Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

draft board and then, when it came to the rape part, they always

laughed and madejokes. I would be typing because I never got

to talk or they would act irritated if I did or they would just

keep talking to each other anyway over me and I felt upset and

I would interrupt and say, well, I mean, rape is. . . . but I

could never finish the sentence, and if I’d managed to get their

attention, sometimes by nearly crying, they’d all just stare and

I’d go blank. It was a terrifying thing and you would be so

hurt; how could they laugh? And you wouldn’t want a Nazi to

come anywhere near you, it would just be foul. The Nazis , I

would say, trying to find a way to say— bad, very bad. Rape is

very bad, I wanted to say, but I could only say Nazis are very

bad. What’s bad about fucking my sister, someone would say;

always; every time. Then they’d all laugh. So I wasn’t even

sure if there was rape. So I don’t think I could have been raped

even though I think I was raped but I know I wasn’t because it

barely existed or it didn’t exist at all and if it did it was only

with Nazis; it had to be as bad as Nazis. I didn’t want the man

to be fucking me but, I mean, that doesn’t really matter; it’s

just that I really tried to stop him, I really tried not to have him

near me, I really didn’t want him to and he really hurt me so

much so I thought maybe it was rape because he hurt me so

bad and I didn’t want to so much but I guess it wasn’t or it

doesn’t matter. I had this boyfriend named Arthur, a sweet

man. He was older; he had dignity. He wasn’t soft, he knew

the streets; but he didn’t need to show anything or prove

anything. He just lived as far as I could see. He was a waiter in a

bar deep in the Lower East Side, so deep down under a dark

sky, wretched to get there but okay inside. I was sleeping on a

floor near there, in the collective. Someone told me you could

get real cheap chicken at the bar. I would go there every night

for m y one meal, fried chicken in a basket with hot thick

french fried potatoes and ketchup for ninety-nine cents and it

was real good, real chicken, not rat meat, cooked good. He

brought me a beer but I had to tell him to take it back because J

didn’t have the money for it but he was buying it for me. Then

I went with him one night. The bar was filled and noisy and

had sawdust on the floors and barrels o f peanuts so you could

eat them without money and there were low life and artists

there. He smiled and seemed happy and also had a sadness, in

his eyes, on the edges o f his mouth. He lived in a small

apartment with two other men, one a painter, Eldridge, the

other I never met. It was tiny, up five flights on Avenue D,

with a couple o f rooms I never saw. Y ou walked in through a

tiny kitchen, all cracked wood with holes in the floor, an

ancient stove and an old refrigerator that looked like a bank

vault, round and heavy and metal, with almost no room

inside. His bed was a single bed in a kind o f living room but

not quite. There were paintings by the artist in the room. The

artist was sinewy and had a limp and was bitter, not sad, with a

mean edge to anything he said. He had to leave the room so we

could be alone. I could hear him there, listening. I stayed the

night there and I remember how it was to watch the light come

up and have someone running his finger under m y chin and

touching m y hands with his lips. I was afraid to go back to the

bar after that because I didn’t know if he’d want me to but it

was the only place I knew to get a meal for small change.

Every time he was glad to see me and he would ask me what I

wanted and he would bring me dinner and some beer and

another one later and he even gave me a dark beer to try

because I didn’t know about it and I liked it; and I would stay;

and I would go with him. I didn’t talk much because you don’t

talk to men even if they seem nice; you can never know if they

will mind or not but usually they will mind. But he asked me

things. He told me some things, hard things, about his life,

and time in jail, and troubles; and he asked me some things,

easy things, about what I did that day, or what I thought, or i f I

liked something, or how I felt, or if something felt good, or i f I

was happy, or i f l liked him. He was my lover I guess, not

really my boyfriend, because I never knew i f l should go to the

bar or not but I would and then w e’d make love and when we

made love he was a sweet man with kisses and soft talk into

sunrise and he’d hold me after and he’d touch me. Sometimes

he took me to visit people, his friends, and I was too shy to say

anything but I thought it might mean he liked me or trusted

me or had some pride in me or felt right about me and they

asked me things too and tried to talk with me. Eldridge would

come into the bar and get drinks and say something but always

something cutting or mean so I didn’t-know what to say or do

because I didn’t know i f l was supposed to be his friend or not;

only that Arthur said he loved him. I would ask him about his

paintings but he would look away. I went to the bar for a long

time, maybe three months, and I went with Arthur to where

he slept in the bed in the living room; and w e’d kiss, face to

face, and the light would come up. I learned to love dawn and

the long, slow coming o f the light. One night I went to the bar

and Arthur wasn’t nice anymore. He brought dinner to me

and he brought beer but he wouldn’t look at me or talk to me

and his face was different, with deep anger or pain or I didn’t

know what because I don’t know how to know what people

feel or think. A lot o f time went by and then I thought I should

go away and not come back but he sat down, it was a Saturday

night, early in the night because he usually worked Saturdays

until four a. m. but now it was only ten at night and it was

busy, very busy, so it wasn’t easy for him to sit down; and he

said his sister, an older sister, Caroline, was in the hospital,

and she had brought him up, and she had cancer, and she had

had cancer for a long time but now it seemed she was dying,

now, tonight, and he was hurting so bad, he was in bad grief,

sad and angry and fucked up, and he had to go to the hospital

right now and it was far away up town and it would take most

o f the night and probably she would die tonight; and would I