Andrea Dworkin - Ice And Fire

reason, deep, terrifying: I must treat him with sincerity, respect,

like one of us: the raped. I must not hate him for wanting to

be close to me anymore. I must not hate him.

*

By now it is 1 1 pm. I try to go. He keeps me there. There is

another story to tell about his parents or his sister. He shows

me his bedroom: one night he picked up a baseball team and

brought them all back here and got fucked by all of them. I go

out of the bedroom to leave. There is another book to discuss.

There is another record to hear. He tells me lots of stories

about sex, lovers, adventures. I am clear, precise. I am ready to

go. There is something he must show me. There is something

he must tell me. There is something I must see. There is

someone I must meet. I am ready to go. He plays a record by

Nichols and May, a couple in bed having just fucked discussing

“ relating” through prisms of intellectual pretension. It is right

on the mark, but we are precoital. I have to go. There is a

book he must give me. There is a book he must find. There is

a drawing I must see. It is in his bedroom. We stand there

together, looking. I have my jacket on. I am like a runner,

ready to sprint. There is something he must show me. There is

something he must get me. He finds me a long-out-of-print

early book by Thomas Mann and a dozen other books, too

much for me to carry. I want the books, very much. He finds

me a shopping bag. I think about the empty streets. I need my

hands free, I don’t know if I can find a cab, I leave the books

there, I ask him to bring them to his office where I will pick

them up. It is 4 am. I run out. I am exhausted and confused. I

don’t know what he wants. I know what I want: a publisher,

not a lover; a publisher, not a barter. I think he wants me but I

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insist to myself I am me, not a woman, the signs are no longer

in my symbology, I do not speak that language, I do not

practice that religion: I have seen him, a child, gang-raped, cut

with knives, it is why he wants to be near me, I am required by my

own dumb heart to love him, he is one of us, the raped, I do not

have to sleep with him, surely that is not what he meant.

*

I know what he wanted, he wanted me to ask to see the scars, to

run my fingers over them, to love him because of them, to stay

there, touching the scars, while he bit and clawed and screwed. I

have seen such scars. Of course, I knew what he wanted: old

habits: familiarity, the smell, the language of the body: you run

your hands over scars like that and you stay the night.

*

I get home. The windows are open. The wind blows through. I

am so cold.

*

I don’t want him. I need him, oh desperately, but I don’t want

him. I have his secret, sorrow added to sorrow, pain added to

pain, rape added to rape. I am faithful to the raped, it is my

only fidelity. I have his secret. It was a blood oath but not on

my blood, my real blood, so it is not enough, I know that, he

is a man, he needs my real blood, my blood is the blood beyond

symbol, uterine blood, vaginal blood, seasonal blood, stench

blood, strong blood; it is not over because it has not been my

blood, him cutting, me bleeding, the way a man and woman

do it. Others say: oh, he is gay, don’t worry, he doesn’t want

that. Others say: oh, don’t be silly, he can’t want that. Oh, he

can’t want that. I want to buy it. He can’t want that. The

raped don’t do that to the raped, I want to believe.

*

Others say: oh, don’t be silly, he can’t want that. I am dense,

troubled but dense. Before I knew what he wanted and how he

wanted it, but now I am blinded, because the raped don’t do

that to the raped. I decide: he can’t want that. I don’t believe it

really, but others say he can’t want that, so I don’t really know

what he wants, not that, I say. I pick a posture: he has told me

a secret: we are colleagues with a special understanding: his

secret: I will be patient and loyal because of his secret: because

I hurt in his behalf. I am always astonished by the cruelty of

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rape. I am awed by the enduring of it. I am awed by those who

carry the secret: those bodies carrying it, burned in; those minds

collapsing under the weight of vivid recollection that doesn’t

pale with time. I am awed by the intensity of the never-

assuaged anguish. I am confused. I don’t know what he wants

from me. He can’t want that. In private, I am troubled. In public

I am dense; we are colleagues with a special understanding.

*

I feel dread, confusion, panic: he can’t want that. That is so

simple and this whole routine is so complex. I need him but I

don’t want him. I am cold, the wind blows through the apartment, I am destitute and I have nowhere left to go: I don’t know what to do except to walk away: and I can’t do that

because I am too desperate and he is one of the raped.

*

I have nowhere else to go. I have no money, no hope of being

published elsewhere, by anyone else, my work offends everyone

else. Life is dead ends, ghostly alleys. I need him. I am so

confused, so cold, unhappy. I don’t know what he wants.

Others say: not that. I think: well, it can’t be that.

*

Underneath, inchoate— it is that. I want him to stay away. I

know he is coming closer.

*

I even say to myself: just do it. Just do it. But I don’t want to. I

say to myself: just do it, in the long run it will be so much

simpler, get it over with, just do it, he will get tired of you

soon, what difference can it make to you, one more or less—

but it makes a difference, I don’t know why, I don’t even want

it to: it just does. I am cold and I am tired and I don’t want to.

*

I am confused, but he is not. It boils over: he loves me.

I am scorched by it everywhere I turn, in private, in public, in

the little world of business where I go to meet with him, the

little world of huge skyscrapers and sterile offices. Like sunlight, it blazes. I don’t know what it is or why or what it consists of— but there is no missing it— I am his special

someone or something: he emanates it: it is no secret: every

secretary and office boy treats me like his bride. I like being

loved. He is no fool. I like being loved: so much so that I want

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