Andrea Dworkin - Ice And Fire

Time. Dawn comes and you are hungry. You are coming down.

You smoke. You sit on a stoop, tired and content. A man

walks by. You ask him for breakfast. He takes you to one of

the all-night restaurants run for the likes of you on the Lower

East Side. The rabble are eating, all tired, all fucked out, all

drugged out. It is beautiful, serene. You get orange juice and

blintzes and sour cream and eggs and toast and coffee. The

man waits. Hey mister, you say laughing, wanna buy us

breakfast? He nods. Now you sit and eat and he watches. Now

you are full. Now he pays the bill. Now you say, hey, mister,

wanna fuck? You are still zinging on the acid a little but mostly

it is over: back to business: of course mister wants to fuck.

*

N and I sit on the stoop in front of poor R ’s apartment. The

light is just beginning. The dark is lit up from inside. The acid

is beginning to soften, to lose its grip. We are still wavy, still

floating, still charged, still porous, bodies floating in light and

air: but personality is beginning to creep back in: we know

who we are and where we are: we know that dawn is on its

way: we know that we are hungry and have to eat: we know

the acid is going: we know the night is over and the trip is over

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and pedestrian day is nearly here: we sit watching the dark

becoming lighter and lighter: we sit watching a dead rat at the

curb: it is indisputably a rat, not God: poor R is sleeping inside,

she won’t let us in, she won’t make us breakfast, we are excommunicated, we are happy, we are turned loose to look for breakfast elsewhere: we sit there, buddies, and chat in the dark:

we walk around: we touch fingers and briefly hold hands.

*

N and I sit on a stoop in St M ark’s Place. Hey mister. We are

hungry. The acid is wearing off. The smoke has given us

ravenous appetites. We are tired. Hey mister. Some misters

pass. This one mister takes us to breakfast. He is silent,

watchful, not easy to disarm. Mister turns out to be not such

an easy fuck. N fucks him and falls asleep. Mister doesn’t

sleep. Mister probably hasn’t slept in months. Mister is nuts. I

get Mister for hours. N sleeps like a log.

*

Mister is white, lean, wiry, crew-cut, muscled, tense, wired to

go off. A coil ready to spring. Full of inexplicable rushes of

violence. He fucks like he hates it. It never gets him anywhere.

He concentrates, he fucks. You can’t feel much except his concentration. He is doing some martial art of the thighs, over and over, trying to make it perfect, get it right: it doesn’t touch

him: then the violence pours through him, impersonal, and he

is in a frenzy of fuck: then, more tense but calmer, he concentrates, he fucks. Eventually I sleep. I don’t know how or why.

When I wake up it is nearly night again. He is taking us to

the beach. The heat here in the storefront is scalding; treacherous, wet steam. Our skin is raw and burning. Our clothes are wet. Our eyes are almost swollen shut. It is hard to breathe.

Heat hurts our lungs. Mister has a car. He is giving us dinner.

We are going with him to the beach.

He drives like a maniac, but we only feel the breeze. The car

barely touches the road. It swerves. We leave the city behind.

The air gets less hot. We see the city lights trailing behind us

as we swerve and curve in the airborne car. We cool down

enough to be afraid.

The car stops, and there is a beach and an ocean. It is endlessly deserted. There are no cars. There are no people. There is a full moon and it is nearly light on the beach. The water

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shines. It advances up against the beach. The waves are small

and delicate. The ocean is tame but it goes on forever. It goes

out as far as we can see, way past the moon. We are on the

beach. Mister wants some sex. N whispers to me that she can’t

fuck, she is bleeding again. All summer she has had this mysterious bleeding. I tease her that she wants to get out of fucking this creep. But still: she is bleeding, not menstruation, hemorrhaging: she can’t be fucked. She and I make love for him on the beach. It is not enough. He is wired, tense, has spasms of

violence, shows us his knife. N holds me down from behind,

both arms. He turns away one minute, a modest gesture unzipping his fly. She grins ear to ear. I try to get loose watching her grin. She is strong and I can’t. She holds me down. He

pulls down his pants. He fucks me. I get dressed. N and I sit

and watch the ocean. N and I sit and watch the moon. He

goes off by himself. A cop comes along. What are you doing

here? Watching the ocean officer. It’s dangerous here at night

girls. Thanks officer. We walk up to the car. The cop moves

on. Mister jumps up from behind the car, plays with his knife.

Mister takes us for lobster, he is silent and watchful, he doesn’t

eat, then Mister drives us home.

*

We get out of the car. The beach is there. The ocean is there.

The moon is full. We see the ocean with the moon hanging

over it. Mister is wired. Mister tells us he has a gun in the car

under the front seat. Mister tells us he hates his wife. Mister

tells us he is going to kill the bitch. Mister tells us his wife has

tried to get away from him. Mister tells us his wife was walking

down a street and he beat the bitch to pieces and pulled a

knife on her. How could his wife do that, we say, not knowing

what she did. We go on to the beach.

*

The beach is a little scummy, empty cans and empty bottles,

paper, trash. The sand is a little dirty. N and I undress each

other. We kiss. We make love standing up. He wants us in the

sand. We make love in the sand. She dresses. He shows a knife.

She holds me down. I am flat on my back naked on the beach.

She is behind me. I look up into her face. She grins. It is her

comradely grin. But I try to get loose and can’t. She is strong.

She is holding me down. It is our charade, but I can’t get

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loose. He fucks me. He disappears. I brush the sand off but I

am all gritty. I get dressed fast. N and I sit and watch the

ocean. N and I sit and watch the moon. The cop comes. He

tells us girls could get hurt alone on the beach at night. We are

panicked that Mister left without us. The car is still there. We

walk to it. We get in covered with sand. I can taste sand in my

mouth. Mister buys us lobster. He sits and watches, all tight

and coiled. He drops us at the storefront. Inside we drink iced