helpless, tiny, cute thing that seems to spasm whole, you
know how infants crinkle all up, their tiny arms and their tiny
legs, they just all bunch up, one m oving sex part in spasm with
a tight, smooth, warm cavity for his penis, it’s a tiny throat,
and the infant sucks hard, pulls the thing in. Years later there
are small suicides, a long, desperate series o f small suicides,
she’s empty inside except for shadows and dread, sick with
debilitating illnesses, no one knows the cause or the cure, she
chokes, she gags, she vom its, she can’t sw allow; there’s
asthma, anxiety, the nights are saturated with a menace that
feels real, specific, concrete, but you can’t find it when you
turn on the light; and eventually, one day or some day, none o f
us can sw allow ; we choke; we gag; we can’t stop them; they
get in the throat, deep enough in, artists o f torment; a manly
invasion; taking a part God didn’t use first. If yo u ’re adult
before they rape you there yo u ’ve got all the luck; all the luck
there is. The infants; are haunted; by familiar rapists; someone
close; someone known; but who; and there’s the disquieting
certainty that one loves him; loves him. There are these
wom en— such fine women— such beautiful women— smart
women, fine women, quiet, compassionate wom en— and
they want to die; all their lives they have wanted to die; death
would solve it; numb the pain that comes from nowhere but
somewhere; they live in rooms; haunted; by a familiar rapist;
they whisper daddy; daddy, daddy, please; asleep or awake
they want to die, there’s a rapist in the room, the figure o f a
man invading, spectral, supernatural, real but not real, present
but not there; he’s invading; he’s a crushing, smothering
adversary; it’s some fucking middle-class bedroom in some
fucking suburb, there aren’t invading armies here but there’s
invasion, a man advancing on sleeping children, his own;
annihilation is how I will love them; they die in pieces inside;
usually their bodies survive; not always, o f course; you want
God to help them but God w on’t help them, He’s on the other
side; there are sides; the suicides are long and slow, not
righteous, not mass but so lonely, so alone; could we gather up
all the women who were the little girls who were the infants
and say do it now, end it now, one time, here; say it was you;
say it happened to you; name names; say his name; we will
have a Massada for girls, a righteous mass suicide, we could
have it on any street corner, cement, bare, hard, empty; but
they’re alone, prisoners in the room with the rapist even after
he’s gone; five infants, uncle; it makes Auschwitz look small,
uncle; deep throat, my uncle invented deep throat, a fine,
upstanding man. I can do the arithmetic; five equals six
million; uncle pig; uncle good Jew ; uncle upstanding citizen;
uncle killer fucking pig; but we have a heroic tradition o f
