Mercy

one day it will be cold and dead. He’s burning towards death

and a man’s not supposed to. A dry fuck with a dry heart is

being a man; a dry, heartless fuck with a dry, heartless heart.

He’s the great dancer, the most beautiful; he had all the women

and all the men; and now he is self-immolating; he is torrential

explosions o f fire, pillars o f flame, miles high; he is a force field

o f heat miles wide. The ground burns under him and anything

he touches is seared. The heat spreads, a fever o f discontent.

The men are fevered, an epidemic o f fury; they are hot but

they can’t burn. H e’s dying in front o f them, torched, and I’m

smashed up on him, whole, arms up and outstretched, on

him, flat up against the flames, indestructible. The whore’s

killing him; she’s a whore and she’s killing you. He can’t stay

away but he tries. He enumerates for me m y lovers. He misses

some but I am discreet. He breaks down because I am not

pregnant yet. I show him m y birth control pills, which he has

never seen; I explain that I w on’t be getting pregnant. He

disappears for a day, two days, then suddenly he is in front o f

me, on his knees, his smile stopping m y heart, he stoops with a

dancer’s swift grace, there is a gift in his hands but his hands

don’t touch mine, he drops the gift and I catch it and he is

gone, I catch it before it hits the ground and when I look up he

is gone, I could have dreamed it but I have the flowers or the

bread or the book or the red-painted Easter egg or the

drawing. H e’s gone and time takes his place, a knife slicing me

into pieces; each second is a long, slow cut. Tim e can slow

down so you can’t outlast it. It can have a minute longer than

your life. Tim e can stand still and you can feel yourself dying

in it but you can’t make it go faster and you can’t die any faster

and if it doesn’t m ove you will never die at all and it w o n ’t

move; you are caved in underground with time collapsed in on

top o f you. T im e’s the cruelest lover yo u ’ll ever have,

merciless and thorough, wrapping itself right around your

heart and choking it and never stopping because time is never

over. Tim e turns your bed into a grave and you can’t breathe

because time pushes down on your heart to kill it. Tim e crawls

with its legs spread out all over you. It’s everywhere, a

noxious poison, it’s vapor and gas and air, it seeps, it spreads,

you can’t run aw ay somewhere so it w o n ’t hurt you, it’s there

before you are, waiting. H e’s gone and he’s left time behind to

punish you; but why? W hy isn’t he here yet; or now ; or now;

or now; and not one second has passed yet. He doesn’t want to

burn; but why? Why should he want less, to be less, to feel

less, to know less; w hy shouldn’t he push him self as far as he

can go; w hy shouldn’t he burn until he dies? I have a certain

ruthless objectivity not uncommon among those who live

inside the senses; I love him without restraint, without limit,

without respect to consequences, for me or for him; I am not

sentimental; I want him; this is not dopey, stupid, sentimental

love; nostalgia and lingering romance; this is it; all; everything. I don’t care about his small stupid social life among stupid, mediocre men— I know him, self-im molating,

torched, in me. His phony friends embarrass him, the men all

around on the streets playing cards and drinking and gossiping, the stupid men who lust for how much he feels, can’t imagine anything other than manipulating tourists into bed so

they can brag or sex transactions for money or the duties o f the

marital bed, the roll-over fuck; and he’s burning, consumed,

dying; so what? H e’d show up suddenly and then he’d be gone

and he never touched me; how could he not touch me? He’d

come in a burst and then he’d disappear and he’d never touch

me and sometimes he brought someone with him so he

couldn’t touch me or be with me or stay near me or come near

me to touch me; how could he not touch me? I went into a

white hot rage, a delirium o f rage; if I’d had his children I

would have sliced their necks open. I used razor blades to cut

delicate lines into my hands; physical pain was easy, a

distraction. Keeping the blade on m y hand, away from my

wrist, took all my concentration, a game o f nerves, a lover’s

game. I made fine lines that turned burgundy from blood the

w ay artists etch lines in glass but the glass doesn’t turn red for

them and the red doesn’t smear and drip. There was a man, I

wanted it to be M but it wasn’t M. He tied me up and hurt me

and on m y back there were marks where he used a whip he had

for animals and I wanted M to see but he didn’t come and he

didn’t see. I would have stayed there strung-up against the

wall m y back cut open forever for him to see but he didn’t see.

Then one day he came in the afternoon and knocked on the

door and politely asked me to have dinner with him that night.

Usually we talked in broken words in broken languages,

messy, tripping over each other. This was a quiet, formal,

aloof invitation with barely any words at all. He came in a car

with a driver. We sat in the back. He was elaborately

courteous. He didn’t say anything. I thought he would explain

things and say why. I sat quietly and waited. He was

unfailingly polite. We ate pinner. He said nothing except do

you like your dinner and would you like more wine and I

nodded whatever he said and m y eyes were open looking right

at him asking him to tell me something that would rescue me,

bring me back to being someone human with a human life.

Then he said he would take me home, form ally, politely, and

at m y door he asked i f he could come in and I said he could

only i f we could talk and he nodded his assent and the driver

waited for him and we went in and he touched me to fuck me,

his hands pushing me down on the bed, and I wanted him dead

and I tried to kill him with m y bare hands for touching me, for

not saying one word to me, for pushing me to fuck me, and I

hit his face with m y fist and I hit his neck and I pushed his neck

so hard I twisted it half around and he was stunned to feel the

pain and he was enraged and he pushed me down to fuck me

and he pinned me down with his hands and shoulders and

chest and legs and he kept fucking me and he said now he was

fucking me the w ay he fucked all whores, yes he went to

brothels and fucked whores, what did I think, that he only

fucked me, no man only fucked one wom an, and I would find

out how much he had loved me before because this was how

he fucked whores and this was how he would fuck me from

now on and it went on forever and I stopped fighting because

m y heart died and I lay still and I didn’t m ove and it still kept

going on and I stared at him and I hated him, I kept m y eyes

open and I stared, and it w asn’t over for a long time but I had

died during it so it didn’t matter when it ended or when he

stopped or when he pulled out o f me finally or when he was

gone from inside me and then it was over and there was

numbness close to death throughout me and there was some

man between m y legs. I hadn’t moved and I didn’t move, I

couldn’t m ove, I was on m y back and he had been on top o f me

to fuck me and then he slid down to where his head was

between m y legs and he turned over on his back and he rested

the back o f his head between m y legs where he had fucked me

and he rested there like some sweet, tired baby who had ju st

been born only they put him between m y legs instead o f in m y

arms and he said we would get married now because there was

nothing else left for either o f us; pity the poor lover, it hurt him