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
made love he was a sweet man with kisses and soft talk into
sunrise and he’d hold me after and he’d touch me. Sometimes
he took me to visit people, his friends, and I was too shy to say
anything but I thought it might mean he liked me or trusted
me or had some pride in me or felt right about me and they
asked me things too and tried to talk with me. Eldridge would