No Way Out

“Us?” he echoed nervously.

“Me and her.”

Claymore was desperately trying to think of something to say — something that would persuade the strong- willed “Lannosea” to reconsider.

“But she doesn’t deserve to suffer — and neither do you. I’m the one who hurt both of you. And I’m the one who should pay for it.”

“What are you saying Claymore? That you care about Andi? That you care about a weak white bitch whom you raped?”

“Yes,” he said, weakly. She still had the upper hand, and they both knew it.

“It looks like you’re pretty weak too.”

Claymore shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

“It’s true. I am weak.”

“And you used to be so strong.”

“I guess I was strong then because I was driven by anger. Now I’m weak because I’m restrained by guilt.”

“But if you’re weak, you’re also vulnerable.”

“That’s true. But I’m the one who deserves to be punished… not Andi.”

“But it’s the form of your weakness that interests me. Your weakness is that you care for her.”

“Yes.”

“And so, ironically, now that you’ve learned to care about your victims, you’re more vulnerable to punishment than when they meant nothing to you.”

She was holding on with only one hand again, and starting to turn, as if ready to jump.

“Yes but why should she suffer for what I did?”

“Because she’s weak too. And because she sold out.”

“Andi!” he shrieked. “It wasn’t meant to be like this!”

She stopped turning and gripped the rail with both hands again.

“What do you mean?”

She was whining again. Andi was back… possibly.

“I thought all the suffering was over — for my victims as well as me! When I came back to America to serve out my sentence, I was a different man. I thought when I turned my life around I’d lost the capacity to inflict suffering on anyone. I thought from then on the pain would only diminish… I thought that in time all the pain and suffering I’d caused would fade away, maybe not completely, but at least enough to be bearable.”

Her eyes were welling up with tears again.

“You think the pain of your victims ebbs into oblivion just because you turned your life around!” She was whining, like a little girl having a tantrum. “You think it’s that easy! Don’t you know that for the victims the pain never goes away! And sometimes it just keeps getting worse! That why it’s better to end it!”

She let go with both hands and turned.

“No!” screamed Claymore.

He grabbed her torso with his legs, clinging on desperately with his hands. He didn’t think he would have the strength to hold onto her if she struggled — or the strength in his upper body to hold onto the rail. But he surprised himself just as she surprised him. There was no struggling — and no cooperation either. As he looked down at her he noticed that she had lost consciousness.

It must have been the drink, he thought.

And in time with that, he realized that her body was limp. She had lost consciousness. And here he was holding on to an unconscious woman with a leg scissor lock, while supporting the weight of both of them by clinging on to the Golden Gate Bridge for his life with his hands.

Wednesday, 2 September 2009 — 19:44

“I can understand why you blame me,” said Gene, fighting back the tears. “But I don’t understand why you blame women in general so much, and your father so little.”

“I told you. In the animal kingdom there is no such thing as rape.”

“But we’re not animals. We don’t live by the law of the jungle. We live by the laws of civilization. And your father broke those laws.”

“Not the law of nature. Everything he did was strictly in accordance with the laws of nature. But you rebelled against a woman’s nature. A woman’s nature — a mother’s nature — is to nurture and protect her child, not give it away to strangers. You should have been proud to carry a child with strong genes like mine — even if my daddy did have to force you.”

“You don’t think that maybe the circumstances in which you were conceived made that unbearably painful for me?”

“Sex is always painful. All the physiological responses that go with sex are part of the pain mechanism. That’s true of men as much as women.”

“But rape isn’t about sex. It’s about power.”

“Oh yes, that old feminist cliche. But sex is always about power, whether it’s the men fighting to get the pick of the females or the power involved in the transaction itself. Why do you think in sex there’s nearly always some one on top, figuratively as well as literally? Why do you think there are so many S amp; M sites on the web?”

“Okay,” she said, struggling to keep pace with his self-serving rationalization, “and what about all those men who go online in search of some leather-clad dominatrix to whop the butts?”

“But don’t you see that just proves my point? It’s the same process with the polarity reversed. Sex is about an exchange of power. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the exercise of power over the other person or giving in to their power. It doesn’t even matter whether it’s real power or just make believe. Either way, it’s not about equality. Never was!”

Gene thought about this for a moment and realized that it was true, even in her own relationship with Andi. All those role-playing games they played. What were they if not ritualized exercises in power and control?

“Okay look… maybe you’re right. Maybe sex is just one big game about power. But it’s a game with rules. Society has rules. We call it the social contract. And people have rights. And we all have a duty to obey those rules and respect the rights of our fellow human beings.”

“Uh-uh! I never signed up for no social contract.” She noticed that as anger got the better of him, his grammar was slipping, like a facade that couldn’t stand up to the inclement weather. “The social contract never did a thing for me. I got jack-shit out of other people’s social contract! So why should I abide by it? This animal lives by the law of the jungle. And I’m proud of it.”

“Then go back to the jungle! Don’t bring your jungle into our cities.”

He looked at her with a wide-eyed smile.

“I prefer to do it this way… to take my jungle with me wherever I go. And that’s not a race thing either. Most kluckers would agree with me on this one.”

He turned to the terrified Martine on the bed and smiled not with delight, but with the vengeful anger that he had carried around with him.

Wednesday, 2 September 2009 — 19:47