Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

how to teach; they develop propaganda and training films,

patriotic films, here’s the target, take her out. Here’s where

they make the plans to make the weapons; and here’s where

they commission the weapons; and here’s where they deploy

the weapons; it’s the church, holy, and the military, profane,

backbone and bedrock, there’s dogma and rules, prayers and

marching chants, sacred rites and bayonets, there’s everything

you stick up them, from iron crosses to grenades; you pull the

pin; stay inside them as long as you have the nerve; pull out;

run; it makes a man out o f a boy. There’s a human being;

under glass. I f you see what’s in front o f you you see w hat’s

down the road: someday they’ll just take the children, the pied

piper o f rape, they’ll ju st use the children, it’s so much easier,

how it is now is so difficult, so com plex, fun taming the big

ones and seducing them and raping them but the children are

tighter, you know; and hurt more, you know; and are so

confused, you know; and love you anyway, you know. All

the worshippers will be tolerant o f each other; and they’ll pass

the little ones on, down the line, so everyone can pray; and the

courts will let them; because the courts have always let them;

it’s just big daddy in a dress, the appearance o f neutrality. I

been living in Times Square, on the sidewalks, I seen all the

marquees, I studied them, I have two questions all the time,

w hy ain’t she dead is one and w hy would anyone, even a man,

think it’s true— her all strung out, all painted, all glossy,

proclaiming being peed on is what she wants; I do not get how

the lie flies; or ain’t they ever made love; or ever seen no one

real; and maybe she’s dead by now; they must think it’s like

you are born a porn thing; in the hospital they take the baby

and they say take it to the warehouse, it’s a porn thing. They

must think it’s a special species; with purple genitals and skin

made from a pale steel that don’t even feel no pain; or they

think every girl is one, underneath, and they wait, until we

turn purple, from cold, or a thin patina o f blood, dried so it’s

an encasement, like an insect’s carapace. And they get hard

from it, the porn thing, flat and glossy, dead and slick, and

after they find something resembling the specimen from

under the glass and they stick it in; a girl in the rain; five

infants; some girl. It’s like how Plato tried to explain; the thing

pure, ideal, as if you went through some magical fog and came

to a whole world o f perfect ideas and there’s Linda taking it

whole; and they wander through the pure world putting fifty

cents down there to cop a feel and five dollars down there, and

for a hundred you see a little girl buggered, and for fifty you do

something perfect and ideal to a perfect whore or some perfect

blow -up doll with a deep silk throat and a deep silk vagina and

a rough, tight rectum, and you come back through the fog and

there’s the girl, not quite so purple, and you do it to her; yeah,

she cries if you hang her or brand her or maim her or even

probably if you fuck her in the ass, she don’t smile, but you can

hurt her enough to make her smile because she has to smile

because if she don’t she gets hurt more, or she’ll try, and you

can paint her more purple, or do anything really; put things in

her; even glass or broken glass and make her bleed, you can get

the color you want; you strive for the ideal. I fuck it up, I say

the girl’s real, but it don’t stop them; and we got to stop them;

so I take the necessary supplies, some porn magazines where

they laminate the women, and I take the stones for breaking

the glass, I will not have women under glass, and I take signs

that say “ Free the Women, Free O urselves” and “ Porn Hates

W omen” and I take a sign that says “ Free Linda” and I have a

sign that says “ Porn Is Rape” and I take a letter I wrote m yself

that says to m y mama how sorry I am to have failed at dignity

and at freedom both, and I say I am Andrea but I am not

manhood for which, mama, I am glad, because they have gone

to filth, they are maggots on this earth; and I take gasoline, and

I’m nearly old for a girl, I’m hungry and I have sores, and I

smell bad so no one looks at all very much, and I go to outside

Deep Throat where m y friend Linda is in the screen and I put

the gasoline on me, I soak m yself in it in broad daylight and

many go by and no one looks and I am calm, patient, gray on

gray cement like the Buddhist monks, and I light the fire; free

us, I start to scream, and then there’s a giant whoosh, it

explodes more like wind than fire, it’s orange, around me,

near me, I’m whole, then I’m flames. I burn; I die. From this

light, later you will see. Mama, I made some light.

E L E V E N

April 30, 1974

(Age 27)

Sensei is cute but she’s fascist. She makes us bow to the Korean

flag; I bow but I don’t look. We are supposed to be reverent in

our hearts but in m y heart is where I rebel. It is more than a

bow. We bow. We get down on our knees and we bow our

heads. It’s the opening ceremony o f every class. In karate you

get down on your knees in a lightning flash o f perfect

movement so there’s no scramble, no noise; it’s a perfect

silence and everyone moves as one; the movement itself

expresses reverence and your mind is supposed to obey, it

moves with the body, not against it, except for mine, which is

anarchist from a long time ago and I never thought I’d bow

down in front o f any fucking flag but I do, in perfect silence

and sym m etry insofar as my awkward self can manage it; my

mind’s like a muscle that pulls every time; I feel it jerk and I feel

the dislocation and the pain and I keep m oving, until I am on

m y knees in front o f the fucking thing. It’s interesting to think

o f the difference between a flag and a dick, because this is not a

new position; with a dick how you get there doesn’t count

whereas in the dojo all that matters is the elegance, the grace,

o f the movement, the strength o f the muscles that carry you

down; an act o f reverence will eventually, says Sensei, teach

you self-respect, which wasn’t the issue with the dick, as I

remember. There’s an actual altar. It has on it the Korean flag,

a picture o f Sensei, and some dried flowers. When I was a child