anarchist from a long time ago and I never thought I’d bow
down in front o f any fucking flag but I do, in perfect silence
and sym m etry insofar as my awkward self can manage it; my
mind’s like a muscle that pulls every time; I feel it jerk and I feel
the dislocation and the pain and I keep m oving, until I am on
m y knees in front o f the fucking thing. It’s interesting to think
o f the difference between a flag and a dick, because this is not a
new position; with a dick how you get there doesn’t count
whereas in the dojo all that matters is the elegance, the grace,
o f the movement, the strength o f the muscles that carry you
down; an act o f reverence will eventually, says Sensei, teach
you self-respect, which wasn’t the issue with the dick, as I
remember. There’s an actual altar. It has on it the Korean flag,
a picture o f Sensei, and some dried flowers. When I was a child
I had a huge picture o f Rock Hudson up on the door in m y tiny
bedroom, on the back o f the door so I would see it when I was
alone, as if he was there, physically present with me, because
the picture was so big and real and detailed, o f a real face; I put
it up with Scotch tape and kissed it good-night, a mixture o f
heat and loneliness; not quite as I would kiss m y mother if I
could but with the same intensity I wanted from her, as if she
could hold me enough, or love me enough, or rock me
forever; I never understood w hy you couldn’t just bury
yourself in someone’s arms and kiss until you died; just live
there, embraced, warm and wet and touched all over. Instead
there was this photo I cut out o f a magazine, and a lonely bed in
a lonely house, with mother gone, sick, and father gone, to
pay doctors. I built up all the love there was in the world out o f
those lonely nights and when I left home I wasn’t afraid ever to
touch or be touched and I never abandoned faith that it was
everything and enough, a thousand percent whole, perfect and
sensual and true. I thought we were the same, everyone. I
thought Rock could hold me; hold me; as if he were my
mother, against his breast. O f course, I also liked Tab
Hunter’s “ Red Sails in the Sunset” ; and Tab Hunter. I was
indiscriminate even then but it was an optimism and I never
understood that there was a difference with men, they didn’t
take the oceanic view; they didn’t want whole, just pieces. I
thought it would be a small bed like mine, simple, poor, and
w e’d be on our sides facing each other, the same, and w e’d ride
the long waves o f feeling as if we all were one, the waves and
us, w e’d be drenched in heat and sweat, no boundaries, no
time, and w e’d hold on, hold on, through the great convulsions that made you cry out, and time would be obliterated by
feeling, as it is. Facing each other and touching we could get
old and die; then or later; because there’s only now; it didn’t
matter who, only how it felt, and that it was whole and real
past any other high or any other truth; I wanted feeling to
obliterate me and love to annihilate me; don’t ever make a
wish. There weren’t religious icons in a Jew ish house; only
movie stars. Sensei says it’s paying respect to her karate
tradition to kneel down in front o f the Korean flag and her
picture on the altar but I always wonder what the Koreans
would think about it; if they’d like a woman elevating herself
so high. She’s not really a woman, though; and maybe they
saw the difference and gave her permission, because she’s got a
male teacher, a karate master, a blackbelt killer as it were, and
he w ouldn’t brook no vanity. If she were a girl per se she
couldn’t be so square and fixed, so physically dense, as if
there’s more o f her per square inch than any other female on
the planet, because anatomically she’s female, I’m sure,
although it
seems
impossible. She’s like a thousand pounds o f
iron instead o f a hundred pounds o f some petite, cute girl. You
expect lethal weapons to be big, six feet or more, towering,
overpoweringly high, casting long, terrifying shadows, with
muscles as big as bowling balls; so you notice she’s small and
you can’t figure out how she got the w ay she is except that
once she must have been a real girl, even in dresses, and so
maybe you could stop being so curved and soft and flimsy.
Each inch o f her uses up the space she’s in, introducing weight
where once there was air; she dislocates space, displaces it, it
moves and she takes over, she occupies the ground, as if she
was infantry with a bayonet and the right to kill. She’s nothing
like a girl. For instance, her shoulders are square, they take up
space, they are substantial and she don’t make them round or
underplay them or slump them, they don’t look soft as if you
could just walk up to her or in a conversation put your arm
around her, everything’s an edge or a hammer, not a curve.
She reigns, imperial; butch, m y dear, but transcending the
domain o f a bar stool, it ain’t role playing, or a pretense, or a
masquerade; if she were a girl she’d be a little doll; petite; and
there’d be a bigger male one whose shadow would fall on her
and bury her alive. She’d live small in perpetual darkness next
to him. Instead, she’s a certifiable Korean nationalist with an
altar and a flag who considers a hundred sit-ups an insubstantial beginning, foreplay but, in the male mode, barely
counting, and she don’t care about the pain. I m yself pretend
it’s coming from a man, because I know if he was on top o f me
I w ouldn’t stop; so I try to keep going by turning it into him on
me; you fuck w ay past pain when a man’s fucking you blind. I
can do maybe fifteen; I put him on top o f me and I get near
thirty, maybe twenty-eight; I put him in the corner o f the
room laughing and I get to thirty-five; after that, Sensei just
keeps you m oving and you don’t get to stop even if actually
you think your heart is contracting along with your abdomen
and it will convulse and cease, still you move, and she sees
everything, including if you hesitate for half a second or stay
still for half a second, or try to rest halfw ay between up and
down because you think she can’t see the difference but she
sees the molecules in the air and if they ain’t m oving you ain’t
m oving and her eyes nail you and she’s firm and hard; finally,
she will say your name to humiliate you; or assign you thirty
more; and so you keep m oving, the muscles are cramped, all
twisted up inside, swollen and twisted and convulsing, and
your heart’s collapsed into your stomach or your stomach into
your heart and there’s only a bed o f pain in the middle o f you
that moves, it moves, a half inch o f space over a period o f
minutes while the others have done five whole sit-ups, six,
seven, and you feel stupid and weak and cowardly but you
m ove the teeny, tiny smidgen, you keep m oving, you bounce
yourself, you use your breath, anything you can get to make
you m ove so it looks like yo u ’re m oving, and the muscles are
stuck stiff with pain, swelling in hardened cement, but you
m ove; barely, but you move; and o f course with m y intellect I
try to see i f she’s getting o ff on it because if she is that lets me
o ff the hook, I can walk out self-righteous because she ain’t no
better than I am, she’s just the other side o f m y coin, m y