Mercy

There couldn’t be this garbage between me and life; like some

  huge smelly dump you had to trudge through or crawl

  through to slide up against someone else who was also real.

  And by the time you got to them you smelled like the garbage.

  I said no. I said I will not. I said it is not on me. I said I may be

  poor but I am not afraid. I said I want. I said I am not afraid to

  pay. I said I will not shield myself. I said I will not pretend to

  live life; I will live it. I said I will not apologize and I will not

  lie. I said, if I die, I die. I was never afraid to die. I got tough in

  some ways but I stayed soft inside the core o f m y belief where

  there was tenderness for others, sometimes. I kept a caring

  eye. I kept a caring heart. O ver the injury I still believed there

  was love; not the love o f two but the love o f many. I still

  believed in us, all o f us, us, if we could get free from rules and

  obedience and being robots. I liked doing sabotage, I’m not

  saying I had a pretty heart, I wasn’t a nice girl and I’m not

  claiming it. I had some ruthlessness. I wasn’t easy to kill. I

  could keep going. I wanted to live. I’m just saying I cared.

  Why didn’t I kill him? Why didn’t I? I’m the most ardent

  pacifist the world ever saw. And fuck meant all kinds o f

  making love— it was a new word. It was fucking if you got

  inside each other, or so near you couldn’t be pulled apart. It

  was jo y and risk and fun and orgasm; not faking it; I never

  have. It didn’t have to do with who put what where. It was all

  kinds o f wet and all kinds o f urgent and all kinds o f here and

  now, with him or her. It was you tangled up with someone,

  raw. It wasn’t this one genital act, in out in out, that someone

  could package and sell or that there was an etiquette for. It

  wasn’t some imitation o f something you saw somewhere, in

  porn or your favorite movie star saying how he did it. It was

  something vast, filled with risk and feeling; feeling; personal

  love ain’t the only feeling— there’s feelings o f adventure and

  newness and excitement and Goddamn pure happiness—

  there’s need and sorrow and loneliness and certain kinds o f

  grief that turn easy into touching someone, wild, agitated,

  everywhere— there’s just liking whoever it is and wanting to

  pull them down right on you, they make you giddy, their

  mere existence tickles you to death, you giggle and cheer them

  on and you touch them— and there’s sensation, just that, no

  morality, no higher good, no justification, just how it feels.

  There’s uncharted waters, you ain’t acting out a script and

  there’s no w ay past the present, you are right there in the

  middle o f your own real life riding a wave a mile high with

  speed and grace and then you are pulled under to the bottom o f

  the world. The whole w orld’s alive, everything moves and

  wants and loves, the whole w orld’s alive with promise, with

  possibility; and I wanted to live, I said yes I want to live.

  There’s not something new about wanting love in spite o f

  knowing terror; or feeling love and having it push against

  your thighs from inside and then those thighs carry you out

  past safety into hell. There’s nothing new about wanting to

  love a multitude. I was born on Mickle Street in Camden in

  1946, down the street from Walt Whitman’s house. I grew up

  an orphan sheltered by the passion o f his great heart. He

  wanted everyone. He wanted them, to touch. He was forced,

  by his time and place, into metaphor. He put it in poems, this

  physicalized love that was universal, he named the kinds and

  categories he wanted, men and women, he said they were

  worthy, all, without exception, he said he wanted to be on

  them and in them and he wanted them in him, he said it was

  love, he said lam , he said lam and then he enumerated the ones

  he wanted, he made lam synonymous with you are and we are.

  Leaves of Grass is his lists o f lovers, us, the people, all o f us; he

  used grandiose language but it was also common, vulgar; he

  says I ant you and you and you, you exist, I touch you, I know

  you, I see you, I recognize you, I want you, I love you, I am. In

  the C ivil War he was devoted to wounded soldiers. He faced

  the maiming and the mutilation, and he loved those boys:

  “ (Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d

  and rested, /M any a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded

  lips. )” It was before surgeons washed their hands, before

  Lister, and legs were sawed off, sutures were moistened with

  saliva, gangrene was commonplace. He visited the wounded

  soldiers day in and day out. He didn’t eroticize suffering, no; it

  was the communion o f being near, o f touching, o f a tender

  intimacy inside a vale o f tears. He saw them suffer and he saw

  them die and he wrote: “ (Come sweet death! be persuaded O

  beautiful death! / In mercy come quickly. )” I got to say, I don’t

  think a three-minute fuck was his meaning. I don’t. It’s an

  oceanic feeling inside and you push it outward and once you

  start loving humanity there is no reason to make distinctions

  o f beauty or kind, there’s something basic in everyone that

  asks love, forgiveness, an honorable tenderness, a manly

  tenderness, you know, strong. He was generous. Call him a

  slut. I f a war happens, it marks you for life, it’s your war.

  Walt’s was the C ivil War, North against South, feuding

  brothers, a terrible slaughter, no one remembers how bloody

  and murderous it was. Mine was Vietnam; I didn’t love the

  soldiers but I loved the boys who didn’t go. M y daddy’s war

  was World War II. Everyone had their own piece o f that war.

  There’s Iwo Jim a, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima; Vichy and the

  French Resistance; sadists, soldier boys, S . S., in Europe. M y

  daddy was in the Army. M y daddy was being sent to the Pacific

  when Truman dropped the bomb; the bomb. He says it saved

  his life. Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved his life. I never saw

  him wish anyone harm, except maybe Strom Thurm an and

  Jesse Helms and Bull Connor, but he thought it was okay,

  hell, necessary, for all those Japanese to die so he could live. He

  thought he was worth it, even if it was just a chance he would

  die. I felt otherwise. He had an unreasonable anger against me.

  I would have died, he said, I would have died. He was peace-

  loving but nothing could shake his faith that Hiroshima was

  right, not the mass death, not the radiation, not the pollution,

  not the suffering later, not the people burned, their skin

  burned right o ff them; not the children, then or later. The

  mushroom cloud didn’t make him afraid. To him it always

  meant he wasn’t dead. I was ashamed o f him for not caring, or

  for caring so much about himself, but I found what I thought

  was common ground. I said it was proved Truman didn’t have

  to do it. In other words, I could think it was wrong to drop the

  bomb and still love m y father but he thought I had insufficient


  respect and he had good intuition because I couldn’t see w hy

  his life was worth more than all those millions. I couldn’t

  reconcile it, how this very patient, very kind, quite meek guy

  could think he was more important than all the people. It

  wasn’t that he thought the bomb would stop Jew s from being

  massacred in Europe; it was that he, from N ew Jersey, would

  live. He didn’t understand that I was born in the shadow o f the

  crime, a shadow that covered the whole earth every day from

  then on. We just were born into knowing w e’d be totally

  erased; someday; inevitably. M y daddy used to be beat up by

  other boys at school when he was grow ing up. He was a

  bookworm , a Je w , and the other boys beat the shit out o f him;

  he didn’t want to fight; he got called a sissie and a kike and a

  faggot, sheenie, all the names; they beat the shit out o f him,

  and yes, one did become the chief o f police in the Amerikan

  way; and then, somehow, an adult man, he knows he’s worth

  all the Japanese who died; and I wondered how he learned it,

  because I have never learned anything like it yet. He was

  humble and patient and I learned a kind o f personal pacifism

  from him; he went into the A rm y, he was a soldier, but all his.

  life he hated fighting and conflict and he would not fight with

  arms or support any violence in w ord or deed, he tried

  persuasion and listening and he’d avoid conflict even i f it made

  him look weak and he was gentle, even with fools; and I

  learned from him that you are supposed to take it, as a person,

  and not give back what you got; give back something kinder,

  better, subtler, more elevated, something deeper and kinder

  and more human. So when he didn’t mind the bomb, when he

  liked it because it saved his life, his, I was dumb with surprise

  and a kind o f fascinated revulsion. Was it just wanting to stay

  alive at any cost or was it something inside that said me, la m ; it

  got sort o f big and said me. It got angry, beyond his apparent

  personality, a humble, patient person, tender and sensitive; it

  went me, I am, and it said that whatever stood between him

  and existence had to be annihilated. I would have died. I might

  have died. As a child I was horrified but later I tried to

  understand w hy I didn’t have it— I was blank there, it was as if

  the tape was erased or something was just missing. If someone

  stood between me and existence, how come I didn’t think I

  mattered more; w h y didn’t I kill them; I never would put me

  above someone else; I never did; I never thought that because

  they were doing something to annihilate me I could annihilate

  them; I figured I would just be wounded or killed or whatever,

  because life and death were random events; like I tried to tell

  m y father, maybe he would have lived. When someone pushes

  you down on the ground and puts him self in you, he pushes

  him self between you and existence— you do die or you will die

  or you can die, it’s the luck o f the draw really, not unlike

  maybe yo u ’ll get killed or maybe you w o n ’t in a war; except

  you don’t get to be proud o f it i f you don’t die. I never thought

  anyone should be killed ju st because he endangered m y

  existence or corrupted it altogether or just because I was left a

  shadow haunting m y own life; I mean really killed. I never

  thought anyone should really die just because one day he was

  actually going to kill me, fucking render me dead: inevitably,

  absolutely; no doubt. I didn’t think any one o f them should

  really die. It was outside what I could think of. Is there

  anything in me, any I am, anything that says I will stop you or

  anything that says I am too valuable and this bad thing you are

  doing to me will cost you too much or anything that says you

  cannot destroy me; cannot; me. If someone tortures you and

  you will die from it eventually, someday, for sure, one w ay or

  another, and you can’t make the day come soon enough

  because the suffering is immense, then maybe he should die

  because he pushed him self between you and existence; maybe

  you should kill him to push him out o f the way. Do you think

  Truman would have bought it? M y daddy wouldn’t have

  either. At best he’d say w hy did this tragic thing happen to

  you— it would never be possible to pin down which tragic

  thing he meant— and he’d be bitter and mad, not at the bad one

  but at me; I’d be the bad one for him. At worst I’d be plain filth

  in his eyes. I don’t know w hy I can’t think all the Japanese

  should die so I can stay alive or w hy I can’t think some man

  should die. I’ll never be a Christian, that’s for sure. I can’t

  stand thinking Christ died for me; it makes me sick. I got some

  idea o f how much it hurt. I can’t stand the thought. I am; but so

  what? I’ve actually been willing to die so none o f them would

  get hurt, even if they’re inside me against what I want. N o w I

  started thinking they’re the Nazis, the real Nazis o f our time

  and place, the brownshirts, they don’t put you on a train, they

  come to where you are, they get you one by one but they do

  get you, most o f you, nearly all, and they destroy your heart

  and the sovereignty o f your body and they kill your freedom

  and they make you ashen and humiliate you and they tear you

  apart and it ain’t metaphor and they injure you beyond repair

  or redemption, they injure your body past any known

  suffering, and you die, not them, you; they kill you some-

  times, slow or fast, with mutilation or not; and you are more

  likely to murder yourself than them; and that’s wrong, child o f

  God, that’s wrong. I can never think someone should die

  instead o f me; but they should if they came to do the harm in

  the first place; objectively speaking, they should. I think

  perhaps they should. M y reason says so; but I can’t face it. I

  run instead; run or give in; run or open m y legs; run or get hit;

  run, hide, do it, do it for them, do whatever they want, do it

  before they can hurt me more, anticipate what they want, do

  it, keep them cooled out, keep them okay, keep them quiet or

  more quiet than they would be if I made them mad; give in or

  run; capitulate or run; hide or run; hide; run; escape; do what

  they say; I used to say I wanted to do it, what they wanted,

  whatever it was, I used to say it was me, I was deciding, I

  wanted, I was ready, it was m y idea, I did the taking, I

  decided, I initiated, hey I was as tough as them; but it was fuck

  before they get mad— it was low er the risk o f making them

  mad; you use your will to make less pain for yourself; you say /

  am as if there is an I and then you do what pleases them, girl,

  what they like, what you already learned they like, and there

  ain’t no I, because i f there was it w ouldn’t have accepted the

  destruction or annihilation, it w ouldn’t have accepted all the

  little Hitler fiends, all the little Goering fiends, all the little

  Him mler
fiends, being right on you and turning you inside

  out and leaving injury on you and liking it, they liked seeing

  you hurt, and then you say it’s me, I chose it, I want it, it’s

  fine— you say it for pride so you can stay alive through the

  hours after and so it w o n ’t hit you in the face that yo u ’re just

  some piece o f trash who ain’t worth nothing on this earth. N o

  one can’t kill someone; h o w ’d I become no one; and w h y ’s he

  someone; and how come there’s no I inside me; how come I

  can’t think he should die i f that’s what it takes to blow him

  loose? I’m a pilgrim searching for understanding; because

  there’s nothing left, I’m empty and there’s nothing and it takes

  a lot o f pride to lie. I wanted; what did I want? I wanted:

  freedom. So they are ripping me apart and I smile I say I have

  freedom. Freedom is semen all over you and some kinky

  bruises, a lot o f men in you and the certainty o f more, there’s

  always more; freedom and abundance— m y cup ran over.

  There’s a special freedom for girls; it doesn’t get written down

  in constitutions; there’s this freedom where they use you how

  they want and you say I am, I choose, I decide, I want— after or

  before, when you ’re young or when you’re a hundred— it’s

  the liturgy o f the free woman— I choose, I decide, I want, I

  am— and you have to be a devout follower o f the faith, a

  fanatic o f freedom, to be able to say the words and remember

  the acts at the same time; devout. Y ou really have to love

  freedom, darling; be a little Buddha girl, no I, free from the

  chain o f being because you are empty inside, no ego, Freud

  couldn’t even find you under a microscope. It’s a cold night,

  one o f them unusual ones in N ew Y ork, under zero with a

  piercing wind about fifteen miles an hour. There’s no coat

  warm enough. I lived in someone’s room, slept on the floor. It

  was Christmas and she said to meet her at M acy’s. I followed

  the directions she gave me and went to the right floor. I never

  saw anything so big or so much. There’s hundreds o f kinds o f

  sausages all wrapped up and millions o f different boxes o f