The Knitting Circle Rapist Annihilation Squad Page 14

  The president’s wife, standing behind him, starts laughing maniacally. The press roars with questions. Two big men with wires coiling out of their ears appear and rush the president’s wife off stage.

  The president continues, “Ahem. In fact, I am honored to announce that we have a new ally and partner to work with us to fight this war on terror. Al Qaeda has pledged to dedicate the full force of its organization in this effort.”

  The promises (or threats) of the President of the United States notwithstanding, the knitting circle movement has now gone beyond stopping rape. The movement wants to go all the way to liberate women. Now that women have gotten a taste of their own power, the uprising has become unstoppable. It spreads all over the world.

  It’s time for a montage! To your favorite feminist revolutionary internationalist anthem!

  In massive protests and riots, women overturn armored trucks containing yarn and needles. Women battle police, dodge tear gas and rubber bullets, and then real bullets. They fire back. Women blow up malls, fast food restaurants, and chain stores, including stores selling women’s fashion. Especially stores selling women’s fashion.

  In Japan, women wearing knitted Hello Kitty hats chase men in western business suits.

  In an airport in Thailand, women and children wield needles as German businessmen flee.

  In Afghanistan, women in knitted burkas chase bearded men and foreign soldiers amid the rubble.

  In the Near East, Israeli and Palestinian women chase Israeli settlers and soldiers, and Palestinian men.

  In Africa, women chase men down a dusty street.

  The same scenes unfold in Latin America and Europe.

  In Antarctica, three female scientists chase three male scientists through a field of penguins.

  A woman wearing a knitted space suit cover floats outside the space shuttle and aims a needle at a man who is also outside the space shuttle. He floats away, leaking precious air, never to corner her in the cockpit again.

  But there remains one final threat to the liberation movement.

  CHAPTER 10

  Zebadiah and Jasmine stand outside the MAWAR headquarters. It looks like a normal dumpy house in a normal dumpy neighborhood. He uses a key to unlock the door. Meanwhile, Jasmine plans the improvements she would make—fresh paint, a few flowers—in the event she and Zeb get married one day.

  Zebadiah says to Jasmine, “I’m kind of tired of talking about me …”

  She looks at him, anticipating at long last a question—any sort of question—about her life.

  He continues, “Why don’t you talk about me for a while?”

  He turns on the lights. Jasmine moves into the living room. He closes and locks the door, then flicks shut nine more deadbolts. Jasmine hears the clicks and looks back at him, slightly troubled. He ignores her and walks into the kitchen. She hears him rummaging around. She sits in a chair, notices the lamps. These are even more troubling than the locks.

  Zebadiah returns from the kitchen holding rope and duct tape.

  Jasmine frowns. “I’m not into that.” The four other MAWAR men come out of a bedroom, wearing their MAWAR shirts.

  Jasmine’s eyes widen. She says, “I’m definitely not into that.”

  MAWAR’s leader points at her. “You may not be into God, but God is definitely into you.”

  A few minutes later, Jasmine is tied to a chair, with duct tape over her mouth.

  The leader says, “Thank you, Brother Zebadiah, for your holy contribution to our glorious mission. Good work!”

  Billy Bob turns to face Jasmine. “You, missy, have become a lucky pawn in the great chess game of the Lord.”

  Jasmine looks puzzled.

  Billy Bob points to his T-shirt logo. “We are MAWAR: Men Against Women Against Rape.”

  Jasmine’s eyes widen in terror, and she attempts a strangled scream.

  Billy Bob continues, “Chill out, sinner. We’re not rapists. We’re men of God defending the Holy Law as it is written.” Jasmine looks puzzled.

  Billy Bob says, “Where in the Ten Holy Fucking Commandments does it ever say, ‘Thou Shalt Not Rape’? Huh? The answer is, it doesn’t. In fact, the whole fuckin’ Bible is filled with rapes that fulfill God’s merciful will. We will not tolerate heresy from a bunch of stupid demons … infidels … heathens … women.”

  Jasmine rolls her eyes in disbelief.

  Billy Bob rips the tape from Jasmine’s mouth. He says, “You’re going to call off your people.”

  She spits, “Or what are you going to do?” Billy Bob looks meaningfully into the kitchen.

  Suzie and Sam are in her bedroom, still, pathetically enough, fully dressed. The phone rings. Suzie answers it.

  She hears Jasmine’s voice, yelling, in tears and with terror, “They’re going to force me to make pies for the church bake sale!”

  Hours later, Suzie paces, distraught, while Sam stares at the wall, angry and determined, distractedly hitting a pillow over and over.

  Suzie says, “We have to get her out of there. They’re making her bake? Soon she’ll be scrubbing and ironing. It will not stop!”

  Sam continues to stare. Then he looks at Suzie. Suzie can see in his eyes the beginning of an idea. At last he says to her, “Let me go in. I can take these guys on. I shall challenge them to a duel!”

  The next day, the members of MAWAR are gathered at headquarters. Their leader says, “That asshole challenged us to a what?”

  Billy Bob answers, “A duel.”

  Their leader: “A duel?”

  Billy Bob: “A motherfuckin’ duel.”

  Their leader: “Fuck. We can’t get out of that.”

  Zebadiah asks, “Why not?”

  Billy Bob answers him, “The whole honor thing. Some asshole challenges you to a duel, you don’t refuse unless you’re a fuckin’ pussy.”

  Zebadiah says, “Oh yeah. The honor thing.”

  They silently ruminate on honor for a few moments, before their leader says, “Which of us is going to take on this motherfucker? Which of us has the balls to kick some heathen profeminist ass for Christ?”

  “There’s really only one choice,” says Billy Bob.

  Everyone looks at the biggest, baddest guy in the room.

  Ezekiel stands up. He’s a mountain of muscled flesh. He smiles and cracks his knuckles.

  Picture an old gym. A really old gym. An extremely old gym. No, not quite as old as the one you’re imagining, but about three-quarters of the way there. The bricks on the walls are chipped and decaying. They’re stained by decades of sweat and cigar smoke and the broken dreams of broken men. At one time the room may have been brightly lit, but time, incompetence, and an unwillingness to pay for a good union electrician have combined to render half of the overhead lights useless. Or maybe it’s just that the bulbs need to be replaced. In any case, the place is poorly lit.

  In the center of the room is a boxing ring. The canvas is decaying and stained by decades of sweat and smoke and the broken dreams of—oh, wait, we already used that description for the bricks. Anyway the canvas is rotting and discolored by tens of years of perspiration and stogey-ash and the busted aspirations of busted men. Or maybe the floor is decomposing like Beethoven in his grave, and is as tainted as the Puritans made Hester Prynne, tainted by night after night and year after year of broken-nosed and brokenhearted men beating each other to a pulp while other men, with hearts as cold as their cash, cheered them on and jeered as the tattered fragments of their dreams splattered like their blood across the fabric of the flooring in this arena to serve a spectacle as gaudy and horrifying (and popular) as those of the Roman Coliseum.

  Or maybe the canvas floor is aging gracefully, suffused with the sweat and blood and hopes and dreams of young men. It is carrying these hopes and dreams long after the men themselves have grown old and tired, carrying these hopes and dreams to inspire a new generation of men to train, to hone their skills, to strengthen their bodies and their wills and their intuition, to learn
to listen, always, to the muse of the Ring, and in so doing this humble canvas has helped to initiate these men into a brotherhood and tradition and even a form of spirituality that stretches farther back than men can remember, and stretches farther into the future than anyone can guess, leading these humble men into an immortality of sorts, and has done the same for generation after generation of those in attendance, those who witness and also worship through this Sport of Kings.

  All of this may or may not have been true a few days ago, but in preparation for the duel the MAWAR folks all headed down to the sperm donation center to collect some dough (the people at the sperm bank wondered why their leader brought with him an illustrated Bible), and used the money to buy another canvas floor for the boxing ring, to replace the old one, which was falling apart.

  On the walls of this dimly lit gym are posters advertising some of the greatest fights in history (none of which took place here). Ali versus Frazier. Louis versus Schmelling. Johnson versus Jeffries. Hagler versus Hearns. Jesus versus Temptation. The Temptations versus the Supremes. Rock and Roll versus Disco. St. Augustine versus his unruly penis. Capitalists vanquishing their consciences. Industrialization versus life on Earth.

  The members of MAWAR sit on folding chairs, murmuring excitedly and waving cigars. At one side of the ring is Jasmine, the prize, tied to a chair. In the ring is Ezekiel. He wears a garish wrestling outfit with mask, cape, and boots. His huge belt buckle features the MAWAR logo, and “MAWAR” is stenciled crookedly across his chest. He carries a big Bible (the 1976 Bicentennial edition, with an embossed Liberty Bell on the cover) in one hand, and his lucky crucifix in the other.

  Facing him is Sam, who is also wearing a wrestling outfit with mask, cape, and boots. Under the cape, he wears a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. He sports glasses, has a pipe clenched between his teeth, and carries a textbook called Introduction to Exegetical Thought.

  A referee stands between them. He looks like Uncle Wiggily, and carries a candy-striped cane in one hand, a whistle in the other. He puts the whistle to his mouth, and blows one sharp blast.

  The MAWAR men stop their murmuring, and put down their refurbished cigars (after splurging on the canvas they’re going to be a little short on cash until they can replenish their precious bodily fluids, so they’ve been getting refurbished cigars, made from the finest and fattest butts found in the trash cans behind Fat Gordi’s Cigar Bar [“Every Tuesday is Ladie’s Night! Hey Ladie’s, get your fat butts in here! And with our prices you can be sure we’re not blowing any smoke up your ass!”]).

  Into the room walk four women with highly styled, frosted hair. They make their way to the sidelines, smiling and smiling and smiling. They wear short aprons and tight sweaters with LAWAR appliqued across their chests. Each wears around her neck her second most precious piece of jewelry after her wedding ring: her 12-karat gold hand-scripted pendant reading “Try God.” They carry toilet brushes and feather dusters. One of them holds up her arms for attention. The others fall into line, hands on hips.

  The first one says, “Ready! Set!”

  Jasmine tugs on the arm of Billy Bob, standing next to her. “Who are they?”

  Billy Bob says, “Cheerleaders. Duh.”

  “No, I mean, who are they?”

  “They’re LAWAR. Ladies Against Women Against Rape.”

  “But … who are they?”

  “Our wives.”

  “Ah.”

  The LAWAR women jump and wave around their cleaning implements as they perform a cheer. “Gimme a ‘G’!”

  The men roar, “G!”

  “Gimme an ‘O’!”

  “O!”

  “Gimme a ‘D’!”

  “D!”

  “And whattaya got? The One whose name we cannot take in vain! Go, GAWAR!”

  “GAWAR?” Jasmine asks.

  “Can’t you figure out anything? That’s God Against Women Against Rape,” Billy Bob says.

  The women try another cheer afterwards, lustily chanting, “We’ve got The Spirit, how about you?”

  But there are no fans on the other side, with or without The Spirit, to respond, so that one fizzles.

  The referee calls them all to attention. He then says to the combatants, “This will be a clean fight. There will be no headbutting, no hitting below the belt, no ad hominem attacks, and, following the rules set forth by Jürgen Habermas, speakers may only assert what they truly believe, and may not dispute a proposition or norm not under discussion without providing a reason for wanting to do so. Further, we have been given specific dispensation from Our Lord and Savior to allow you not to turn the other cheek. And finally, of course, no biting. Do you agree?”

  Both fighters nod.

  The referee continues, “Return to your corners, and come out swinging. May the best man—by which we mean the most Holy Man of God—win!”

  Both fighters retreat to their corners. The leader of MAWAR rings a bell. Both fighters step to toward the center.

  Ezekiel lands the first blow by stating, triumphantly, “Deuteronomy 21:11! It says there that when God helps you kick some heathen ass, and you see some really hot chick, you get to take her home to be ‘your wife.’”

  The MAWAR and LAWAR crowd cheers.

  Sam nods thoughtfully.

  The cheering grows even louder.

  Sam says, “So you’re equating rape with marriage?”

  The crowd clearly thinks this blow landed directly on Ezekiel’s solar plexus, as they fall silent, stunned.

  But Ezekiel is unfazed. He says, “Read some books, Four Eyes. Deuteronomy 21:14 answers that one: if she’s not a good lay, you can send her packing back to Mommy and Daddy, but can’t sell her as a slave. So rape only equals marriage if she’s fuckin’ hot!”

  The referee waves his candy-striped cane and says, “Two points to Ezekiel.”

  Ezekiel moves in close for a body blow: “Ready for another one? The whole fuckin’ story of Genesis 19!”

  More cheering.

  He pushes home the attack, “Lot lived in . Angels came to town, and them fuckin’ sodomites—get it?—wanted to rape them angels, but Lot said no, you can’t have them angels. Instead you can have my two daughters. Did Lot pull out any knitting needles? Hell, no, bub. God woulda turned his ass to salt.”

  Sam looks dazed.

  Ezekiel moves in for the knockout punch. “Now let’s go back to Deuteronomy, Academic-boy. How about a little Deuteronomy 22 action? The whole fuckin’ chapter.”

  Sam is up against the ropes.

  Jasmine shouts, “Do something!”

  Ezekiel offers a flurry of verses, “How about the story in Numbers 31, or Second Samuel 12:11-14? Judges 21. You want more, boy? You had enough?”

  Sam stutters, “I …”

  Ezekiel is relentless. His flurry is staggering Sam. Ezekiel says, “There’s plenty more where that came from. We got us some Zechariah 14, verses 1 and 2. We got us some …”

  Sam leans over the ropes and says to Jasmine, “I have a secret weapon at my disposal.”

  Ezekiel hears him, crows, “Bring it on!”

  Sam staggers away from Ezekiel, but becomes more steady as he approaches his corner. After he takes a standing eight count, he regains his composure, sits on his stool, crosses one leg over the other, European style, puffs contemplatively on his empty pipe, then takes the pipe out of his mouth. He looks absent-mindedly at it for a moment, before he begins to speak. “I must reject not only your logic and your sources, but even your epistemology itself. We must begin with the Notion.”

  Ezekiel says, “Huh,” as though hit with a philosophical blow to the gut. Or maybe it makes as little sense to him as it does to anyone else.

  Jasmine says, “Your secret weapon is a notion?”

  Sam doesn’t seem to be worried. “As I’m sure you know, in his Shorter Logic, first published in 1830, Hegel wrote that ‘The notion is what is mediated through itself and with itself. It is a mistake to imagine that the objects w
hich form the content of our mental ideas come first, and that our subjective agency then supervenes, and by the aforesaid operation of abstraction, and by colligating the points possessed in common by the objects, frames notions of them.’ You see how this applies, do you not?”

  Ezekiel looks stupefied.

  The referee waves his candy-striped cane around briskly and blows his whistle. He says, sharply, “Two points taken away. No Hegel.”

  Sam doesn’t hesitate. He says, “No loss. If we’re going to speak of God’s support of rape we must speak of the existence of God. For this I prefer Wittgenstein’s approach to truth as manifested in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, where he stated quite clearly, and, ahem, this is my own modest translation, that according to the nature of truth-operations, in the same way as out of elementary propositions arise their truth functions …”

  The referee shakes his head to stir himself awake, and has to blow a couple three times on his whistle to get it to make a sort of “piffle” sound. He says, sleepily, “Two more points lost. No Wittgenstein.”

  Sam continues calmly, patiently, really hitting his academic stride. “Well, then, let us accept that before we can talk of rape, we must talk of the metaphysics, indeed, the metasymbology, of free will. And before we can speak of free will, we must speak of, if I may coin a phrase, metaepistemological exegetic dialecticalism …”

  Ezekiel is having a hard time standing.

  Sam continues, “I’m sure we all know that, as Kierkegaard wrote, ‘in the interest of ever more highly specialized deliberation’—and Biblical exegetics are nothing if not specialized—which by forgetting—well, I’ll skip over that and dash right to the point where we attain …”

  Sam looks around, then continues, more and more slowly and quietly, as if to a child falling asleep, “… a dubious perfectibility by being able to become anything at all.”

  There is complete silence in the gym, except for the ticking of a far-off clock, and the slight hiss of steam in the pipes, and the faint sound of distant traffic, and the louder sound of closer traffic, and helicopters flying overhead, and jets taking off from the nearby airport, and the thunderous snoring of Ezekiel and several of the members of MAWAR and LAWAR. Even Uncle Wiggly snores fitfully, leaning on his candy-striped cane.