Mercy

by Andrea Dworkin

  less honorable to who I did it to; it was new to pick me over

  them. I just knew I’d live longer stealing than fucking. O f

  course I stole from the weak; who doesn’t? I had thought

  fucking for money was stealing from the strong but it only

  robbed me, although I can’t say o f what, because there’s more

  wordlessness there, more what’s never been said; I’m not

  formulated enough to get at it. I had a dog someone dumped

  on me saying they were going to have it killed. It was so fine;

  you can weave affirmation back, there can be a sudden miracle

  o f happiness; m y dog was a smiling, happy creature; I thought

  o f her as the quintessential all-Amerikan, someone w holly

  extroverted with no haunted insides, just this cheerful, big,

  brilliant creature filled with licks and bounces; and I loved

  what made her happy, a stick, a stone, I mean, things I could

  actually provide. I think making her happy was m y happiest

  time on earth. She was big, she bounced, she was brown and

  black, she was a German shepherd, and she didn’t have any

  meanness in her, just play, just jum p, just this jo y . She didn’t

  have a streak o f savagery. If there was a cockroach in the

  apartment, a small one because we didn’t have the monsters,

  she’d stand up over it and she’d study it awhile and then she’d

  pick it up in her mouth and she’d carry it to her corner o f the

  room and she’d put it down and sit on top o f it. She’d be proud

  and she’d sit with her head held high while the awful little

  thing would crawl out from under her and get lost in some

  crack in the wall. Y ou ever seen a proud dog? They have this

  look o f pride that could break your heart like they done

  something for you the equivalent o f getting you out from

  under an avalanche and they are asking nothing in return, just

  that you look at the aquiline dignity o f their snouts. I got to say

  I loved her more than m y heart could bear and w e’d go on

  walks and to the park but the park near me was full o f broken

  glass and winos and junkies and I was afraid for her, that she’d

  hurt her feet. Y o u couldn’t really let her run or anything. She

  ate a lot, and I didn’t, but I felt she had certain rights, because

  she depended on me or someone, she had to; so I felt I had to

  feed her and I felt I had to have enough m oney and I felt her life

  was in m y hands and I felt her life was important and I felt she

  was the nicest, most kind creature I ever knew. She’d sit with

  me and watch the door when the locks fell apart but she didn’t

  grasp it and I couldn’t count on her sense o f danger, because it

  w asn’t attuned to the realities o f a w om an’s life. Someone

  might be afraid o f her or not. Someone might hurt her. I’d die

  i f they hurted her. I’d probably have throwed m yself on her to

  protect her. I ju st couldn’t bear the thought o f someone

  hurting her. Her name was Gringo, because the man who had

  her and who named her w asn’t a fine, upstanding citizen, he

  was degenerate, and I was afraid he would hurt her, and I was

  afraid she would die, and I think there is nothing worse than

  knowing an animal is being hurt, except for a child, for which

  I thank God I don’t have one, even though my husband would

  have taken it away from me, I know. If something’s in your

  charge and it must love you then for something cruel to

  happen to it must shatter your heart into pieces, by which I

  mean the pain is real and it is not made better by time because

  the creature was innocent and you are not; or I am not. I kept her

  fine. I kept her safe. I kept her sleek and beautiful and without

  any sores or any illnesses or any bad things on her skin or any

  marks; I kept her gleaming and proud and fine and fed; I kept

  her healthy and I kept her strong and I kept her happy; and she

  loved me, she did. It was a little beyond an ignorant love, I

  truly believe. She knew me by my reverence for her; I was the

  one that lit up inside every time my eyes beheld her. I never

  could train her to do anything but sit; usually I said sit a second

  after she had done it, for my own self-respect; and she pulled

  me about one hundred miles an hour down the street; I loved

  her exuberance and could not condemn it as bad behavior; I

  loved that she was sweet and extrovert and unhaunted and I

  didn’t want any shadows forming on her mind from me

  shouting or pulling or being an asshole in general; I couldn’t

  romp but my heart jum ped when she bounced and wagged

  and waved and flew like some giant sparrow heading toward

  spring; and I counted on the respect pricks have for big dogs to

  keep me safe but it didn’t always, there was always ones that

  wanted to fight because she was big, because they thought she

  was more male than them, bigger than them, stronger than

  them, especially drunks or mean men, and there was men in

  the park with bigger dogs who wanted their dogs to hurt her

  or fight with her or mount her or bite her or scare her or who

  made me m ove by threatening to set their dog on her to show

  their dog was bigger or meaner or to make me move because I

  was gash according to them and they was men. It’s simple and

  always the same. I moved with a deep sense o f being wronged.

  I shouldn’t have had to m ove but I couldn’t risk them hurting

  her— more real life with a girl and her dog who are hurting no

  one. The toilet was too small to take her into and I couldn’t

  leave her loose in the hall because some man upstairs, a

  completely sour person, hated her and kept threatening to call

  all these different city agencies with cops for animals that

  would take her away; but probably I w ouldn’t have left her

  there anyw ay because I’d be afraid something unexpected

  would happen and she’d be helpless; so she had to stay in the

  apartment when I went to the toilet and I locked the door to

  protect her. It’s unimaginable, how much I loved her. She was

  so deep in m y heart I w ould’ve died for her, to keep her safe.

  E very single piece o f love I had left in me was love for her;

  except for revolutionary love. Y o u become the guardian o f a

  creature and it becomes your soul and it brings jo y back to

  you, as i f you was pure and young and there was nothing

  rough or mean and you had tom orrow, really. She made me

  happy by being happy and she loved me, a perfect love, and I

  was necessary, beyond the impersonal demands o f the revolution per se. I had always admired the Black Panthers, with a

  certain amount o f skepticism, because I been on the streets

  they walked and there’s no saints there, M ao’s long march

  didn’t go through Camden or Oakland or Detroit or Chicago.

  I didn’t get close with Huey until I saw a certain picture. I think

  it will be in m y brain until I die. I had admired him; how he

  created a certain political reality; how he stood up to police

  violence, how he faced them down, then the Survival

  Program , free food for children, free shoes,
some health care,

  teaching reading and writing; it was real brilliant; and he ju st

  didn’t die, I mean, you fucking could not kill him, and I

  admire them that will not die. I knew he had run wom en but I

  also been low ; I couldn’t hold it against him; I couldn’t hold

  anything against him, really, because it’s rough to stay alive

  and reach for dignity at the same time; you can fucking feed

  children on top o f that and you got my respect. I stayed aloof,

  also because I wasn’t some liberal white girl, middle-class by

  skin, I had to take his measure and I couldn’t do it through

  public perceptions or media or propaganda or the persona that

  floated through the air waves. I saw him do fucking brilliant

  things; I mean, you got to know how hard it is to do fucking

  anything; and I saw him survive shootings, the police were

  trying to assassinate him, no doubt; and I saw him transcend it;

  and I saw him build, not just carry a fucking gun. Then there’s

  this picture. H e’s been shot by the police and he’s cuffed to a

  gum ey in an emergency room at Kaiser Hospital, October

  1967. His chest is bare and raised; it’s raised because his arms

  are cuffed to the legs o f the gurney, pulled back towards his

  head; he’s wounded but they pulled his arms back so his chest

  couldn’t rest on the gurney, so he’s stretched by the manacles,

  his chest is sticking up because o f the strain caused by how his

  arms are pulled back and restrained, it would hurt anyone, I

  have been tied that way, it hurts, you don’t need a bullet in you

  for it to give you pain, there’s a white cop in front o f him, fully

  dressed, fully armed, looking with surprise at the camera, and

  there’s this look on H uey’s face, half smile, half pain, defiant,

  his eyes are open, he ain’t going to close them and he ain’t

  going to die and he ain’t going to beg and he ain’t going to give

  in and he ain’t thinking o f cutting his losses and he ain’t no

  slobbering, frightened fool, and behind him there’s a white

  nurse doing something and a sign that says “ D irty Needles

  And Syringes O n ly, ” and she ain’t looking at him at all, even

  though he’s right next to her, right against her side almost. I

  have been cuffed that way, physically restrained. I have been

  lying there. I have memories when I see this picture, I see m y

  life in some o f its aspects, I see a hundred thousand porn

  magazines too in which the woman, some woman, is cuffed

  the same way, and the cop is or isn’t in the photograph, and the

  cuffed woman is white or black, and I see on H uey’s face a

  defiance I have never seen on her face or on m y own, not that I

  have seen mine but I know what the photo would show, a

  vapid pain, a blank, hooded stare, eyes that been dead a long,

  long time, eyes that never stared back let alone said fuck you. I

  see that he is defiant and that the cop is scared and that the cop

  has not won. I see that even though H uey’s chest is raised

  because his arms are stretched back and he is cuffed there is

  pride in that raised chest. I see that his eyes are open and I see

  that there is a clearness in his eyes, a willfulness, they are not

  fogged or doped or droopy. I see that he is looking directly at

  the camera, he’s saying I am here, this is me, I am, and the

  camera can’t take his picture without making his statement. I

  see that there is no look o f shame or coyness on his face, he

  ain’t saying fuck me. I see that his nakedness is different from

  mine, that his pride is unknown to me. I see that the cop and

  the nurse are barely existing and that Huey is vivid and real and

  alive, he’s jum ping o ff the page and they are robots, ciphers,

  automatons, functionaries, he’s bursting with defiance, the

  raised chest, however painful, is bursting with pride. I wonder

  if anyone would ever jerk o ff to the picture; you know, black

  boy in chains; but I don’t believe they would, I don’t, he’s

  nobody’s piece o f meat, his eyes w ouldn’t let you and yo u ’d

  w orry what he’d do when he’s uncuffed later, his eyes would

  see you and he’d come to get you and yo u ’d know it in your

  heart and in your hand. H e’s oppressed. He didn’t learn to read

  really until he was eighteen. H e’s been low ; he knows. H e’s

  put together a grassroots organization that’s defying the cops;

  he’s made it international in scope, in reach, in importance.

  H e’s poor. He was born socially invisible but darling look at

  him now; manacled on that gurney he is fully vivid and alive

  and the white nurse and the white cop are sim ply factotums o f

  power with nothing that is their ow n; the life’s with him.

  They got nothing that does express lam whereas Huey, shot,

  manacled, naked down to his waist, says lam with his strange,

  proud smile that shows the pain and his clear, wide-open eyes

  that don’t look away but look right through you, they see you

  front to back; and I’ve been on that bed, it’s the bed o f the

  oppressed, the same cuffs, the same physical pain, as bad, I

  think as bad, the same jeopardy, I have been on that bed; and

  they want him to give in and fade away and yet he has endured

  and in the picture he is declaring that he will endure, it is in

  every aspect o f his demeanor and the camera shows it, he’s

  wounded but he’s not afraid, he’s manacled but he’s not

  surrendering; he ain’t fucked; he just ain’t fucked; there’s no

  other w ay to say it. Even if he’s been fucked in his life, by

  which I mean literally, because I don’t know what he’s done or

  not done and there’s not too many strangers to being fucked

  on the street, he ain’t been fucked; it ain’t what he is. I love him

  for it. I fucking love him for it. He’s spectacular and there is a

  deep humanism in him that expresses itself precisely in

  surviving, not going under, standing up; even tied down, he’s

  standing up; and he’s gone beyond the first steps, the original

  Black Panther idea that had to do with arming against police

  violence, now he’s an apostle o f social equality and he is

  fucking feeding the children; he’s been physically hurt and he’s

  been laid out on the bed o f pain and his idea o f what’s human

  has gotten broader and kinder and more inclusive, and that’s

  revolutionary love, and I know it, and I got it, and while

  there’s many reasons he can’t trust me, nor me him, we have

  been on the same bed o f pain, cuffed, and I didn’t have his

  pride, and I need him to teach me; I need to learn it— defiance,

  the kind a bullet can’t stop. I don’t know i f he’s kind to women

  or not and it worries me but I put it aside because there’s what I

  know about that bed o f pain he’s cuffed to; I think I’m

  annihilated inside by it; I think I’m shot to hell inside, with

  nothing but gangrene everywhere there was a wound; I see, I

  feel, an inner collapse that comes from the humiliation o f how

  they do you on the bed o f pain; bang bang. I tel
l him I know

  the man; but I don’t know if he knows what I mean. I know

  the man. He acts to me with respect as if he grasps m y

  meaning. I am trying to say, without saying, that the man

  fucked me too; but I don’t know how to say I became it and he

  didn’t and now I’m refusing to be it or I’m in the process and

  that there’s profound injustice in making someone it, in

  crushing them down so their insides are fucked in perpetuity. I

  die for men to admire, from a stance o f parity; I admire Huey; I

  am struggling for parity, what I see as his revolutionary

  dignity and self-definition, his bravery— not in defying

  authority, I been through that, but in upending the reality that

  said what he was and what was on top o f him. He sends me

  poems and m axims, and I am thinking whether to send him

  some. I love him. I think maybe he could be for women. In

  some speeches he says so. He says men have been arrogant

  over women and there’s new freedoms women need to have.

  During the days I type for four dollars an hour, which means

  that if I am prepared to go ape-shit or stir crazy I could

  certainly make up to thirty-two dollars a day, on some days;

  but I can only stand to do it four hours or maybe three, and I

  really couldn’t stand to do it every day, although I have tried to

  for the money, I have tried; if I could do three hours every day

  I would be fine, unless something happened. It’s just that I do

  it and I do it and I do it and not much time has elapsed it turns

  out and I get bored and restless as if m y mind is physically

  lifting itself out o f m y head and hitting the walls like some

  trapped fly. I feel a profound distaste for it, sitting there and

  doing this stupid shit. I feel a bitterness, almost guilt or

  remorse, it’s unbearable in the minute or at that time as if I’m

  betraying being alive, there’s too much m oving in me and I

  cannot fucking waste it in this chickenshit way. It’s not a

  matter o f having an idea o f a picture o f life, or taking exception

  to the idea o f typing or being a secretary or doing something o f

  the sort, I don’t have some prior idea o f how I should be or