Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

and what he had paid, what he had become out of that hardand lonely life, not betray his truth, which was his capacity tolove, with the demand for lies. Yves’s fear was the fear no selfknowledgecould overcome:There also appeared in his face a certain fear. It was this fearwhich Eric sometimes despaired o f conquering, in Yves, or inhimself. It was the fear o f making a total commitment, a vow: itwas the fear o f being loved. 10Yves’s fear, and Eric’s too, is not neurotic or psychological, noris it personal, rooted in family history. It is a fear based on therecognition of life’s impermanence; fear of being known, beingseen and known in all one’s awful trouble and shabby dignity,having a witness to what one is and why, then to lose that astonishinggrace. Life does not tolerate stasis; and there is noway of protecting love. In fucking, the deepest emotions onehas about life as a whole are expressed, even with a stranger,however random or impersonal the encounter. Rage, hatred,bitterness, joy, tenderness, even mercy, all have their home inthis passion, in this act; and to accept truly another personwithin those bounds requires that one must live with, if notconquer, the fear of being abandoned, thrown back alone:O n the day that Yves no longer needed him, Eric would dropback into chaos. He remembered that army o f lonely men whohad used him, who had wrestled with him, caressed him, submittedto him, in a darkness deeper than the darkest night. 11There is no safety, no permanence, says Baldwin, even though itis our dearest illusion that we can make life stand still for us by