Q.
‘Pardon me?’
Q.
‘I’ve already told you. I weep. It is then that I weep. Have you been paying even the slightest attention, slouched over there? I lie down beside them and weep and explain to them the psychological origins of the game and the needs it serves in me. I open my innermost psyche to them and beg compassion. Rare is the subject who is not deeply, deeply moved. They comfort me as best they can, restricted as they are by the bonds I’ve made.’
Q.
‘Whether it ends in actual intercourse depends. It’s unpredictable. There’s simply no way to tell.’
Q….
‘Sometimes one just has to go with the mood.’
B.I. #51 11-97
FORT DODGE IA
‘I always think, “What if I can’t?” Then I always think, “Oh shit, don’t think that.” Because thinking about it can make it happen. Not like it’s happened that often. But I get scared about it. We all do. Anybody tells you they don’t they’re full of it. They’re always scared it might happen. Then I always think, “I wouldn’t even be worried about it if she wasn’t here.” Then I get pissed off. It’s like I think she’s expecting something. That if she wasn’t lying there expecting it and wondering and, like, evaluating, it wouldn’t have even occurred to me. Then I get almost kind of pissed off. I’ll get so pissed off, I’ll stop even giving a shit about can I or not. It’s like I want to show her up. It’s like, “OK, bitch, you asked for it.” Then everything goes fine.’
B.I. #19 10-96
NEWPORT OR
‘Why? Why. Well, it’s not just that you’re beautiful. Even though you are. It’s that you’re so darn smart. There. That’s why. Beautiful girls are a dime a dozen, but not — hey, let’s face it, genuinely smart people are rare. Of either sex. You know that. I think for me, it’s your smartness more than anything else.’
Q.
‘Ha. That’s possible, I suppose, from your point of view. I suppose it could be. Except think about it a minute: would that possibility have even occurred to a girl who wasn’t so darn smart? Would a dumb girl have had the sense to suspect that?’
Q.
‘So in a way you’ve proved my point. So you can believe I mean it and not dismiss it as just some kind of come-on. Right?’
Q….
‘So c’mere.’
B.I. #46 07-97
NUTLEY NJ
‘Alls I’m — or think about the Holocaust. Was the Holocaust a good thing? No way. Does anybody think it was good it happened? No way. But did you ever read Victor Frankl? Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning? It’s a great, great book. Frankl was in a camp in the Holocaust and the book comes out of that experience, it’s about his experience in the human Dark Side and preserving his human identity in the face of the camp’s degradation and violence and suffering total ripping away his identity. It’s a totally great book and now think about it, if there wasn’t a Holocaust there wouldn’t be a Man’s Search for Meaning.’
Q.
‘Alls I was trying to say is you have got to be careful of taking a knee-jerk attitude about violence and degradation in the case of women also. Having a knee-jerk attitude about anything is a total mistake, that’s what I’m saying. But I’m saying especially in the case of women, where it adds up to this very limited condescending thing of saying they’re fragile or breakable things and can be destroyed so easily. Like we have to wrap them in cotton and protect them more than everybody else. That it’s knee-jerk and condescending. I’m talking about dignity and respect, not treating them like they’re fragile little dolls or whatever. Everybody gets hurt and violated and broken sometimes, why are women so special?’
Q.
‘Alls I’m saying is who are we to say getting incested or abused or violated or whatever or any of those things can’t also have their positive aspects for a human being in the long run. Not that it necessarily does all the time, but who are we to say it never does, in a knee-jerk way? Not that anybody ever ought to get raped or abused, not that it’s not totally terrible and negative and wrong while it’s going on, no question. Nobody’d ever say that. But that’s while it’s going on. The rape or violation or incest or abuse, while it’s going on. What about afterwards? What about down the line, what about the bigger picture then of the way her mind deals with what happened to her, adjusts to deal with it, the way what happened becomes part of who she is? Alls I’m saying, it’s not impossible there are cases where it can enlarge you. Make you more than you were before. More of a complete human being. Like Victor Frankl. Or that saying about how whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. You think whoever it was that said that was for a woman getting raped? No way. He just wasn’t being knee-jerk.’
Q….
‘I’m not saying there’s no such thing as a victim. Alls I’m saying is we tend to sometimes be so narrow-minded about the myriads of different things that go into making somebody into who he is. I’m saying we get so knee-jerk and condescending about rights and perfect fairness and protecting people we don’t stop and remember nobody’s just a victim and nothing is just negative and just unfair — almost nothing is like that. Alls — how it’s possible even the worst things that can happen to you can end up being positive factors in who you are. What you are, being a full human being instead of just a — think about getting gang-raped and degraded and beaten down to within an inch of your life for example. Nobody’s going to say that’s a good thing, I’m not saying that, nobody’s going to say the sick bastards that did it shouldn’t go to jail. Nobody’s suggesting she was liking it while it was happening or that it should have happened. But let’s put two things into the perspective here. One is, afterwards she knows something about herself she didn’t know before.’
Q.
‘What she knows is that the totally most terrible degrading thing that she ever could have even imagined happening to her has really happened to her now. And she survived. She’s still here. I’m not saying she’s thrilled, I’m not saying she’s thrilled about it or she’s in great shape or clicking her heels together out of joy it happened, but she’s still here, and she knows it, and now she knows something. I mean really knows. Her idea of herself and what she can live through and survive is bigger now. Enlarged, larger, deeper. She’s stronger than she ever deep-down thought, and now she knows it, she knows she’s strong in a totally different way from knowing it just because your folks tell you or some speechmaker at a school assembly has you all repeat you’re Somebody you’re Strong over and over. Alls I’m saying is she’s not the same and how some of the ways she’s not the same — like, if she’s still afraid at midnight walking to her car in a parking garage or whatever of getting jumped and gang-raped, now she’s afraid in a different way. Not that she wants it to ever happen again, getting gang-raped, no way. But now she knows it won’t kill her, she can survive it, it won’t obliterate her or make her, like, subhuman.’