Mercy (69 page)

so. If I was a man and something happened I could write it

down and probably it would pass as a story even if it was true.

O f course, that’s just speculation. I’d swagger, too, if I was a

man; I’m not proud to say it but I’m sure it’s true. I would take

big steps, loud ones, down the street; I could be the Zen master

o f fuck you. I would spread m yself out and take up all the

space and spread my legs wide open in the subway to take up

three seats with just m y knees like they do. I would be very

bold and very cool. I’d be smarter than I am now, I’m sure,

because what I knew might matter and I’d remember more,

I’m sure. I don’t think I’d go near women though because I

wouldn’t want to hurt them. I know how everything feels. I

think if I was a man m y heart would not hurt so much and I

wouldn’t have this terror I am driven by but cannot name. I

think I could write a poem about it, perhaps. I think it could

probably make a very long poem and I could keep rewriting it

to get every nuance right and chart it as it changed over time;

song o f himself, perhaps, a sequel. Ginsberg says he chased

Whitman through supermarkets; I fucking was him; I

embraced all the generations without distinctions and it failed

because o f this awfulness that there is no name for, this great

meanness at the heart o f what they mean when they stick it in; I

just don’t know a remedy, because it is a sick and hostile thing.

Even if there were no wars I think I could say some

perceptions I had about life, I wouldn’t need the C ivil War or

the Vietnam War to hang m y literary hat on as it were, and I

could be loud, which I would try, I’m sure, I could call

attention to m yself as i f I mattered or what happened did or as

i f I knew something, even about suffering or even about life;

and, frankly, then it might count. I could stop thinking every

minute about where each sound is coming from and where the

shadows are each minute. I can’t even close m y eyes now

frankly but I think it’s because I’m this whatever it is, you can

have sophisticated words for it but the fact is you can be

sleeping inside with everything locked and they get in and do

it to you no matter how bad it hurts. In magazines they say

w om en’s got allure, or so they call it, but it’s more like being

some dumb w riggling thing that God holds out before them

on a stick with a string, a fisher o f men. The allure’s there even

i f you got open sores on you; I know. The formal writing

problem, frankly, is that the bait can’t write the story. The bait

ain’t even barely alive. There’s a weird German tradition that

the fish turned the tables and rewrote the story to punish the

fisherman but you know it’s a lie and it’s some writer o f fiction

being what became known as a modernist but before that was

called outright a smartass; and the fish still ain’t bait unless it’s

eviscerated and bleeding. I just can’t risk it now but if I was a

man I could close m y eyes, I’m sure; at night, I’d close them,

I’m sure. I don’t think m y hands would shake. I don’t think so;

or not so much; or not all the time; or not without reason;

there’s no reason now anyone can see. M y breasts w ouldn’t

bleed as i f God put a sign on me; blessing or curse, it draws

flies. Tears o f blood fall from them; they weep blood for me,

because I’m whatever it is: the girl, as they say politely; the

girl. Y o u ’re supposed to make things up for books but I am

afraid to make things up because in life everything evaporates,

it’s gone in mist, just disappears, there’s no sign left, except on

you, and you are a fucking invisible ghost, they look right

through you, you can have bruises so bad the skin’s pulled o ff

you and they don’t see nothing; you bet women had the

vapors, still fucking do, it means it all goes aw ay in the air,

whatever happened, whatever he did and how ever he did it,

and yo u ’re left feeling sick and weak and no one’s going to say

w hy; it’s ju st wom en, they faint all the time, they’re sick all the

time, fragile things, delicate things, delicate like the best

punching bags you ever seen. They say it’s lies even if they just

did it, or maybe especially then. I don’t know really. There’s

nothing to it, no one ever heard o f it before or ever saw it or

not here or not now; in all history it never happened, or if it

happened it was the Nazis, the exact, particular Nazis in

Germany in the thirties and forties, the literal Nazis in

uniform; when they were out o f uniform they were just guys,

you know, they loved their families, they paid o ff their

whores, just regular guys. N o one else ever did anything,

certainly no one now in this fine world we have here; certainly

not the things I think happened, although I don’t know what

to call them in any serious way. Y ou just crawl into a cave o f

silence and die; w hy are there no great women artists? Some

people got nerve. Blood on cement, which is all we got in my

experience, ain’t esthetic, although I think boys some day will

do very well with it; they’ll put it in museums and get a fine

price. W on’t be their blood. It would be some cunt’s they

whispered to the night before; a girl; and then it’d be art, you

see; or you could put it on walls, make murals, be political, a

democratic art outside the museums for the people, Diego

Rivera without any conscience whatsoever instead o f the very

tenuous one he had with respect to women, and then it’d be

extremely major for all the radicals who would discover the

expressive value o f someone else’s blood and I want to tell you

they’d stop making paint but such things do not happen and

such things cannot occur, any more than the rape so-called can

happen or occur or the being beaten so bad can happen or

occur and there are no words for what cannot happen or occur

and i f you think something happened or occurred and there are

no words for it you are at a dead end. There’s nothing where

they force you; there’s nothing where you hurt so much;

there’s nothing where it matters, there’s nothing like it

anywhere. So it doesn’t feel right to make things up, as you

must do to write fiction, to lie, to elaborate, to elongate, to

exaggerate, to distort, to get tangled up in moderations or

modifications or deviations or compromises o f m ixing this

with that or combining this one with that one because the

problem is finding words for the truth, especially if no one will

believe it, and they will not. I can’t make things up because I

w ouldn’t know after a while w hat’s blood, w hat’s ink. I barely

know any words for what happened to me yesterday, which

doesn’t make tom orrow something I can conceive o f in m y

mind; I mean words I say to m yself in m y ow n head; not social

words you use to explain to someone else. I barely know

anything and if I deviate I am lost; I have to be literal, if I can

remember, which m ostly I cannot. N o one will acknowledge

that some things happen and probably at this point in time

there is no w ay to say they do in a broad sweep; you describe

the man forcing you but you can’t say he forced you. If I was a

man I could probably say it; I could say I did it and everyone

would think I made it up even though I’d just be remembering

what I did last night or twenty minutes ago or once, long ago,

but it probably w ouldn’t matter. The rapist has words, even

though there’s no rapist, he ju st keeps inventing rape; in his

mind; sure. He remembers, even though it never happened;

it’s fine fiction when he writes it down. Whereas m y mind is