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 such 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
couldn’t spell it right. The peace wom an fed me sometimes
and let me sleep there sometimes and she talked to me so I
learned some words I could use with her but I didn’t tell her
most things because I didn’t know how and she had an
apartment and w asn’t conversant with how things were for
me and I didn’t want to say but also I couldn’t and also there
was no reason to try, because it is as it is. I’m me, not her in her
apartment. Y ou always have your regular life. She’d say she
could see I was tired and did I want to sleep and I’d say no and
she’d insist and I never understood how she could tell but I was
so tired. I had a room I always stayed in. It was small but it was
warm and there were blankets and there was a door that closed
and she’d be there and she didn’t let anyone come in after me.
M aybe she would have let me stay there more if I had known
how to say some true things about day to day but I didn’t ask
anything from anyone and I never would because I couldn’t
even be sure they would understand, even her. And what I
told her when she made me talk to her was how once you went
to jail they started sticking things up you. T hey kept putting
their fingers and big parts o f their whole hand up you, up your
vagina and up your rectum; they searched you inside and
stayed inside you and kept touching you inside and they
searched inside your mouth with their fingers and inside your
ears and nose and they made you squat in front o f the guards to
see i f anything fell out o f you and stand under a cold shower
and make different poses and stances to see if anything fell out
o f you and then they had someone w ho they said was a nurse