The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant

that it could not be erased. How much can it cost? Horrible,

that’s hor ible.

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The Vow

It was a tender conversation. The woman who had helped me

most in Amsterdam, Ricki Abrams, sat with me and we held

hands. I was going to go back to New York. I talked with

Ricki about how she had saved my life; I thanked her. I talked

with Ricki about having prostituted and having been homeles . Back then I never talked about these parts of my own life.

I talked with her about bringing what I had learned into the

fight for women’s freedom. I talked with her about my fierce

commitment to the women’s movement and feminism. I

talked to her about how grateful I was to the women’s movement - to the women who had been organizing and talking and shouting and writing, making women both visible and

loved by each other. I talked with her about the book she and

I had started together and that I was going to finish alone,

Woman Hating. We had shown a draft of the chapter on Suck,

a counterculture pornography magazine, to those who ran the

magazine, ex-pats like ourselves, from the same generation,

with the same commitment to civil rights and, we thought,

human dignity. They cut us cold. Ricki could not stand it. I

could. There’s one thing about surviving prostitution - it takes

96

The Vow

a hell of a lot to scare you. My husband was a hel of a lot, and

he taught me real fear; the idiots at Suck were not much of

anything. Writing had become more important to me than the

ir itability of wannabe pimps.

Sit ing with Ricki, talking with Ricki, I made a vow to her:

that I would use everything I knew, including from prostitution, to make the women’s movement stronger and bet er; that I'd give my life to the movement and for the movement.

I promised to be honor-bound to the well-being of women,

to do anything necessary for that well-being. I promised to

live and to die if need be for women. I made that vow some

thirty years ago, and I have not betrayed it yet.

I took two laundry bags fil ed with manuscripts, books, and

some clothes, the Afghan sheepskin coat I had as a legacy

from my marriage, an airplane ticket given me by a junkie,

and some money I had stolen, and I went back to New York

City. Living hand to mouth, sleeping on floors or in closetsized rooms, I began working on Woman Hating. I had up to four jobs at a time. Every other day I would take $7 out of

a checking account. I ate at happy hours in bars. Any money

I had I would first tithe to the Black Panther Party in Oakland,

California. Huey Newton sent me his poems before he shot

and killed a teenage prostitute, the event that caused him to

flee the United States. Since I didn’t believe that the police