Free Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker Page B

Custom House', the introduction to The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne makes sure he tells us the story of The Scarlet Letter occurred long ago and has nothing to do with anyone who's now living. After all, Hawthorne had to protect himself so he could keep writing. Right now I can speak as directly as I want 'cause no one gives a shit about writing and ideas, all anyone cares about is money. Even if one person in Boise, Idaho, gave half-a-shit, the only book Mr Idaho can get his hands on is a book the publishers, or rather the advertisers ('cause all businessmen are now advertisers) have decided will net half-a-million in movie and/or TV rights. A book that can be advertised. Define culture that way.
    You see, things are much better nowadays than in those old dark repressed Puritan days: anybody can say anything today; progress does occur.
    It's possible to hate and despise and detest yourself 'cause you've been in prison so long. It's possible to get angrier and angrier. It's possible to hate everything that isn't wild and free. A girl is wild who likes sensual things: doesn't want to give up things being alive: rolling in black fur on top of skin ice-cold water iron crinkly leaves seeing three brown branches against branches full of leaves against dark green leaves
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    through this the misty grey wanders in garbage on the streets up to your knees and unshaven men lying under cocaine piled on top of cocaine colours colours everything happening! one thing after another thing! . . . you keep on going, there are really no rules: it doesn't matter to you whether you live or die, but every now and then there's a kind of territory and you might get stuck; if you get stuck that's OK too if you really don't give a shit, but who doesn't give a shit! Loving everything and rolling in it like it's all gooky shit goddamnit make a living grow up no you don't want to do that.
    The Massachusetts seacoast in the middle of the seventeenth century looked the same as it does now: WILD. Trees and bushes and weeds and wind and water. Trees and bushes and weeds and winds and water are always moving every moment the whole world is a totally different world air rides over shivering water so those water areas shiver harder grow darker below the water hit the sharper rocks harder splash! foam appears. And disappears.
    My father told me the day after he tried to rape me that security is the most important thing in the world. I told him sex is the most important thing in the world and asked him why he didn't fuck my mother. In Hawthorne's and our materialistic society the acquisition of money is the main goal 'cause money gives the power to make change stop, to make the universe die; so everything in the materialistic society is the opposite of what it really is. Good is bad. Crime is the only possible behaviour.
    Hester Prynne, Hawthorne tells us, had wanted to be a good girl. I remember I wanted to be a good girl for my father. Her loving husband sent her to the New World to prepare a way for him. Travelling in those days was dangerous - there were no roads - and her husband never showed up. Two years passed. Hester was being a good dead girl. Suddenly a little unsuspected ecstatic crazy-making overtaking wildness like a big King Viper spreading his hood, rising up and spreading overtaking everything, that's what love's like, snake-insane rose up in Hester she fucked. Pregnancy made her wildness or evil (that's the religious word for wildness) public. The child was the sign of her nasti-ness and disintegration and general insanity.
    Hawthorne gives us a description of motherhood in the fucked-up society: All the people around Hester hate her and despise her and think she's a total freak. The kid's beyond human law and human consideration. How do you feel about yourself when every human being you hear and see and smell every day of your being thinks you're worse than garbage? Your conception of who you are has always, at least partially, depended on how the