Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

the hope to die. But it is also hard to see what one sees. Onesees that most human beings are wretched, and, in one way oranother, become wicked: because they are wretched. 6Inside an unjust, embittering social universe where there aremoral possibilities, however imperiled, of self-esteem and empathy,fucking is the universal event, the point of connection,where love is possible if self-knowledge is real; it is also theplace where the price paid, both for ignorance and truth, isdevastating, and no lie lessens or covers up the devastation. InBaldwin’s fiction, fucking is also a bridge from ignorance totruth— to the hardest truths about who one is and why. Andcrossing on that high and rotting and shaking bridge to identity,with whatever degree or quality of fear or courage, is theordeal that makes empathy possible: not a false sympathy ofabstract self-indulgence, a liberal condescension; but a way ofseeing others for who they are by seeing what their own liveshave cost them.In fucking, one’s insides are on the line; and the fragile andunique intimacy of going for broke makes communion possible,in human reach—not transcendental and otherworldly, butan experience in flesh of love. Those broken too much by theworld’s disdain can become for each other, as Eric and Yves doin Another Country, “ the dwelling place that each had despairedof finding. ”7For Yves, a French street boy, the first timewith Eric had been redemptive: “ in some marvelous way, forYves, this moment in this bed obliterated, cast into the sea offorgetfulness, all the sordid beds and squalid grappling whichhad led him here. ”8This forgetfiilness is not ignorance; it is redemption,being wiped clean of hurt and despair by “the loverwho would not betray him” 9—not betray what he had learned