Kathy Acker

by Kathy Acker

  When I started going to college, it was cool to fuck, because that was the beginning of the hippie days. So then I had no guilt whatsoever—I mean, my girlfriends and I would go out prowling every night. We’d pass ‘em on to each other (“You have him next!”); we had charts of the lengths of cocks; we were really into sex. One girl, Susie Sampson, was the only virgin in our freshman class. So we all decided: “Susie, you gotta lose it!” The guy was picked, they got along okay, and during her first time she got gonorrhea!

  JUNO: Now AIDS has changed everything.

  ACKER: Oh God—my first roommate at college ran an orgy in the room. I think her father was a trustee, so she got away with it. She covered the whole room with green carpet and mattresses, and it was, like, orgy-time! I moved out after three weeks because I never knew who was going to be in my bed, and it was hard to study. She had a dog named Magic, who just loved genitals (both male and female)—she had trained it with pieces of meat. You’d be sitting at the dining room table and—all of us had holes in our blue jeans between our legs so that Magic could go from person to person. I guess those were the good old days…

  VALE: When did the pill come in?

  ACKER: I started taking it in college. Abortions were illegal in those days—there was one doctor in Philadelphia, and we all used to chip in whenever somebody needed an abortion. I remember hearing horror stories of illegal abortions: women taping irons to their bodies and throwing themselves down flights of stairs, and then they’d have the baby in traction! Of course, there were countless coat-hanger stories.

  VALE: Didn’t you work in the sex industry?

  ACKER: When I was in San Diego I worked as a stripper. There were these three clubs in San Diego, and you went around in this pink Cadillac from club to club. They’re burlesque clubs, you do your act, and you don’t have to serve drinks or talk to customers. You would dance, get off stage and into the pink Cadillac, and be driven to the next club; you would go around and around all night. So you’d spend all your time with the other girls.

  Those were the days when everyone did drugs. These women would take anything—the most amazing combinations. I wasn’t a big druggie, so I was always ending up having to work hard at the end of the night—because someone would be passed out. Anyway, these women would tell incredible stories—especially once the drugs got going. So what I did was, I copied them down. But I didn’t want to be like a sociologist, so I would retell them in the first person, then put in some of my dreams. I had all this text consisting of these great stories plus my dreams—there was a murder story…some things were pretty wild…

  VALE: Were you ever married?

  ACKER: I was married twice. The first time I got married because that was the only way I could get money from my parents. But it didn’t mean anything; we were hippies—I was nineteen years old. The second time I got married was because I’d lived with this guy for six years and thought I was dying. I had this lump in my breast and the doctors said it was cancerous, but it turned out to be just this cyst.

  Actually, getting married fucked up the relationship. It was sick, because before we’d had kind of a good relationship worked out; we’d lived together for six years. We didn’t have sex anymore, it was just a family thing; we both had our lovers. So I thought we’d be partners—besides, our families expected this. But after we got married, he got jealous of my lover—all that baggage came in. So now I think it’s a bad idea to get married—besides, everyone starts treating you like this “couple.”

  JUNO: When you first started getting tattoos, was this as an expression of reclaiming the body?

  ACKER: Well, when I first got tattoos I did so because I just thought they were so beautiful…Tattooing seemed to be a real form of art—an amazing form of art, because it’s art that’s on your flesh. So you have a certain relationship to the artist that’s very close—it’s magical, really.

  Some people see me as a bit weird because I have tattoos and I’m a woman (you know: if a woman has a tattoo, it’s supposed to be a very delicate little one that’s hidden on her breast or somewhere; you’re not supposed to do these things). I guess I thought, “I’m old enough—I can start doing what I want. I’m over the age of beauty anyway, so what the hell!” After the age of thirty, you’re not supposed to be “beautiful”—so you can start having fun.

  If every day I thought about all the things I’m not supposed to do because I’m a woman, and all the ways in which I’m not supposed to be—I couldn’t exist. What I’ve done is, I’ve buried all that in my mind. And there’s an amazing strata of anger in me—when it’s touched, it just comes ripping out! So I don’t think about tattooing as a way of asserting control over my own body—although it obviously is—because I can’t touch that anger every day. It’s not that I dislike men—I don’t at all, but I dislike the fact that because you’re a woman, you can’t do things…That the word “NO!” is the very first word you learn and it’s burnt into your flesh.

  JUNO: I think most women really have to deal with that bedrock of rage and anger.

  ACKER: Well, we were taught to channel anger, rage, feelings of insecurity—to channel what would be “negative” energy masochistically. We were taught not to do it directly—not to go out and hit someone, for example—but to do it so we’d hurt ourselves. And that’s a typical feminine ploy to deal with power…in a way it’s because you don’t have power, but you’re looking for power.

  JUNO: At the same time this gets inverted when you make a beautiful artwork on your skin…

  ACKER: I think this is a bit how art is created. Julia Kristeva has written a book, Powers of Horror, about this: art doesn’t come from a gesture that resembles one man going to hit another man; art comes from a gesture of power turned against itself. She calls it “ejection,” when you take that emotion and turn it in on itself—which is what tattooing does, or what women do. And I’d say women are almost “natural” artists—we’re just trained to do that over and over, so we have an amazing sense of beauty. And we decorate ourselves; we constantly walk around the world finding patterns of sensuality.

  Makeup isn’t frivolous, it’s another form of art. And what we’ve done with our bodies is a form of art throughout the ages…yet it’s always been put down. Whatever we do—that we learn how to dress well, or decorate our bodies a certain way, or walk a certain way…that we learn how to be elegant and charming and how to please people—all this is ridiculed, yet it’s a form of art—a very high art! Again, I think a certain range of feminists have been scared by this, so they say, “Oh God, I won’t wear makeup.” And that’s absolutely ridiculous.

  JUNO: Underlying all this is the denial of the body, the denial of what women have excelled in. Going back to your tattoos: How do people react to them?

  ACKER: Most people tell me they like them. I’ve never gotten anything negative from a guy…only women. I think it’s the women who are more scared, because what women have done is to internalize this bad girl/good girl distinction, and out of fear say, “I’ve got to be a good girl; I’m not going to be a bad girl.” So they’re the ones who really get down on the so-called bad girls. I think women are really scared of taking control of themselves, and the men—well, there seems to be some crisis; the men seem to be absolutely floundering about: Should they be strong? Should they be weak? How should they act? Maybe it’s better to hide in a hole. Men don’t know what to do at all—they don’t want to appear to be the macho pigs they are. So everybody’s walking around in fear these days, because the roles are absolutely not clear anymore.

  Now in the battered-wife relationship, it seems to me that to begin with, something is done to the woman against her will. Usually it’s in a situation of dependency—there’s economic dependency…or children. For whatever reasons, she feels she can’t leave this man who’s been beating her. So she takes it; she does not leave at that point. But this is definitely against her will—she’s not asking to be beaten. And when you’re in a relationship (it doesn�
�t even have to be one in which you’re being bit) where the other person starts doing bad things to you, but you’re scared to leave the relationship, you can start to think that pain is pleasure…

  We’re very adaptable. It’s well known that some of the Jews in Auschwitz adapted to the concentration camp, which is probably as hard a form of adaptation as you can do. Some women who are in a situation which is terrible for them don’t see a way out, so they adapt. And one way to adapt is to find pleasurable what is not, because you can’t live in total pain all the time. Even physically, if you undergo a lot of pain, your endorphins will switch around and start interpreting it as pleasure. Or you’ll just numb out…

  Look, I don’t know why various people want pain. I think there’s a huge number of reasons. Let’s say we divide “sensation” into pain and pleasure. Everyone thinks they understand why you would want pleasure, but not pain…but pain can be interesting. First of all, when you bodybuild, in order to really build you have to go through pain—you burn. If you don’t burn, you don’t build. The first time I burned, I wanted to run away, but my trainer said, “No! Just go through the pain.” And I learned how to relax and not fight pain, and I think that’s not a bad technique to learn. In certain tribes, rites of passage (when you go from one stage to another) involve a great deal of pain. That’s another kind of pain, and that would be to physically shock you into another level of awareness (I’ve never done a rite of passage, so I don’t know). There’s a quote from Nietzsche: “That which does not kill you, will only make you grow.”

  I don’t know how to talk about a utopian world. We live in this world and there’s a lot of suffering. If you learn how to deal with physical pain, maybe you can deal with what’s really much greater pain. Now if we’re talking about an S&M relationship—the ones I know about are just play, really, which means if there’s some pain it’s “scratch pain”—little razor blade cuts which every kid does, a little play with dangerous weapons—toys! We’re not talking about huge amounts of pain. And I’m just talking about my own experience; I know many people have done other stuff—there’s a realm of S&M relationships that are very dangerous. But I think there’s a way in which you play with what you most fear in order to deal with it—that’s one thing you do. Another thing is you’re curious about your body: How will your body react to this? And it’s not only just pain, it’s also how you react in terms of being controlled. So you play with various areas.

  Sexuality and play are very close, and when people start repressing and denying that play aspect, it’s absolutely silly. I used to be terribly scared of cigarettes and fire, and this German boyfriend said to me, “Look, Kathy, I’ll show you a game German kids play.” And what they do is, they take lit cigarettes and just toss them back and forth from hand to hand. And they’re doing it so fast that it doesn’t burn. But I was frightened out of my mind; it took ages before I’d trust him enough to play this game with him. So I think it’s all very complicated…

  JUNO: There’s a continuum between pain and sexuality. Even “normal” sex includes biting and scratching.

  ACKER: Well, my body is such that—it’s very personal, but I have a tremendously overactive clit that can almost not bear to be touched—I’d prefer to be touched on almost any other part of my body than to have my clit touched! So the average man who wants to be a non-macho pig wants to go down on you, right? But I go, “Don’t do it; absolutely do not do it! Spank me, do anything—here’s a whip—but do not go near that!” Now that’s not like I’m some victim or I’m being submissive; this is my body—I’ve got a weird body! [laughs] That’s what I mean: sex is so unique from person to person. And from what a lot of my girlfriends tell me, I’d say about 60 percent of them don’t cum from being fucked. No one’s ever gone into this one, like: How do you cum? And if we talk about all the different ways we have to play, what we have to do to cum, what really gets us off—all this is forbidden. Yet this is the realm of pleasure!

  JUNO: If you let a person spank you, can someone accuse you of being traditionally submissive?

  ACKER: No one who knows me calls me submissive; just people who read my books get on this track: “All the women are so submissive.” Well—not really! [laughs] A typical scenario goes: Some guy wants to go down on me, and I go, “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” And they feel very hurt, because guys now have this grand thing in their mind that if they do this wonderful thing of going down on you, you should be eternally grateful, and how can you deny this to them—it’s as if you told them they had a small cock or something. I try to suggest, “Why don’t you spank me a little?” and they go [gasp], “I couldn’t do something like that!” And I go, “Oh yes, you could!” “Oh no, I can’t!” Here I’d say I’m not being submissive at all! I’m trying to make them submissive to what I want, and trying to figure out how to connive them into doing precisely what I want.

  They always say the masochist is in control, and to some extent that has to be true. Because if the masochist isn’t controlling, then it’s rape or some horror story or it’s a crime. I once asked this German boyfriend, “Why does a sadist do it? I don’t get it. Why does anyone want to go to all the trouble? I get off so much more than you do. You don’t get any pleasure out of this. What do you get out of this? What do you like?” And he said, “It’s the tension.” Yet the masochist is controlling that tension—there’d be no tension otherwise.

  This boyfriend just loves situations of more and more tension. And it’s not like I’m controlling—he’s controlling, really. It just gets into this incredible amount of tension, so you don’t know who’s controlling; you just keep pushing the situation so you can get the most tension out of it. It’s like you set up an area of play and you just see how far you can go. Then it gets a little addictive, so you have to stop…because it can get a little dangerous. It’s like playing, “Let’s go out into the street and see if cars will run us over!” It’s kids’ games, and I’m just a big kid; I’ve just never properly grown up. So I like motorcycles. I like kids’ games. I don’t really see this as being submissive at all. If we play a game about being submissive, it’s just to get the tension going…to see how far everybody can get pushed. You do that in friendships; you push each other and see how far you can go.

  JUNO: Here one word is covering two very different situations.

  ACKER: Actually, submissive women freak me out; I like women who know what they’re doing…I guess everybody makes a choice somewhere down the line: that they’re going to abide by society’s rules and hide in their nice suburban homes and do just what they’re told and they’re not going to step out of line—and maybe, just maybe, they’ll be “safe.” (I don’t know what they’ll be “safe” for, however.) My father made this type of decision; I saw him get a heart attack and suddenly he realized that he wasn’t safe—he was about to die. He had done everything by the rules and it hadn’t done him a goddamn bit of good…he had nothing to hold on to. Because he didn’t have any values—all his values were the values of society, they weren’t his. There was nothing in him.

  I think the other choice is to find what your value is…to find who you are and where your energy is, where your ground is, where your guts are, where your centers are—however you want to put it. People are searching for their centers (be they centers of pleasure, pain, whatever) but really, in a way, it’s a search for “God.” And in this search—that’s when someone starts being interesting, and stops being like a jello. There are various ways of going about this search for God.

  Those of us who don’t want to split the mind and the body go through ways that are considered abnormal, and play is definitely an area where you can investigate certain things with some realm of safety. Because you’ve seen various artists who have died in this attempt—and you don’t want to die! But it’s a dangerous search, obviously, because there aren’t many guidelines. I think that’s what we’re really talking about, and I don’t want to take sex away from that. But really, it’s all about t
his search. And we’re being denied it by our repressive society.

  JUNO: It’s about facing death, which your father couldn’t do…

  ACKER: Yeah. We’re all going to die; that’s the one given we’ve got. We know it, but what we don’t know is what this life is about!

  JUNO: We try to keep the mind/body together and not have that repressive split. Because in order to get illumination you cannot deny the body.

  ACKER: Well, there were ways in which nuns and monks denied the body in order to get farther. I think there’s a way in which the energy comes up another way, but that’s very radical…

  A gay friend of mine said something interesting to me. I asked her if she differentiated between gay and straight women, and she said, “Yes, women who are gay are really outlaws, because we’re totally outside the society—always.” And I said, “What about people like me?” and she said, “Oh, you’re just queer.” Like—we didn’t exist?! [laughs] It’s as if the gay women position themselves as outside society, but meanwhile they’re looking down on everybody who’s perverse! Which is very peculiar…

  JUNO: That happens a lot to outlawed minorities, who try desperately (in a denial fashion) to gain some sort of acceptance. In the tattoo world, there used to be almost this hatred of piercing, because the tattooers were trying to make tattooing “respectable.”

  ACKER: Everyone makes these arbitrary “definitions” in order to establish how “straight” they are.