Don't Cry: Stories by Mary Gaitskill Page A

cruelty.
    "'You are an alcoholic?” yelled the accused rapist. “Everybody knows!”
    “I offered you one drink!” she cried. “I thought you were lonely!”
    “You are a whore! You give VD!”
    “No!” cried the woman. “No!” And then she just wept.
    A stout little woman came on to talk about rape. She planted her feet, set her small barrel body in a “no bull” stance, and gave it to us straight: Rape was bad, and she was prepared to duke it out with anyone who said it wasn’t.
    “I agree!” screamed the accused rapist. “I agree!"
    The wigged woman continued to weep. Nobody looked at her. In swept the triumphant redhead, who bellowed about her rights. “And I just hope the rapists who are watching the show right now understand that we aren’t going to take it anymore!” she cried. The audience cheered. The wig woman wept. The talk-show hostess strode about the set, blond and bristling with savoir faire. She had featured progress, but she had not forgotten the agonized face. Unlike the feminist author, she had put it right up there on the screen.
    But wait! The feminist author was not talking about rape, was she? Being a prostitute is not the same thing as being raped, is it? And of course they are not the same. But for the purposes of my discussion here—for the deepest layer of my discussion—they are close enough! The rape victim on TV was treated like a prostitute on an official pro-victim show, and the feminist author—well, it probably wasn’t fair to talk about her that way in the pamphlet, even if nobody read it, even if it was true. Can you blame her for not wanting to be like the poor, hurt woman on the talk show, preferring to prance around, swinging her little handbag, instead? Can you blame her for trying to put a good face on it? For talking so loudly about things that have been used to shame women for centuries?
    Wordless knowledge can be heavy and dark as the bottom of the ocean. Sometimes you want the relief of dryness, of light, bright words. Sometimes you might be on the side of a smart-aleck middle-aged woman who thumbs her nose at the agonized face and fellates a snotty, sexy man, just for a dumb little thrill. Sometimes you wish it could be that easy.
    I looked at my watch. I drank my seltzer and felt myself return to sobriety. I listened to the prairie author entertain a group with a story about how he had been so drunk the previous night that, in a muddled attempt to find the bathroom, he had left his hotel room naked and had roamed the halls until a “beautiful woman” from room service had escorted him back. Everyone laughed. A harried caterer wiped her hand on her rumpled white shirt and made a disgusted face. I looked out the windo'vy; people strolled the sidewalks like sensitive grazing animals, full of trust that what they needed was to be found there on the grounds of the hotel. I heard the prairie writer cry, “And she had the most incredible ass!” There was delighted laughter.
    Suddenly, I was flooded with goodwill toward the feminist author. I didn’t even care that she had refused to speak with me. She wrote well enough and she was an articulate, perhaps even socially significant, figure. Why should she be dismissed, while a man who ran around naked in public and yelled about peoples asses was coddled? And yet... some part of me was still troubled
    by the issue of the agonized face. Because the face is not only about rape and pain.
    I remember how it was with my husband sometimes, or, rather, how it was on occasion, or, really, maybe just once. It was before I became pregnant with Kira. We had not been getting along, and we were trying to have a special time together. We lit a candle and we undressed and lay on the bed, outside the covers. We rubbed each other with oil. It was relaxing, and awkward, too—it would feel really good and then he would have a sneezing fit. Or I would turn his foot at a strange angle during the foot massage and he would open his