Mercy (74 page)

they do you on the bed o f pain; bang bang. I tell him I know

the man; but I don’t know if he knows what I mean. I know

the man. He acts to me with respect as if he grasps m y

meaning. I am trying to say, without saying, that the man

fucked me too; but I don’t know how to say I became it and he

didn’t and now I’m refusing to be it or I’m in the process and

that there’s profound injustice in making someone it, in

crushing them down so their insides are fucked in perpetuity. I

die for men to admire, from a stance o f parity; I admire Huey; I

am struggling for parity, what I see as his revolutionary

dignity and self-definition, his bravery— not in defying

authority, I been through that, but in upending the reality that

said what he was and what was on top o f him. He sends me

poems and m axims, and I am thinking whether to send him

some. I love him. I think maybe he could be for women. In

some speeches he says so. He says men have been arrogant

over women and there’s new freedoms women need to have.

During the days I type for four dollars an hour, which means

that if I am prepared to go ape-shit or stir crazy I could

certainly make up to thirty-two dollars a day, on some days;

but I can only stand to do it four hours or maybe three, and I

really couldn’t stand to do it every day, although I have tried to

for the money, I have tried; if I could do three hours every day

I would be fine, unless something happened. It’s just that I do

it and I do it and I do it and not much time has elapsed it turns

out and I get bored and restless as if m y mind is physically

lifting itself out o f m y head and hitting the walls like some

trapped fly. I feel a profound distaste for it, sitting there and

doing this stupid shit. I feel a bitterness, almost guilt or

remorse, it’s unbearable in the minute or at that time as if I’m

betraying being alive, there’s too much m oving in me and I

cannot fucking waste it in this chickenshit way. It’s not a

matter o f having an idea o f a picture o f life, or taking exception

to the idea o f typing or being a secretary or doing something o f

the sort, I don’t have some prior idea o f how I should be or

how life should be, a magazine picture in my head, you know,

or from television, or from the romances other people say they

want. It ain’t a thought in any sense at all. It’s that I am not her

and I cannot be her, I fucking am not her, I can’t do it, I can’t sit

still and type the shit. It’s just that I want what I want, which is

throughout me, not just my brain, and it’s to feel and move

and fuck. I don’t try to resolve it. I figure you have to be

humble before life. Life tells you, you don’t tell it, and you

can’t argue with what w on’t sit still long enough to be argued

with. I have to break loose one w ay or another, drink or fuck,

find some real noise, you know, a fucking stream o f real noise

and messing around to jum p right in; that’s my way. If it’s

tepid I don’t want it and I don’t do it from habit or just because

it’s there to be done, it’s a big change I made in myself, I have

to feel it bad, I don’t do nothing on automatic; people think if

it’s on the bad side it ain’t bourgeois but I don’t; I think if it’s

tepid it don’t matter what it is class-wise or style-wise. I don’t

solve things in m y mind to impose it on reality, because it ain’t

worth much to do so; for instance, to say you don’t want to be

some fucked thing so don’t fuck. Fucking never feels like you

will end up some fucked thing anyway; it pushes you out so

fast and so far it ain’t a matter o f what you think and it’s stupid

to misidentify it, the problem. Y o u ’re some poor, fragile

person in the middle o f an ocean you never seen the whole of;

you don’t know where it starts or where it stops or how deep

down it goes and what you got to do is swim and hope, hope

and swim; you learn everything you know from it, it don’t

learn a fucking thing from you. Y ou can make promises to

yourself in your mind but your mind is so small up against the

world; you got to have some respect for the world; or so I see it

and that’s m y way; but, then, I ain’t holding out for a pension.

I type m y hours, however many I can make it through,

putting as much pressure on m yself as I can stand, which isn’t

making a lot o f progress, and I keep a time sheet, which I make

as honest as possible but it is hard not because I want to lie but

because I ju st fucking cannot keep track, I can’t pay enough

attention to it to keep track, so I just approximate sort o f

combining what I need with what seems plausible and I come

up with something. I cannot write every fucking thing down

to keep track o f m y time as i f I’m some asshole and I find it

profoundly unbearable to do robot stuff. Sometimes I w ork

for a writer, a poet, and I deliver packages, which at least

means I go on subways and taxis and see places, and I file

papers aw ay alphabetically and I type, except she says you

have to put a space before the colon and a space after it, one

space after it instead o f just no space before it and two spaces

after it as every typist does. In theory I am for defying

convention but typing is something you do automatic like

yo u ’re the machine, not it, and you learn to put two spaces

after the colon and none before it and your hands do that and

your brain ain’t fast enough to stop them and I spend half my

time correcting the stupid thing with white Liquid Paper and

eraser stuff and trying to align it right when I’m typing the

colon back in and I just really want her to drop dead because o f

it. Passions can be monumental. I can barely keep my ass on

the typing chair at her desk; I mean, she owns the desk; she has

her desk, a big desk, and then the desk where I sit, a little desk

and her desk is in her big room and m y desk is in a little

anteroom right o ff her big room so she can always see me but

I’m o ff to the side, relegated to being help in a clear w ay; it has

its own eloquence and I feel it acutely and it gets me mad. I try

to take the typing home with me so I don’t have to sit at the

little desk in the little room with her watching but she wants

me to do it there and there’s this tug o f war. She’s real

seductive and I am too fucking bored to care because if I give in

to it then I will have to be there more and if I am there more I

will have to type more and if I have to type more I will die.

There’s apparently some edge she sees; she thinks I’m

turbulent, she says; I think I’m calm and patient in a world o f

endless and chaotic bullshit, which I say but it falls on deaf

ears; I smile and I’m nice and completely calm except for when