disappear into, someone hard and tough and she seen it all and
she’s got a mattress covered with old garbage, paper garbage,
nothing filthy, and old newspapers, and I lay under her, a
pretty girl up against her dry skin and bones that feel like
they’re broke, her callouses, her scars, bad teeth but her eyes
are brilliant, savage and brilliant, and her sex is ferocious and
rough, a little mean, I find such a woman, older than me and
I’m the ingenue and I’m the tough girl with the future; some
nights between places I stay in a hallway in a building with an
open door; some nights between places I am up all night in
bars with nowhere to sleep and no one I am ready to go with,
something warns me o ff or I just don’t want to, and at two or
four when the bars close I find a doorw ay and wait or walk and
wait, it’s cold, a lethal cold, so usually I walk, a slow,
purposeful walk with m y shoulders hunched over so no one
will see I’m young and have nowhere to go. T he jail was dirty,
dark, foul. I wasn’t allowed to make the plans or write the
leaflets or draft the letters or decide anything but they let me
picket because they needed numbers and it was just being a
foot soldier and they let me sit in because it was bodies and
they let me get arrested because it was numbers for the press;
but once we were arrested the wom en disappeared inside the
prison, we were swallowed up in it, it w asn’t as if anyone was
missing to them. T hey were all over the men, to get them out,
to keep track o f them, to make sure they were okay, the heroes
o f the revolution incarnate had to be taken care of. The real
men were going to real jail in a real historical struggle; it was
real revolution. The nothing ones walked o ff a cliff and melted
into thin air. I didn’t mind being used but I didn’t expect to
disappear into a darkness resembling hell by any measure; left
there to rot by m y brothers; the heroes o f the revolution. T hey
got the men out; they left us in. Rape, they said. We had to get
them out as a priority; rape, they said. In jail men get raped,
they said N o jokes, no laughs, no Nazis; rape; we can’t have
the heroes o f the revolution raped. And them that’s raped ain’t
heroes o f the revolution; but there were no words for that. The
women had honor. We stood up to the police. We didn’t post
bail. We went on a hunger strike. We didn’t cooperate on any
level, at any time. The pacifists just cut us loose so we could go
under, no air from the surface, no lawyers, no word, no
solace, no counsel, no help; but we didn’t give in. We didn’t
shake and we didn’t scream and we didn’t try to die, banging
our heads against concrete walls until they were smashed. We
were locked in a special hell for girls; girls you could do
anything to; girls who were exiled into a night so long and
lonely it might last forever, a hell they made for those who
don’t exist. “ Ladies, ” they kept calling us; “ ladies. ” “ Ladies, ”
do this; “ ladies, ” do that; “ ladies, ” come here; “ ladies, ” go
