Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

confusing; I’d know it was a lie on him; I’d stand on that street

corner forever screaming until m y fucking throat bled to death

from it; he’s not chattel, nor a slave, nor some crawling thing

you put under glass, nor subhuman, nor alien; I would spit on

them that put him there; and them that masturbated to it I

would pillory with stones until I was dragged away and locked

up or they was dead. I f they was lynching him I would feel the

pain; a human; they are destroying someone. And if they put a

knife in him, which I can see them doing, it ain’t beyond them

by no means, they w ouldn’t show him coming from it; and if

they urinated on him he w ouldn’t be smiling. I seen black men

debased in this city, I seen them covered in blood and filth, in

urine and shit, and I never saw one say cheese for a camera or

smiling like it was fun; I didn’t see no one taking sex pictures

either; I m yself do not go through garbage or live on cement to

have an orgasm; be your pet; or live on a leash; I ain’t painted

red or purple; I seen myself; how I was after; on the bed; hurt; I

seen it in m y brain; and I wasn’t no prize in human rights or no

exemplar o f human dignity I would say; as much as I tried in

m y life, I did not succeed. But wasn’t nobody put me under

glass and polished me all up as if I was a specimen o f some

fucked thing, some swollen, painted sex mule. This Linda

girl, with the throat, who tormented her? In the end, it’s

always simple. I paid the dollars to go; to the film; to see it; if it

was true; what they did to her throat; I figured the boy who

did it to me must o f got it from there; because, frankly, I know

the world A to Z ; and no one banged a w om an’s throat before

these current dark days. I smelled bad and I was past being a

whore and they didn’t want me to go in but I had the money

and I’m hard to move, because I’m more intransigent now; on

cement; hungry almost all the time; hates men; an old woman

nearly, hates men; and if you don’t have a soft spot for them,

you don’t have no soft spot. I wanted to see Linda; if she was a

creature or a person; I think they are all persons but you can’t

prove it, it’s a matter o f faith; I have this faith, but there’s no

proof. In the film she’s this nice girl who can’t have an orgasm

so they line up hundreds o f men to fuck her, all around the

block, and they just keep fucking her every which w ay to

Sunday to try to get her to have one and she’s bored which, on

the intellectual plane, would be true; but I fucked that many

men, it’s a w eek’s worth, not one afternoon as they show, and

no one gets an orgasm from such a line o f slime acting as men,

because it will tear you and bruise you inside as well as out and

you will hurt very bad, but she just smiles and acts disappointed; and there’s all this blah blah, talk with a supposed girlfriend, a hard-edged whore, by which I mean she been

used so much already there’s not too much left o f her and it

shows, how they’ve drained her away; and they talk about

how Linda can’t come; and the girlfriend puts a cigarette in her

own vagina and I wanted to reach into the film and take it out;

a burning cigarette in her vagina; but it was another joke; it

was all jokes; the men around the block; the vagina huffing and

puffing on the cigarette so smoke comes out; and the girl

Linda’s got big bruises all over her legs, real big bruises, high

and wide, master bruises, have to be from feet and fists, it ain’t

in the story, no one hit her in the legs in the story but someone

sure beat the hell out o f her all over her fucking legs; I see the

bruises; I feel the pain; I’ve taken such a beating; perhaps,

Linda, we could be friends, you and me, although I’m

unsavory now, perhaps you ain’t no creature at all, just a girl,

another girl, but they caught you and they put you under

glass, in the zoo, yo u ’re a girl they turned the camera on but

they had to beat you to pieces to do it; maybe yo u ’re just some

girl; and then there’s this doctor with a big cock w h o ’s pleased

with him self generally speaking and he finds out she’s got a

clitoris in her throat, the big joke, and that’s w hy she can’t

come from all these other sex acts so he fucks her in the throat

to cure her, he fucks her hard in the throat but slow so you can

see it, the whole distance in and out, the whole big thing, to

the bottom o f her throat; and she don’t seem ripped apart,

she’s smiling, she’s happy, shit, she’s conscious, she’s alive;

think o f it like an iron bar, a place in your throat where there’s

an iron bar, and if someone goes past it it don’t give, you

choke, you vom it, you can’t breathe, and if he goes past it with

a big penis he stretches muscles that can’t be stretched and he

pushes your throat out to where it can’t be pushed out, as if the

outsides tore open so there was holes so it could expand so the

penis could go through, yo u ’d rather have a surgeon drill holes

in the sides o f your throat than have him push it down, the

pain will push you down to hell, near death, to coma, to the

screamless scream, an agony, no voice, a ripped muscle,

shreds swim m ing in blood in your throat, thin ribbons o f

muscle soaking up blood. But Linda smiles, and the camera

doesn’t let up, and the penis is big, it comes out so we can see

how big it is in case we forgot and it goes down, her throat

stretches like a snake eating an alligator or some boa constrictor with a small animal in it and the penis pushes hard to the bottom, it’s in her neck by now bumping around her

shoulders; again and again; and I’m crying m yself near to

death; the men are rubbing and moaning and ejaculating and

someone’s offering me money and I’m sitting there crying

near to death for the girl; because I don’t know where the

blood is; but I know there’s blood; somewhere Linda’s shed

blood and there’s pieces o f her floating around in it; Linda.

They do all the things to her; glass in her vagina; from the

front; from behind; all the things; and it’s all big jokes and big

moaning, the phony moans, ooh and aah and more and

harder, stupid, false moans; and you think these men are crazy

to think this is a woman moaning in sex; and then there’s this

guy with the w orld’s biggest penis and he fucks her throat and

she’s in love with him because he’s got this giant penis so he