Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

worse— I would just die from that. Y ou got all these same

mean motherfuckers around after yo u ’re dead and you got the

God who made it all still messing with you but now up

close— H e’s around. Y o u ’re listening to angels and yo u ’re

not allowed to tell God H e’s one m aggoty bastard; or yo u ’re

running around in circles in hell, imprisoned by your fatal

flaw, instead o f being here on a leash with all your flaws, none

fatal enough, making you a m aggoty piece o f meat. I want

dead to mean dead; all done; finished; quiet; insensate;

nothing; I want it to be peaceful, no me being pushed around

or pushing, I don’t want to feel the worm s crawling on me or

eating me or the cold o f the wet ground or suffocating from

being buried or smothering from being under the ground; or

being stone cold from being dead; I don’t want to feel cold; I

don’t want to be in eternal dark forever stone cold. N othing

by which I mean a pure void, true nonexistence, is different; it

isn’t filled with horror or dread or fear or punishment or pain;

it’s ju st an absence o f being, especially so you don’t have to

think or know anything or figure out how yo u ’re going to eat

or w ho’s going to be on you next. It’s not suffering. I don’t

have suffering in mind; not jo y , not pain— no highs, no lows.

Just not being; not being a citizen wandering around the

universe in a body or loose, ethereal and invisible; or just not

being a citizen here, now, under street lights, all illuminated,

the light shining down. I hate the light shining down— display

yourself, dear, show them; smile, spread your legs, make

suggestive gestures, legs wide open— there’s lots o f ways to sit

or stand with your legs wide open. Which day did God make

light? You think He had the street lights in some big

storeroom in the sky to send down to earth when women

started crawling over sidewalks like cockroaches to stay alive?

I think He did. I think it was part o f the big plan— light those

girls up, give them sallow light, covers pox marks, covers

tracks, covers bruises, good light for covering them up and

showing them at the same time, makes them look grotesque,

just inhuman enough, same species but not really, you can

stick it in but these aren’t creatures that get to come home, not

into a home, not home, not quite the same species, sallow

light, makes them green and grotesque, creatures you put it in,

not female ones o f you, even a fucking rib o f you; you got ones

in good light for that. They stick it in boys too; anything under

these lights is here to be used. Y o u ’d think they’d know boys

was real, same species, with fists that work or will someday,

but someday isn’t their problem and they like the feel that the

boy might turn mean on them— some o f them like it, the ones

that use the older ones. I read about this boy that was taken o ff

the street and the man gave him hormones to make him grow

breasts and lose his body hair or not get it, I’m not sure; it

made me really sick because the boy was nothing to him, just

some piece o f something he could mess with, remake to what

he wanted to play with, even something monstrous; I wanted

to kill the guy; and I tried to figure out how to help the kid, but

I just read it in Time or Newsweek so I wondered i f I could find

him or not. I guess it depends on how many boys there are

being fed hormones by pedophiles. Once it’s in Newsweek , I

guess there are thousands. The kid’s around here somewhere;

it said Low er East Side; I hate it, what the man did to him.

These Goddamn men would all be each other’s meat if they

weren’t the butchers. They use fucking to slice you open. It’s

like they’re hollow, there’s nothing there, except they make

big noise, this unbearable static, some screeching, high-

pitched pain, and you can’t see they’re hollow because the

noise diverts you to near madness; big lovemaker with fifty

dollars to spend, seed to spill making mimetic magic, grind,

bang, it’s a boy, a big, bad boy who writes books, big, bad

books. I see the future and it’s a bunch o f pricks making a

literature o f fucking, high art about sticking it in; I did it, ma;

she was filth and I did it. O nly yo u ’ll get a Mailer-Genet beast:

I did it, ma, I did it to her, he did it to me. The cement will

grow them; sympathetic magic w orks; the spilled seed, the

grinding, bang bang, pushes the fuck out past the bounds o f

physical reality; it lurks in the biosphere; it will creep into

weeping wom bs; they’ll be born, the next generation, out o f

what the assholes do to me; I’ve got enough semen dripping in

me for a literary renaissance, an encyclopedia o f novellas, a

generation o f genius; maybe some o f them will paint or write

songs. Mother earth, magic vessel, the altar where they

worship, the sacred place; fifty dollars to burn a candle, or

pills, or a meal and money; bang bang ain’t never without

consequences for the future o f the race. N o reason the race

should be different from the people in it. There’s no tom orrow

I know of. I never seen one that ain’t today. It’s fine to be slut-

mama to a literary movement; the corporeal altar o f sym pathetic motherhood to a generation; his loins; m y ass.

Immortal, anonymous means to his end. It’s what the hippie

girls all glittering, flecked, stardust, want: to be procreatrix

with flowering hips and tea made from plants instead o f

Lipton; they recline, posh and simple, all spread out draped in

flowing cotton and color; they don’t take money; well, they

do, but they don’t say so upfront— from my point o f view

they are mannerless in this regard; mostly they just hang on,

like they have claws, it passes for spiritual, they just sit there

until he comes back from wherever he’s gone after coitus has

made him triste, they say it’s meditating but it’s just waiting

for some guy to show w ho’s left; they ain’t under the light,

they are o f it— luminescent fairy things from on high, just

down for a fast, ethereal screw. I been to bed with them;

usually a man and one o f them, because they don’t do women

alone— too real for the nitrous oxide crowd, not Buddhistic

enough— it’s got an I want right between the legs and it’s got

your genitals leading your heart around or vice versa, who the

hell knows, and it don’t make the boy happy unless he gets to