Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

hard and I did some bad things and it made me hard and I got

tough and tired, so tired, and nasty, sometimes, mean:

unworthy. W hy’d Gandhi put those young girls in his bed and

make them sleep there so he could prove he wouldn’t touch

them and he could resist? I never got nasty like that, where I

used somebody else up to brag I was someone good. There’s

no purity on this earth from ego or greed and I never set out to

be a saint. I like everything being all mixed up in me; I don’t

have quarrels with life like that; I accept w e’re tangled. In my

heart, I was peace. Once I saw a cartoon in The New Yorker ,

maybe I was eighteen. It showed a bunch o f people carrying

picket signs that said “ Peace. ” And it showed one buxom

woman carrying a sign that said “ Piece. ” I hated that. I hated

it. But you cither had to be cowed, give in to the pig shit

behind that cartoon, or you had to disown it, disown the

dumb shit behind it. I disowned it all. I disowned it without

exception. I kept none o f it. I pushed it o ff me. I purged m y

world o f it. I disavowed anyone who tried to put it on me.

There couldn’t be this garbage between me and life; like some

huge smelly dump you had to trudge through or crawl

through to slide up against someone else who was also real.

And by the time you got to them you smelled like the garbage.

I said no. I said I will not. I said it is not on me. I said I may be

poor but I am not afraid. I said I want. I said I am not afraid to

pay. I said I will not shield myself. I said I will not pretend to

live life; I will live it. I said I will not apologize and I will not

lie. I said, if I die, I die. I was never afraid to die. I got tough in

some ways but I stayed soft inside the core o f m y belief where

there was tenderness for others, sometimes. I kept a caring

eye. I kept a caring heart. O ver the injury I still believed there

was love; not the love o f two but the love o f many. I still

believed in us, all o f us, us, if we could get free from rules and

obedience and being robots. I liked doing sabotage, I’m not

saying I had a pretty heart, I wasn’t a nice girl and I’m not

claiming it. I had some ruthlessness. I wasn’t easy to kill. I

could keep going. I wanted to live. I’m just saying I cared.

Why didn’t I kill him? Why didn’t I? I’m the most ardent

pacifist the world ever saw. And fuck meant all kinds o f

making love— it was a new word. It was fucking if you got

inside each other, or so near you couldn’t be pulled apart. It

was jo y and risk and fun and orgasm; not faking it; I never

have. It didn’t have to do with who put what where. It was all

kinds o f wet and all kinds o f urgent and all kinds o f here and

now, with him or her. It was you tangled up with someone,

raw. It wasn’t this one genital act, in out in out, that someone

could package and sell or that there was an etiquette for. It

wasn’t some imitation o f something you saw somewhere, in

porn or your favorite movie star saying how he did it. It was

something vast, filled with risk and feeling; feeling; personal

love ain’t the only feeling— there’s feelings o f adventure and

newness and excitement and Goddamn pure happiness—

there’s need and sorrow and loneliness and certain kinds o f

grief that turn easy into touching someone, wild, agitated,

everywhere— there’s just liking whoever it is and wanting to

pull them down right on you, they make you giddy, their

mere existence tickles you to death, you giggle and cheer them

on and you touch them— and there’s sensation, just that, no

morality, no higher good, no justification, just how it feels.

There’s uncharted waters, you ain’t acting out a script and

there’s no w ay past the present, you are right there in the

middle o f your own real life riding a wave a mile high with

speed and grace and then you are pulled under to the bottom o f

the world. The whole w orld’s alive, everything moves and

wants and loves, the whole w orld’s alive with promise, with

possibility; and I wanted to live, I said yes I want to live.

There’s not something new about wanting love in spite o f

knowing terror; or feeling love and having it push against

your thighs from inside and then those thighs carry you out

past safety into hell. There’s nothing new about wanting to

love a multitude. I was born on Mickle Street in Camden in

1946, down the street from Walt Whitman’s house. I grew up

an orphan sheltered by the passion o f his great heart. He

wanted everyone. He wanted them, to touch. He was forced,

by his time and place, into metaphor. He put it in poems, this

physicalized love that was universal, he named the kinds and

categories he wanted, men and women, he said they were

worthy, all, without exception, he said he wanted to be on

them and in them and he wanted them in him, he said it was

love, he said lam , he said lam and then he enumerated the ones

he wanted, he made lam synonymous with you are and we are.

Leaves of Grass is his lists o f lovers, us, the people, all o f us; he

used grandiose language but it was also common, vulgar; he

says I ant you and you and you, you exist, I touch you, I know

you, I see you, I recognize you, I want you, I love you, I am. In

the C ivil War he was devoted to wounded soldiers. He faced

the maiming and the mutilation, and he loved those boys:

“ (Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d

and rested, /M any a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded

lips. )” It was before surgeons washed their hands, before

Lister, and legs were sawed off, sutures were moistened with

saliva, gangrene was commonplace. He visited the wounded

soldiers day in and day out. He didn’t eroticize suffering, no; it

was the communion o f being near, o f touching, o f a tender

intimacy inside a vale o f tears. He saw them suffer and he saw

them die and he wrote: “ (Come sweet death! be persuaded O

beautiful death! / In mercy come quickly. )” I got to say, I don’t

think a three-minute fuck was his meaning. I don’t. It’s an

oceanic feeling inside and you push it outward and once you

start loving humanity there is no reason to make distinctions

o f beauty or kind, there’s something basic in everyone that

asks love, forgiveness, an honorable tenderness, a manly

tenderness, you know, strong. He was generous. Call him a