Andrea Dworkin - Ice And Fire

two waitresses with huge red lips and short skirts running back

and forth emptying them, and the smell of the smoke got into

my fingers and into my hair and on my clothes and the rain

outside even began to carry it off when it was too much for

the room we were in. The empty packs were crumpled, and I

began pulling apart the filters, strand by strand, and rolling

the matchbooks into tight little wads and then opening them

up all softened and tearing them into little pieces, and then I

began to tear the fetid butts into pieces by tearing off the paper

and rolling the burnt tobacco between my palms which were

tight and wretched with strain and perspiration and I was

making little piles of torn papers and torn matchbooks and

torn cigarette packs but not touching the cellophane (he was

talking), and making the little piles as high as I could and

watching them intently, staring, as if their construction were a

matter of symmetry and perfection and indisputable necessity

and it required concentration and this was my job. During this

we talked, of course mostly he talked, because I was there to

be talked to, and have certain things explained, and to be

corrected, especially to be set right, because I had gone all

wrong, gotten all Dostoyevsky-like in the land of such writing

as “ Ten New Ways to Put on Lipstick” and “ The Truth About

How to be Intimate with Strangers. ” Coitus was what?

In the rain we walked to another restaurant, to dinner. Oh,

he had liked me. I had done all right.

*

When I walked into the coffeehouse, he knew me right away.

The mountain of thigh, not any other kind of fame. The place

was wet, smelly, crowded, and I had picked it, it resembled me,

not modest, dank, a certain smell of decay. The other women

huddled themselves in, bent shoulders, suddenly, treacherously lowered heads that threatened to fall off their necks, tight little legs wrapped together like Christmas packages,

slumping down, twisting in, even the big ones didn’t dare

spread out but instead held their breath, pulled in their

tummies, scrunched their mouths, used their shoulders to cover

their chests, crossed their ankles, crossed their feet, crossed

their legs, kept their hands lying quietly under the tabletops,

didn’t show teeth, moved noiselessly, melted in with the gray

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and the mud and the wet, except for some flaming lips: and no

monumental laughs, no sonorous discourse, no loud epis-

temology, no boom boom boom: the truth. I wanted to

whimper and contract, fold up, shrivel to some version of

pleasing nothing, sound the call: it’s all finished, she gives up, no

one’s here, out to lunch, empty, smelly, noiseless, folded up.

But I would have had to prepare, study, start earlier in the

day, come from a warmer apartment into a cleaner coffeehouse, be dry, not wear the ancient denim articles of an old faith, witnesses, remembrances, proofs, evidences of times without such silly rules. He stood, nodded, smiled, pointed to the seat, I sat, he gave me a cigarette, I smoked, I drank coffee, he

talked, I listened, he talked, I built castles out of paper on

tabletops, he talked, oh, I was so quiet, so soft, all brazen

thigh to the naked eye, to his dead and ugly eye, but inside I

wanted him to see inside I was all aquiver, all tremble and

dainty, all worried and afraid, nervy and a pale invalid, all

pathetic need contaminated by intellect that was like wild

weeds, wild weeds massively killing the gentle little flower

garden inside, those pruned and fragile little flowers. This I

conveyed by being quiet and tender and oh so quiet, and I

could see my insides all running with blood, all running with

knife cuts and big fuck bruises, and he saw it too. So he took

me to dinner in the rain.

*

The bathroom was in the back, painted a pink that looked

brown and fungoid, and I got to it by heaving myself over the

wet boots strewn like dead bodies in my way, sliding along the

wet puddles, touching strange shoulders delicately like God

just for a hint of balance. The smoke heralded me, shrouded

me, trailed behind me: in front, around, behind, a column of

fire hiding me. The walls in the little room were mud and the

floor was mud and the seat of the toilet had some bright red

dots and green splotches and the mirror had a face looking

out, destitute. I was bleeding. The rain and bleeding. The

muscles in my back caved in toward each other furiously and

then shot out, repelled. A small island under my stomach beat,

a drum, a pulse, spurting blood. Oh, mother. I took thick paper

towels meant for drying big wet hands and covered the toilet

seat and pushed my old denim down to the slobbering floor. I

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waited for life to pass, for the man to go away, for the blood

to stop, to grow old and die. Four beige-stained walls, enough

naked flesh hitting the cold edge of the cold air to keep me

awake and alive, and time passing. Then I went out because I

had to, because I wasn’t going to die there, past the kitchen, a

hole in the wall, burning oil hurled in the air by a cook who

bounced from pot to pot, singing, sauteing, stirring, draining,

humming. I walked through all the same tables, this time my

hands straight down by my side like other people, and I sat

down again. The piles of matchbook paper covered the table-

top, and he was slumped and disbelieving.

*

On the right when you enter the coffeehouse there are unappealing tables near the trash, and behind them a counter with cakes under cheap plastic covers but the cakes are good,

not cheap. All the light is on the other side, a solid wall of

glass and light, and all the tables near the glass and light were

always filled with people with notebooks writing notes to themselves on serious subjects as serious people who are also young do. I always looked over their shoulders, glanced sideways,

eavesdropped with my eyes, read whole sentences or paragraphs. Sometimes there were equations and triangles and words printed out with dull blue ballpoint pens, like in the

fifth grade, block lettering. More often there were sentences,

journals, stories, essays, lists of important things to remember

and important books to find. Sometimes there were real books,

and the person never looked up, not wanting to be thought

frivolous. Of course he had gotten a table filled with light,

something I rarely managed to do, next to the glass, and the

glass was colder than I had ever seen it, moist and weeping,

and the light had become saturated with dull water. Outside

there was the funniest phone box, so small it wasn’t even the

size of a fire hydrant, and there was a plant shop with the

ugliest plants, all the same color green with no letup, no