Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

can’t even try to say because I think they will laugh at me but I

heard them once like zucchini, and if someone makes something and hands it to me I eat it. Sometimes someone asks me if

I like this or that but I don’t know what they mean and I stare

blankly but I smile and I don’t know what they think but I try

to be polite. I worked at the Student Peace Union and the War

Resisters League to stop the bomb and I was a receptionist at a

place that taught reading and I was a waitress at a coffee shop

that poured coffee-to-go and I typed and carried packages and

I went with men and they had smoke or food or music or a

place to sleep. I didn’t get much money and I didn’t keep any

jobs because mostly I lived in pretty bad places or on the streets

or in different places night to night and I guess the regular

people didn’t like it or wanted to stay away but I didn’t care or

think about it and I never thought about being regular or

looking regular or acting regular; I did what I wanted from

what there was and I liked working for peace and the rest was

for cigarettes. I slept in living rooms, on cots, on floors, on

soiled mattresses, in beds with other people I didn’t know who

fucked while I slept, in Brooklyn, in Spanish Harlem, near

Tompkins Square Park, in abandoned buildings, in parks, in

hallways, curled up in corners. Y ou can build your own walls.

Even the peace people had apartments and pretty things and

warm food, it seemed regular and abundant but I don’t know,

I never asked them for anything but sometimes someone took

me home and I could see. I didn’t know where it came from; it

was just like some play with scenery. They had plants or

pretty rugs or wool things or pots; posters; furniture; heat;

food; things around. I tried to live in a collective on Avenue B

and I was supposed to have a bed and we were going to cook

and all but that was where the junkies kept rolling on top o f me

because the collective would never tell anyone they couldn’t

sleep there and I never was there early enough so there wasn’t

someone asleep where I thought was mine. I never did really

sleep very well, it’s sort o f a lie to say I could sleep with junkies

rolling over on top o f me, a little bravado on m y part, except I

fell o ff to sleep, or some state o f less awake, and then it’d

happen. Y ou are always awake a little. I lived in a living room

o f a woman for peace who lived with her brother. He slept in

the living room, she slept in the bedroom, but she put me in

the living room with him. He breathed heavy and stayed up

watching me and I had to move out because she said he

couldn’t sleep. I stayed anywhere I could for as long as I could

but it w asn’t too long usually. I slept on benches and in

doorways. D oorw ays can be like palaces in the cold, in the

dark, when it’s wet; doorways are strong; you feel sheltered,

like in the arms o f God, unless the wind changes and comes

right at you and drives through you; then you wake up already

shivering, sleep pulling you down because you want to believe

you are only dreaming the wind is driving through you, but

you started to shake unconscious and the cold permeates your

body before you can bring your mind to facing it. Y ou can’t

find any place in N ew Y ork that doesn’t have me in it. I’m

stuck in the dark, m y remembrance, a shadow, a shade, an

old, dark scar that keeps tearing, dark edges ripping, dark

blood spilling out, there’s a piece left o f me, faded, pasted onto

every night, the girl who wanted peace. Later I found out it

was Needle Park or Bed-Stuy or there were whores there or it

was some kind o f sociological phenomenon and someone had

made a documentary showing the real shit, some intrepid

filmmaker, some hero. It never happened. N o one ever

showed the real shit because it isn’t photogenic, it doesn’t

stand still, people just live it, they don’t know it or conceptualize it or pose for it or pretend it and you don’t get to do it over i f you make a mistake. Y ou just get nailed. Fucked or hit

or hurt or ripped o ff or poisoned with bad shit or yo u ’re just

dead; there’s no art to it. There’s more o f me stuck in that old

night than anywhere. Y o u don’t just remember it; it remem­

bers you; Andrea, it says, I know you. Y ou do enough in it and

it takes you with it and I’m there in it, every night on every

street. When the dark comes, I come, every night, on every

street, until N ew Y ork is gone; I’m alive there in the dark

rubbing up against anything flesh-and-blood, not a poor,

homeless girl but a brazen girl-for-peace, hungry, tired,

waiting for you, to rub up against you, take what you have,

get what you got; peace, freedom, love, a fuck, a shy smile,

some quarters or dimes or dollars. The dark’s got a little anger

in it m oving right up against you. You can feel it pushing right

up against you now and then, a burning flash across your

thing; that’s me, I’m there, Andrea, a charred hallucination,

you know the w ay the dark melts in front o f you, I’m the

charred thing in the melting dark, the dark fire, dark ash

burned black; and you walk on, agitated, to find a living one,

not a shade stuck in midnight but some poor, trembling, real

girl, hungry enough even to smile at you. That’s m y home

you’re misbehaving in with your mischievous little indulgences, your secret little purchases o f girls and acts, because I was on every street, in every alley, fucked there, slept there,

got drugs there, found a bed for my weary head; oh, it got

weary; curled up under something, a little awake. C an’t be.

N o one can live that way. C an’t be. Isn’t true. C an’t be. Was.

Was. I wasn’t raped really until I was eighteen, pretty old.

Well, I wasn’t really raped. Rape is just some awful word. It’s a

w ay to say it was real bad; worse than anything. I was a pacifist

and I didn’t believe in hurting anyone and I wouldn’t hurt

anyone. I had been eighteen for a couple o f months; o f legal

age. It was winter. Cold. Y ou don’t forget winter. I was

w orking for peace groups and for nonviolence. It wouldn’t be

fair to call it rape; to him; it wouldn’t be fair to him. I wasn’t a

virgin or anything; he forced me but it was m y own fault. I

was working at the Student Peace Union then and at the War

Resisters League. I typed and I answered phones and I tried to

be in the meetings but they didn’t really ever let me talk and I