Andrea Dworkin - Ice And Fire

*

I lived in the present, slowly, except for tremors of terror,

physical memories of the beatings, the blood. I took drugs. I

took who I wanted, male or female. I was alert. I read books. I

listened to music. I was near the water. I had no money. I

watched everyone. I kept going. I would be alone and feel

happy. It frightened me. Coitus is the punishment for the happiness of being alone. One can’t face being happy. It is too extreme.

*

I had to be with others, compulsion. I was afraid to be alone.

Coitus is the punishment for the fear of being alone. I took

who I liked, whatever moved me, I felt it in my gut. It was

fine. But only solitude matters. Coitus is the punishment for cowardice: afraid of being alone, in a room, in a bed, on this earth: coitus is the punishment for being a woman: afraid to be alone.

*

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I couldn’t be alone. I took whoever made me feel something, -a

funny longing in the gut or crotch. I liked it. I took hashish,

acid. Not all the time, on special days, or on long afternoons. I

took long saunas. I was happy. I read books. I started to write.

I began to need solitude. It started like a funny longing in the

gut or crotch. Coitus was the punishment for not being able to

stand wanting solitude so much.

*

I gave up other lovers. I wanted solitude. It took a few years to

get faithful. Coitus was the punishment for a breach of faith.

*

I came back to New York City, the Lower East Side. I lived

alone, poor, writing. I was raped once. It punished me for the

happiness of being myself.

*

I am alone, in solitude. I can almost run my fingers through it.

It takes on the rhythmic brilliance of any passion. It is like

holy music, a Te Deum. Coitus is the punishment for not

daring to be happy.

*

I learn the texture of minutes, how hours weave themselves

through the tangled mind: I am silent. Coitus is the punishment

for running from time: hating quiet: fearing life.

*

I betray solitude. I get drunk, pick up a cab driver. Coitus is

the punishment.

*

I write day in and day out, night after night, alone, in the quiet

of this exquisite concentration, this exquisite aloneness, this

extreme new disordering of the senses: solitude, my beloved.

Coitus is the punishment for not daring to be extreme enough,

for compromising, for conforming, for giving in. Coitus is the

punishment for not daring to disorder the senses enough: by

knowing them without mediation. Coitus is the punishment

for not daring to be original, unique, discrete.

*

I am not distracted, I am alone, I love solitude, this is passion

too. I am intensely happy. When I see people, I am no less

alone: and I am not lonely. I concentrate when I write: pure

concentration, like life at the moment of dying. I dream the

89

answers to my own questions when I sleep. I am not tranquil,

it is not my nature, but I am intensely happy. Coitus is the

punishment for adulterating solitude.

*

I forget the lovers of Europe. They don’t matter. The terror

still comes, it envelops me, solitude fights it tooth and nail,

solitude wins. I forget what I have done on these streets here.

It doesn’t matter. I concentrate. I am alone. The solitude is

disruption, extremity, extreme sensation in dense isolation.

This is a private passion, not for exhibit. Coitus is the

punishment for exhibiting oneself: for being afraid to be happy

in private, alone. Coitus is the punishment for needing a human

witness. I write. Solitude is my witness.

*

Coitus is the punishment for the happiness of being. Solitude is

the end of punishment.

I write. I publish.

*

Coitus is punishment. I write down everything I know, over

some years. I publish. I have become a feminist, not the fun

kind. Coitus is punishment, I say. It is hard to publish. I am a

feminist, not the fun kind. Life gets hard. Coitus is not the

only punishment. I write. I love solitude: or slowly, I would

die. I do not die.

Coitus is punishment. I am a feminist, not the fun kind.

90

Ne cherchez plus mon coeur; les betes

l'ont mange.

(Don’t look for my heart anymore; the beasts*

have eaten it. )

Baudelaire

*

He was a subtle piece of slime, big open pores, hair hanging

over his thick lip onto his teeth, faintly green. He smiled. I

sat. Oh yes, and I smiled. Tentatively. Quietly. Eyes slanted

down, then up quickly, then away, then down, nothing elaborate. Just a series of sorrowful gestures that scream female.

Gray was in the air, a thick paste. It was a filter over

everything or just under my eyelids. The small table was too

dirty, rings of wet stuck to it, and the floor had wet mud on it

that all the people had dragged in before they sat down to

chatter. I picked this place because I had thought it was clean.

I went there almost every day, escaping the cold of my desolate

apartment. Now the tabletop was sordid and I could smell

decay, a faint acrid cadaver smell.

The rain outside was subtle and strange, not pouring down

in sheets but just hanging, solid, in thin static veils of wet

suspended in the air, soaking through without the distracting

noise of falling hard. The air seemed empty, and then another

sliver of wet that went from the cement on the sidewalk right

up into the sky would hit your whole body, at once, and one

walked or died.

I had nothing to keep the rain off me, just regular cotton

clothes, the gnarled old denim of my time and age, with holes,

frayed not for effect but because they were old and tired, and

what he saw when he saw me registered in those ugly eyes

hanging over those open pores. Her, It, She, in color, 3-D,

fearsome feminista, ballbuster, woman who talks mean, queer

arrogant piece. But also: something from Fellini, precisely a

mountain of thigh, precisely. I could see the mountain of thigh

hanging in the dead center of his eyes, and the slight drip of

saliva. Of course, he was very nice.

* the stupids

91

Coffee came, and cigarettes piled up, ashtray after ashtray,