Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

moving and I’m shifting on the chair, a straight-back wood chair

you have to sit still on, there’s no license to move but I’m

moving, rattling m y feet, rocking, rocking on m y heels, and

then there’s an urgent sensation in m y thighs and in my hips and

wherever sex is down there, whatever you want to call it, there’s

only bad names for it but it isn’t bad and it is real and it sends you

out, it sends you away, it makes you impatient and distracted,

and I feel like busting out, and some nights I do, I bust out. I take

all the money I got on me, and if it’s ten dollars I’m flush, and I

ju st bolt, I get out and drink, I find a man, sometimes a

woman, sometimes both, I like both at once, I like being

drunk, or I start out just for a drink and I end up with

someone, drunk; fucking happy drunk; no light but everything glistens; no illumination but everything shines. Som etimes I ju st walk, I can walk it off, aimlessly. It’s as dangerous as fucking, takes nearly the same adrenaline, just to take a walk

at night, even if you walk towards the neon and not towards

the dark park; ain’t a woman in Amerika walks towards the

park. If I can calm m yself I go home. But there’s times if I was

a man I’d kill someone. I feel wild and mean and I’m tired o f

being messed with, I got invisible bars all around me and I

have blame in my heart to them that put them there and I want

to fucking tear them apart, I want my insides turned out in

bruising them, I don’t want no skin left on me that ain’t

roughed them up, I want them bloodied, I want to dance in

men’s blood, the cha-cha, the polka, the tango, the rhumba,

hard, fast, angular dances or stomping dances or slow killing

dances, the murder waltz, I want to mix it up with killing right

next to me, on m y side; it’s hot in my heart and cold in my

brain and I ain’t ever going to feel sorry; or I’d take one o f them

boys and I’d turn him inside out and put something up his ass

and I’d hear him howl and I’d expect a thank-you and a yes

m a’am; and I would get it. D on’t matter how dangerous you

feel, all the danger’s to you, so it’s best to settle down and end

up back inside your stupid fucking walls that you wanted so

much; alone, inside the walls, a Valium maybe or a ’lude so

you don’t do no damage to yourself; love your walls, citizen. I

want them bruised and bloodied but I don’t get what I want as

m y mama used to tell me but I didn’t believe her; besides I

wanted something different then; her point was that I had to

learn the principle that I wasn’t supposed to get what I wanted;

and m y point was that I wasn’t going to learn it. Y ou don’t

name someone not-cunt and then betray the meaning and

make them fit in cages; I didn’t learn it, fucking bitch o f a

mother. It’s a rainy night. The rain is slick over the cement and

on the buildings like diamonds dripping; a liquid dazzle all soft

and rolling and swelled up, like a teardrop. It’s one o f them

magic nights where the rain glow s and the neon is dull next to

it; like God lit a silver flame in the water, it’s a warm , silver,

glassy shine, it sparkles, it’s a night but it ain’t dark

because it’s a slick light you could skate on and everything

looks translucent and as if it’s m oving, it slides, it shines. It’s

beckoning to me as i f God took a paint brush and covered the

w orld in crystal and champagne. It’s wet diamonds out there,

lush and liquid, I never could pass up the sparkle, it’s a wet,

shimmering night, a wet, dazzling night; but warm, as if it’s

breathing all over you, as if it’s wrapped around you, a

cocoon, that w ispy stuff. If there’s acid in your brain

everything’s fluid and monstrous bright; this is as if the acid’s

out there, spread over the city, the sidewalks are drenched in it

and the buildings are bathed in it and the air is saturated with it,

nothing’s standing still and it is monstrous bright and I love

the fucking city when it’s stoned. Inside it’s dull and dry and

I’m not in a constructive mood and there is a pain that runs

down me like a river, a nasty, surging river, a hard river, a

river that starts up high and races down to below falling more

than flowing, falling and breaking, shattering; it’s a river that

goes through me top to bottom; the pain’s intractable and I can

barely stand it; it’s not all jo ie de vivre when a girl goes

dancing; the pain’s a force o f nature beyond my ability to bear

and I can’t take the edge o ff it very easy and I can’t stand

needles and I can’t sit still with it and I can’t rip it out, although

if it was located right precisely in m y heart I would try, I

would take m y fucking hands and I would take m y fucking

fingers and I would rip m y chest open and I would try. It’s

raining and the rain makes me all steamy and damp inside and

out and it ain’t a man I want, it’s a drink, a dozen fucking

drinks to blot out the hard pain and the hard time, each and

every dick I ever sucked, and the bottle ain’t enough because I

can’t stand the quiet, a quiet bottle in a quiet room; I can’t

stand the quiet, lonely bottle in the quiet, lonely room. Lonely

ain’t a state o f mind, it’s a place o f being; a room with no one

else in it, a street with no one else on it; a city abandoned in the

rain; em pty, wet streets; cement that stretches uptown,

downtown, empty, warm, wet, until the sky starts, a

perspiring sky; empty cars parked on empty streets, damp,

deserted streets lined with dark, quiet buildings, civilized,

quiet stone, decorous, a sterile urban formalism; the windows

are closed, they’re sleeping or dead inside, you w on’t know

until morning really, a gas could have seeped in and killed

them in the night; or invaders from outer space; or some lethal

virus. I need noise; real noise; honest, bad noise; not random

sounds or a few loud voices or the electronic drone o f

someone’s television seeping out o f a cracked w indow; not

some dignified singer or some meaningful lyric; not something small or fine or good or right; I need music so loud you

can’t hear it, as when all the trees in the forest fall; and I need

noise so real it eats up the air because it can’t live on nothing; I

need noise that’s like steak, just so thick and just so tough and

ju st so immoral, thick and tough and dead but bloody, on a

plate, for the users, for the fucking killers, to still their hearts,