air shafts o f apartment buildings; I spray-paint their w indows;
I spray-paint their cars; I go to the courts; I follow them home;
I follow them to w ork; I have an air rifIe; I break their w indows
with it; I am seeking to blind them; the raped women come out
at night, we convene, there’s rallies, marches, sometimes a
mob, we stomp on the rape magazines or we invade where
they prostitute us, where we are herded and sold, we ruin their
theaters where they have sex on us, we face them, we scream
in their fucking faces, we are the women they have made
scream when they choose, when they like it; do you like it
now? We’re all the same, cunt is cunt is cunt, w e’re facsimiles
o f the ones they done it to, or we are the ones they done it to,
and I can’t tell him from him from him; we set fires, to their
stores, to them when they come outside from the Roman
circuses, inside they are set on fire metaphorically, the pimp
uses the woman to make them burn, she’s torn to pieces and
they get hot, outside we introduce the literal; burn, darling,
using girls is hot; we smash bums and we are ready for Mr.
Wall Street who will follow any piece o f ass down any dark
street; now he’s got a problem; it is very important for women
to kill men. We surge through the sex dungeons where our
kind are kept, the butcher shops where our kind are sold; we
break them loose; Am nesty International will not help us, the
United Nations will not help us, the World Court will not
help us; so at night, ghosts, we convene; to spread justice,
which stands in for law, which has always been merciless,
which is, by its nature, cruel. T hey don’t stop themselves, do
they? T hey get scared, even the bouncers at the rape em poriums, it’s inspiring, they ain’t used to mobs o f girls who surge and kick and smash; let alone that we are almost ethereal, so
ghostly, so frail and fucked out, near to death. Y ou see one o f
the big ones afraid and it will inspire you for a thousand years.
A girl alone or any mass o f girls; kicking, pushing, shoving;
you can tear their prisons down where they keep women
caged in; you must, mustn’t you? I have spent some years
searching for words, writing, wanting to write, and I have
spent some years now, writing a plan, a map with words, a
drawing with songs, a geography o f us here, them there, with
lyrics for how to move, us through them, us over them, us
past them; I published the military plan in haiku— Listen/
Huey killed/M e too— and it was widely understood; among
the raped; who do not exist; except in my mind; because they
are not proven to exist; and it is not proven to happen; but still;
we convene. I map out a plan, which I communicate through
gesture, graphs and charts and poems and a dance I do alone
after dark; a stark and violent dance; on his face; the raped will
hear me. They don’t stop themselves, do they? I enunciate a
fundamental political principle; I write it down, in secret; I
enunciate a plan; Stop them. I have looked for words. I have
read books. I have tried to say some simple things that
happened, with borrowed words, or old words, with sad
words, words tacked together shamefully without art. I have
sobbed for wanting words; because o f wanting to say the
simplest things; what he did and what it was, or what it was
like, as if it would matter if it could be said, or said right; I have
sobbed to him saying stop; I have begged person-to-person;
stop. Walt was a poet o f abundance; he had a surfeit o f words;
the ones I struggled for mean nothing, I looked for raped, was
it real, was it Nazis, could it be; how much did it hurt; what
did it signify; I wanted to say, it destroys freedom, it destroys
love, I want freedom, I want love, freedom first, freedom
now; rape rape rape; fucking 0; I found the word, it’s the right
word; fucking 0; no one cares; enough to stop them; stop
them. I will never have easy words; at my fingertips as they
say; but I will stake m y life on these words: Stop them. They
don’t stop themselves, do they? I’m Andrea, which means
manhood, but I do not rape; it is possible to be manly in your
heart, which I have always been, and not rape, I’ve always
liked girls, I’ve made love with many, I’ve never forced
anyone, don’t tell me you can’t, save it for them that don’t
know what it’s like, being with a girl. I was born in 1946, after
Auschwitz, after the bomb, I never wanted to kill, I had an
abhorrence for killing but it was raped from me, raped from
m y brain; obliterated, like freedom. I’m a veteran o f Birkenau
and Massada and deep throat, uncounted rapes, thousands o f
men, I’m twenty-seven, I don’t sleep. They leave the shell for
reasons o f their own. I have no fear o f any kind, they fucked it
out o f me some time ago, it’s neither here nor there, not good
or bad, except girls without fear scare them. I was born in
Camden, on M ickle Street, down from where Walt Whitman
lived, the great gray poet, a visionary, a prophet o f love; and I
loved, according to his poems. I was poor, I never shied away
from life, and I loved. I had a vision too, like his, but I will
never write a poem like his, a song o f myself, I count the
multitudes and so on, the multitudes passed on top o f me,
sticking it in, I lost count. For the record, Walt was wrong;
only a girl had a chance in hell o f being right. A lot o f men on
the B o w ery resemble Walt; huge, hairy types; I visit him
often. It was the end o f April, still cold, a brilliant, lucid cold.
Y ou could feel summer edging its w ay north. Y ou could smell
spring coming. Y ou would sing; if your throat wasn’t ripped.
Y ou r heart would rise, happy; if you wasn’t raped; in
perpetuity. I went out; at night; to smash a man’s face in; I
declared war. M y nom de guerre is Andrea One; I am reliably
told there are many more; girls named courage who are ready
to kill.
Not Andrea: Epilogue
It is, o f course, tiresome to dwell on sexual abuse. It is also
simple-minded. The keys to a woman’s life are buried in a
context that does not yield its meanings easily to an observer not
sensitive to the hidden shadings, the subtle dynamics, o f a self
that is partly obscured, partly lost, yet still self-determining, still
agentic— willful, responsible, indeed, even wanton. We are
seeking for the analytical tools— rules o f discourse that are
enhanced rather than diminished by ambiguity. We value
nuance. Dogma is anathema to the spirit o f inquiry that animates