Mercy (93 page)

anarchist from a long time ago and I never thought I’d bow

down in front o f any fucking flag but I do, in perfect silence

and sym m etry insofar as my awkward self can manage it; my

mind’s like a muscle that pulls every time; I feel it jerk and I feel

the dislocation and the pain and I keep m oving, until I am on

m y knees in front o f the fucking thing. It’s interesting to think

o f the difference between a flag and a dick, because this is not a

new position; with a dick how you get there doesn’t count

whereas in the dojo all that matters is the elegance, the grace,

o f the movement, the strength o f the muscles that carry you

down; an act o f reverence will eventually, says Sensei, teach

you self-respect, which wasn’t the issue with the dick, as I

remember. There’s an actual altar. It has on it the Korean flag,

a picture o f Sensei, and some dried flowers. When I was a child

I had a huge picture o f Rock Hudson up on the door in m y tiny

bedroom, on the back o f the door so I would see it when I was

alone, as if he was there, physically present with me, because

the picture was so big and real and detailed, o f a real face; I put

it up with Scotch tape and kissed it good-night, a mixture o f

heat and loneliness; not quite as I would kiss m y mother if I

could but with the same intensity I wanted from her, as if she

could hold me enough, or love me enough, or rock me

forever; I never understood w hy you couldn’t just bury

yourself in someone’s arms and kiss until you died; just live

there, embraced, warm and wet and touched all over. Instead

there was this photo I cut out o f a magazine, and a lonely bed in

a lonely house, with mother gone, sick, and father gone, to

pay doctors. I built up all the love there was in the world out o f

those lonely nights and when I left home I wasn’t afraid ever to

touch or be touched and I never abandoned faith that it was

everything and enough, a thousand percent whole, perfect and

sensual and true. I thought we were the same, everyone. I

thought Rock could hold me; hold me; as if he were my

mother, against his breast. O f course, I also liked Tab

Hunter’s “ Red Sails in the Sunset” ; and Tab Hunter. I was

indiscriminate even then but it was an optimism and I never

understood that there was a difference with men, they didn’t

take the oceanic view; they didn’t want whole, just pieces. I

thought it would be a small bed like mine, simple, poor, and

w e’d be on our sides facing each other, the same, and w e’d ride

the long waves o f feeling as if we all were one, the waves and

us, w e’d be drenched in heat and sweat, no boundaries, no

time, and w e’d hold on, hold on, through the great convulsions that made you cry out, and time would be obliterated by

feeling, as it is. Facing each other and touching we could get

old and die; then or later; because there’s only now; it didn’t

matter who, only how it felt, and that it was whole and real

past any other high or any other truth; I wanted feeling to

obliterate me and love to annihilate me; don’t ever make a

wish. There weren’t religious icons in a Jew ish house; only

movie stars. Sensei says it’s paying respect to her karate

tradition to kneel down in front o f the Korean flag and her

picture on the altar but I always wonder what the Koreans

would think about it; if they’d like a woman elevating herself

so high. She’s not really a woman, though; and maybe they

saw the difference and gave her permission, because she’s got a

male teacher, a karate master, a blackbelt killer as it were, and

he w ouldn’t brook no vanity. If she were a girl per se she

couldn’t be so square and fixed, so physically dense, as if

there’s more o f her per square inch than any other female on

the planet, because anatomically she’s female, I’m sure,

although it
seems
impossible. She’s like a thousand pounds o f

iron instead o f a hundred pounds o f some petite, cute girl. You

expect lethal weapons to be big, six feet or more, towering,

overpoweringly high, casting long, terrifying shadows, with

muscles as big as bowling balls; so you notice she’s small and

you can’t figure out how she got the w ay she is except that

once she must have been a real girl, even in dresses, and so

maybe you could stop being so curved and soft and flimsy.

Each inch o f her uses up the space she’s in, introducing weight

where once there was air; she dislocates space, displaces it, it

moves and she takes over, she occupies the ground, as if she

was infantry with a bayonet and the right to kill. She’s nothing

like a girl. For instance, her shoulders are square, they take up

space, they are substantial and she don’t make them round or

underplay them or slump them, they don’t look soft as if you

could just walk up to her or in a conversation put your arm

around her, everything’s an edge or a hammer, not a curve.

She reigns, imperial; butch, m y dear, but transcending the

domain o f a bar stool, it ain’t role playing, or a pretense, or a

masquerade; if she were a girl she’d be a little doll; petite; and

there’d be a bigger male one whose shadow would fall on her

and bury her alive. She’d live small in perpetual darkness next

to him. Instead, she’s a certifiable Korean nationalist with an

altar and a flag who considers a hundred sit-ups an insubstantial beginning, foreplay but, in the male mode, barely

counting, and she don’t care about the pain. I m yself pretend

it’s coming from a man, because I know if he was on top o f me

I w ouldn’t stop; so I try to keep going by turning it into him on

me; you fuck w ay past pain when a man’s fucking you blind. I

can do maybe fifteen; I put him on top o f me and I get near

thirty, maybe twenty-eight; I put him in the corner o f the

room laughing and I get to thirty-five; after that, Sensei just

keeps you m oving and you don’t get to stop even if actually

you think your heart is contracting along with your abdomen

and it will convulse and cease, still you move, and she sees

everything, including if you hesitate for half a second or stay

still for half a second, or try to rest halfw ay between up and

down because you think she can’t see the difference but she

sees the molecules in the air and if they ain’t m oving you ain’t

m oving and her eyes nail you and she’s firm and hard; finally,

she will say your name to humiliate you; or assign you thirty

more; and so you keep m oving, the muscles are cramped, all

twisted up inside, swollen and twisted and convulsing, and

your heart’s collapsed into your stomach or your stomach into

your heart and there’s only a bed o f pain in the middle o f you

that moves, it moves, a half inch o f space over a period o f

minutes while the others have done five whole sit-ups, six,

seven, and you feel stupid and weak and cowardly but you

m ove the teeny, tiny smidgen, you keep m oving, you bounce

yourself, you use your breath, anything you can get to make

you m ove so it looks like yo u ’re m oving, and the muscles are

stuck stiff with pain, swelling in hardened cement, but you

m ove; barely, but you move; and o f course with m y intellect I

try to see i f she’s getting o ff on it because if she is that lets me

o ff the hook, I can walk out self-righteous because she ain’t no

better than I am, she’s just the other side o f m y coin, m y