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