how to get lawyers to be ready, how to get the press there,
how to rouse people and how to quiet them down. I listen so
that I learn how to think a certain w ay and answer certain hard
questions, very specific questions, about what w ill happen in
scenario after scenario; but I am not allowed to say anything
about what to do or how to do it or ask questions or the w ords
I do say ju st disappear in the air or in m y throat. The old men
really are the ones. T hey say how to do it. T hey do all the
thinking. T hey make all the plans. They think everything
through. I listen to them and I remember everything. I am
learning how to listen too, concentrate, think it hard as if
writing it down in your mind. It is not easy to listen. The peace
boys talk and never listen. The old men do it all for them, then
they swagger and take all the credit while the old men are
happy to fade to the background so the movement looks virile
and young. The peace boys talk, smoke, rant, make their
jokes, strum guitars, run their silky white hands through their
stringy long hair. They spread their legs when they talk, they
spread out, their legs open up and they spread them wide and
their sentences spread all over and their words come and come
and their gestures get bigger and they got half erect cocks all
the time when they talk, the denim o f their dirty jeans is pulled
tight across their cocks because o f how they spread their legs
and they always finger themselves just lightly when they talk
so they are always excited by what they have to say. Somehow
they are always half reclining, on chairs, on desks, on tables,
against walls or stacks o f boxes, legs spread out so they can
talk, touching themselves with the tips o f their fingers or the
palms o f their spread hands, giggling, smoking, they think
they are Che. I live in half a dozen different places: in the
collective on Avenue B on the floor, I don’t fight for the bed
anymore; in a living room in Brooklyn with a brother and a
sister, the brother sleeps in the same room and stares and
breathes heavy and I barely dare to breathe, they are pacifists
and leave the door to their ground floor apartment open all the
time out o f love for their fellow man but a mongrel bulldog-
terrier will kill anyone who comes through, this is the
Brooklyn o f elevated subways where you walk down dark,
steep flights o f stairs to streets o f knives and broken bottles, an
open door is a merciless act o f love; in an apartment in Spanish
Harlem, big, old, a beautiful labyrinth, with three men but I
only sleep with two, one’s a sailor and he likes anal intercourse
and when he isn’t there I get the single bed in his room to myself,
some nights I am in one bed half the night, then in the other bed;
some nights between places I stay with different men I don’t
know, or sometimes a woman, not a peace woman but
someone from the streets who has a hole in the wall to-
disappear into, someone hard and tough and she seen it all and
she’s got a mattress covered with old garbage, paper garbage,
nothing filthy, and old newspapers, and I lay under her, a
pretty girl up against her dry skin and bones that feel like
they’re broke, her callouses, her scars, bad teeth but her eyes
are brilliant, savage and brilliant, and her sex is ferocious and
rough, a little mean, I find such a woman, older than me and
I’m the ingenue and I’m the tough girl with the future; some
nights between places I stay in a hallway in a building with an
open door; some nights between places I am up all night in
bars with nowhere to sleep and no one I am ready to go with,
something warns me o ff or I just don’t want to, and at two or
four when the bars close I find a doorw ay and wait or walk and
wait, it’s cold, a lethal cold, so usually I walk, a slow,
purposeful walk with m y shoulders hunched over so no one
will see I’m young and have nowhere to go. T he jail was dirty,
dark, foul. I wasn’t allowed to make the plans or write the
picket because they needed numbers and it was just being a
foot soldier and they let me sit in because it was bodies and
they let me get arrested because it was numbers for the press;
but once we were arrested the wom en disappeared inside the
prison, we were swallowed up in it, it w asn’t as if anyone was
missing to them. T hey were all over the men, to get them out,
to keep track o f them, to make sure they were okay, the heroes
o f the revolution incarnate had to be taken care of. The real
men were going to real jail in a real historical struggle; it was
real revolution. The nothing ones walked o ff a cliff and melted
into thin air. I didn’t mind being used but I didn’t expect to
disappear into a darkness resembling hell by any measure; left
there to rot by m y brothers; the heroes o f the revolution. T hey
got the men out; they left us in. Rape, they said. We had to get
them out as a priority; rape, they said. In jail men get raped,
they said N o jokes, no laughs, no Nazis; rape; we can’t have
the heroes o f the revolution raped. And them that’s raped ain’t
heroes o f the revolution; but there were no words for that. The
women had honor. We stood up to the police. We didn’t post
bail. We went on a hunger strike. We didn’t cooperate on any
level, at any time. The pacifists just cut us loose so we could go
under, no air from the surface, no lawyers, no word, no
solace, no counsel, no help; but we didn’t give in. We didn’t
shake and we didn’t scream and we didn’t try to die, banging
our heads against concrete walls until they were smashed. We
were locked in a special hell for girls; girls you could do
anything to; girls who were exiled into a night so long and
lonely it might last forever, a hell they made for those who
don’t exist. “ Ladies, ” they kept calling us; “ ladies. ” “ Ladies, ”
do this; “ ladies, ” do that; “ ladies, ” come here; “ ladies, ” go
there. We had been in the cold all day. We picketed from real
early, maybe eight in the morning, all through the afternoon,
and it was almost five in the evening before Adlai Stevenson
came. About three or four we blocked the doors by sitting
down so then we couldn’t even keep warm by walking
around. We sat there waiting for the police to arrest us but they
wouldn’t; they knew the cold was bad. Finally they said they’d
arrest us i f we blocked a side door, the one final door that
provided access to the building. Then we saw Adlai Stevenson
go in and we got mad because he didn’t give a fuck about us
and then we blocked the final door and then the police arrested
us; some people went limp and their bodies were dragged over
cement to the police vans and some people got up and walked
and you could hear the bones o f the people who were dragged
cracking on the cement and you wondered if their bones
had
split down the middle. Then we went to the precinct and the
police made out reports. Then the men were taken to the city
jail for men, the Tom bs, a place o f brutality, pestilence, and
rape they said; rape; and we went to the w om en’s jail; no one
said rape. It was w ay late after midnight when we got there.
We got out o f the van in a closed courtyard and it was cold and
dark and we walked through a door into hell, some nightmare
some monster dreamed up. Hell was a building with a door
and you walked through the door. But the men got out the
next day on their own recognizance because the pacifists
hurried to get them lawyers and hearings, spent the whole day
w orking on it, a Friday, dawn to dusk, and the wom en didn’t
get out because the pacifists didn’t have time; they had to get
the heroes o f the revolution out before someone started
sticking things up them. They just left us. Then it was a
weekend and a national holiday and the jail w asn’t doing any
nasty business like letting people who don’t exist and don’t
matter loose; we were nothing to them and they left us to rot
or be hurt, because it was a torture place and they knew it but
they didn’t tell us; and they left us; the wom en who didn’t exist
got to stay solidly in hell; and no one said rape; in jail they kept
sticking things up us all the time but no one said rape, there is
no such w ord with any meaning that I have ever heard applied
when someone spreads a girl’s legs and sticks something in
anywhere up her; no one minds including pacifists. One
woman had been a call girl, though we didn’t know it then,
and she was dressed real fine so the women in the jail spit on
her. One woman was a student and some inmates held her
down and some climbed on top o f her and some put their
hands up her and later the newspapers said it was rape because
lesbians did it so it was rape if lesbians piled on top o f you and
lesbians was the bad word, not rape, it was bad because
lesbians did it, like Nazis, and it wasn’t anything like I knew,
being around girls and how we were. Later the newspapers
said this w om en’s jail was known as a hellhole torture place
and there’s a long history o f wom en beat up and burned and
assaulted for decades but the pacifists let us stay there; didn’t
bother them. There was a woman killed there by torture.
There were women hurt each and every day and the newspapers couldn’t think o f enough bad names to say how evil the
place was and how full o f cruelty and it was known; but the
pacifists let us stay there; didn’t bother them; because if you
get tortured they don’t hear the screams any more than if you
talk in a meeting; you could be pulled into pieces in front o f
them and they’d go on as if you wasn’t there; and you weren’t
there, not for them, truly you were nothing so they weren’t
w orrying about you when you were well-hidden somewhere
designed to hide you; and they weren’t all overwrought just
because someone might stick something up you or bring you
pain; and if you got a hole to stick it up then there’s no problem
for them if someone’s sticking something up it, or how many
times, or if it’s very bad. I don’t know what to call what they
did to me but I never said it was rape, I never did, and no one
did; ever. T w o doctors, these men, gave me an internal
examination as they called it which I had never heard o f before
or seen and they used a steel speculum which I had never seen
before and I didn’t know what it was or why they were putting
it up me and they tore me apart inside so I couldn’t stop
bleeding; but it wasn’t rape because it wasn’t a penis and it was
doctors and there is no rape and they weren’t Nazis, or lesbians
even, and maybe it was a lie because it’s always a lie or if it did
happen was I a virgin because if I wasn’t a virgin it didn’t
matter what they did to me because if something’s been stuck
up you once it makes you dirty and it doesn’t matter if you tear
someone apart inside. I didn’t think it was rape, I never did, I
didn’t know what they did or w hy they did it except I knew
how much it hurt and how afraid I was when I didn’t stop
bleeding and I wouldn’t have ever said rape, not ever; and I
didn’t, not ever. The peace boys told me I was bourgeois; like I
was too spoiled to take it. The pacifists thought if it was bad
for the prison in the newspapers it was good. But even after
the pacifists didn’t say, see, these girls hate the War. Even
these silly girls hate the War. Even the girl w h o ’s stupid
enough to type our letters and bring us coffee hates the War.
Even these dumb girls who walked through a door into hell
hate the War. Even these silly cunts we left in a torture pit
know ing full well they’d be hurt but so what hate the War.
They are too stupid to hate us but they hate the War. So stop
the War because these dregs, these nothings, these no ones,
these pieces we sent in to be felt up and torn up and have things
stuck in them hate the War. The peace boys laughed at me
when they found out I was hurt. It was funny, how some
bourgeois cunt couldn’t take it. They laughed and they spread
their legs and they fingered themselves. I w asn’t the one who
told them. I never told them. I couldn’t speak anym ore at all; I
was dumb or mute or however you say it, I didn’t have words
and I w ouldn’t say anything for any reason to anyone because I
was too hurt and too alone. I got out o f jail after four days and I
walked on the streets for some days and I said nothing to no
one until this nonviolence woman found me and made me say
what happened. She was a tough cookie in her ow n w ay which
was only half a pose. She cornered me and she w ouldn’t let me
go until I said what happened. Some words came out and then
all the ones I had but I didn’t know how to say things, like
speculum which I had never seen, so I tried to say what
happened thing by thing, describing because I didn’t know
what to call things, sometimes even with m y hands showing
her what I meant, and when it was over she seemed to
understand. The call girl got a jail sentence because the ju dge
said she had a history o f prostitution. The pacifists didn’t say
how she was noble to stand up against the War; or how she
was reformed or any other bullshit; they just all shivered and
shook when they found out she had been a call girl; and they
ju st let her go, quiet, back into hell; thirty days in hell for
trying to stop a nasty war; and the pacifists didn’t want to
claim her after that; and they didn’t help her after that; and they
didn’t want her in demonstrations after that. They let me drift,
a mute, in the streets, just a bourgeois piece o f shit who
couldn’t take it; except for the peace woman. She seemed to
understand everything and she seemed to believe me even
though I had never heard o f any suc
h thing happening before
and it didn’t seem possible to me that it had happened at all.
She said it was very terrible to have such a thing happen. I had
to try to say each thing or show it with m y hands because I
couldn’t sum up anything or say anything in general or refer to
any common knowledge and I didn’t know what things were
or if they were important and I didn’t know if it was all right
that they did it to me or not because they did it to everyone
there, who were mostly whores except for one woman who
murdered her husband, and they were police and doctors and
so I thought maybe they were allowed to even though I
couldn’t stop bleeding but I was afraid to tell anyone, even
myself, and to m yself I kept saying I had m y period, even after
fifteen days. She called a newspaper reporter who said so
what? The newspaper reporter said it happens all the time
there that women are hurt just so bad or worse and remember
the woman who was tortured to death and so what was so
special about this? But the woman said the reporter was wrong
and it mattered so at first I started to suffocate because the
reporter said it didn’t matter but then I could breathe again
because the woman said it mattered and it couldn’t be erased
and you couldn’t say it was nothing. So I went from this
woman after this because I couldn’t just stay there with her and
she assumed everyone had some place to go because that’s
how life is it seems in the main and I went to the peace office
and instead o f typing letters for the peace boys I wrote to
newspapers saying I had been hurt and it was bad and not all
right and because I didn’t know sophisticated words I used the
words I knew and they were very shocked to death; and the
peace boys were in the office and I refused to type a letter for
one o f them because I was doing this and he read m y letter out
loud to everyone in the room over m y shoulder and they all
laughed at me, and I had spelled America with a “ k ” because I
knew I was in K afka’s world, not Jefferson ’s, and I knew
Am erika was the real country I lived in, and they laughed that I