The New Womans Broken Heart Read online

  poor and no person either, a woman is what I am, a hisser, a goddam

  fucking poor woman who stays goddam fucking poor because she

  doesnt fuck various jerks around town.

  its the white glove syndrome, the queen must be naked except for

  the white gloves, while hes fucking her raw she has to pretend shes

  sitting with her legs closed proper and upright and while hes sitting

  with his legs closed handing out work assignments she has to pretend shes fucking him until she drops dead from it. yeah its tough on her. its tougher on me.

  I dont mean for this to be bitter. I dont know from bitter, its true

  that morning fell flat on its ass and when morning breaks its shit to

  clean it up. and I dont much like sleeping either because I have technicolor dreams in which strangers try to kill me in very resourceful ways, and its true that since the ass wiggler snubbed me in the toilet

  of the ritzy hotel I get especially upset when I go to pee in my own

  house (house here being a euphemism for apartment, room, or

  hovel—as in her own shithole which she does not in any sense own,

  in other words, where she hangs her nonexistent hat) and remember

  that the food stamps ran out and I have $11. 14 in the bank, bleak,

  Arctic in fact, but not bitter, because I do still notice some things I

  particularly like, the sun, for instance, or the sky even when the sun

  isnt in it. I mean, I like it. I like trees. I like them all year long, no

  matter what. I like cold air. Im not one of those complainers about

  winter which should be noted since so many people who pretend to

  love life hate winter. I like the color red a lot and purple drives me

  crazy with pleasure. I chum inside with excitement and delight every

  time a dog or cat smiles at me. when I see a graveyard and the moon

  is full and everything is covered with snow I wonder about vampires,

  you cant say I dont like life.

  people ask, well, dont sweet things happen? yes, indeed, many

  sweet things, but sweet doesnt keep you from dying, making love

  doesnt keep you from dying unless you get paid, writing doesnt keep

  you from dying unless you get paid, being wise doesnt keep you from

  dying unless you get paid, facts are facts, being poor makes you face

  facts which also does not keep you from dying,

  people ask, well, why dont you tell a story the right way, you woke

  up then what happened and who said what to whom. I say thats shit

  because when you are ass fucking poor every day is the same, you

  worry, ok. she had brown hair and brown eyes and she worried,

  theres a story for you. she worried when she peed and she worried

  when she sat down to figure out how far the SI 1. 14 would go and

  what would happen when it was gone and she worried when she took

  her walk and saw the pretty tree, she worried day and night, she

  choked on worry, she ate worry and she vomited worry and no matter

  how much she shitted and vomited the worry didnt come out, it just

  stayed inside and festered and grew, she was pregnant with worry,

  hows that? so how come the bitch doesnt just sell that ass if shes in

  this goddam situation and its as bad as she says, well, the bitch did,

  not just once but over and over, long ago, but not so long ago that

  she doesnt remember it. she sold it for a corned beef sandwich and

  for steak when she could get it. she sold it for a bed to sleep in and it

  didnt have to be her own either, she ate speed because it was cheaper

  than food and she got fucked raw in exchange for small change day

  after day and night after night, she did it in ones twos threes and

  fours with onlookers and without, so she figures shes wiggled her ass

  enough for one lifetime and the truth is she would rather be dead if

  only the dying wasnt so fucking slow and awful and she didnt love

  life goddam it so much, the truth is once you stop you stop, its not

  something you can go back to once its broken you in half and you

  know what it means. I mean, as long as youre alive and you know

  what trading in ass means and you stop, thats it. its not negotiable,

  and the woman for whom it is not negotiable is anathema.

  for example, heres a typical vignette, not overdrawn, underdrawn,

  youre done yr days work, fucking, youre home, so some asshole man

  thinks thats his time, so he comes with a knife and since hes neighborhood trade you try to calm him down, most whores are pacifists of the first order, so he takes over yr room, takes off his shirt, lays

  down his knife, thats yr triumph, the fuck isnt anything once the

  knife is laid down, only the fuck is always something, you have to

  pretend that you won. then you got to get him to go but hes all comfy

  isnt he. so another man comes to the door and you say in an undertone, this fuckers taken over my house, so it turns out man 2 is a hero, he comes in and says what you doing with my woman, and it

  turns out man 2 is a big drug dealer and man 1 is a fucking junkie,

  so you listen to man 1 apologize to man 2 for fucking his woman, so

  man 1 leaves, guess who doesnt leave? right, man 2 is there to stay,

  so he figures hes got you and he does, and he fucking tries to bite you

  to death and you lie still and groan because you owe him and he

  fucking bites you near to death, between yr legs, yr clitoris, he fucking bites and bites, then he wants breakfast, so once you been through it enough, enough is enough.

  ah, you say, so this explains it, whores hate men because whores

  see the worst, what would a whore be doing with the best, but the

  truth is that a whore does the worst with the best, the best undress

  and reduce to worse than the rest, besides, all women are whores and

  thats a fact, at least all women with more than $11. 14 in the bank,

  me too. shit, I should tell you what I did to get the $11. 14. nothing

  wrong with being a whore, nothing wrong with working in a sweatshop. nothing wrong with picking cotton, nothing wrong with nothing.

  I like the books these jerko boys write. I mean, and get paid for. its

  interesting, capital, labor, exploitation, tomes, volumes, journals,

  essays, analyses, all they fucking have to do is stop trading in female

  ass. apparently its easier to write books, it gives someone like me a

  choice, laugh to death or starve to death. Ive always been pro choice,

  the ladies are very impressed with those books, its a question of

  physical coordination, some people can read and wiggle ass simultaneously. ambidextrous.

  so now Im waiting and thinking. Anne Frank and Sylvia Plath leap

  to mind, they both knew Nazis when they saw them, at some point,

  there were a lot of ass wigglers in the general population around

  them wiggling ass while ovens filled and emptied, wiggling ass while

  heroes goosestepped or wrote poetry, wiggling ass while women,

  those old fashioned women who did nothing but hope or despair,

  died, this new woman is dying too, of poverty and a broken heart, the

  heart broken like fine china in an earthquake, the earth rocking and

  shaking under the impact of all that goddam ass wiggling going off

  like a million time bombs, an army of whores cannot fail—to die one

  by one so that no one has to notice, meanwhile one sad old whore

  who stopped liking it has a heart first cracked then broken by the
/>   ladies who wiggle while they work.

  the wild cherries of lust

  (for Orisis)

  bertha schneider had once been a woman and was now an androgyne. as a woman she had lain for 8 years on her back with her legs open as the multitudes passed by leaving gifts of sperm and spit,

  now as an androgyne her legs were still open but at the same time

  they ran, jumped, swam, stood up, skipped, and squatted, her

  mouth was also open and what nestled there with restless fervor also

  found its way to her armpits, under and between her breasts, to the

  creases in her neck, to the small of her back as well as the bend of

  her elbow, not to mention where the bend of her elbow often found

  itself.

  bertha had passed 2 years of celibacy before becoming an androgyne. she had fucked during that time in much the way vegetarians eat hamburgers—sometimes and not proudly, yes, she

  had been fucked and gutted and ransacked occasionally by sweet

  young boys who lived on street comers, yes, she had sucked the cunts

  of brilliant, strong, and worthy women with abandon and no small

  measure of delight, but all the while she had dreamed herself celibate and had even imagined that she was a virgin again as she once had been—only this time in spirit as well as in body, on purpose instead of by accident.

  bertha had changed much in her one short life, as a woman she

  had often been whipped and had lusted for that agonizing, exquisite

  humiliation, those who had whipped her were not yr vulgar wife

  beaters but velvet coated actors and curly haired painters as well as

  revolutionaries and workers, the whips had been real leather and

  when her back and ass were shredded and blood began to form puddles on the floor, the whip handle had often as not been stuffed up her cunt or ass. now as an androgyne she had renounced all that, she

  was proud of the fact that in her soul whips did not speak to her. oh

  yes, there were occasional fleeting seconds—moments even—of

  desire that verged on need, yes, sometimes the muscles in the pit of

  her stomach did tighten and she did lust for the lash of the whip, not

  to mention the whip handle, but she was secure in her conviction

  that she who was now an androgyne would not regress to being a

  mere woman, it would take, she knew, more than one man could

  offer to make her into a woman again, it would take, she knew, a

  concert hall filled with thousands of people, her bare-assed naked on

  stage shackled in wicked chains, being whipped by, dare she say it,

  Jean-Louis Trintignant, before she would even be tempted in a

  serious way.

  bertha had changed physically as well, as a woman she seemed to

  be all breasts and ass. indeed, if other parts of her body existed, they

  went unremarked by the world at large, now as an androgyne her

  breasts had diminished while her belly had grown, her belly was now

  a giant luminous mound, glowing, exquisitely sensitive to every

  touch, even to every thought of touch, a finger on her belly was the

  instrument of ecstasy and a tongue brought on multiple orgasms

  that were as vast and as deep as the universe, stars quaked and comets exploded when her belly came into contact with an electric vibrator.

  her nose, of course, had grown, it had grown and grown and

  grown, sometimes it hung, weak, limp, sweet, beautiful, sometimes

  upon the passing of a gentle wind, a grazing cow, or a wood nymph,

  her nose would stiffen and enlarge and become engorged with blood,

  it was not very pleasant when this happened in the company of ordinary men and women with their hidden private parts and endless sources of shame, but when it happened in the presence of other androgynes, she herself would touch and fondle it. limp or stiff, her nose would roll over arms and into armpits, explore ears that opened

  up like flowers, juicy and moist and yielding, find its way between

  toes and rub itself against calloused heels, seek out with gentle insistence the backs of knees, immerse itself in puddles of saliva under the tongue and the rich resonances of slick assholes, vibrate and

  heave, and finally come to rest on a nipple, touching it just barely,

  then, as bertha lay exhausted, her lover would touch her belly and so

  they would begin again and continue and replenish and deplete and

  invent, and then begin again.

  berthas hair of course had changed too. as a woman she had violated it without conscience—cut it, lacquered it, straightened it, curled it, even shaved it from her legs and armpits and pulled it out

  from between her eyes, now as an androgyne her hair rose and fell

  with the light, the wind, it danced between her legs, it reached

  toward the sun in rich profusion from every part of her. each hair

  was an antenna, sensitive, alert, one hair, like a new filling, could

  send an icy thrilling chill through her whole body or warm her like

  whiskey and Ben-Gay. her pubic hair flowed, billowing, curling,

  lustrous, slightly rough and coarse so that when touched by her fingertips elecric impulses would tickle her knuckles and cause her palms to swell and sweat, her hair grew on her legs and reached out

  and touched the wind and met the water and when touched by other

  flesh sent thrills into the marrow of her bones and turned her almost

  inside-out with pleasure.

  her hands too had changed, her fingers looked now much like her

  nose, and her fingertips resembled vulvas, her Mount of Venus had

  thickened and the lines in her hand were deep, almost cavernous,

  and her ass, which as a woman had been mostly for shitting and occasional rape, had become an interior tunnel into which flesh sometimes flowed, or honey it seemed, or ice cream, in fact, the whole space between her ass and mouth had become a winding energy

  passage so that any touch or breath in either place caused sweet

  chills and exquisite tremors.

  bertha schneider, once a woman, then a celibate, had become an

  androgyne—and when I tell you that she lived happily ever after, I

  hope you will know what I mean.

  bertha schneiders unrelenting sadness

  as she kissed his neck, bertha schneider remembered her unrelenting sadness, this was her hidden part, all covered in the luxuriant twine of personality, learned facts, sardonic humor.

  “oh, what a life our bertha has led, ” said the ignorant, as she held

  forth on her research into remote jungle tribes where hymens were

  impaled on wooden spikes and urethras were split wide open to

  resemble precious cuntlike flowers, it was almost as if she had been

  there, heard the tribal drums, drunk the sweet or nauseating brews

  of livers and brains of deceased enemy warriors, danced the raucous

  gyrating dances of birth, death, and rebirth, but bertha, truth to tell,

  had in fact been to the New York City Public Library at 42nd and

  5th, especially on snowy storming days, there she had sat under that

  pale and dreadful light (which, she believed, was part of the very

  design of that building, calculated by those who wanted no one

  civilian to know too much), books opened up like leaves fallen on the

  earth in late October, her giantesque thighs pulsating on the stiff

  wooden chairs to the beat of the cold hum around her.

  bertha schneider had unrelenting sadness flowing through her very

  veins, and this had been a fact all of her long lived life, it was her

  heritage, in fact—a sadness so large, so
soft, so sweet, so resonant,

  that it interjected itself right into other peoples sentences and punctuated her own. the dead of bertha schneiders russian past churned in her, whole dead bodies of sadness never buried deep enough, this

  sadness had passed, first in mother russia itself, from mother to

  daughter and from mother to daughter and from mother to

  daughter, in those dark grim russian urban alleys where her

  forefathers had lived and studied Torah and died, the unrelenting

  sadness had been bom, on those narrow dirt and stone streets, amid

  shops and pogroms, amid hard benches and mountains of laundry to

  do and meals to prepare and yes candles to light and heads to be

  covered, that sadness had been bom. amid the hard screaming births and the quiet obedient deaths, amid the bone poor hunger and the melancholy prayers, amid the vile hatred of her kind, the sadness

  had been bom.

  bertha had her own idea, in fact, as to how the sadness had been

  bom. she had long ago learned that the memories of men, in

  whatever form, were not to be trusted, generations of men had

  passed as scribes, rabbis, and storytellers and yet, bertha knew, the

  real story had never been told, this was not mysterious to bertha,

  since she knew that men avoided life, not respecting it, never daring

  to look it squarely in the face, treasuring only their sons and their

  own self-importance, this bertha might lament but she could not

  change it. for those generations of scribes and rabbis and storytellers

  life had been an abstract canvas full of abstract ideas—they had

  obscured the actual shape of things and the actual facts of the case,

  they had passed their avoidance of lines and proportions and direct

  commitment on to each other over so many generations that now it

  had soaked into the very marrow of their bones, and so they had invented Law and W ar and Philosophical Arguments and with all their arsenals of Culture and Learning and Civilization they had

  stopped all dissent, even as their children were starving they could

  ignore life and argue the philosophical ramifications of death, in

  particular the men of whom bertha was thinking had worshiped