Andrea Dworkin - Ice And Fire

drink. I am waiting for the ideas about structure. He orders

for me. He smothers me with talk. I drink more. I ask in the

restaurant about his ideas about structure. He ignores me and

keeps talking. I drink. He talks about sex. He talks about his

life. He talks about his lovers. I say: well we must get absolutely

sober now so I can hear your ideas about structure. We go to a

coffeehouse. He talks. He talks about how he has to love an

author. He talks about the authors he has loved. He talks about

someone he is involved with who is writing a novel: he talks

about visiting this author and that author and what they drink

and how they love him and how they want him. I say I want

to hear his ideas about structure. He tells me he is going to

buy a beach house, a house by the ocean, where I can come to

live and write. He says he has found it. He says it is right on

the ocean. He says he can picture me there, working, undistracted, not having to worry about fumes and rats and poverty. He tells me that as long as he has a home I have a

home and that this home, on the ocean, is very special and for

me. He knows it is what I have always wanted, more than

anything: it is my idea of peace and solace. I say thank you but

I had a rather strange childhood always being moved from

home to home because my mother was sick sort of like an

orphan and I am not too good about staying in other people’s

houses. I ask him about his ideas about the structure of the

novel. He says that his involvement with the work of an author

and his involvement with the author are indistinguishable, he

has to love them as one. He tells me about the house he is

buying right on the ocean where I will go and work and finish

the novel. He tells me he sees me in it working. I ask him

about his ideas about structure. He tells me that he wants me

to understand that now I have a home, with him, by the ocean,

he has bought a home there where I will live and write, his

home and my home. We leave the coffeehouse. We get to the

corner where we go in different directions. I ask him if he

wants to tell me about his ideas about structure so I can think

about them. He tells me that the publishing company is my

home too, as long as he is there, and he wants me to see the

house on the ocean which is my home: and the publishing

house is my home, because wherever he is is my home. He tells

me to call him, day or night. He tells me to call him at home. I

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look blank, because I am blank; I am blank. He kisses me. I

walk away, alone. He calls after me: remember you have a

home now. I met him at six for dinner, it is now three in the

morning, I don’t know his ideas on structure. I walk home,

alone. The rats are in the walls. The walls are closing in.

Someone, a stranger, blond, six feet, muscled, curled in fetal

position, is sleeping. I do not call the publisher, no, I don’t, I

wait for his offer of money on my novel. Months go by. I

don’t call him, my agent keeps calling him, he says he is

working on it, trust him, six or seven months go by, the

stranger in the next room and I barely speak to each other, the

rats are monstrous, I am hungry. I say to my agent: you must

find out, I must have money. She calls. He says he doesn’t do

fiction. He doesn’t do fiction. My book that I finished when the

rats came is published a few months later. He lets it die, no gift

like jewelry for me anymore. He preordains its death and it dies. I

see my house, the ocean so near it. I see the beach, smooth wet

sand, and the curve of the waves on the earth, the edge of the

ocean, so delicate, so beautifully fine, lapping up on the beach

like slivers of liquid silver. I see the sun, silver light on the winter

water, and I see dusk coming. I am alone there, in winter, ice on

the sand, silver waves outside the window. I see a small, simple

house, white and square against the vast shore. I see the simple

beauty of the house absorbing the dusk, each simple room

turning somber, and then the dusk reaching past the house onto

the wet beach and finally spreading out over the ocean. I see the

moon over the ocean. I see the night on the water. I see myself in

the simple house, at a window, looking out, just feeling the first

chill of night. I sit in the apartment, rats are running in the

walls, the walls are closing in, writing my poor little heart out:

in a terrible hurry to tell what is in my heart. You have to be

in a terrible hurry or the heart gets eaten up. There is a carcass,

sans heart, writing its little heart out so to speak: in a terrible

hurry: and somewhere an ocean near a house, waiting. He

can’t want that , they said, oh no, not that. I am a writer, not a

woman, I thought somewhere down deep, he can’t want that.

Now I am in a terrible hurry to tell what is in my heart. Who

could hurry fast enough? Brava\ whoever managed it!

Did I remember to say that I always wanted to be a writer,

since I was a little girl?

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