Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

w ouldn’t get him the tea and I tried to convey to my husband

that m y hospitality was being abused, our hospitality, o f

course, that I wasn’t being treated fair, not that some rule was

being broke but that the boy was being rude to me; I told my

husband to clean it up finally but he never did it too good. I

told m y husband who I still thought was m y brother that I

didn’t want the junkie to come anymore because he didn’t

treat me in an honorable w ay and I said I wasn’t born for this.

So there were these fissures coming between us because the

fraternal affection was with him and the junkie from the old

days together, not him and me from now, and I was shocked

by this, I couldn’t grasp it. I went into the rooms with him but

it came down on him how bad it was from the men and it came

down on me that I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near

where they were. I kept going to the rooms because we kept

hitting targets all over the city and w e’d need to get o ff the

streets fast and he’d know some place he wanted to be, one

friend or another, and they’d all be there; it would contradict

the plan but he’d say it was necessary. Some were on the run

for recent crimes but most were burned out, living in times

past, not fighting no more, most stopped long ago and far

away and they were just burned out to hell. Yeah, they were

tired, I respected that; I mean, I fucking loved these heroes; I

knew they were tired, tired from living on their nerves, from

hiding, from jail, from smoke, from fucking, which came first

for some but last for others. Some had children they had

deserted; some lived in the past, remembering stray girls in

cities they were passing through. They were older than me but

not by a lot. I wanted their respect. I hadn’t given up and I did

anything anybody else did and I wasn’t afraid o f nothing so

how come it was like I wasn’t there? I mean, I was too

honorable to be anything other than strong and silent, I tell

you; but I thought silence made its own sound, you count on

revolutionaries to hear the silence, otherwise how can the

oppressed count on them? Every lunatic was someone we

knew that we dropped in on or stayed with while we were

running— or m oving just for the sake o f speed, the fun o f

flight. We went to other cities, hitchhiking; we lived in small

rented rooms, slept on floors. We went to other countries—

we begged, we borrowed, yeah, we stole, me more than him,

stealing’s easy, I been stealing all m y life, not a routine or some

fixed act, just here and there as needed, from stores when I was

a kid, when I was hungry or when there was something I

wanted real bad that I couldn’t have because it cost money I

didn’t have— I never minded putting money out if I had it in

m y pocket— I mean, I remember taking a chocolate Easter egg

when I was a kid or m y proudest, most treasured acquisition, a

blues record by Dave Van Ronk, the first man I ever saw with

a full beard like a beatnik or a prophet; I took money when I

needed it and could get it easy enough; pills; clothes. M o n ey’s

w hat’s useful. He began dealing some shit, it w asn’t too hard

or dangerous compared to running borders with other

contraband but it got so he did it without me more and more;

he spent more and more time with these low life gangster

types, not political revolutionaries at all but these vulgar guys

who packed guns and just did business; he said it’s just for

money, what’s it got to do with you or with us, I’ll just do it

fast, get the money, it’s nothing; and it was nothing, I didn’t

have no interest in money per se, but it got so he did the

running, he was free, freedom and flight were his, he’d pick up

and go, I didn’t know where he was or who with or when I’d

meet them they’d be lowlife I had no interest in, just toadies as

much as some corporate businessmen were and I’d feel very

bored with them and they’d treat me like I was a skirt and I’d

feel superior and because I didn’t want no part o f them I didn’t

challenge it, I’d just put up with it and be relieved when he did

his shit for money elsewhere; he hunted money down, he

hunted dope down, he drove the secret highways o f Europe at

a hundred miles an hour, without me, increasingly without

me, and I stayed home and dusted walls, waiting, I waited,

while I waited I cleaned, I dusted, I washed things, I made

things nice, I put something here or there, little touches, but

especially I washed things— I washed floors, dishes, clothes,

anything could be washed I fucking washed it; and I would o f

course keep thinking; I’d be doing laundry but I’d think I was

thinking— housework wasn’t what I was doing, not me, no, I

was thinking. I shared the fruits o f all this labor with him,

clean clothes, clean dishes, clean floors, my thinking, which

has always been first-rate in some senses, and I saw him put the

thinking I had done into action so I felt like some pretty major

player, running dope and making money all over Europe, and

I kept thinking, and I saw the thinking go into political

actions, so I felt pretty major, and I just kept washing and

thinking; washing, ironing, and thinking; washing, shopping,

and thinking; washing, cooking, and thinking; washing,

scrubbing, and thinking; washing, folding, and thinking. I

saw the consequences o f m y thinking; it was us out there, not

just him. I was important; he knew; you don’t need

recognition in a revolutionary life. Increasingly he incarnated,

freedom, I dreamed it; especially he was the one who got to be

free outside the four walls, and I got to be what he rolled over

on when he got home, dead tired and mean as madness. He

did— he got on top, he fucked me, he went to sleep. I was

incredulous. In the aftershock I ironed, I washed, I scrubbed, I

cooked. I’d lie there awake after he rolled o ff me, on m y back,

not m oving, for hours— outraged, a pristine innocence,

stunned in disbelief; this was me; me. We’d entertain too, the

revolutionary couple, the subversives— I learned to do it. It’s

like you see in all those films where the bourgie wife slinks

around and makes the perfect martini amidst the glittering

furniture; well, shit, honey, I made the most magnificent joint

a boy could sit down to on a beanbag chair. I mean, I made a

joint so gorgeous, so classic and yet so full o f savagery and