Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

and she’s fingering her crotch and the urine’s coming from

her, as i f she’s ejaculating it, and the urine’s colored a bright

yellow as if someone poured yellow dye in it; and they’re

smiling; they’re both smiling; it’s girls touching each other, as

i f girls would do so, laughing, and she’s being peed on, one o f

them; and there’s her throat, thrown back, bared, he’s down

to the bottom, as far as he can go; i f he were bigger he’d be in

deeper; and she’s timid, shy, eager, laughing, grateful;

laughing and grateful; and moaning; you know, the porn

moan; nothing resembling human life; these stupid fake

noises, clown stuff, a sex circus o f sex clowns; he’s a freak, a

sinister freak; a monstrous asshole if not for how he subjugates

her, the smiling ninny down on her knees and after saying

thank you, as girls were born for, so they say. There’s this

Lovelace girl on the marquee; and even the junkies are

laughing, they think it’s so swell; and I think who is she,

w here’s she from, who hurt her, who hurt her to put her here;

because there’s a camera; because in all my life there never was

a camera and if there’s a camera there’s a plan; and if it’s here

it’s for money, like she’s some animal trained to do tricks;

when I see black men picking cotton on plantations I get that

somewhere there’s pain for them, I don’t have to see it, no one

has to show it to me for me to know it’s there; and when I see a

wom an under glass, I know the same, a sex animal trained for

sex tricks; and the camera’s ready; maybe M asta’s not in the

frame. Picking cotton’s good; you get strong; black and

strong; getting fucked in the throat’s good; you get fucked and

female; a double-female girl, with two vaginas, one on top.

M aybe her name’s Linda; hey, Linda. Cheri Tart ain’t Cheri

but maybe Linda’s Linda; how come all these assholes buy it,

as i f they ain’t looking at Lassie or Rin Tin Tin; it’s just, pardon

me, they’re dogs and she’s someone real; they’re H ollyw ood

stars too— she’s Tim es Square trash; there’s one o f them and

there’s so many thousands o f her you couldn’t tell them apart

even when they’re in separate coffins. There’s these girls here,

all behind glass; as if they’re insects you put under glass; you

put morphine to them to knock them out and you mount

them; these weird crawling things, under glass, on display;

Tim es Square’s a zoo, they got women like specimens under

glass; block by city block; cages assembled on cement; under a

darkening sky, the blood’s on it; wind sweeping the garbage

and it’s swirling like dust in a storm; and on display, lit by

neon, they have these creatures, so obscene they barely look

human at all, you never saw a person that looked like them,

including anyone beaten down, including street trash, including anyone raped however many times; because they’re all

painted up and polished as if you had an apple with m aggots

and worm s and someone dipped it in lacquer and said here it is,

beautiful, for you, to eat; it’s as i f their mouths were all swelled

up and as if they was purple between their legs and as if their

breasts were hot-air balloons, not flesh and blood, with skin,

with feeling to the touch, instead it’s a joke, some swollen

joke, a pasted-on gag, what’s so dirty to men about breasts so

they put tassles on them and have them swirl around in circles

and call them the ugliest names; as if they ain’t attached to

human beings; as if they’re party tricks or practical jokes or the

equivalent o f farts, big, vulgar farts; they make them always

deformed; as if there’s real people; citizens; men; with flat

chests, they look down, they see their shoes, a standard for

what a human being is; and there’s these blow-up dolls you

can do things to, they have funny humps on their chests, did

you ever see them swirl, the woman stands there like a dead

puppet, painted, and the balloon things spin. In m y heart I

think these awful painted things are women; like I am still in

m y heart; o f human kind; but the men make them like they’re

two-legged jackasses, astonishing freaks with iron poles up

the middle o f them and someone smeared them with paint,

some psychotic in the loony bin doing art class, and they got

glass eyes with someone’s fingerprints smeared on them; and

they’re all swollen up and hurt, as if they been pushed and

fucked, hit, or stood somewhere in a ring, a circus ring or a

boxing ring, and men just threw things at them, balls and bats

and stones, anything hard that would cause pain and leave

marks, or break bones; they’re swollen up in some places, the

bellies o f starving children but moved up to the breasts and

down to the buttocks, all hunger, water, air, distended; and

then there’s the thin parts, all starved, the bones show, the ribs

sometimes, iridescent skeletons, or the face is caved in under

the paint, the skin collapses because there is no food, only pills,

syringes, Demerol, cocaine, Percodan, heroin, morphine,

there’s hollow cheeks sunk in hollow faces and the w aist’s

hollow, shrinking down, tiny bones, chicken bones, dried up

wish bones; and they’re behind glass, displayed, exhibits,

sex-w om en you do it to, they’re all twisted and turned,

deformed, pulled and pushed in all the w rong directions, with

the front facing the back and the back facing the front so you

can see all her sex parts at once, her breasts and her ass and her

vagina, the lips o f her vagina, purple somehow; purple. The

neck’s elongated so you know they can take it there too.

T h ey’re like mules; they carry a pile o f men on top o f them.

T h ey’re like these used-up race horses, you give them lots o f

shots to make them run and if you look at the hide there’s

bound to be whip marks. There’s not one human gesture; not

one. There’s not one woman in the world likes to be hung or

shit on or have her breasts tied up so the rope cuts in and the

flesh bulges out, the rope’s tearing into her, it sinks, burning,

into the fleshy parts, under the rope it’s all cut up and burned

deep, and the tissue’s dying, being broke apart, thinned out

and ripped by pressure and pain. If I saw pictures like that o f a

black man I would cry out for his freedom; I can’t see how it’s

confusing i f you ain’t K . K . K. in which case it still ain’t