Uncomplicated Fuck

She wanted to write a story about sex for fun—not romance, not for anything, no exposé on intimacy or struggling for understanding. Simple sex—not missionary sex, but sex uncomplicated by spiritual bullshit or guilt-ridden lust. A fine meal can please the palate and be smooth on the digestion. Hunger is a requirement for a pleasurable meal. I suppose lust is a healthy requirement for four-star sex. Sometimes, for her own purpose, she had not eaten when she was hungry—not even a stolen bit of a breadstick or a deliberate longing gaze at the chocolate cake in the pantry, steered her from her purpose of not eating. Abstinence gave healing and pleasure, too. She has felt lust too, felt herself to be the object of desire, and has abstained—she wonders for healing? For pleasure? Could it be the hunger of love and the designs of lust have not crossed her path in these past six years? Is this too complicated to shift through to get the simple, humping pleasurable word images? Is this story a substitute or a sneaky way to avoid the complications of lust, enlightenment and petty human jealousies and petty, ordinary-but-fun-anyway, sex? She still likes a fine meal, could a fine dish of warmed up genitals sprinkled with cream and nuts with the cherry on top, watching, waiting to be licked and sucked in, a cherry with a seductive voice that says, "Come on, the pleasure is waiting, why not?" Would she say, "Yes, today I will feast. . . . today the healing is finished, today there are no complications." Why not indeed?

I'm not sure anymore why her fast has continued for years. She wants to write about a sex partner. Sex done with style. Maybe no one knows really how to cook up their own juices. Does sex have anything to offer besides the annihilation of its throbbing, driving demand? Once hunger is appeased is there a need, a purpose or value to eating? Pleasure. Pleasure.

She finds pleasure in artistic endeavors. She likes to paint, draw, listen to music, play music and write. She wants to write a story about art—the beauty, the style of it. Beauty with grace. Humor with kindness. "Happiness Is an Art" would be the title of the story. Beauty immediately touches, relaxes us, gives us pleasure. Oh, sex and pleasure, unlike a sweet love song or flowered painting, get so fucking complicated.

She wants to write a story about a revolution. She wants to tell a story about women and courage and how they will finally be listened to, respected for their talents and sparks of magic. We are not the goddess or maya—we represent no illusion, no fall from grace. We may appear to have sounded confused but it is only because a selected ear has tuned in the radio to static distortions of our song. We are ready to sing out, we have been singing for centuries, our voices are in tune and are strong. We don't hate men, but we do wonder why you are, on the whole, such fools, such fearful fools, who try to get pleasure without adding to our own?

She wants to write a story about simple, pleasurable good fucking. No complications, no person who would inhibit her free time away from the fuck—no jealousy—no revolving her life around the desires, whims, fears and conveniences— no soul mate, no psychic melding into another—ANOTHER—she can't even find a consistent herself—it changes as the performance calls for it. She wants to tell a story about beauty, art, her life, its revelations of creative flow and impulse. She loves change, stillness, light and form, echoes, bird shrills, ink and alphabets.

She wants to tell a story of courage and passion, of risking beyond the dull and rigid, of oppression bonking out of existence through courageous acts of love. Like sword fighting, she loves the sport and challenge of it. Sport, revolution, art and beauty. Pleasure, yes, the pleasure of the story.

The story wants to be written. She is ready. How will she bring the simple, pleasurable, uncomplicated fuck to a story about revolution and art? Hey—revolution is easy, art is poetry of her emotion, but the fuck—goddamn it—is as complicated and as difficult as getting a man to say those words:

No—not, "I love you."

No—not, "marry me."

No—not, "have my child."

No—these words, these words:

"I am just a man.

Not your god.

Not your guru."

And how about some honesty like:

"And I don't even know how to fuck you right."

Let's begin, take it in stride. Maybe I don't know anything about fucking, about men and fucking, or women and women fucking, but I never ever heard a man say the word clitoris yet . . . Penis envy? Clitoris fear?

My heroes have been disposable and now everyone is nodding, shaking their clitoris at me. Oh, you couldn't consider me a hero, could you? I'm bumbling along like the rest of you. If there is going to be a revolution—it's going to be one, single woman, one woman, one woman alone, alone (millions of women)—feeling foolish and worn out. She'll have been repeating the same foolish words over and over. Will anyone, any man, listen? She has given up hope that they will, yet she won't, she can't give up either. She is a classic in her own right. She's a dope all right. Yeah, but Lennon's Imagine is played as elevator music these days.

We gotta give her a name. Tell her story. The revolution is beginning even though it's off to a very whiny, slow start. Art is the ten-punched holes in her ears and she wears a mohawk. She is forty years old and a bit eccentric. Her name is Heart Warrior, can you believe it?

Once a man who was close to her juices, but never cared to get into her basket of rocks, her mind music—told her what every woman needs is a good fuck.

I used to reply, "And who is going to give it to her? You?"

Of course he had an answer for everything. I needed to fuck him more. I gave up trying to reason with him. The dish and babysitting skirmishes took too much of my energy. We shared babysitting and the housework. Every other day was his turn. My days were time and a half nightmares of domesticality. The reasoning—Oh, I forgot there was none—he is the kind of guy who cleans up by closing the curtains so the neighbors can't see.

Sex is so complicated for women and so simple for men. Heart Warrior was touchy on the hole subject and the dick subject, too. Oh, she'd talk about it, make fun of it, but it was just easier to have it in her life. NOT! Anyway, she reasoned, I'm too busy starting a revolution by sending postcards of Mount Shasta to people. It was and remains a real challenge for anyone to grab a kiss from her. Over the last six years, only about five people have managed to plant a smack—a quick, small one on the lips. They had to sneak up on her to do it. That's as close as she got to foreplay. That's as close as they got, too.

You know, other postcards are suitable to start a revolution. They don't all have to be Mount Shasta—national parks are good—Zabuski Point in Death Valley is inspiring—a tall, looming Sequoia tree picture can make you feel small. Animals can work: alligators, charging rhinos, pacing lions. Funny postcards can be a nice change like, "Oops, I left my dildo on the bus." Hey, why not religious ones—they could have a good twist. Jesus and his bleeding heart, Mary in white, Buddha winking. Cartoon cards of the Peanut-butter gang and that fat cat that likes to eat lasagna. Bart can roll over a few innocent sarcasms.

She never got any responses, but she had given up on anyone listening or caring. Poor baby. It's a sad state of affairs and the slowest start to a revolution there ever was. Well, the problem is the women don't even know they are oppressed. The Blacks know it, the Natives know it, everyone knows who's in the role of superiority and privilege. More women die from being battered by a man, usually their husbands, than any other cause of death. We don't know it. Hey—we just found out where our clitoris is—we're still afraid to tell men where it is and to ask them to pay some attention once in a while. We are so scared of men that we don't even realize that birth control is THEIR issue—they impregnate us!

Oh, it's been a masterpiece of brainwashing. Centuries and centuries of it—and no apology has ever been given. No woman has ever asked for one. That's the work of Heart Warrior's postcards.

Everyone is saddened by the plight and the continual harassment of the Native American, the horror of the slavery of the Black race in this country. But wait a minute, you women haven't had it that bad. Surely you can't complain that you deserve something better—an apology—for what? Yeah, for what, ask the daughters, wives, mothers of the black man, red man, yellow man? They know their position has been even lower than the men in their lives and that they've still had to fight the prejudice, sexist attitudes of their own men. White women are the most psychologically abused women in the world. They are completely

B R A I N W A S H E D to believe they are special and they have rights. Other women know better.

Heart Warrior has been accused of brainwashing women. A man even accused her of brainwashing him to like her. She has been accused of hating men. The real truth is that men have hated women for centuries and there is so much proof—facts, women sharing their painful experiences of being belittled, not taken seriously, treated as sex objects—yet men say the evidence is not real, over-exaggerated. Weren't the witch hunts something? The casual, daily raping of women something?

All she wants is for a man to show some remorse and apologize.

This is the background filler—there is a plot—don't worry.

Our story begins on Friday the 13th. Marada received her first reply—a postcard.

It was a four by six with a picture of a groundhog—a great, fat, big one, its head peeking out from its hole. Was he testing for the thaw of spring? Heart Warrior studied the groundhog's expression. He appeared confident, ready to run through the field of grass that showed up in the background of the picture postcard.

"So, fella, what do you have to say for yourself?" Heart Warrior asked of the woodchucking groundhog. She turned the postcard over to get the answer. It was postmarked Seattle, Washington. Beside her name and address the only other words on the card were in blue. Three simple words: "I am sorry." No signature, no name. She stared at the blue, scribbly lines. Crayon, it was written in crayon. Was this serious or a joke? Was it written by an infantile madman or a beginning artist? On Saturday, the 14th, which just as well could have been associated with bad luck, but was not—was spared such dreaded prominence—another card showed up in her mailbox on that sunny morning. Green crayon this time—same postmark. Same picture of the groundhog. Must have bought the postcard on sale, she thought. Same words written three times. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She got the same picture postcard with the same words for the next several days. She stacked them up on the refrigerator door. Her friends speculated about the person who wrote them. Was he crazy? What was his angle? Did he mean it? Why was he doing this? Would it continue forever or until his blue crayon was worn down to nothing? On the tenth day, Heart Warrior was getting bored and threw the stack of postcards into the rubbish. The postcard changed that day to a picture of a bunny munching on a piece of lettuce. The three words were different and spelled out, "Please forgive me," in a dark 6B leaded pencil.