Andrea Dworkin - Ice And Fire

The flower girls and boys abound in other parts of the

neighborhood, not near us.

We are not them and not not them. N grew up in a swamp

in the South, oldest child, four boys under her, father abandoned family, became a religious fanatic after running whores for a while, came back, moved the family North, sent her to a

girls’ school to get a proper upbringing, then ran off again:

like me, poor and half orphaned. Like me she gets a scholarship

to a rich girls’ college. We meet there, the outcast poor, exiled

among the pathetic rich. We don’t have money hidden away

somewhere, if only we would behave. Her mother, my father,

have nothing to give. She has other children to feed. He is sick,

says nothing, does nothing, languishes, a sad old man with a

son killed in Vietnam and a dirty daughter on dirty streets. N

and I are poor now: poorer even than when we were children:

nothing but what we get however we get it. But also we are

white and smart and well-educated. Do we have to be here or

not?

We can’t be lacquer-haired secretaries. There is no place else

for us. The flower children are like distant cousins, the affluent

part of the family: you hear about them but it doesn’t mean

you can have what they have. They wear pretty colors and

have good drugs, especially hallucinogens, and they decorate

the streets with paint and scents: incense, glitter: fucking them

is fun sometimes but often too solemn, they bore with their

lovey pieties: but we didn’t leave anything behind and we got

nothing to go back to.

*

Eighteen, nineteen, twenty: those years. The men numbered in

the thousands. At first I was alone, then, with her, I wasn’t.

This was one summer. We also had a winter and a spring

before.

*

Every time we needed petty cash: and when we didn’t.

*

We took women for money too, but with more drama, more

plot, more plan. They had to be in love or infatuated. You had

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to remember their names and details of their childhood. They

gave you what you needed gingerly: the seduction had to

continue past sex: sometimes they would get both of us: other

times only one of us could get near enough: or sometimes we

would both be there, each one picking up the slack when the

other got bored, and take turns before drifting off to sleep. Or

N would do it one night, me another. I liked another woman’s

body there between us, and I liked when N fucked me then her

and then I kept kissing her between the legs, though N would

have fallen asleep by then. I liked those nights. I didn’t like

that we never got enough out of it: enough money: enough

food: enough: and I didn’t like it that the women got clingy or

all pathetic or that not one could bear to remember how she

had come, wanting to be courted, and stayed.

*

And then there was just having the women: because you

wanted them: because it was a piece of heaven right in the

middle of hell: because they knew your name too: because you

went mad with them in your mouth: and you went crazy thigh

to thigh: and it was earth, sublime: and the skin, pearl: and the

breasts: and coming, coming, coming.

*

Especially the hairs that stayed in your mouth, and the bites

they left.

*

The men fucked or did whatever: but the women came close

to dying, with this quiet surprise.

*

And you did too, because you were the same, only harder, not

new. They were enough like you. As close as could be. Every

slight tremble shot through both bodies. Even when she knew

nothing and you knew everything: even when you did it all:

your fingers on her, her taste all over you, pushed you so far

over the edge you needed drugs to bring you back. The small

of her back, trembling: how small they were, how delicate, the

tiny bones, how they almost disappeared: and then the more

ecstatic exertions of a lover with her beloved.

*

The sex could go on until exhaustion defeated the prosaic

body: these were not the short, abrupt times of men with their

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push and shove: these were long, hot, humid times, whole

seasons: but once over, life went on: she was on her own,

desolate: unhappy: ready to shell out what you needed so as

not to be alone forever: so as to be able to come back: and you

must never take too much, she must not be humiliated too

much: and you must make sure she knows that you know her

name and her uniqueness: and you must stay aloof but not be

cold: and she gives you something, money is best: and she is

just unhappy enough when she leaves. Her body still trembles

and she is as pale as death, washed out, delicate and desperate,

she has never done anything like this before, not wanting her

own life, wanting ours: which we hold for ransom. She can get

near it again, if we let her: if she has something we need. We

are tired of her and want her gone. We are both cold and

detached and ready for someone new.

*

The coffeehouse has a jukebox N likes. The music blares. She

knows how to turn them up. In any bar she can reach behind,

wink at the bartender, and turn up the music. In this

coffeehouse, all painted pink, there is no resistance. It is in the

Village, a dumpy one surrounded by plusher places for tourists

and rich hippies and old-time bohemians who have learned how

to make a living from art.

There is nightlife here, and money, and N and I hang out

for the air conditioning and to pick up men. It is easy pickings.

She roams around the room, a girl James Dean, toward the

jukebox, away from the jukebox, toward it, away from it, her

cigarette hanging out of her slightly dirty mouth, her hips tough

and lean, her legs bent at the knees, a little bowlegged, opened

up. She is dirty and her eyes have deep circles set in fragile,

high cheekbones. She spreads her arms out over the breadth

of the jukebox and spreads her legs with her knees slightly

bent outward and she moves back and forth, a slow, excruciating fuck. Jim Morrison and the Doors. Otis Redding.

Janis. Hey mister, she says in her deepest mumble, you gotta

cigarette. She gets courtly: I seem to be out, she says to him,

eyelids drooping. She smiles: I guess I must of left them somewhere. She hustles change for the jukebox. She hustles change for coffee. These are long, leisurely, air-conditioned nights. She

disappears. I disappear. She returns, orders cappuccino, it means

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money, something easy with a boy. I return: we have sandwiches. She returns: with some grass. I return: we have dessert, chocolate cake, leisurely, cheesecake, passing it around. She