so worried and you just keep trying to do everything better,
the cleaning, bed, whatever he wants, you concentrate on
doing it good, the w ay he likes it, and you just squeeze your
mind into a certain shape so you can concentrate on not
making mistakes and some days you can’t and you talk back or
are slow or say something sarcastic and you will be hurt. Did
you provoke it, did you want it, or are you just a fucking
human being w h o ’s tired o f the little king? If you tell anyone
or ask for help they blame you for it. Everyon e’s got a reason
it’s your fault. I didn’t clean the refrigerator, I did mess up the
laundry, I wasn’t in the right, I’m supposed to do those things,
I’m the wife after all, whoever heard o f one who didn’t know
how to do those things, he has rights too; I’m supposed to
make him happy. And I let him tie me up so it’s on me what
happened and if I say I didn’t like it people just say it’s a lie, you
can’t face it, you can’t face how you liked it; and I can’t explain
that I’m not like them, I’m not someone virginal in the world
like them, I been facing what I liked since I was bom and being
tied up isn’t what they think, the words they use like
“ sadomasochism” or “ bondage, ” three-dollar words for
getting a trick to come, and they get all excited just to say them
because they read about them in books and they are all
philosophers from the books and I hate them, I hate the
middle-class goons who have so much to say but never spent
one fucking day trying to stay alive. And when you are a
fucking piece o f ground meat, hamburger he left on the floor,
and he fucks you or he fucking leaves you there for dead,
whichever is his pleasure that day, it’s what you wanted, what
you are, what’s inside o f you, like you planned it all along, like
yo u ’re General Westmoreland or something instead o f messed
up, bleeding trash, and i f yo u ’re running aw ay they send you
back for more, and they don’t give you money to help you,
and they tell you that you like it; fucking middle-class
hypocrite farts. I have a list. I remember you ones. Y o u try to
pull the w ool over someone else’s eyes about how smart you
are and what humanitarians you all are on the side o f
w hoever’s hurting. Nelson Mandela provoked it. What do
you think about that, assholes? We all o f us got the consolation
that nobody remembers the worst things. T h ey’re gone; brain
just burns them away. And there’s no words for the worst
things so ain’t no one going to tell you the worst things; they
can’t. Y ou can pick up any book and know for sure the worst
things ain’t in it. It’s almost funny reading Holocaust literature. The person’s trying so hard to be calm and rational, controlled, clear, not to exaggerate, never to exaggerate, to
remember ordinary details so that the story will have a
narrative line that will make sense to you; you— whoever the
