Mercy

heat and loneliness; not quite as I would kiss m y mother if I

could but with the same intensity I wanted from her, as if she

could hold me enough, or love me enough, or rock me

forever; I never understood w hy you couldn’t just bury

yourself in someone’s arms and kiss until you died; just live

there, embraced, warm and wet and touched all over. Instead

there was this photo I cut out o f a magazine, and a lonely bed in

a lonely house, with mother gone, sick, and father gone, to

pay doctors. I built up all the love there was in the world out o f

those lonely nights and when I left home I wasn’t afraid ever to

touch or be touched and I never abandoned faith that it was

everything and enough, a thousand percent whole, perfect and

sensual and true. I thought we were the same, everyone. I

thought Rock could hold me; hold me; as if he were my

mother, against his breast. O f course, I also liked Tab

Hunter’s “ Red Sails in the Sunset” ; and Tab Hunter. I was

indiscriminate even then but it was an optimism and I never

understood that there was a difference with men, they didn’t

take the oceanic view; they didn’t want whole, just pieces. I

thought it would be a small bed like mine, simple, poor, and

w e’d be on our sides facing each other, the same, and w e’d ride

the long waves o f feeling as if we all were one, the waves and

us, w e’d be drenched in heat and sweat, no boundaries, no

time, and w e’d hold on, hold on, through the great convulsions that made you cry out, and time would be obliterated by

feeling, as it is. Facing each other and touching we could get

old and die; then or later; because there’s only now; it didn’t

matter who, only how it felt, and that it was whole and real

past any other high or any other truth; I wanted feeling to

obliterate me and love to annihilate me; don’t ever make a

wish. There weren’t religious icons in a Jew ish house; only

movie stars. Sensei says it’s paying respect to her karate

tradition to kneel down in front o f the Korean flag and her

picture on the altar but I always wonder what the Koreans

would think about it; if they’d like a woman elevating herself

so high. She’s not really a woman, though; and maybe they

saw the difference and gave her permission, because she’s got a

male teacher, a karate master, a blackbelt killer as it were, and

he w ouldn’t brook no vanity. If she were a girl per se she

couldn’t be so square and fixed, so physically dense, as if

there’s more o f her per square inch than any other female on

the planet, because anatomically she’s female, I’m sure,

although it seems impossible. She’s like a thousand pounds o f

iron instead o f a hundred pounds o f some petite, cute girl. You

expect lethal weapons to be big, six feet or more, towering,

overpoweringly high, casting long, terrifying shadows, with

muscles as big as bowling balls; so you notice she’s small and

you can’t figure out how she got the w ay she is except that