Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

someone doesn’t know you’re human they’re a Goddamn fool

and they got a load o f ignorance to tip them over with. Y ou

ain’t got literature but you got a chance; a chance; you

understand— a chance; you got a chance because the bait’s

going to get it, and there’s going to be a lot o f w riggling things

jum ping o ff G o d ’s stick. I live in this real fine, sturdy tenement

building made out o f old stone. They used to have immigrants

sleeping in the hallways for a few pennies a night so all the

toilets are out there in the halls. They had them stacked at

night; men sleeping on top o f each other and women selling it

or not having a choice; tenement prostitution they call it in

books, how the men piled in the halls to sleep but the women

had to keep putting out for money for food. They did it

standing up. N o w you walk through the hall hoping there’s

no motherfucker with a knife waiting for you, especially in the

toilets, and if you have to pee, you are scared, and i f you have

to shit, it is fully frightening. I go with a knife in m y hand

always and I sleep with a knife under m y pillow, always. I

have not had a shit not carrying a knife since I came here. I got

a bank account. I am doing typing for stupid people. I don’t

like to make margins but they want margins. I think it’s better

i f each line’s different, if it flows like a poem, if it’s uneven and

surprising and esthetically nice. But they want it like it’s for

soldiers or zombies, everything lined up, left and right, with

hyphens breaking words open in just the right places, which I

don’t know where they are. I type, I steal but less now, really

as little as possible though I will go to waitress hell for stealing

tips, I know that, I will be a prisoner in a circle o f hell and they

will put the faces o f all the waitresses around me and all their

shabby, hard lives that I made worse, but stealing tips is easy

and I am good at it as I have been since childhood and when I

have any m oney in m y pocket I do truly leave great chunks o f

it and when I am older and rich I will be profligate and if I ever

go broke in m y old days it will be from making it up to every

waitress alive in the world then, but this generation’s getting

fucked unavoidably. Someday I will write a great book with

the lines m oving like waves in the sea, flowing as much as I

want them. I’m Andrea is what I will find a deep w ay to

express in honor o f m y mama who thought it up; a visionary,

though the vision couldn’t withstand what the man did to me

early; or later, the man, in the political sense. I make little

amounts o f m oney and I put them in the bank and each day I

go to the bank for five dollars, except sometimes I go for two

days on seven dollars. I wait in line and the tellers are very

disturbed that I have come for m y money. It’s a long walk to

the bank, it’s far aw ay because there aren’t any banks in the

neighborhood where I live, and it’s a good check on me

because it keeps me from getting money for frivolous things; I

have to make a decision and execute it. When an emergency

occurs, I am in some trouble; but if I have five dollars in my

pocket I feel I can master most situations. M y astrology said

that M ercury was doing some shit and Saturn and things

would break and fall apart and I went to unlock the two locks

on m y door to my apartment and the first lock just crumbled,

little metal pieces fell as if it was spiders giving birth, all the

little ones falling out o f it, it just seemed pulverized into grains

and it just was crushed to sand, the whole cylinder o f the lock

just collapsed almost into molecules; and the second lock just

kept turning around and around but absolutely nothing locked

or unlocked and then there was this sound o f something falling

and it had fallen through the door to the other side, it just fell

out o f the door. It was night, and even putting the chain on

didn’t help. I sat with m y knife and stared at it all night to keep

anyone from breaking in. The crisis o f getting new locks made

me destitute and desperate and on such occasions I had to steal.

I always considered it more honorable to m yself than fucking;

less honorable to who I did it to; it was new to pick me over

them. I just knew I’d live longer stealing than fucking. O f

course I stole from the weak; who doesn’t? I had thought

fucking for money was stealing from the strong but it only

robbed me, although I can’t say o f what, because there’s more

wordlessness there, more what’s never been said; I’m not

formulated enough to get at it. I had a dog someone dumped

on me saying they were going to have it killed. It was so fine;

you can weave affirmation back, there can be a sudden miracle

o f happiness; m y dog was a smiling, happy creature; I thought

o f her as the quintessential all-Amerikan, someone w holly

extroverted with no haunted insides, just this cheerful, big,

brilliant creature filled with licks and bounces; and I loved

what made her happy, a stick, a stone, I mean, things I could

actually provide. I think making her happy was m y happiest

time on earth. She was big, she bounced, she was brown and

black, she was a German shepherd, and she didn’t have any

meanness in her, just play, just jum p, just this jo y . She didn’t

have a streak o f savagery. If there was a cockroach in the

apartment, a small one because we didn’t have the monsters,

she’d stand up over it and she’d study it awhile and then she’d

pick it up in her mouth and she’d carry it to her corner o f the

room and she’d put it down and sit on top o f it. She’d be proud

and she’d sit with her head held high while the awful little

thing would crawl out from under her and get lost in some

crack in the wall. Y ou ever seen a proud dog? They have this

look o f pride that could break your heart like they done

something for you the equivalent o f getting you out from

under an avalanche and they are asking nothing in return, just

that you look at the aquiline dignity o f their snouts. I got to say

I loved her more than m y heart could bear and w e’d go on

walks and to the park but the park near me was full o f broken

glass and winos and junkies and I was afraid for her, that she’d

hurt her feet. Y o u couldn’t really let her run or anything. She

ate a lot, and I didn’t, but I felt she had certain rights, because