out: prison was the larger evil. Here I was, virtually overlooking the murders of the two policemen; but he hit those women, and I didn’t think there was anything to suggest that if or
when he was out he wouldn’t hit more women.
One weekend someone took me to a benefit for one of the
pacifist groups. I was so offended by the anti woman lyrics to
a song that I got up and walked out. Someone else did, too.
We reached the pavement at approximately the same time.
“I have a question I'd like to ask you, ” I said to the stranger.
I then presented the Trantino problem, which was really
gnawing at me. “It sounds like you already know what you
want to do, ” he said. Yes, I nodded. “You want him to stay in,
right? ” “Yes, ” I said out loud. The man was John Stoltenberg,
and I've lived with him for nearly twenty-seven years. I called
up the friend who had asked me to write the piece and said I
couldn’t do it. I told her the true reason: the women, not the
police.
Anita
The same friend asked me to go talk with Anita Hoffman,
whose husband, Abbie, had just gone underground after being
busted for selling cocaine. I had donated some money to
Abbie’s defense fund and said he should just keep running.
I didn’t real y know why I was going to see Anita.
The apartment was small and crowded, distinguished only
by a television set the size of a smal country. Anita’s child with
Abbie, America, was playing. She and I sat on what was her
bed to talk.
She and Abbie had not been together for a while. It was
clear that she was poor. She said that she didn’t know what to
do, that a friend of Abbie’s had offered her work as a prostitute (“escort, ” high end of the line) and was put ing a lot of pressure on her. Abbie’s latest caper had left her destitute. This
guy was a friend of Abbie’s, so he had to be okay, right? She
had thought of doing organizing - poor, single mothers like
herself who had no political power in the system; but real y,
what was wrong with prostituting? She could earn a lot of
money and she was lonely. Honey, I thought, you don’t begin
to know what lonely is.
I told her about my own experiences in the trade, especial y
about the dissociation that was essential to doing the deed.
You had to separate your mind from your body. Your consciousness had to be hovering somewhere near the ceiling behind you or on the far side of the room watching your body.
