Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

much to say to each other, the ones that left and the ones that

stayed. Children get shamed by fear but you can’t tell the

adults that; they don’t care. They make children into dead

things like they are. If there’s something left alive in you, you

run. Y ou run from the poor little child on her knees; fear

burned the skin o ff all right; she’s still on her knees, dead and

raw and tender. N ew Y o rk ’s nothing, a piece o f cake; you

never get afraid like that again; not ever. I live where I can find

a bed. Men roll on top, fuck, roll off, shoot up, sleep, roll on

top again. In between you sleep. It’s how it is and it’s fine. I

never did feel more at home. It’s as i f I was always there. It’s

familiar. The streets are the same gray, home. Fucking is

nothing really. Hiding from the law and dumb adults is

ordinary life; yo u ’re always hiding from them anyw ay unless

yo u ’re one o f their robots. I hate authority and it’s no jo k e and

it’s no game; I want them dead all right, all the order givers.

N ew Y o r k ’s home because there’s other people the same; we

know each other as much as you have to, not much. The only

other w ay is the slow time o f mothers; facing a wall, staring at

a blank wall, for life, one man, forever, marriage, the living

dead. I don’t want to be like them. I never will be. I’m not

afraid o f dying and I’m not standing quiet at some wall; the

bomb comes at me, I’m going to hurl m yself into it; flashfly

into its fucking face. I’m fine on the streets. I’m not afraid; o f

fucking or anyone; and there’s nothing I’m afraid of. I have

ideals about peace and freedom and it doesn’t matter what the

adults think, because they lie and they’re stupid. I’m sincere

and smarter than them. I believe in universal love. I want to

love everybody even if I don’t know them and not to have

small minds like the adults. I don’t mind if people are strangers

or how they look and no matter how raw som ebody is they’re

human; it’s the plastic ones that aren’t human. I don’t need a

lot, a place to sleep, some money, almost none, cigarettes.

Everyone in this place knows something, jazz or poems or

anarchism or dope or books I never heard o f before, and they

don’t like the bomb. T h ey’ve lived and they don’t hide from

knowing things and sex is the main w ay you live— adults say it

isn’t but they never told the truth yet. N ew Y o rk ’s the whole

world, it’s like living inside a heartbeat, you know, like a

puppy you can put your head up against the ticking when

you’re lonely and when you want to move the beat’s behind

you. I don’t need things. I’m not an American consumer. I’m

on the peace side and I have ideals about freedom and I don’t

want anyone telling me what to do, I’ve had enough o f it, I’m

against war, I go to demonstrations, I’m a pacifist, I have been

since I can remember. I read books and I go to places in N ew

Y ork, churches and bare rooms even, and I hear people read

poems and in m y mind I am with Sartre or Camus or Rimbaud

and I want to show love to everyone and not be confined and

sex is honest, it’s not a lie, and I like to feel things, strong

things. In N ew Y ork there’s people like me everywhere,

hiding where regular people don’t look, in every shadow

there’s the secret people. There are pockets o f dark in the dark

and the people like me are in them, poor, with nothing, not

afraid, I’m never afraid. It’s as if every crack in the sidewalk is

an open door to somewhere; you can go between the cracks to

the hidden world but regular people never even see the cracks.

People the same as you go through the cracks because they’re

not afraid and you meet them there, in the magic places, real

old from other generations even, hidden, some great underground city, dirty, hard, dark, free. There’s always sex and dope and you can get pretty hungry but you can get things if

you have to; there’s always someone. I never doubted it was

home from the start; where I was meant to come. I’m known

and invisible at the same time; fitting in but always going m y

own way, a shy girl alone in a dark corner o f the dark, the

dark’s familiar to me and so are the men in it, no rules can ever

stop night from putting its arms around a lonely girl. I like

doing what I want no matter what it is and I like drifting and I

run i f I have to; someone’s always there, kind or otherwise,

you decide quick. I love the dark, it’s got no rough edges for

me. I hear every sound without trying. I feel as if I was born

knowing every signal. I’m an animal on instinct lucky to be in

the right jungle, a magic animal charged with everything

intense and sacred, and I hate cages. I’m the night, the same.

Y ou have to hurt it to hurt me. I am one half o f everything

lawless the night brings, every lawless embrace. I can smell

where to turn in the dark, it’s not something you can know in

your head. It’s a whisper so quiet not even the dead could hear

it. It’s touching fire so fast you don’t burn your hand but the

fire’s real. I don’t know much, not what things are called or

how to do them right or how people act all the regular times.

Everything is ju st what it is to me with nothing to measure it

against and no w ay to check and I don’t have any tom orrow

and I don’t have a yesterday that I can remember because the

days and nights just go on and on and never stop and never

slow down and never turn regular; nothing makes time

normal. I have nineteen cents, I buy a big purple thing, it’s

with the vegetables, a sign says eggplant, it’s the cheapest

thing there is, I never saw one before, I try to cook it in m y one

pan in a little water, I eat it, you bet I do, it’s an awful thing, I

see w hy momma always used vegetables in cans but they cost

more. I buy rice in big unmarked bags, I think it’s good for

you because Asian people eat it and they have lived for

centuries no matter how poor they are and they have an old

civilization so it must be good but then someone says it has

starch and starch is bad so I stop buying it because the man’s very

disapproving as if I should know better because it makes you fat

he says. I just boil what there is. I buy whatever costs what I have

in m y pocket. I don’t know what people are talking about

sometimes but I stay quiet because I don’t want to appear so

ignorant to them, for instance, there are funny words that I