Andrea Dworkin - Ice And Fire

have anything to do with me. There was E, an emaciated, catty

little thief: girlfriend of a major ideologist of the counterculture

revolution, a small, wiry, cunning, nervous, bespectacled man:

she wore government surplus, guerilla style: they were arrested

for stealing money from parking meters. You can’t make a

great plan on an empty stomach, he told me. There was a

bright, beautiful woman who looked like the Dutch Boy boy,

only she lit up from inside and her smile was like sunlight. Her

boyfriend was dour, officious, a functionary in the huge,

government-run building that housed the radical youth and the

hashish, he made sure the porno movies were on the right

walls at the right times. There was Frau B, a dowager administrator, suburban, having an affair with the head honcho, an ex-colonel in an occupying army: they kept the lid on for the

government. And then I too became a fixture: the girlfriend,

then the wife. The American. The only brunette. The innocent

by virtue of Americanism. They kept Europe’s feudal sex

secrets hidden. I thought I invented everything. Smoking dope

in their great painted rooms they seemed innocent: I thought

I was the old one.

In these rooms, he looked up, his face all questioning and

tender and sad: and I kissed him.

*

Once you want to be together in Northern Europe it is the

same all over. There is nowhere to go.

81

In the South there are beaches and old ruins. Boys sneak girls

somewhere, some flat place, and other boys hide behind rocks

or pieces of ancient walls and watch. In the North it is cold.

There are the streets, too civilized for sex. There are no rooms,

no apartments, even adult men live with their parents. One is

sneaked into a tiny bedroom in the parents’ house: hands are

held over one’s mouth: no noise can be made: and sneaked out

before dawn, giggling silently and left in the cold, unless one’s

lover is sentimental: then he covers you in his coat and buries

you in his arms and you wait for dawn together. In Northern

European cities, dawn comes late but parents wake up early.

The young men have no privacy: they stay strange little bad

boys who get taller and older. They get married too young.

They sneak forever.

But it doesn’t matter: where or why or how.

There were plenty before him in gray Europe. It was his

sadness: saturating his comic face, his comic stance, his great

comic stories, his extravagant gestures. It made him different:

sad: more like me, but so fragile compared to me, so unused.

When he looked up, so innocent, I must have decided. I became

his friend, thinking that he too must love life fiercely, desperately: my gift to him: it costs me nothing and there is an abundance of it, without limits: the physical facts of life. There

is not a lot I can do. I can do this.

*

Darker, grayer: no buildings filled with hash: another European

city: to get an apartment: we had spent nights together out on

the street, in the rain, in the cold, he was my friend, I had

nowhere to go and he had nowhere to take me so he stayed

with me in the wet nights, bitter cold. So we went somewhere

else, Northern, gray, he came a few days a week, every week,

he taught me how to cook, he was my friend. There was a big

bed, one room, a huge skylight in the middle of the room, one

large table in a corner: I put the bed under the skylight, water

condenses and drips on it, but there I teach him, slowly. I have

understood. He has too much respect for women. I teach him

disrespect, systematically. I teach him how to tie knots, how to

use rope, scarves, how to bite breasts: I teach him not to be

afraid: of causing pain. It goes slowly. I teach him step by step.

I invent sex therapy in this one room somewhere in the middle

82

of Europe. I am an American innocent, in my fashion. I forbid

intercourse. I teach him how to play games. You be this and I

will be that. Rape, virgin, Queen Victoria. The games go on

and on. There are some we do over and over. I teach him to

penetrate with his fingers, not to be afraid of causing pain. I

fellate him. I teach him not to worry about erection. I tie him

up. Dungeon, brothel, little girl, da-da. I ask him what he

wants to do and we do it. I teach him not to be afraid of

causing pain. Not to be afraid of hurting me. I am the one

there: don’t be afraid of hurting me, see, this is how. I teach

him not to be afraid of piss and shit, human dirt. I teach him

everything about his body, I penetrate him, I scratch, I bite, I

tie him up, I hit him with my hand open, with my fist, with

belts: he gets hard. He does each thing back to me. He is

nearly hard. Water condenses on the skylight and falls. We

move the bed. I am disappointed. I liked the extravagance. I

do everything I can think of to help him: impotent and suicidal:

I am saving his life. We are on an island, isolated in this European city. There is us. There is the bed. He is nearly hard. We move back to his city, where he is from, into a room that is

ours. He needs some act, some gesture, some event to give him

the final confidence: to get really hard. Reader, I married him.

*

I love life so fiercely, so desperately: there is an endless

abundance of it, with no limits: it costs me nothing.

Reader, I married him.

*

I thought I could always leave if I didn’t like it. I had the

ultimate belief in my own ability to walk away. I thought it

would show him I believed in him. It did. Reader, he got hard.

*

He became a husband, like anyone else, normal. He got hard,

he fucked, it spilled over, it was frenzy, I ended up cowering,

caged, catatonic. How it will end finally, I don’t know. I

wanted to help: but this was a hurricane of hate and rage let

loose: I wanted to help: I saved him: not impotent, not suicidal,

he beat me until I was a heap of collapsed bone, comatose,

torn, bleeding, bruised so bad, so hard: how it will end, I don’t

know.

*

83

Oh, it was a small small room with no windows: he had it

painted dark blue: he didn’t let me sleep: he never let me sleep:

he beat me and he fucked me: I fought back and I tried to run

away. The rest is unspeakable. He got hard and fucked easy

now. Reader, I had married him. He rolled on top and he

fucked: it costs me nothing, and there is an endless abundance

of it: I love life so fiercely, so desperately: how it will end, I