled about it or she’s in great shape or clicking her heels together out of joy it happened, but she’s still here, and she knows it, and now she knows something. I mean really knows . Her idea of herself and what she can live through and survive is bigger now. Enlarged, larger, deeper. She’s stronger than she ever deep-down thought, and now she knows it, she knows she’s strong in a totally different way from knowing it just because your folks tell you or some speechmaker at a school assembly has you all repeat you’re Somebody you’re Strong over and over. Alls I’m saying is she’s not the same and how some of the ways she’s not the same — like, if she’s still afraid at midnight walking to her car in a parking garage or whatever of getting jumped and gang-raped, now she’s afraid in a different way. Not that she wants it to ever happen again, getting gang-raped, no way. But now she knows it won’t kill her, she can survive it, it won’t obliterate her or make her, like, subhuman.’

Q….

‘And plus now also she knows more about the human condition and suffering and terror and degradation. I mean, all of us will admit suffering and horror are part of being alive and existing, or at least we all pay lip service to knowing it, the human condition. But now she really knows it. I’m not saying she’s thrilled about it. But think how much bigger now her view of the world is, how much more broad and deep the big picture is now in her mind. She can understand suffering in a totally different way. She’s more than she was. That’s what I’m saying. More of a human being. Now she knows something you don’t.’

Q.

‘That’s the knee-jerk reaction, that’s what I’m talking about, taking everything I say and taking and filtering it through your own narrow view of the world and saying what I’m saying is Oh so the guys that gang-raped her did her a favor. Because that’s not what I’m saying. I’m not saying it was good or right or it should have happened or that she’s not totally fucked up by it and shattered or it ever should have happened. For any one case of a woman getting gang-raped or violated or whatever, if I was there and I could have the power to either say Go ahead or Stop, I’d stop it. But I couldn’t. Nobody could. Totally terrible things happen. Existence and life break people in all kinds of awful fucking ways all the time. Trust me I know, I’ve been there.’

Q.

‘And I get the feeling this is the real difference. You and me here. Because this isn’t really about politics or feminism or whatever. For you this is all ideas, you think we’re talking about ideas. You haven’t been there. I’m not saying nothing bad ever happened to you, you’re not badlooking and I bet there’s been some degradation or whatever that came your way in your life. That’s not what I’m saying. But we’re talking Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning —Holocaust-type total violation and suffering and terror here. The real Dark Side. And baby I can tell just from just looking at you you never. You wouldn’t even wear what you’re wearing, trust me.’

Q.

‘That you might admit you believe yeah OK the human condition is full of terrible awful human suffering and you can survive almost anything or whatever. Even if you really believe it. You believe it, but what if I said I don’t just believe it I know it? Does that make a difference in what I’m saying? What if I told you my own wife got gang-raped? Not so sure of yourself now are you. What if I told you a little story about a sixteen-year-old girl that went to the wrong party with the wrong guy and his buddies and ended up get — having done to her just about everything four guys could do to you in terms of violation. Six weeks in the hospital. What if I told you she still has to go in for dialysis twice a week, that’s how bad they did her?’

Q.

‘What if I told you she’d never say she in any way asked for it or enjoyed it or liked it or likes only having half a kidney and if she could go back and have a way to stop it she would but if you asked her if she could go into her head and forget it or like erase the tape of it happening in her memory, what do you think she’d say? Are you so sure what she’d say? That she wishes she never had to, like, structure her mind to deal with it happening to her or to all of a sudden know the world can break you just like: that . To know that another human being, these guys, can look at you lying there and in the totally deepest way understand you as a thing, not a person a thing, a fuck-doll or punching-dog or a hole, as just a hole to shove a Jack Daniel’s bottle in so far it blows out your kidneys — if she said after that, totally negative as what happened was, now at least she understood it was possible, people can.’

Q.

‘See you as a thing, that they can see you as a thing. Do you know what that means? It’s terrible, we know how terrible it is as an idea, and that it’s wrong, and we think we know all these things about human rights and human dignity and how terrible it is to take away somebody’s humanity that’s what we call it somebody’s humanity but to have it happen to you, see, and now you really know . Now it’s not just an idea or cause to get all knee-jerk about. Have it happen and you get a real taste of the Dark Side. Not just the idea of darkness, the genuine Dark Side. And now you know the power of it. The total power. Because if you can really see somebody just as a thing you can do anything to him, all bets are off, humanity and dignity and rights and fairness — all bets are off. Alls — what if she said it’s like a quick expensive little tour of a side of the human condition everybody talks about like they know but really they can’t even imagine it, not really, not unless you been there. So if alls it is is her way of seeing the world was broadened, what if I said that? What would you say? And of herself, how she understood herself. That now she understood she could be understood as a thing. Can you see how much this would change — rip away, how much this would rip away? Of yourself, you, what you used to think of as you? It would rip all that away. Then what would be left? Can you even imagine do you think? It’s like Victor Frankl in his book says that at the very worst of it in the camp in the Holocaust, when your freedom’s taken away, and your privacy and dignity because you’re naked in a crowded camp and you have to go to the bathroom in front of everybody else because there’s no such thing as privacy anymore, and your wife’s dead and your kids starved while you had to watch and you don’t have any food or heat or blankets and they treat you like rats because to them really you really are rats you’re not a human being, and they call you out and bring you in and torture you, like scientific torture so they can show you they can even take your body away, your body isn’t even you anymore it’s the enemy it’s this thing they use to torture you because to them it’s just a thing and they’re running lab experiments on it, it’s not even sadistic they’re not being sadistic because to them it’s not a human being they’re torturing — that when everything that has any like connection to the you you think you are gets ripped away and now all that’s left is only: what, what’s left, is there anything left? You’re still alive so what’s left is you? What’s that? What does you mean now? See now it’s showtime, now’s when you find out what you even are to yourself. Which most people with dignity and humanity and rights and all that there don’t ever get to know. What’s possible. That nothing is automatically sacred. That’s what Frankl’s talking about. That it’s through suffering and terror and the Dark Side that whatever’s left gets to open up, and then after that you know .’