Mercy (90 page)

they put tassles on them and have them swirl around in circles

and call them the ugliest names; as if they ain’t attached to

human beings; as if they’re party tricks or practical jokes or the

equivalent o f farts, big, vulgar farts; they make them always

deformed; as if there’s real people; citizens; men; with flat

chests, they look down, they see their shoes, a standard for

what a human being is; and there’s these blow-up dolls you

can do things to, they have funny humps on their chests, did

you ever see them swirl, the woman stands there like a dead

puppet, painted, and the balloon things spin. In m y heart I

think these awful painted things are women; like I am still in

m y heart; o f human kind; but the men make them like they’re

two-legged jackasses, astonishing freaks with iron poles up

the middle o f them and someone smeared them with paint,

some psychotic in the loony bin doing art class, and they got

glass eyes with someone’s fingerprints smeared on them; and

they’re all swollen up and hurt, as if they been pushed and

fucked, hit, or stood somewhere in a ring, a circus ring or a

boxing ring, and men just threw things at them, balls and bats

and stones, anything hard that would cause pain and leave

marks, or break bones; they’re swollen up in some places, the

bellies o f starving children but moved up to the breasts and

down to the buttocks, all hunger, water, air, distended; and

then there’s the thin parts, all starved, the bones show, the ribs

sometimes, iridescent skeletons, or the face is caved in under

the paint, the skin collapses because there is no food, only pills,

syringes, Demerol, cocaine, Percodan, heroin, morphine,

there’s hollow cheeks sunk in hollow faces and the w aist’s

hollow, shrinking down, tiny bones, chicken bones, dried up

wish bones; and they’re behind glass, displayed, exhibits,

sex-w om en you do it to, they’re all twisted and turned,

deformed, pulled and pushed in all the w rong directions, with

the front facing the back and the back facing the front so you

can see all her sex parts at once, her breasts and her ass and her

vagina, the lips o f her vagina, purple somehow; purple. The

neck’s elongated so you know they can take it there too.

T h ey’re like mules; they carry a pile o f men on top o f them.

T h ey’re like these used-up race horses, you give them lots o f

shots to make them run and if you look at the hide there’s

bound to be whip marks. There’s not one human gesture; not

one. There’s not one woman in the world likes to be hung or

shit on or have her breasts tied up so the rope cuts in and the

flesh bulges out, the rope’s tearing into her, it sinks, burning,

into the fleshy parts, under the rope it’s all cut up and burned

deep, and the tissue’s dying, being broke apart, thinned out

and ripped by pressure and pain. If I saw pictures like that o f a

black man I would cry out for his freedom; I can’t see how it’s

confusing i f you ain’t K . K . K. in which case it still ain’t

confusing; I’d know it was a lie on him; I’d stand on that street

corner forever screaming until m y fucking throat bled to death

from it; he’s not chattel, nor a slave, nor some crawling thing

you put under glass, nor subhuman, nor alien; I would spit on

them that put him there; and them that masturbated to it I

would pillory with stones until I was dragged away and locked

up or they was dead. I f they was lynching him I would feel the

pain; a human; they are destroying someone. And if they put a

knife in him, which I can see them doing, it ain’t beyond them

by no means, they w ouldn’t show him coming from it; and if

they urinated on him he w ouldn’t be smiling. I seen black men

debased in this city, I seen them covered in blood and filth, in

urine and shit, and I never saw one say cheese for a camera or

smiling like it was fun; I didn’t see no one taking sex pictures

either; I m yself do not go through garbage or live on cement to

have an orgasm; be your pet; or live on a leash; I ain’t painted

red or purple; I seen myself; how I was after; on the bed; hurt; I

seen it in m y brain; and I wasn’t no prize in human rights or no

exemplar o f human dignity I would say; as much as I tried in

m y life, I did not succeed. But wasn’t nobody put me under

glass and polished me all up as if I was a specimen o f some

fucked thing, some swollen, painted sex mule. This Linda

girl, with the throat, who tormented her? In the end, it’s

always simple. I paid the dollars to go; to the film; to see it; if it

was true; what they did to her throat; I figured the boy who

did it to me must o f got it from there; because, frankly, I know

the world A to Z ; and no one banged a w om an’s throat before

these current dark days. I smelled bad and I was past being a

whore and they didn’t want me to go in but I had the money

and I’m hard to move, because I’m more intransigent now; on

cement; hungry almost all the time; hates men; an old woman

nearly, hates men; and if you don’t have a soft spot for them,

you don’t have no soft spot. I wanted to see Linda; if she was a

creature or a person; I think they are all persons but you can’t

prove it, it’s a matter o f faith; I have this faith, but there’s no

proof. In the film she’s this nice girl who can’t have an orgasm

so they line up hundreds o f men to fuck her, all around the

block, and they just keep fucking her every which w ay to

Sunday to try to get her to have one and she’s bored which, on

the intellectual plane, would be true; but I fucked that many

men, it’s a w eek’s worth, not one afternoon as they show, and

no one gets an orgasm from such a line o f slime acting as men,

because it will tear you and bruise you inside as well as out and

you will hurt very bad, but she just smiles and acts disappointed; and there’s all this blah blah, talk with a supposed girlfriend, a hard-edged whore, by which I mean she been

used so much already there’s not too much left o f her and it

shows, how they’ve drained her away; and they talk about

how Linda can’t come; and the girlfriend puts a cigarette in her

own vagina and I wanted to reach into the film and take it out;

a burning cigarette in her vagina; but it was another joke; it

was all jokes; the men around the block; the vagina huffing and

puffing on the cigarette so smoke comes out; and the girl

Linda’s got big bruises all over her legs, real big bruises, high

and wide, master bruises, have to be from feet and fists, it ain’t

in the story, no one hit her in the legs in the story but someone

sure beat the hell out o f her all over her fucking legs; I see the

bruises; I feel the pain; I’ve taken such a beating; perhaps,

Linda, we could be friends, you and me, although I’m

unsavory now, perhaps you ain’t no creature at all, just a girl,

another girl, but they caught you and they put you under

glass, in the zoo, yo u ’re a girl they turned the camera on but

they had to beat you to pieces to do it; maybe yo u ’re just some

girl; and then there’s this doctor with a big cock w h o ’s pleased

with him self generally speaking and he finds out she’s got a

clitoris in her throat, the big joke, and that’s w hy she can’t

come from all these other sex acts so he fucks her in the throat

to cure her, he fucks her hard in the throat but slow so you can

see it, the whole distance in and out, the whole big thing, to

the bottom o f her throat; and she don’t seem ripped apart,

she’s smiling, she’s happy, shit, she’s conscious, she’s alive;

think o f it like an iron bar, a place in your throat where there’s