Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

there’s this look on H uey’s face, half smile, half pain, defiant,

his eyes are open, he ain’t going to close them and he ain’t

going to die and he ain’t going to beg and he ain’t going to give

in and he ain’t thinking o f cutting his losses and he ain’t no

slobbering, frightened fool, and behind him there’s a white

nurse doing something and a sign that says “ D irty Needles

And Syringes O n ly, ” and she ain’t looking at him at all, even

though he’s right next to her, right against her side almost. I

have been cuffed that way, physically restrained. I have been

lying there. I have memories when I see this picture, I see m y

life in some o f its aspects, I see a hundred thousand porn

magazines too in which the woman, some woman, is cuffed

the same way, and the cop is or isn’t in the photograph, and the

cuffed woman is white or black, and I see on H uey’s face a

defiance I have never seen on her face or on m y own, not that I

have seen mine but I know what the photo would show, a

vapid pain, a blank, hooded stare, eyes that been dead a long,

long time, eyes that never stared back let alone said fuck you. I

see that he is defiant and that the cop is scared and that the cop

has not won. I see that even though H uey’s chest is raised

because his arms are stretched back and he is cuffed there is

pride in that raised chest. I see that his eyes are open and I see

that there is a clearness in his eyes, a willfulness, they are not

fogged or doped or droopy. I see that he is looking directly at

the camera, he’s saying I am here, this is me, I am, and the

camera can’t take his picture without making his statement. I

see that there is no look o f shame or coyness on his face, he

ain’t saying fuck me. I see that his nakedness is different from

mine, that his pride is unknown to me. I see that the cop and

the nurse are barely existing and that Huey is vivid and real and

alive, he’s jum ping o ff the page and they are robots, ciphers,

automatons, functionaries, he’s bursting with defiance, the

raised chest, however painful, is bursting with pride. I wonder

if anyone would ever jerk o ff to the picture; you know, black

boy in chains; but I don’t believe they would, I don’t, he’s

nobody’s piece o f meat, his eyes w ouldn’t let you and yo u ’d

w orry what he’d do when he’s uncuffed later, his eyes would

see you and he’d come to get you and yo u ’d know it in your

heart and in your hand. H e’s oppressed. He didn’t learn to read

really until he was eighteen. H e’s been low ; he knows. H e’s

put together a grassroots organization that’s defying the cops;

he’s made it international in scope, in reach, in importance.

H e’s poor. He was born socially invisible but darling look at

him now; manacled on that gurney he is fully vivid and alive

and the white nurse and the white cop are sim ply factotums o f

power with nothing that is their ow n; the life’s with him.

They got nothing that does express lam\ whereas Huey, shot,

manacled, naked down to his waist, says lam with his strange,

proud smile that shows the pain and his clear, wide-open eyes

that don’t look away but look right through you, they see you

front to back; and I’ve been on that bed, it’s the bed o f the

oppressed, the same cuffs, the same physical pain, as bad, I

think as bad, the same jeopardy, I have been on that bed; and

they want him to give in and fade away and yet he has endured

and in the picture he is declaring that he will endure, it is in

every aspect o f his demeanor and the camera shows it, he’s

wounded but he’s not afraid, he’s manacled but he’s not

surrendering; he ain’t fucked; he just ain’t fucked; there’s no

other w ay to say it. Even if he’s been fucked in his life, by

which I mean literally, because I don’t know what he’s done or

not done and there’s not too many strangers to being fucked

on the street, he ain’t been fucked; it ain’t what he is. I love him

for it. I fucking love him for it. He’s spectacular and there is a

deep humanism in him that expresses itself precisely in

surviving, not going under, standing up; even tied down, he’s

standing up; and he’s gone beyond the first steps, the original

Black Panther idea that had to do with arming against police

violence, now he’s an apostle o f social equality and he is

fucking feeding the children; he’s been physically hurt and he’s

been laid out on the bed o f pain and his idea o f what’s human

has gotten broader and kinder and more inclusive, and that’s

revolutionary love, and I know it, and I got it, and while

there’s many reasons he can’t trust me, nor me him, we have

been on the same bed o f pain, cuffed, and I didn’t have his

pride, and I need him to teach me; I need to learn it— defiance,

the kind a bullet can’t stop. I don’t know i f he’s kind to women

or not and it worries me but I put it aside because there’s what I

know about that bed o f pain he’s cuffed to; I think I’m

annihilated inside by it; I think I’m shot to hell inside, with

nothing but gangrene everywhere there was a wound; I see, I

feel, an inner collapse that comes from the humiliation o f how

they do you on the bed o f pain; bang bang. I tell him I know

the man; but I don’t know if he knows what I mean. I know

the man. He acts to me with respect as if he grasps m y

meaning. I am trying to say, without saying, that the man

fucked me too; but I don’t know how to say I became it and he

didn’t and now I’m refusing to be it or I’m in the process and

that there’s profound injustice in making someone it, in

crushing them down so their insides are fucked in perpetuity. I

die for men to admire, from a stance o f parity; I admire Huey; I

am struggling for parity, what I see as his revolutionary

dignity and self-definition, his bravery— not in defying

authority, I been through that, but in upending the reality that

said what he was and what was on top o f him. He sends me

poems and m axims, and I am thinking whether to send him

some. I love him. I think maybe he could be for women. In

some speeches he says so. He says men have been arrogant

over women and there’s new freedoms women need to have.

During the days I type for four dollars an hour, which means

that if I am prepared to go ape-shit or stir crazy I could

certainly make up to thirty-two dollars a day, on some days;