Blood and Guts in High School

by Kathy Acker

  Father: I have to be alone, Janey. If you demand I say anything more, it’ll only be to totally reject you.

  Janey: I have nightmares in my head. Either I fantasize you take me in your arms again and again, telling me you love me. I don’t know whether I can let myself fantasize that because if it isn’t true … Or I have to wipe you out of my mind. There is no more Johnny.

  Father: Why do you have to do that?

  Janey: I have to make a new life for myself! I have to live. I can’t spend all my time thinking about someone who doesn’t love me.

  Father: I don’t know what to say.

  Janey: I don’t know what to think and each nightmare is pulling me backwards and forwards and I can’t stop.

  Father: Don’t let your mind drive you crazy.

  Janey: What can I do? I’m sorry. This isn’t your problem. I’m going to get off the phone now.

  Father (pleading): Look. Don’t keep pushing things. You’re making things worse than they are.

  Janey: How can things be worse?

  Father: You want to know how?

  AND THE MAN:

  Janey called Johnny again because she needed to hear a friendly voice because she was scared.

  (After a long silence.)

  Father (heartily): Hello, how are you?

  Janey (just wanting to hear a friendly voice): I just wanted to say hello.

  Father: Where are you?

  Janey: I’m still in New York City. I haven’t settled down yet.

  Father: I’m really enjoying living alone. I’m happier than I’ve been in months.

  Janey: Oh. (She doesn’t want to feel anything.) That’s wonderful. Who’re you seeing?

  Father: I’m not really seeing anyone. I’m living very quietly. I’m going to stay here till the end of September and then I’ll decide what my plans are. (He wants to say, ‘My plans absolutely don’t include you because you terrorize me’, but he feels guilty about hurting her.) I can’t tell you anything more than that now.

  AND THE MAN:

  Janey (though she wants to keep the conversation light, she’s been programmed to say it): You mean you’re not going to live with me again?

  Father: Right now I just really like opening my door to this apartment and walking into my own space. I’m going to be here through September and then I’ll see what my plans are. I don’t think you should bank on anything.

  Janey: I see. I guess that’s that.

  Father: What do you mean ‘that’s that’?

  Janey: I guess it’s over.

  Father: I don’t know.

  Janey: Oh no? I don’t understand. I just don’t understand.

  Father: I have to be alone.

  Janey: OK. So you’re alone. I’m not stopping you from being alone. I went off to the United States, didn’t? You said, ‘Get away from me,’ and I went to another land. How far around the world do I have to go?

  Father: You were planning to go to the United States.

  Janey: I wouldn’t have gone to the United States when I was as sick as I was.

  Father: You didn’t have to go to the United States ’cause of me.

  Janey: Well, I didn’t know that. You said, ‘Get away’, and I got away. I want to give you what you want. This all doesn’t matter anymore. I’d better go.

  Father: Do you mean you never want to see me again?

  Janey: You said it’s over.

  If the author here lends her ‘culture’ to the amorous subject, in exchange the amorous subject affords her the innocence of its image-repertoire, indifferent to the proprieties of knowledge. Indifferent to the proprieties of knowledge.

  Father: I have to be alone.

  Janey: I understand.

  Father: I have to be alone. You’ve had the same thing. It’s like I’m on a retreat.

  Janey: I’m not protesting against that.

  TURN THE EYES AS IF I SEE SOME HOPE, I think it’s wonderful to be alone. But you don’t know whether you love me anymore.

  Father: That’s true. It’s really heavy, isn’t it? (As if he doesn’t want to believe it’s heavy.)

  Janey: Yeah. It’s heavy. OK (Sighs because she’s made a decision.) If you really want, I wait around as long as you want until you make a decision.

  Father: I had to get away. I felt trapped.

  Janey: Well, you’re not trapped anymore. You’ve got everything the way you want it. There’s no need to explain anything anymore. (She’s still crying.) Whenever you make your decision, just tell me.

  Father: If you need any money, Janey, you can rely on me.

  Janey: What do you mean by that?

  Father: If you want me to help you out monetarily, I will.

  Janey (now that she’s made her decision, her emotions are gone): You can’t just say that. I have to stay alive. I can’t do anything about the emotional … but I can keep myself alive physically. What do you mean by MONEY? I’m sorry I’m being so crude. I have to stay alive.

  Father: I’ll pay your rent wherever you are.

  Janey: OK. I’ll wait for you and you’ll pay the rent. You’ll have to give me a month’s notice if you’re going to stop paying it. I just have to know. Is that OK?

  Father: Listen, Janey, will you take care of yourself?

  Janey: IS THAT OK? I’m sorry it might not be important to you how I stay alive, but it’s important to me.

  Father (evading): I’ll help you out however I can.

  Janey: I’m sorry I’m being so hard (she thinks she’s really being a little bitch) but I have to figure out how I’m going to live. I don’t want to make a thing of it, but I’m still sick. (She thinks she’s going to die.) The phone call hasn’t really gotten bad yet.

  It starts off slow, stagnant.

  Father (obsessed with trying to explain to Janey he doesn’t want her anymore. Trying to show her as little affection as possible): Our relationship just got too entangled. If anything is ever going to work out between us, it’ll have to work out while we’re living separately.

  Janey: I said I’d wait here for you.

  Father: I’ve been thinking everything over and I see that we were always out of phase with each other.

  Janey: I know. I was very selfish.

  Father: I don’t hate you. I just dwell on how good things were between us.

  Janey: It’s funny. We always had this fantasy that you were the one who was madly in love, but now it turns out I’m the one.

  The energy rising

  Father: Why don’t you just dwell on the memories of how good things were?

  Janey: What? Now you want me to live in the past? That’s too much to ask of me. You can’t ask that. Oh God is there no end to pain? I’ll do anything, anything, but Jesus Christ!

  Father: I want you to know there’s very little hope.

  Janey: I got the message, Johnny.

  Father: I just don’t want to give you any false impressions.

  Full pain

  Janey: You’ve made your point. (Howls.) I’d better get off the phone now.

  Father: We have to talk together. I can’t talk to you over this phone.

  Janey: I can’t talk either.

  Father: Maybe you’d better come home.

  Janey: You want me to come home? I’ll be home as soon as possible.

  Janey: I’m calling to tell you I can’t come home from New York City ’cause I’m too sick. I have to rest here a few days to get my strength back and then I’ll come home as soon as possible. New York is a very hard city to live in.

  TURN MY EYES INSANE, WHILE BEING CORRUPTS ITSELF, AS A POOL OF SHAME, IN THAT HOPE.

  Father: You don’t have to come home ’cause of me, Janey.

  TURN MY EYES INSANE

  Janey: I thought you said you wanted me home.

  Father: I just said that for your sake. I thought you were freaking out.

  Janey: Oh. Well, I won’t be coming home soon.

  Father: You should enjoy your vacation.

  Janey: I a
m. I hate the Americans, but there are lots of French and German tourists here and they’re all wonderful. (Gossips about them.)

  Father: I wanted to apologize about how I’ve been acting. I think I’ve been too mean.

  Janey: Oh, I decided you were a UBH.

  Father: What’s that? (Laughing.)

  Janey (laughing): An Unnecessarily Brutal Horror.

  Father: Well, I was confused.

  Janey: And I decided I’d sue you for a thousand American dollars for child abuse.

  Father: I see your mind’s thinking up lots of schemes. (They both laugh.) We should make this phone call short. These phone calls have been costing me a fortune.

  Janey: I just called you ’cause I had to give you that message. I won’t call you again. By the way, if you want to come here and stay with me, I’ll pay for it somehow ….

  Father: I’m alone right now.

  Janey: Well, goodbye.

  Father: I never know how to say goodbye.

  Janey: We never do, do we? Just say, ‘Goodbye.’

  Father: Take care of yourself, Janey.

  Janey: Goodbye.

  PLEASE

  ME NO LONGER MYSELF

  Mr Smith puts Janey in school in New York City to make sure she doesn’t return to Merida.

  Excerpt from Janey’s diary:

  The scorpions

  I was running around with a wild bunch of kids and I was scared. We were part of THE SCORPIONS.

  Daddy no longer loved me. That was it.

  I was desperate to find the love he had taken away from me.

  My friends were just like me. They were desperate – the products of broken families, poverty – and they were trying everything to escape their misery.

  Despite the restrictions of school, we did exactly what we wanted and it was good. We got drunk. We used drugs. We fucked. We hurt each other sexually as much as we could. The speed, emotional overload, and pain every now and then dulled our brains. Demented our perceptual apparatus.

  We knew we couldn’t change the shit we were living in so we were trying to change ourselves.

  I hated myself. I did everything I could to hurt myself.

  I don’t remember who I fucked the first time I fucked, but I must have known nothing about birth control ’cause I got pregnant. I do remember my abortion. One-hundred-ninety dollars.

  I walked into this large white room. There must have been fifty other girls. A few teenagers and two or three women in their forties. Women lined up. Women in chairs nodding out. A few women had their boy-friends with them. They were lucky, I thought. Most of us were alone. The women in my line were handed long business forms: at the end of each form was a paragraph that stated she gave the doctor the right to do whatever he wanted and if she ended up dead, it wasn’t his fault. We had given ourselves up to men before. That’s why we were here. All of us signed everything. Then they took our money.

  My factory line was ushered into a pale green room. In the large white room fifty more girls started to sign forms and give up their one-hundred-ninety stolen, begged-for, and borrowed dollars.

  In a small orange room they explained an egg drops down from the ovaries and, when the cock enters this canal called THE UTERUS, it leaves millions of, I don’t remember how many, sperm. If just one sperm out of all these sperms meets the dropping egg, the female (me and you) is in a lot of trouble. A female can use any of the many methods of birth control, all of which don’t work or deform.

  It’s all up to you girls. You have to be strong. Shape up. You’re a modern woman. These are the days of post-women’s liberation. Well, what are you going to do? You’ve grown up by now and you have to take care of yourself. No one’s going to help you. You’re the only one.

  Well, I couldn’t help it, I just LOVE to fuck, he was SO cute, it was worth it.

  We girls knew everything there was to know without having to say a word and we knew we had put ourselves here and we were all in this together.

  An abortion is a simple procedure. It is almost painless. Even if it isn’t painless, it takes only five minutes. If you MUST have it, weak, stupid things that you are, we can put you to sleep.

  The orange walls were thick enough to stifle the screams pouring out of the operating room. Having an abortion was obviously just like getting fucked. If we closed our eyes and spread our legs, we’d be taken care of. They stripped us of our clothes. Gave us white sheets to cover our nakedness. Led us back to the pale green room. I love it when men take care of me.

  I remember a tiny blonde, even younger than me. I guess it must have been the first time she had ever been fucked. She couldn’t say anything. Whether she wanted a local or not. A LOCAL means a local anaesthetic. They stick large hypodermics filled with novocaine in your cunt lips and don’t numb where it hurts at all. A general anaesthetic costs fifty dollars more and fills you up with synthetic morphine and truth serum. All of us gathered around her, held her hands, and stroked her legs. Gradually she began to calm down. There was nothing else to do. We had to wait while each one of us went through it. Finally they came for her.

  She was the believing kind. She had believed them when they said a local wouldn’t hurt. They were taking the locals first.

  I’ll never forget her face when she came out. She couldn’t have come out of her mommy’s cunt any more stunned. Her face was dead white and her eyes were fish-wide open.

  ‘I made a mistake. Don’t do it. Don’t do anything they tell you to.’

  Before she could say more, they wheeled her away.

  I got to like that pale green room, the women who were more scared than I was so I could comfort them, the feeling someone was taking care of me. I felt more secure there than in the outside world. I wanted a permanent abortion.

  They strapped my ankles and wrists to this black slab. When I asked the huge blonde anaesthesia nurse if there was any chance I’d react badly to the anaesthesia, she told the other huge blonde nurse I was a health food freak. After that I didn’t ask them anything and I did exactly what they told me.

  An hour later a big hand shook me and told me it was time to go. Girls were lying all around me, half-dead. Blood was coming out between my legs. Another nurse gave me a piece of Kotex, half-a-cup of coffee, my clothes, twenty penicillin pills, and told me to get out. I didn’t get to talk to any of the other girls again.

  Penelope Mowlard was the creepiest girl in my class. Her skin was green. She was stupid. She didn’t know how to kiss. She was gangly. She was an idiot. Her face was scrunched-up, covered with snot, partly eyeless, and her hair was full of puke.

  Miss Richard’s was a school for nice well-bred girls. We knew better than to get visibly in trouble. For months Penelope wandered through the classrooms and hallways with a larger and larger stomach. She was too stupid to know what was going on. The teachers didn’t tell ’cause they were scared or mean dykes. We didn’t tell her ’cause it was fun to make her suffer.

  Early one morning the janitor, an old man, found a bloody bundle in the bottom of one of the basement garbage cans. Later that day we saw Penelope’s stomach had disappeared. The principal couldn’t suspend her ’cause she had to do everything she could to prevent scandal.

  I couldn’t figure out what birth control method to use. Foams and diaphragm creams tasted so bad every time I got the chance to feel a tongue on my cunt, I chose the tongue. An IUD made me bleed and get PID again. There was a druggist in Harlem who’d slip me some pills every other month if I’d give him a blow job under the counter, but once every other month isn’t enough. All the boys I fucked refused to use condoms.

  I decided that if I got pregnant again, I’d stick a broken hanger up my cunt. I didn’t care if I died as long as the baby died. Then I heard a story about a woman, I think it’s true, who was so desperate to kill her baby she chained flatirons around her arms, legs, and stomach and threw herself down three flights of stairs. Even though almost every bone in her body broke, her baby didn’t die and she gave birth
in traction.

  I was still desperate to fuck. Abortions make it dangerous to fuck again because they stretch out the opening of the womb so the sperm can reach the egg real easily. They upset the hormonal system: the hormones send out many more eggs to compensate. They leave gaping holes in the womb and any foreign object that nears these holes can cause infection.

  I’m not trying to tell you about the rotgut weird parts of my life. Abortions are the symbol, the outer image, of sexual relations in this world. Describing my abortions is the only real way I can tell you about pain and fear … my unstoppable drive for sexual love made me know.

  My second abortion took place two months after my first abortion.

  It cost fifty dollars because it was a menstrual extraction. The differences between a menstrual extraction and an abortion are:

  In a menstrual extraction the doctor doesn’t dilate the cervix. The baby is still too small.

  Since the doctor may or may not find the baby, menstrual extractions can be dangerous and are illegal.

  Most of the doctors who perform menstrual extractions are not certified MDs.

  The minute I entered the office, they doped me up with Valium.

  The factory line was shorter.

  I actually saw the doctor.

  He was the only doctor there.

  He killed 32 to 48 babies and netted 1,600 to 2,400 dollars a day.

  He stuck his hand up my cunt and told me I was OK.

  He stuck a little needle in my arm and tried to be nice to me.

  A week after my second abortion I came down with a case of PID. When I called up the doctor to complain, he said it wasn’t his fault and he had never heard of me.

  I didn’t know how much these abortions hurt me physically and mentally. I was desperate to fuck more and more so I could finally get love. Soon my total being was on fire, not just my sex, and I was doing everything to make the non-sexual equivalent of love happen.

  The rest of THE SCORPIONS were growing the same way I was.

  We started out making trouble. Early one morning we rode in a stolen van into a Connecticut town and busted into a hardware store. We threw everything in the store out of the door.