Ice And Fire

by Andrea Dworkin

  the whole private night was not. I am pleased. It is never

  mentioned again. Today is uptown business. The days of

  uptown business are few and far between, but all the same

  somehow. We are going uptown to talk with men who have

  money about our film.

  N dresses. She wears a silk scarf as a headband and flared

  sailor pants. Her eyes are elongated and blackened and her lips

  are pursed: they seem longer, thinner, as if she is sucking them

  in. I too go out of my way. Clean T-shirt. Her hair is dirty

  blonde and straight; it stands up on end. Mine is curly and

  black; it stands up on end. We both comb our hair with our

  fingers. We make it stand up more.

  Uptown there is a lawyer who is going to turn us into a

  corporation. He is silver from top to bottom. The spittle pours

  from the edges of his mouth as he listens to the details of our

  film. Of course he will incorporate us for no fee: but, leaning

  over, and over, and over, almost stretching the trunk of his

  body further than it could possibly go, but, he will expect to

  come to the Village for a private screening. Village, private

  screening. Saliva pours out, a thin, dripping creek.

  56

  Uptown there is a producer: will he sign N up and make her

  a movie star and then we can make our film with that money?

  Someone who discovered a famous rock singer sends us to

  him. We wait in the chilly waiting room. The sweat and the

  dirt that never comes off is pasted on by the cool air of the air

  conditioner. The men in suits and the women with lacquered

  hair and neat blouses and modest skirts stare. The receptionist

  is visibly disturbed. Inside the office is huge. It seems the producer is a quarter mile away. His huge desk is at the end of the huge room. We are told to sit on a sofa near the door. He tells

  N she isn’t feminine. I say unisex is in. I say times have

  changed. I say people are riveted by the way N looks. The

  producer keeps staring at her. He talks and stares. He is hostile.

  She mumbles like Marlon Brando. The door opens. His wife, a

  famous singer but not a star, comes in. She looks old. She is

  dyed blond. Her skirt is short, way above her aging knees. Her

  makeup is serious. Each detail is meant to remind one of

  youth. Each detail shows how old her face is and how tired

  her soul is. The old legs on top of the high heels bounce under

  the short skirt as she makes her way across the huge room to

  kiss the producer. This is a woman, he says. You see what I

  mean, he says, this is a woman. We stare.

  Uptown there is an advertising executive: he wants to give

  money to bright young men who want to make films. We sit in

  his small office. It is chilly. He stares. We discuss the film

  scene by scene. He discusses his advertising campaigns scene

  by scene. He stares. We ask for money. We leave the script

  with him. We are hopeful. N isn’t really. I am. She is right.

  The air conditioning always helps.

  The offices are strange places.

  The people in them seem dead.

  It is the straight world of regular USA.

  We abhor it.

  We go back to our world of slime and sex tired and bored:

  to be alive as we understand living. Not like them.

  *

  The world is divided that way now: the straight adults, old

  people; and us. It is that way.

  *

  On St Mark’s Place the police are always out in large numbers,

  57

  hassling the hippies. Where we live there are never any police,

  no matter who gets hurt or how bad. It takes a riot to bring

  them out. Then they shoot.

  The flower girls and boys abound in other parts of the

  neighborhood, not near us.

  We are not them and not not them. N grew up in a swamp

  in the South, oldest child, four boys under her, father abandoned family, became a religious fanatic after running whores for a while, came back, moved the family North, sent her to a

  girls’ school to get a proper upbringing, then ran off again:

  like me, poor and half orphaned. Like me she gets a scholarship

  to a rich girls’ college. We meet there, the outcast poor, exiled

  among the pathetic rich. We don’t have money hidden away

  somewhere, if only we would behave. Her mother, my father,

  have nothing to give. She has other children to feed. He is sick,

  says nothing, does nothing, languishes, a sad old man with a

  son killed in Vietnam and a dirty daughter on dirty streets. N

  and I are poor now: poorer even than when we were children:

  nothing but what we get however we get it. But also we are

  white and smart and well-educated. Do we have to be here or

  not?

  We can’t be lacquer-haired secretaries. There is no place else

  for us. The flower children are like distant cousins, the affluent

  part of the family: you hear about them but it doesn’t mean

  you can have what they have. They wear pretty colors and

  have good drugs, especially hallucinogens, and they decorate

  the streets with paint and scents: incense, glitter: fucking them

  is fun sometimes but often too solemn, they bore with their

  lovey pieties: but we didn’t leave anything behind and we got

  nothing to go back to.

  *

  Eighteen, nineteen, twenty: those years. The men numbered in

  the thousands. At first I was alone, then, with her, I wasn’t.

  This was one summer. We also had a winter and a spring

  before.

  *

  Every time we needed petty cash: and when we didn’t.

  *

  We took women for money too, but with more drama, more

  plot, more plan. They had to be in love or infatuated. You had

  58

  to remember their names and details of their childhood. They

  gave you what you needed gingerly: the seduction had to

  continue past sex: sometimes they would get both of us: other

  times only one of us could get near enough: or sometimes we

  would both be there, each one picking up the slack when the

  other got bored, and take turns before drifting off to sleep. Or

  N would do it one night, me another. I liked another woman’s

  body there between us, and I liked when N fucked me then her

  and then I kept kissing her between the legs, though N would

  have fallen asleep by then. I liked those nights. I didn’t like

  that we never got enough out of it: enough money: enough

  food: enough: and I didn’t like it that the women got clingy or

  all pathetic or that not one could bear to remember how she

  had come, wanting to be courted, and stayed.

  *

  And then there was just having the women: because you

  wanted them: because it was a piece of heaven right in the

  middle of hell: because they knew your name too: because you

  went mad with them in your mouth: and you went crazy thigh

  to thigh: and it was earth, sublime: and the skin, pearl: and the

  breasts: and coming, coming, coming.

  *

  Especially the hairs that stayed in your mouth, and the bites

  they left.

  *

  The men fucked or did whatever: but the women
came close

  to dying, with this quiet surprise.

  *

  And you did too, because you were the same, only harder, not

  new. They were enough like you. As close as could be. Every

  slight tremble shot through both bodies. Even when she knew

  nothing and you knew everything: even when you did it all:

  your fingers on her, her taste all over you, pushed you so far

  over the edge you needed drugs to bring you back. The small

  of her back, trembling: how small they were, how delicate, the

  tiny bones, how they almost disappeared: and then the more

  ecstatic exertions of a lover with her beloved.

  *

  The sex could go on until exhaustion defeated the prosaic

  body: these were not the short, abrupt times of men with their

  59

  push and shove: these were long, hot, humid times, whole

  seasons: but once over, life went on: she was on her own,

  desolate: unhappy: ready to shell out what you needed so as

  not to be alone forever: so as to be able to come back: and you

  must never take too much, she must not be humiliated too

  much: and you must make sure she knows that you know her

  name and her uniqueness: and you must stay aloof but not be

  cold: and she gives you something, money is best: and she is

  just unhappy enough when she leaves. Her body still trembles

  and she is as pale as death, washed out, delicate and desperate,

  she has never done anything like this before, not wanting her

  own life, wanting ours: which we hold for ransom. She can get

  near it again, if we let her: if she has something we need. We

  are tired of her and want her gone. We are both cold and

  detached and ready for someone new.

  *

  The coffeehouse has a jukebox N likes. The music blares. She

  knows how to turn them up. In any bar she can reach behind,

  wink at the bartender, and turn up the music. In this

  coffeehouse, all painted pink, there is no resistance. It is in the

  Village, a dumpy one surrounded by plusher places for tourists

  and rich hippies and old-time bohemians who have learned how

  to make a living from art.

  There is nightlife here, and money, and N and I hang out

  for the air conditioning and to pick up men. It is easy pickings.

  She roams around the room, a girl James Dean, toward the

  jukebox, away from the jukebox, toward it, away from it, her

  cigarette hanging out of her slightly dirty mouth, her hips tough

  and lean, her legs bent at the knees, a little bowlegged, opened

  up. She is dirty and her eyes have deep circles set in fragile,

  high cheekbones. She spreads her arms out over the breadth

  of the jukebox and spreads her legs with her knees slightly

  bent outward and she moves back and forth, a slow, excruciating fuck. Jim Morrison and the Doors. Otis Redding.

  Janis. Hey mister, she says in her deepest mumble, you gotta

  cigarette. She gets courtly: I seem to be out, she says to him,

  eyelids drooping. She smiles: I guess I must of left them somewhere. She hustles change for the jukebox. She hustles change for coffee. These are long, leisurely, air-conditioned nights. She

  disappears. I disappear. She returns, orders cappuccino, it means

  60

  money, something easy with a boy. I return: we have sandwiches. She returns: with some grass. I return: we have dessert, chocolate cake, leisurely, cheesecake, passing it around. She

  returns: drinks for tomorrow night. I return: speed for tomorrow. We are bankers, saving up, past our immediate needs.

  She returns: some money toward the rent. She walks around

  the room, her hips very, very tough. The cigarette dangles.

  The music plays. Friends drop in and visit. She gets a glint in

  her eye: disappears: comes back to buy a round of coffees,

  some cake, some sandwiches.

  Outside it is crowded, dark, hot, the sticky wet of the city

  air. The streets are overrun with tourists. The tourist joints are

  flowing over. They come to see this life.

  Too hot to hang out on a stoop: so we go to the West

  Village to a bright pink coffeehouse, especially on weekends,

  rich tourists, rich hippie types, and then, at the end, when only

  the scum is left hovering in doorways, just plain punks who

  wanna fuck.

  N returns: she orders a milkshake, sodas, buys cigarettes.

  Poor R is going to join us for a cup of coffee: and someone

  N has met on the street, A. He is not tall, not short, thin but

  not noticeably, nice face but nothing special, intense big brown

  eyes, Brazilian. He is street stuff, not the idle rich, but with

  manners. There is polite conversation all around. Poor R considers this a formal date with N. A is there to meet me, to win my approval, because he is N ’s new friend, picked up on the

  street but she likes him or I wouldn’t be meeting him now.

  The walls are pink and dirty. The air conditioning is not

  doing so good. The place is crowded. There is only money for

  coffee: we have coffee: and coffee: and coffee. N and poor R

  disappear, round the corner a block away to R ’s apartment: a

  date. A and I talk. It is working out. He has a lot to say. I

  don’t mind listening. It is a sad story. Something about how he

  was a dancer and in love with a beautiful virgin in Brazil but

  her parents oppose their marriage and so he goes on tour and

  is in an accident and loses his hand and has punctures all over

  his body. He only has one hand. Then about his months in the

  hospital and how he couldn’t work anymore as a dancer and

  how the girl left him because he was maimed and how he was

  arrested for something he didn’t do and ran away from the

  61

  country altogether and became a fugitive because he couldn’t

  make anyone believe him, it was a murder he was wanted for.

  He was an artful storyteller because this story took nearly

  four hours to tell. I cried. His accent was thick. He spoke

  softly and deliberately. He didn’t live around here. He lived

  around Times Square. Yeah he had some women out working

  for him: old girlfriends but no one he was living with now: but

  with N it was different. She comes back without poor R but

  loaded with money: poor R got two-timed again: and we drink

  coffee and eat and have more coffee and we talk there in the

  pink coffeehouse, the jukebox gone quiet. Outside the streets

  are emptying, it is nearly dawn. I go to the storefront alone,

  thinking about pimps, nervous.*

  A sits in the coffeehouse wearing a coat, as if cold. He hides

  his arm. It is shrivelled at the elbow. He has tremendous poli-

  tesse and dignity. He is not handsome and not not handsome.

  He has some gentleness. He smokes like N, like me, cigarettes

  one after another, but he holds them longer in his one hand.

  He does things slowly: sits very still: slightly stooped: black

  hair straight and framing his face in a kind of modified pageboy for boys. His lips are thick but not particularly sensual.

  He has watery eyes. His skin is an ochre color. He wears dark

  colors. He is intelligent, well-spoken: soft-spoken. When N

  and poor R leave he doesn’t blink or flinch or react: he is

  harmonious w
ith how we do things: he imposes nothing: he

  has a sense of courtesy not unlike N ’s: he seems removed from

  physical violence but he can’t be. I watch every muscle move,

  trying to figure it out. He can’t be. N comes back and orders

  food for us. Poor R manages a stunning ignorance: she has

  gone on a date with her lover, just like other girls on a Friday

  night. N had left her some hours before, I could see by the

  volume of food and the new packs of cigarettes and the new

  rounds of coffee. Actual loose dollars are taken out in a

  rumpled pile. N gives me some money and some grass and

  some cigarettes before she goes off with A. I walk home alone

  in the dawn, the streets nearly empty now, the heat beginning

  to build for the new day: thinking about pimps: a bit disturbed.

  *

  6z

  N and A are now officially friends and lovers. This means it

  isn’t for money. This means he visits us both and talks. This

  means we listen to music together. This means he and N go off

  alone for whole nights.

  He is concerned about us, down in this violent neighborhood. He is concerned about us, so poor, and for what? We should be making real money after all, not small change for

  drinks and pukey drugs. We should have enough to finish our

  film. He is quiet, gentle, concerned. He is worried for us. He

  doesn’t think we are quite safe down here.

  He seems to adore N. He is nice to me. He is a good friend.

  He brings presents now and then, something nice, a bottle of

  wine, like a person.

  At night we roam together sometimes: meet his friends at

  some late-night joint: the jukebox plays Billie, and we sit while

  he talks to his friends, sometimes about us, we can’t understand, especially to one of his friends, a Latino, dark-haired, big moustache, long hair, machismo. They buy us food. We

  meet here late at night. A is who we are with. No one asks us

  anything. Sometimes he tells us to play something on the

  jukebox. He gets us something to eat. It is friendly and not

  friendly. It is tense. What are we there for? The men look at

  us: make remarks we don’t understand. They play music and

  smoke and stare at us. It is ominous. I don’t want to be turned

  over to them. It seems possible. There is an edge somewhere.