Truman would have bought it? M y daddy wouldn’t have
either. At best he’d say w hy did this tragic thing happen to
you— it would never be possible to pin down which tragic
thing he meant— and he’d be bitter and mad, not at the bad one
but at me; I’d be the bad one for him. At worst I’d be plain filth
in his eyes. I don’t know w hy I can’t think all the Japanese
should die so I can stay alive or w hy I can’t think some man
should die. I’ll never be a Christian, that’s for sure. I can’t
stand thinking Christ died for me; it makes me sick. I got some
idea o f how much it hurt. I can’t stand the thought. I am; but so
what? I’ve actually been willing to die so none o f them would
get hurt, even if they’re inside me against what I want. N o w I
started thinking they’re the Nazis, the real Nazis o f our time
and place, the brownshirts, they don’t put you on a train, they
come to where you are, they get you one by one but they do
get you, most o f you, nearly all, and they destroy your heart
and the sovereignty o f your body and they kill your freedom
and they make you ashen and humiliate you and they tear you
apart and it ain’t metaphor and they injure you beyond repair
or redemption, they injure your body past any known
suffering, and you die, not them, you; they kill you some-
times, slow or fast, with mutilation or not; and you are more
likely to murder yourself than them; and that’s wrong, child o f
God, that’s wrong. I can never think someone should die
instead o f me; but they should if they came to do the harm in
the first place; objectively speaking, they should. I think
perhaps they should. M y reason says so; but I can’t face it. I
run instead; run or give in; run or open m y legs; run or get hit;
run, hide, do it, do it for them, do whatever they want, do it
before they can hurt me more, anticipate what they want, do
it, keep them cooled out, keep them okay, keep them quiet or
more quiet than they would be if I made them mad; give in or
run; capitulate or run; hide or run; hide; run; escape; do what
they say; I used to say I wanted to do it, what they wanted,
whatever it was, I used to say it was me, I was deciding, I
wanted, I was ready, it was m y idea, I did the taking, I
decided, I initiated, hey I was as tough as them; but it was fuck
before they get mad— it was low er the risk o f making them
mad; you use your will to make less pain for yourself; you say /
am as if there is an I and then you do what pleases them, girl,
what they like, what you already learned they like, and there
ain’t no I, because i f there was it w ouldn’t have accepted the
destruction or annihilation, it w ouldn’t have accepted all the
little Hitler fiends, all the little Goering fiends, all the little
Him mler fiends, being right on you and turning you inside
out and leaving injury on you and liking it, they liked seeing
you hurt, and then you say it’s me, I chose it, I want it, it’s
fine— you say it for pride so you can stay alive through the
hours after and so it w o n ’t hit you in the face that yo u ’re just
some piece o f trash who ain’t worth nothing on this earth. N o
one can’t kill someone; h o w ’d I become no one; and w h y ’s he
someone; and how come there’s no I inside me; how come I
can’t think he should die i f that’s what it takes to blow him
loose? I’m a pilgrim searching for understanding; because
there’s nothing left, I’m empty and there’s nothing and it takes
a lot o f pride to lie. I wanted; what did I want? I wanted:
freedom. So they are ripping me apart and I smile I say I have
freedom. Freedom is semen all over you and some kinky
bruises, a lot o f men in you and the certainty o f more, there’s
always more; freedom and abundance— m y cup ran over.
There’s a special freedom for girls; it doesn’t get written down
in constitutions; there’s this freedom where they use you how
they want and you say I am, I choose, I decide, I want— after or
before, when you ’re young or when you’re a hundred— it’s
the liturgy o f the free woman— I choose, I decide, I want, I
am— and you have to be a devout follower o f the faith, a
fanatic o f freedom, to be able to say the words and remember
the acts at the same time; devout. Y ou really have to love
freedom, darling; be a little Buddha girl, no I, free from the
chain o f being because you are empty inside, no ego, Freud
couldn’t even find you under a microscope. It’s a cold night,
one o f them unusual ones in N ew Y ork, under zero with a
piercing wind about fifteen miles an hour. There’s no coat
warm enough. I lived in someone’s room, slept on the floor. It
was Christmas and she said to meet her at M acy’s. I followed
the directions she gave me and went to the right floor. I never
saw anything so big or so much. There’s hundreds o f kinds o f
sausages all wrapped up and millions o f different boxes o f
cookies all wrapped up and bottles o f vinegar and kinds o f oil
and millions o f things; I couldn’t get used to it and I got dizzy
and upset and I ran out. I lived with the woman who helped
me when I was just a kid out o f jail— she still had the same
apartment and she fed me but I couldn’t sleep in m y old room,
her husband slept in it now, a new husband, so I slept on a sofa
in the room right outside the kitchen and there were no doors.
There was the old sofa, foam rubber covered with plaid cloth,
and books, and the door to the apartment was a few feet away.
When you came in you could turn right or left. I f you turned
left you went to the bathroom or the living room. The living
room had a big double bed in it where she slept, m y friend. If
you turned right you came to the small room that was the
husband’s and past that you came to the open space where I
slept and you came to the kitchen. The husband didn’t like me
being there but he didn’t come home enough for it to matter.
He was hard and nasty and arrogant but politically he was a
pacifist. He looked like a bum but he was rich. He ordered
everyone around and wrote poems. He was an anarchist. M y
old room had to stay empty for him, even though he had his
own apartment, or studio as he called it, and never told her
when he was showing up. A friend o f hers gave me a room for
a few months in a brownstone on West 14th Street— pretty
place, civilized, Italian neighborhood, old, with Greenwich
Village charm. The room belonged to some man in a mental