Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

watch and the hippie girls do not irritate the love-boys by

doing things that might not be directly and specifically for

them. The hippie boys like bringing another woman into bed.

Y ou can shake some coke loose from them if you do it; or

money, which they pretend is like nothing but they hold onto

it pretty tight. Coke and orange juice is my favorite breakfast;

they want you to do the coke with them because it makes them

hard and high and ready but I like to take some o ff with me and

do it alone or with someone I pick, not with someone in bed

with some silly girl who ought to be a housewife but is seeing

the big city and he’s so hip he has to be able to roll over from

one to another, dreaming it’s another housewife, all girls are

housewives to him; peace, flowers, love, clean m y house, bake

m y bread. They try to tell you they see the real you, the

sensitive you, inside, and the real you doesn’t want money—

she wants the good fucking he’s got and to make strings o f

beads for him and sell them in flea markets for him; darling,

it’s sad. Y ou convey to the guy that you’re the real thing, what

he never thought would be near him, street grime he w on ’t be

able to wash off, and he’s so trembling and overw rought his

prick starts shaking. There’s some who do things real, don’t

spend their time posturing or preening; they just pull it out

without philosophy. There’s this one I had once, with a

woman. I was on Demerol because I had an operation; m y

appendix came out but it had got all infected and it was a big

slice in me and then they let me loose with a blood clot because

there w asn’t somewhere for me to stay and I didn’t have

money or no one to take care o f me so they just let me out. M y

side didn’t seem like it would stay sewed, it felt open, and

there was a pain from the clot that was some evil drilling in m y

shoulder that they called reflexive pain which meant the pain

was really somewhere else but I could only feel it in m y

shoulder. It hurt to breathe. Y ou don’t think about your

shoulder or how it moves when you breathe unless some Nazi

is putting a drill in it; I saw God the Nazi pushing His full

weight on the drill and if I breathed it made more pressure

from inside on where the drill was and there w asn’t enough

Demerol in the world. So I’m walking around, desperate and

dreamy, in pain but liking the pills, and I see this shirt, fucking

beautiful shirt, purple and turquoise and shades o f blue all in

flowers, silk, astonishing whirl o f color; and the man’s dark

with long hair and a beard, some prototype, no face, ju st hair;

and I take him back but there’s this girl with him too, and she’s

all hippie, endlessly expressing herself and putting little pats

on m y hand, teeny weeny little pats, her hand to mine:

expressing affection for another woman; heavy shit. I can

barely believe this one’s rubbing her hands on me. And the

guy starts fucking, and he’s some kind o f monster o f fuck, he

lasts forever and a day, it’s night, it’s dark, and hours go by,

and I see the light coming up, and she and me are next to each

other, and he’s in me, then he’s in her, then me, then her, and

m y side is splitting open and I’m not supposed to be m oving

around with the clot but you can’t keep your hips still the

whole time although my interest comes and goes, at some

point the boy takes o ff the shirt and I’m wondering who he is

and w hy he’s here, and I don’t have to w orry about her

sentimentality because the boy isn’t seeking variety and he

don’t want to watch, this is a boy who wants to fuck and he

moves good but he’s boring as hell, the same, the same, and

when the pain hits me I am pretty sure I am really going to die,

that the clot is loose in my blood somewhere and it’s going to

go to m y brain, and I’m trying to think this is real glorious,

dying with some Olympian fuck, but the pain is some vicious,

choked up tangle o f blades in my gut, and I try to

choreograph the pain to his fuck, and I try to rest when he’s

not in me, and I am praying he will stop, and I am at the same

time trying to savor every second o f m y last minutes on earth,

or last hours as it turns out, but intellectual honesty forced me

to acknowledge I was bored, I was spending m y last time

bored to death, I could have been a housewife after all; and the

light comes up and I think, well, dawn will surely stop him;

but he fucks well into daylight, it’s bright morning now with a

disagreeably bright sun, profoundly intrusive, and suddenly

there’s a spasm, thank the Lord, and the boy is spent, it’s the

seventh day and this man who fucks must rest. And I thank

God. I do. I say, thank you, Lord. I say, I owe Y ou one. I say, I

appear still to be alive, I know I was doing something

proscribed and maybe I shouldn’t address Y ou before he even

moves o ff me but I am grateful to Y ou for stopping him, for

making him tired, for wearing him out, for creating him in

Y our image so that, eventually, he had to rest. I can’t move

because m y insides are messed up. M y incision is burning as if

there are lighted coals there and I’m afraid to see i f it is open or

i f it will bleed now and m y shoulder has stones crushed into it

as i f some demolition team was crushing granite, reflexive

pain from some dead spot, I don’t know where, and I truly

think I might not ever move again and I truly think I might

have opened up and I truly think I might still die; and I want to

be alone; die alone or bleed alone or endure the pain alone; and

I’m lying there thinking they will go now when the girl starts

pawing me and says stupid, nice things and starts being all

lovey dovey like w e ’re both Gidget and she wants now to have

the experience, if you will, o f making love with a wom an; this

is in the too-little-too-late category at best; and I am fairly

outraged and astonished because I hurt so much and m y little

sister in sensitivity thinks we should start dating. So I tell them

to go; and she says but he doesn’t like me better, m aybe he

needs you to be there— needs you, can you imagine— and I’m

trying to figure out what it has to do with him, w hy it’s what

he wants when I want them to go; it’s what I want; I never

understand w h y it’s always with these girls what he wants— i f

he’s there and even if he ain’t in sight or in the vicinity; he had