Mercy

legs, wear white gloves and don’t get them dirty, girls don’t

climb trees, girls don’t run, girls don’t, girls don’t, girls don’t;

w asn’t nothing girls actually did do o f any interest whatsoever. It’s when they get you a doll that pees that you recognize the dimensions o f the conspiracy, its institutional reach, its

metaphysical ambition. Then God caps it all o ff with

Leviticus. I have to say, I was not amused. But the meanest

was m y daddy: be kind, be smart, read, think, care, be

excellent, be serious, be committed, be honest, be someone,

be, be, be; he was the cruelest jo k er alive. There’d be “ Meet

the Press” on television every Sunday and they’d interview the

Secretary o f State or Defense or a labor leader or some foreign

head o f state and w e’d discuss the topic, m y daddy and me:

labor, Suez, integration, law, literacy, racism, poverty; and

I’d try to solve them. We would discuss what the President

should do and what I would do if I were Secretary o f State. He

would listen to me, at eight, at ten, at twelve, attentively, with

respect. The cruelty o f the man knew no bounds. Y ou have a

right to hate liberals; they make promises they cannot keep.

They make you believe certain things are possible: dignity in

the world, and freedom; but especially equality. They make

equality seem as if it’s real. It’s a great sorrow to grow up. The

w orld ain’t liberal. I always wanted excellence. I wanted to

attain it. I didn’t start out with apologies. I thought: I am. I

wanted to m ix with the world, hands on, me and it, and I’d

have courage. I w asn’t born nice necessarily but nurture

triumphed over nature and I wanted to be the good citizen

who could go from my father’s living room out into the

world. I got all fucked up with this peace stuff—how you can

make it better, anything better, if you care, if you try. I didn’t

want to kill Nazis, or anyone. In this sense I knew right from

w rong; it was an immutable sense o f right and wrong; that

killing killed the one doing the killing and that killing killed

something precious and good at the center o f life itself. I knew

it was wrong to take an individual life, mine, and turn it into a

weapon o f destruction; I knew I could and I said no I w on’t; I

could have; I was born with the capacity to kill; but m y father

changed m y heart. I said, it’s Nazism you have to kill, not

Nazis. People die pretty easy but cruelty doesn’t. So you got

to find a w ay to go up against the big thing, the menace; you

have to stop it from being necessary— you have to change the

world so no one needs it. Y ou have to start with the love you

have to give, the love that comes from your own heart; and

you can’t accept any terror o f the body, restrictions or

inhibitions or totalitarian limits set by authoritarian types or

institutions; there’s nothing that can’t be love, there’s nothing

that has to be mean; you take the body, the divine body, that

their hate disfigures and destroys, and you let it triumph over

murder and rage and hate through physical love and it is the

purest democracy, there is no exclusion in it. Anything,

everything, is or can be communion, I-Thou. Anything,

everything, can be transformed, transcended, opened up,

turned from opaque to translucent; everything’s luminous,

lambent, poignant, sweet, filled with nuance and grace,

potentially ecstatic. I thought I had the power and the passion

and the will to transform anything, me, now, with the simple

openness o f m y own heart, a heart pretty free o f fear and

without prejudice against life; a heart loving life. I didn’t have

a fascist heart or a bourgeois heart; I just had this heart that

wanted freedom. I wanted to love. I wanted; to love. I never

grasped the passive part where if you were a girl you were

supposed to be loved; he picks you; you sit, wait, hope, pray,

don’t perspire, pluck your eyebrows, be good meaning you

fucking sit still; then the boy comes along and says give me

that one and you respond to being picked with desire, sort o f

like an apple leaping from the tree into the basket. I was me,

however, not her, whomever; some fragile, impotent,

mentally absent person perpetually on hold, then the boy

presses the button and suddenly the line is alive and you get to

say yes and thank you. In Birkenau it didn’t matter what was

in your gorgeous heart, did it; but I didn’t learn, did I? I

wanted to love past couples and individuals and the phoney

baloney o f neurotic affairs. I didn’t want small personalities

doing fetishized carnal acts. I thought adultery was the

stupidest thing alive. John Updike made me want to puke. I

didn’t think adultery could survive one day o f real freedom. I

didn’t think it was bad— I thought it was moronic. I wanted a

grand sensuality that encompassed everyone, didn’t leave

anyone out. I wanted it dense and real and full-blooded and

part o f the fabric o f every day, every single ordinary day, all

the time; I wanted it in all things great and small. I wanted the

world to tremble with sexual feeling, all stirred up, on the

edge o f a thrill, riding a tremor, and I wanted a tender embrace

to dissolve alienation and end war. I wanted the w orld’s colors

to deepen and shine and shimmer and leap out, I didn’t want

limits or boundaries, not on me, not on anyone else either; I

didn’t want life flat and dull, a line drawing done by some

sophomore student at the Art League. I thought w e’d fuck

power to death, because sexual passion was the enemy o f

power, and I thought that every fuck was an act o f passion and

compassion, beauty and faith, empathy and an impersonal

ecstasy; and the cruel ones, the mean ones, were throwbacks,

the old order intransigent and refusing to die, but still, the

fuck, any fuck, brought someone closer to freedom and power

closer to dying. And yes, the edge is harrowing and poverty is

not kind and power ain’t moved around so easy, especially not

by some adolescent girl in heat, and I fell very low over time,

very low, but I had devotion to freedom and I loved life. I

w asn’t brought low in the inner sanctum o f m y belief; until

after being married, when I was destroyed. I remembered

Birkenau. I wished I could find my w ay back to the line, you

wait, you walk, you wait, you walk some more, it’s over. I

know that’s ignorant; I am ignorant. I wanted peace and I had

love in m y heart and being hurt didn’t mean anything except I

wasn't dead yet, still alive, still having to live today and right

now; being hurt didn’t change anything, you can’t let fear