Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

so she w on ’t be hurt or malnourished or used bad, treated

mean, locked up or starved or kicked; I’m hoping there’s a

person, half magic, who will have regard for her; and after I’ve

done all the trials and tribulations she will come to me in a dark

wood. I’ve got pain, in m y throat, some boy tore it up, I rasp, I

barely talk, it’s an ugly sound, some boy killed it, as if it were

some small animal he had to maim to death, an enemy he had

to kill by a special method, you rip it up and it bleeds and the

small thing dies slow. It’s a small, tight passage, good for fun,

they like it because it’s tight, it hugs the penis, there’s no give,

the muscles don’t stretch, at some point the muscles tear, and

it must be spectacular, when they rip; then he’d come; then

he’d run. Y ou couldn’t push a baby through, like with the

vagina; though they’d probably think it’d be good for a laugh;

have some slasher do a cesarean; like with this Lovelace girl,

where they made a jo k e with her, as if the clit is in her throat

and they keep pushing penises in to find it so she can have an

orgasm; it’s for her, o f course; always for her; a joke; but a

friendly one; for her; so she can have a good time; I went in,

and I saw them ram it down; big men; banging; you know,

mean shoving; I don’t know w hy she ain’t dead. They kept her

smiling; i f it’s a film you have to smile; I wanted to see if it

hurt, like with me; she smiled; but with film they edit, you

know, like in H ollyw ood. She had black and blue marks all

over her legs and her thighs, big ones, and she smiled; I don’t

know w hy we always smile; I m yself smile; I can remember

smiling, like the smile on a skeleton; you don’t ever want them

to think they did nothing wrong so you smile or you don’t

want them to think there’s something w rong with you so you

smile, because there’s likely to be some kind o f pain coming

after you if there’s something w rong with you, they hit you to

make it right, or you want them to be pleased so you smile or

you want them to leave so you smile or you just are crapping

in your pants afraid so you smile and even after you shit from

fear you keep smiling; they film it, you smile. Sometimes a

man still offers me money, I laugh, a hoarse, ugly laugh, quite

mad, m y throat’s in ribbons, just hanging streaks o f meat, you

can feel it all loose, all cut loose or ripped loose in pieces as if

it’s kind o f like pieces o f steak cut to be sauteed but someone

forgot and left it out so there’s maggots on it and it’s green,

rotted out, all crawling. Some one o f them offers me money

and I make him sorry, I prefer the garbage in the trash cans,

frankly, it’s cleaner, this walking human stuff I don’t have no

room in m y heart for, they’re not hygenic. I’m old, pretty old,

I can’t take the chance o f getting cancer or something from

them; I think they give it to you with how they look at you; so

I hide the best I can, under newspapers or under coats or under

trash I pick up; m y hair’s silver, dirty; I remember when I was

different and these legs were silk; and m y breasts were silk; but

now there’s sores; and blood; and scars; and I’m green inside

sometimes, if I cut m yself something green comes out, as if

I’m getting green blood which I never heard o f before but they

keep things from you; it could be that if you get so many bad

cuts body and soul your blood changes; from scarlet to a dank

green, an awful green; some chartreuse, some Irish, but

mostly it is morbid, a rotting green; it’s a sad story as I am an

old-fashioned human being who had a few dreams; I liked

books and I would have enjoyed a cup o f coffee with Camus in

m y younger days, at a cafe in Paris, outside, w e’d watch the

people walk by, and I would have explained that his ideas

about suicide were in some sense naive, ahistorical, that no

philosopher could afford to ignore incest, or, as I would have

it, the story o f man, and remain credible; I wanted a pretty

whisper, by which I mean a lover’s whisper, by which I mean

that I could say sweet things in a man’s ear and he’d be thrilled

and kind, I’d whisper and it’d be like making love, an embrace

that would chill his blood and boil it, his skin’d be wild, all

nerves, all smitten, it’d be my mark on him, a gentle mark but

no one’d match it, just one whisper, the kind that makes you

shiver body and soul, and it’d just brush over his ear. I wanted

hips you could balance the weight o f the world on, and I’d

shake and it’d move; in Tanzania it’d rumble. I wanted some

words; o f beauty; o f power; o f truth; simple words; ones you

could write down; to say some things that happened, in a

simple way; but the words didn’t exist, and I couldn’t make

them up, or I wasn’t smart enough to find them, or the parts o f

them I had or I found got tangled up, because I couldn’t

remember, a lot disappeared, you’d figure it would be

impressed on you if it was bad enough or hard enough but if

there’s nothing but fire it’s hard to remember some particular

flame on some particular day; and I lived in fire, the element; a

Dresden, metaphysically speaking; a condition; a circum-

stance; in time, tangential to space; I stepped out, into fire. Fire

burns m em ory clean; or the heart; it burns the heart clean; or

there’s scorched earth, a dead geography, burned bare; I

stepped out, into fire, or its aftermath; burnt earth; a dry, hard

place. I was born in blood and I stepped out, into fire; and I

burned; a girl, burning; the flesh becomes translucent and the

bones show through the fire. The cement was hot, as if flames

grew in it, trees o f fire; it was hot where they threw you down;

hot and orange; how am I supposed to remember which flame,

on which day, or what his name was, or how he did it, or what

he said, or w hy, if I ever knew; I don’t remember knowing.

O r even if, at some point; really, even if. I lived in urban flame.

There was the flat earth, for us gray, hard, cement; and it

burned. I saw pictures o f woods in books; we had great flames

stretching up into the sky and swaying; m oving; dancing; the

heat melting the air; we had burning hearts and arid hearts;

girls’ bodies, burning; boys, hot, chasing us through the forest

o f flame, pushing us down; and we burned. Then there were

surreal flames, the ones we superimposed on reality, the