Mercy (16 page)

be conscientious objectors came in for help there were always

a lot o f jokes about rape. I didn’t see how you could make

jokes about rape i f you were against violence; maybe rape

barely existed at all but it was pretty awful. The pacifists and

w ar resisters would counsel the conscientious objectors about

what to say to the draft boards. Vietnam was pulling all these

boys to be killers. The draft board always asked what the c. o. ’s

would do i f their mother was raped or their girlfriend or their

sister and it was a big joke. The pacifists and the c. o . ’s would

say things like they would let her have a good time. I don’t

remember all the things they said but they would laugh and

jo k e about it; it always made me sort o f sick but if I tried to say

something they w ouldn’t listen and I didn’t know what to say

anyway. Eventually the pacifists would tell the c. o. ’s the right

w ay to answer the question. It was a lofty answer about never

using violence under any circumstance however tragic or

painful but it was a lie because none o f them ever thought it

was anything to have their girlfriend raped or their mother.

They always thought it was funny and they always laughed; so

it wasn’t violence because they never laughed at violence. So

I’m not sure i f rape even really existed because these pacifists

really cared about violence and they never would turn their

backs on violence. They cared about social justice. They cared

about peace. They cared about racism. They cared about

poverty. They cared about everything bad that happened to

people. It was confusing that they didn’t care about rape, or

thought it was a joke, but then I wasn’t so sure what rape was

exactly. I knew it was horrible. I always had a picture in my

mind o f a woman with her clothes torn, near dead, on the floor,

unable to move because she was beaten up so bad and hurt so

much, especially between her legs. I always thought the Nazis

had done it. The draft board always asked about the Nazis:

would you have fought against the Nazis, suppose the Nazis

tried to rape your sister. They would rehearse how to answer the

draft board and then, when it came to the rape part, they always

laughed and madejokes. I would be typing because I never got

to talk or they would act irritated if I did or they would just

keep talking to each other anyway over me and I felt upset and

I would interrupt and say, well, I mean, rape is. . . . but I

could never finish the sentence, and if I’d managed to get their

attention, sometimes by nearly crying, they’d all just stare and

I’d go blank. It was a terrifying thing and you would be so

hurt; how could they laugh? And you wouldn’t want a Nazi to

come anywhere near you, it would just be foul.
The Nazis
, I

would say, trying to find a way to say—
bad, very bad.
Rape is

very bad, I wanted to say, but I could only say
Nazis are very

bad.
What’s bad about fucking my sister, someone would say;

always; every time. Then they’d all laugh. So I wasn’t even

sure if there was rape. So I don’t think I could have been raped

even though I think I was raped but I know I wasn’t because it

barely existed or it didn’t exist at all and if it did it was only

with Nazis; it had to be as bad as Nazis. I didn’t want the man

to be fucking me but, I mean, that doesn’t really matter; it’s

just that I really tried to stop him, I really tried not to have him

near me, I really didn’t want him to and he really hurt me so

much so I thought maybe it was rape because he hurt me so

bad and I didn’t want to so much but I guess it wasn’t or it

doesn’t matter. I had this boyfriend named Arthur, a sweet

man. He was older; he had dignity. He wasn’t soft, he knew

the streets; but he didn’t need to show anything or prove

anything. He just lived as far as I could see. He was a waiter in a

bar deep in the Lower East Side, so deep down under a dark

sky, wretched to get there but okay inside. I was sleeping on a

floor near there, in the collective. Someone told me you could

get real cheap chicken at the bar. I would go there every night

for m y one meal, fried chicken in a basket with hot thick

french fried potatoes and ketchup for ninety-nine cents and it

was real good, real chicken, not rat meat, cooked good. He

brought me a beer but I had to tell him to take it back because J

didn’t have the money for it but he was buying it for me. Then

I went with him one night. The bar was filled and noisy and

had sawdust on the floors and barrels o f peanuts so you could

eat them without money and there were low life and artists

there. He smiled and seemed happy and also had a sadness, in

his eyes, on the edges o f his mouth. He lived in a small

apartment with two other men, one a painter, Eldridge, the

other I never met. It was tiny, up five flights on Avenue D,

with a couple o f rooms I never saw. Y ou walked in through a

tiny kitchen, all cracked wood with holes in the floor, an

ancient stove and an old refrigerator that looked like a bank

vault, round and heavy and metal, with almost no room

inside. His bed was a single bed in a kind o f living room but

not quite. There were paintings by the artist in the room. The

artist was sinewy and had a limp and was bitter, not sad, with a

mean edge to anything he said. He had to leave the room so we

could be alone. I could hear him there, listening. I stayed the

night there and I remember how it was to watch the light come

up and have someone running his finger under m y chin and

touching m y hands with his lips. I was afraid to go back to the

bar after that because I didn’t know if he’d want me to but it

was the only place I knew to get a meal for small change.

Every time he was glad to see me and he would ask me what I

wanted and he would bring me dinner and some beer and

another one later and he even gave me a dark beer to try

because I didn’t know about it and I liked it; and I would stay;

and I would go with him. I didn’t talk much because you don’t

talk to men even if they seem nice; you can never know if they

will mind or not but usually they will mind. But he asked me

things. He told me some things, hard things, about his life,

and time in jail, and troubles; and he asked me some things,

easy things, about what I did that day, or what I thought, or i f I

liked something, or how I felt, or if something felt good, or i f I

was happy, or i f l liked him. He was my lover I guess, not

really my boyfriend, because I never knew i f l should go to the

bar or not but I would and then w e’d make love and when we