Part 8 (1/2)

I didn't know yet that sexuality is an entire continent

I didn't know yet how many times a person can be born

Mother

Before I on, I'd been to exactly three SM play parties in Eugene Wanna kno? Because ot s happen Once I saw abut his ot drops of water in his ot his dick whipped until it was red as a screaelo cherub with her wrists bound and hung above her head get her twat whipped for over an hour while her pussy swelled and reddened and purpled until even the air shuddered and felt faint

I went back

I saohs pierced with tiny blue capped needles - 20 up one thigh and 20 down the other - her eyes strea at those around her like a tsuna

I saw reddened welts rise on a wo, I saw a tranny pierce her cheek hat looked like a barbeque skewer all the way through to the other cheek without blinking, I saw ahis back slabs I saw bondage in 300 varieties, fistings, bloodsport, dungeons, crossbea out electricity anywhere you wanted

So pain and feeling painhad since I was a child Unlike drinking Unlike drugs I could feel it I could more than feel it

But I wanted to feel it more Harder

” Tell an If I said so duht, Angel” And lightly sting s dangling froain,” she'd say

I'd try again And again Until I said what it was I really wanted

What I really wanted was to be taken to whatever the edge of self was To a death cusp Maybe not literally But ood I was in the hands of a professional A calm sadist An intellectual Because she took my request and o somewhere? Can you ht ofmy birth ”Dorothy? Do you have pain? Where is the pain?”

At first I didn't knohat she meant by ”journey” I just wanted to be with her I just wanted her to hurtpleasureIt involved thinking Can't we just do it?

This wo sex - that anchor of heterosexual scripture - she'd left that behind h to say that in her hands I becaain An athlete I becaain A lover And the most difficult: a mother All the crucibles of my life were now available across the surface of my own body With her

This: territories that had caused me psychic pain were now available to recross physically through a pain thatcleansed me like water

This woman unlike any other woman I ever met in my life didn't want to be in a relationshi+p If by ”relationshi+p” wethe social realo look, there's a couple Or any of the do ter her and being with her and doing with her was to meet her when she ca in between? I could feel it in the bruises and cuts and welts left onto creep you out Or shock you I' looks different on women like me

She read every story I wrote Where I placed irls - junkies and prostitutes and child thieves and girls with their hair on fire And that is why the third year she told me to call her ”mother” Because my real mother? She'd been a numb drunk folded into her own pain when I needed her This one took action This one could have killed e eon -those remade basements in the hoht in her loft, bathed in white and golden light when the sun came in Or hued black and blue when it rained The crossbeaht up And there was a padded bench on it like on a weightlifting bench And a ledge for your feet When she bound my wrists with thin black leather twine christ-like to the wood I started crying

”Mother, I would like to be whipped”

Then she would present a long cat of nine tails - its dark red leather strips the color of blood ”Tell el”

So I told her And begged her She whipped my breasts She whipped my stomach My hipbones Late into the day I did notOh how I cried The crying of so a body And then she whipped me red where my shame had been born and where s as far as I could to take it Even my spine ached

Afterwards she would cradleto me And batheme dinner in bed ine Only then would wea self back In between seeing her I swalish Department In water and words and bodies

My safe as ”Belle”

But I never used it

My Mother Dey IN THE END, THE BOOKS I LOVED THE MOST IN GRADUATE school were the deviant ones The underbelly of literature George Bataille and the Marquis de Sade and Dennis Cooper and Williahs Which makes it easier to understand how I found a literary foremother in Kathy Acker

So if you've never read Kathy Acker's books, then you don't kno often fathers rape their daughters Without artifice or affect Without any literary strategy to lyricise or sye and rape his daughter, and the daughter will be the one narrating, and she will not be in any kind of victi, hter won't be The daughter narrating the rape by her father will be extremely articulate even if coarse, and the narration will be the juirl child or robot woression rite her very body

When other people I knew in grad school read Kathy Acker's books they were shocked Appalled Particularlyout women friends by their reactions to her books The ones that s and touched themselves, I kept The ones that freaked out, well, they were idiots Once I read a paragraph froender class and one of the woan to cry and ran out and barfed No shi+t pussy, I thought

When I read Kathy Acker's books, and particularly any section in which fathers sexually molested or raped or dohters, all I as yes

I did not feel shocked I did not feel appalled I feltpresent

So it did not take me any ti was the law of the father Patriarchy and capitalism More precisely, the effects of patriarchy and capitalisirls Actually, you knohat? I just crackedthis If you've never read Blood and Guts in High School, you are in for a treat Every year I teach it I expect to be fired

You can count the books written by women that precisely articulate these theers shot off with Williahs' pistol

But underneath that, what she was also writing was literal A literal father and a literal daughter and the plainspeak necessary to na to get caught or smacked a red blotchy one You can say this shi+t? And it can be published?

In this way, her books saved e it was toout with her Feminae a feminae

Many many many people ”knew” her better than I I'm friends with lots of the to tell The story I' to tell is quite a bit s are staggering

I sith her

When I sith Kathy Acker it was at a Best Western shrunken indoor pool with too much chlorine Trust me I know chlorine Her swimsuit was black and blue Mine was dark red Her body was decorated with tattoos Her hair was platinu silver sprouted from her face and ears I had one side of my head close shaven, and on the other side I had Breck Girl long blonde hair We irl's wound