Ice And Fire

by Andrea Dworkin

  she can do without them. I never ask. These are privacies I

  respect. I have my own dignity too. I pretend it is cheaper than

  food.

  One night N brings home a fuck, a Leo named Leo. He

  steals our speed and all our cash. The speed is gone. I go into

  emergency gear. I pretend it is a joke. How the fuck, I ask her

  repeatedly, can anyone be stupid enough to fuck someone who

  says he is a Leo named Leo? I ask this question, tell this joke,

  many times. I am scared. We find a trick. She fucks him because

  42-

  she lost the pills. It is our code and her own personal sense of

  courtesy. We get the pills. A Leo named Leo, I say. How can

  anyone be so stupid? We pop the pills. A Leo named Leo. We

  sit in our middle room, she is drinking scotch and I am drinking

  vodka, we are momentarily flush: and the pills hit. A Leo

  named Leo. We laugh until we start to cry. We hold our guts

  and shake. A Leo named Leo. She grins from ear to ear. She

  has done something incredibly witty: fucked a Leo named Leo.

  We are incredibly delighted with her.

  *

  Walking down St Mark’s Place I run into an old lover, Nikko. He

  is Greek. I love Greece. We say hello, how are you in Greek. It is

  hot. I take him back with me. N is not there. We have a fight. I am

  insulted because he wants to wear a condom. But women are

  dirty, he says as a point of fact. I am offended. I won’t allow the

  condom. We fight. He hits me hard in the face several times. He

  hits me until I fall. He fucks me. He leaves. It is two weeks before

  I remember that this is what happened last time. Last winter.

  Women carry diseases, he said. No condoms, I said. He hit me

  several times, hard in the face, holding me up so he could keep

  hitting. He fucked me and left. I had another lover coming, a

  woman I had been waiting for weeks to see, married, hard to see.

  I picked myself up and forgot about him. She was shameless: she

  liked the bruises, the fresh semen. He didn’t use the condom.

  Either time.

  *

  We proceed with our film project. We are intensely committed

  to it, for the sake of art. The politics of it is mine, a hidden

  smile behind my eyes. We call a famous avant-garde film critic.

  He says he will come to see us at midnight. At midnight he

  comes. We sit in the front room, huddled on the floor. He is

  delicate, soft-spoken, a saintly smile: he likes formal, empty

  filmic statements not burdened by content: our film is some

  baroque monster in his presence, overgrown with values and

  story and plot and drama. It will never have this appearance

  again. Despite his differences with us— aesthetic, formal,

  ethereal— he will publish an interview with us to help us raise

  money. We feel lifted up, overwhelmed with recognition: what

  he must see in us to do this for us, a pure fire. We wait for the

  other shoe to drop.

  43

  But he sits there, beatific. We can interview each other and

  send it to him along with photographs of us. He drinks our

  pathetic iced tea. He smiles. No shoe drops. He leaves.

  The next days we spend in a frenzy of aesthetic busywork.

  We take pencils in hand and plot out long, interesting conversations about art. We try to document an interesting, convoluted discussion of film. We discuss Godard at some length and write

  down for posterity our important criticisms of him. We are

  brassy, hip, radical, cool. We haunt the photo machines at

  Woolworth’s, taking artistic pictures of ourselves, four poses

  for four quarters. We use up all our change. We hustle more.

  Excuse me, sir, but someone just stole my money and I don’t

  have a subway token to get home with. Excuse me, sir, I am

  very hungry and can’t you spare a quarter so I can get some

  food. Excuse me, sir, I just lost my wallet and I don’t have bus

  fare home.

  Then we go back to the machine and pose and look intense

  and avant-garde. We mess up our hair and sulk, or we try

  grinning, we stare into the hidden camera, looking intense,

  looking deep, looking sulky and sultry and on drugs.

  We write down some more thoughts on art. We pick the

  photos we want. We hustle for money for stamps. Excuse me,

  sir, my child is sick and I don’t have any money to buy her

  medicine.

  The critic prints our interview. He doesn’t print our

  photographs. We are famous. Our thoughts on film and

  art are in the newspaper. We wait for people to send us

  money.

  *

  We run back and forth from our storefront to Woolworth’s as

  we get the money to take more photos. We run back and forth

  as we add pages and pages to our interview with each other. I

  sit at the typewriter ponderously. This is an important project.

  We run back and forth each time we think of something new

  to add: a new pose to try, a new sentence to write down, a

  new topic to explore, a new intensely artistic sulk or pout. We

  make feverish notes in Woolworth’s and run home to type them

  up. On one trip a policeman follows us. He walks half a block

  behind us, keeping us in sight. We go faster, go slower, he stays

  half a block behind us. Girls, he calls finally, girls. We wait.

  44

  He catches up. There is a silence. Did you know, girls, that

  about half an hour ago you crossed the street against a red

  light? We are properly stunned, truly stunned, silent and

  attentive. I have to write you girls a ticket but listen I don’t

  want to be too hard on you, I don’t want to give you a

  record or anything so why don’t I write it just for one of

  you. The three of us decide he will give the ticket to N since

  the apartment is not in her name. He slowly, soberly, prints

  her name out in big block letters. Now listen girls you be

  careful next time I don’t want to have to do this again you

  hear. We stand there, dazed and acquiescent. We walk on

  slowly, once we are sure he is really gone. We look over our

  shoulders. Is he still there or was he really there? N has a

  ticket for jaywalking in her hand. Between us right then we

  have a dozen tabs of acid and a bag of marijuana and some

  loose joints. We have no money for food so we have been

  living on speed and alcohol. We have the speed on us, in a

  prescription bottle but you would have to be a fool to believe

  it. We are hungry and as soon as we mail off our interview

  we know we are going to have to find a fuck. We are stoned

  beyond all imagining, and yet of course intensely serious

  about art. Still, in the scheme of things, jaywalking is not

  a good thing to do. We can see that now, once we think

  about it. We think about it now quite a lot, rolling along the

  city streets in the burning heat, our sides splitting with

  laughter. We are dazzled with the universe and its sense of

  humor. We are dazzled too by its generosity: we are left to

  pursue art: we are not carted off, dangerous criminals,

  drowning in drugs. We are artists, not riffraff. We are scared,

 
the cop’s breath still hot on our silly necks. Hungry, we find

  a fuck, a safe one, N ’s girlfriend, to whom we recount our

  uproarious adventure, stressing our triumphant escape. She

  feeds us, just barely pretending to be amused. I leave them

  alone. N pays for the meal.

  *

  Poor R ’s apartment is tiny and dark, on the first floor of a

  brown brick building in a Mafia neighborhood. Italian rings

  out around us: is it apocryphal or are stolen bicycles really

  returned? R says it is true. She says she is safe here. Every

  window is covered in layers of metal. It is dark, but it is the

  45

  real Village, not the Lower East Side. It is West. It is not piss-

  covered. It is not blood-drenched.

  Poor R is refined, ladylike, devoted. She cuts N ’s hair and

  sews clothes for her. She makes her meals and feeds her friends.

  She is repelled by the company N keeps but she is devoted

  anyway, the soul of quiet devotion no matter what the provocation. She wants to be a refuge, a retreat, a nest. She makes sachets of delicate smells. She lights delicate candles to go with

  dinner. She cooks delicate souffles and serves many kinds of

  cheeses. She goes to auditions and gets jobs off-Broadway in

  little theaters. She is small and delicate and refined. She is

  quiet and kind. She is genuinely devoted. We come from the

  dense torment of our storefront, immersed in the drugs,

  smelling of the sex, numb from the violence, nevertheless exhilarated: and she feeds us and lets us sleep: because she is in love and devoted. She is talented, carefully dressed, not pretty,

  not handsome, but each feature is distinct so that the face adds

  up to an expressive one. She reads books and listens to music,

  all in moderation. She loves devotedly, without moderation.

  She hangs in for the long haul. She is promising to be there

  forever. She wants to be there when N, weary, wants peace.

  Given half a chance, she would be the one. But she has no

  chance. N is bored. We eat, I leave, N pays for the meal.

  *

  N is easy to love, devotedly. She is very beautiful, not like a

  girl. She is lean and tough. She fucks like a gang of boys. She is

  smart and quiet. She doesn’t waste words. She grins from ear

  to ear. She is never afraid.

  *

  Women pursue her. She is aloof, amused. She fucks everyone

  eventually, with perfect simplicity and grace. She is a rough

  fuck. She grinds her hips in. She pushes her fingers in. She

  tears around inside. She is all muscle and jagged bones. She

  thrusts her hips so hard you can’t remember who she is or

  how many of her there are. The first time she tore me apart. I

  bled and bled.

  *

  Women want her. So do men. She fucks everyone. It is always

  easier for her to than not to. She has perfect courtesy and rare

  grace. She is marvelously polite, never asking, never taking,

  46

  until licensed by an urgent request. Then she is a hooligan, all

  fuck and balls.

  *

  She is slightly more reserved with men. When a man fucks me,

  she says, I am with him, fucking me. The men ride her like

  maniacs. Her eyes roll back but stay open and she grins. She is

  always them fucking her, no matter how intensely they ride.

  Me I get fucked but she is different, always just slightly outside

  and on top: being him, fucking her. The men are ignorant and

  entranced.

  *

  She dresses like a glittering boy, a tough, gorgeous boy.

  She is Garbo in Queen Christina but run-down and dirty and

  druggy, leaner and tougher: more used: slightly smelling of

  decay and death, touched by the smell of the heat and the

  smell of the piss and the smell of the men: but untouched

  underneath by any human lust not her own.

  *

  She is ardent and intense, entirely charming, a grimy prince of

  the streets, tough and fast: destitute and aloof, drawn to the

  needle: edging toward the needle: but she fucks instead most of

  the time: she likes the needle though: you can see it in her eyes,

  all glazed over: she stops grinning and her lips get thick with

  sensuality and dirty with greed: she loses her courtesy: she is

  finally taken over: the needle is not her fucking her: it is something outside her fucking her: and she dissolves, finally. I could lose her to this. I never think about losing her or having her,

  except around the needle. It is the only thing I am afraid of. I

  would do anything for her. I want to shoot up with her: her do

  it to me, tie the rubber thing, heat the spoon, fill the needle,

  find the vein, shoot it up. She demurs politely. She keeps away

  from it: except sometimes: she does not draw me in. She does

  it away from me: with other lovers: now and then: glassy-eyed

  and elated: not aloof but ecstatic: sated: when no one could

  even see, from day to day, that she had been hungry.

  Or I couldn’t see.

  Or she wasn’t: the needle just gutted her with pleasure: so

  afterward, in retrospect, one inferred that there had been a

  lack, a need, before the needle: but in fact she had been complete before and now was simply drenched in something extra: 47

  something exquisite, heavy and thick like some distilled perfume, sweet to the point of sickness, a nauseating sweetness: something transporting and divine: something that translated

  into eyelids weighed down and swollen, lips puffed up, the

  cracks in them spreading down, the body suddenly soft and

  pliant, ready to curl, to billow, to fold: a fragile body, delicate

  bones suddenly soft, eyes hiding behind lush eyelids: the hard

  tension of her hips dissolved, finally. The way other women

  look when they’ve been fucked hard and long, coming and

  coming, is how she looked: the way other women look fucked

  out, creamy and swollen, is how she looked. The needle gave

  her that, finally: dissolved.

  *

  The jazz club is on a rough street, darker even than ours. It is

  low down in a cellar. It is long and narrow. The walls are

  brick. The tables are small, brown covered with a thick shellac,

  heavy and hard, ugly. They are lined up against the brick walls

  one right next to the other. You have to buy two drinks. There

  is a stage at the end of the long, narrow room. Jazz blares,

  live, raw: not the cold jazz, but belted-out jazz, all instruments,

  all lips and spit. There is no chatter. There is no show. There

  is just the music. The musicians are screaming through metal.

  Or there is waiting—glasses, ice, cigarette smoke, subdued

  mumbling. The music is loud. No one talks when the musicians

  are on stage, even when they stop for a minute. Everyone waits

  for the next sound. The smoke is dense but the sounds of the

  horns punch through it and push it into the brick. We are

  listening to the legendary black musician who according to

  some stories turned Billie into a junkie. I am wondering if this

  is as awful as it seems on the surface and why it is whispered

  in a hushed awe. He is a sloppy musician by now, decades

  later. He is bent over, blowing. He is sweating like a pig. His


  instrument screams. There is not a hint of delicacy or remorse.

  The music rouses you, the volume raises hackles on your skin,

  the living, breathing sound makes your blood jump, but the

  mind is left bored and dazed. Other musicians on the stage try

  to engage that lost faculty: they solo with ideas or moods,

  some sadness, some comic riffs. But the legend blares on,

  interrupts, superimposes his unending screech. We can only

  afford two drinks but the legend makes us desperate for more:

  48

  to take the edge off the blowing, blowing, blowing, the shrill

  scream of the instrument, the tin loudness of his empty spasms.

  The set ends. We want to stay for more. It is live music, jazz,

  real jazz, we want as much as we can get of it. We cannot

  come here often. The two required drinks cost a lot. We are at

  a small wooden shellacked table against a brick wall. On one

  side is a bohemian couple, dating nonetheless. On the other

  side, the direction of the stage, is a man. He is huge. His

  shoulders are broad. He is dressed very straight, a suit, a tie, a

  clean shirt, polished shoes. He is alone. I hate his face on sight.

  It has no lines. It is completely cold and cruel. There is nothing

  wrong with it on the surface. His features are even handsome.

  His skin is a glistening black, rich, luminous. He is lean but

  nevertheless big, broad-shouldered, long, long legs. His legs

  can barely fit under the small table. He is solitary and self-

  contained. He has been watching N. He offers us drinks. She

  accepts. They talk quietly between sets. I can’t hear them, don’t

  want to. I can see something awful in him but she is fascinated.

  I can’t name it. His expression never changes. It shows nothing.

  I am instinctively afraid of him and repelled. N listens to him

  intently. She looks almost female. Her body softens. Her eyes

  are cast down. The music starts. He leaves. The legend sweats

  and blares and spits and screams. He is even sloppier now,

  more arrogant too, but we are drunker so it evens out. We

  leave at dawn. We walk home in the hot haze. Junkies make

  jokes at us. Men pee. Someone flashes a knife from a stoop.