And when you wake, Louis is under the treetops and the heat has gone and the sun is embedded in flashes of light shooting into your eyes as you open them and the backs of your thighs are stuck to the shiny surface of the backseat and covered in pondweed and mud and the unreal intensity of the light serves as darkness when you later recount it to Cosmogirl:
the darkness descended when I was nearly seven. We were on a picnic by the river. Dorothy was there. Louis was there. The light was so strong I didn’t know which way to turn. When I woke, Louis was next to me. I didn’t see Dorothy. The leaves cast shadows on his hands. I was lying on my back and Louis was there. My dress was pure white. I never had a white dress after that. He put his hands underneath my white dress. I let him. I let him. Then darkness. The light through the trees on his hands.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT, NEW YORK, JUNE 3, 1968
ARRAIGNMENT HEARING, NIGHTTIME
Apparently it is raining outside, which concerns you not in the slightest, because inside the courthouse there is no weather at all, just stone and wood and dark suits and the sweet little traffic officer, William Schmalix, in his white gloves. All the questions are the wrong ones and outside in Madison Square Park you have kneeled and reached into the pants of untold strangers. You are wearing Cosmo’s yellow top and underneath it nothing moves.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Judge David Getzoff summons Valerie Solanas in the case of New York State vs. Valerie Solanas.
VALERIE: Thank you so much. It’s not often I shoot someone and have the honor of coming here.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Everything you say here can later be used against you.
VALERIE: I don’t doubt it.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Personal circumstances of the accused. Valerie Solanas. Age: thirty-two. Address: none. Marital status: single. Profession: unknown; the accused states she is a writer. No previous criminal record. Born in Ventor, Georgia, April 9, 1936.
VALERIE: Hey, hey, hey you. Mister. What do you know about love?
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: You are accused of homicide or attempted homicide. The charge is not yet established.
VALERIE: Aha.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Do you know what day it is?
VALERIE: I know I should have done a bit more target practice, mister.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Do you know where you are?
VALERIE: As far as I can see, I’m not anywhere I want to be.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Do you have a lawyer?
VALERIE: No, but I have no objection to appearing outside history.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Do you need a lawyer?
VALERIE: I need a kiss.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: I’m asking if you need a lawyer.
VALERIE: I regret that I missed. If a lawyer can help me undo that, I’ll gladly have a lawyer.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Do you remember why you shot Andy Warhol?
VALERIE: Unfortunately, I tend to remember slightly more than I need to. And in this case there was someone who had too much control over my life and I found it rather hard, to cut a long story short, to adjust to.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Why did you shoot Andy Warhol?
VALERIE: You should read my manifesto if you’re interested in joining SCUM’s supporters. It will tell you who I am.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: You handed yourself in to a traffic officer yesterday on Fifth Avenue. Why did you do that?
VALERIE: Because I wanted some company. Because I was fed up. And he seems really nice, William Schmalix. And clever. I’ve never seen such a tiny policeman before and he still managed to arrest me.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: This is the final time I will ask about a lawyer. You will need defense counsel. Can you afford a lawyer?
VALERIE: I want to defend myself. This, unlike so much else, will remain in my own competent hands.
VENTOR, GEORGIA, SUMMER 1945
MEN BACK IN THE FACTORIES AFTER THE WAR
The tarot cards are lying fanned out in strategic places around the house. Dorothy predicts that everything will be fine and there will be new children in the house and new desert flowers and the house will stop being a shithole and Louis will stop staring into the distance and the grapes and wild animals will survive out there where there is only sand and stones and merciless sun. As long as Louis is there, she is happy and busy and convinced she will succeed in growing sunflowers and sweet peas. As long as Louis is there, she drenches the house in soap and washes the sheets and nightshirts overnight and serves cornflakes with milk and syrup for breakfast and forever has new projects: a bath in the kitchen, a saucy hat, piles of dead butterflies in glass jars, solar panels on the roof, a new flavoring for the winemaking machine, and myriad underwater dreams of a future for Valerie somewhere else. A shift in the breeze inside you when she gazes at you with her dark eyes, convinced you are a changeling in need of special sustenance and special books and games, a stranger to her, unexpected but secretly wished for, like winning on the horses without having placed a bet.
DOROTHY: Nine years old and the prettiest in all America.
VALERIE: You are the pretty one, Dorothy.
DOROTHY: Louis thinks I’m beautiful. I intend to carry on being beautiful until I die. I have no intention of accepting the march of time, of my face looking like a war zone. Louis will stay with me as long as I’m radiant. Don’t forget to be radiant, Valerie. Don’t ever forget.
VALERIE: You’re radiant.
DOROTHY: But I’ve had to work at it. Beauty doesn’t come free, pretty eyes aren’t free. What would you like for your birthday?
VALERIE: I’d like you.
DOROTHY (spreads her arms wide): Happy birthday.
VALERIE: And I’d like it if we didn’t live with Louis.
DOROTHY (crestfallen, lets her arms drop to her sides): He’s your father, Valerie.
VALERIE: He might be. But I don’t like him.
DOROTHY: Without him, I’m nobody.
VALERIE: Okay.
DOROTHY: Without you, America is nothing.
And you return from the river in Louis’s car, but Louis is not there, only Dorothy and you, and she continues to sing at the top of her voice, roughened by sweet wine and cigarettes, as the roads disappear behind you, poplars and telegraph posts and deep black shadows, and she sings like a gushing waterfall and holds your gaze in the rearview mirror. On the shoulder the remains of dead animals flash past—foxes, dogs, and snakes—and on the porch of the desert house Louis waits for you both to return and for Dorothy to go back to her work at the bar. And on the backseat huge bloodstained tears of wretchedness and no way to get around the simple facts of Louis and Dorothy and Valerie Solanas. Dorothy falls to pieces without Louis and Valerie falls to pieces without Dorothy. So Dorothy carries on singing and driving, knowing all about the world, but not wanting to know, and as she whistles and hums and casts fathomless glances in the rearview mirror, she wishes it were possible to keep everything and lose nothing.
Dorothy
Dorothy
Nightfall takes such a long time, and when you come home someone has taken your collection of snake skins; it must have been a desert dog. After Dorothy has melted away to the bar in her leopard-skin dress with her leopard-skin bag, Louis lies on the porch swing drinking beer and the night is black with insects, total darkness without stars or lamps. For the last time he takes his chicken soup out into the garden. For the last time he shouts to you to come out of the house. With a beer in your hand you walk slowly across the sand, still hot from the sun, and the heat has burned all your thoughts away and when it is dark outside you might as well be dead.
Afterward he smokes a cigarette and watches the smoke blend into the night. When the dark recedes and the hens wake, he packs his things and disappears into the distance. When Dorothy finally returns, she
is tired after the night and smokes a cigarette on the porch and listens to the birds fly by in the first light. Then she walks slowly through the rooms and she already knows, but does not want to know, and she shouts and weeps and goes through his empty drawers and none of his clothes are there and no money in the cake tin under the sink, only the forsaken wedding ring, lying in the sun. In Hiroshima shadows of fleeing people are seared onto buildings forever. You tell Cosmo about it later:
it was nothing special, it was just that Louis used to rape me on the porch swing after Dorothy had driven into town and the treetops wafted about in the night sky and the seat creaked in resistance because it needed oiling again and we were always waiting for new light bulbs for the garden and Louis should have done a bit more exercise because the flab on his arms wobbled when he strained on top of me and his chest against my face heavy and suffocating and he was a jumbled agony of tears and lust and the seat cover fabric was a mesh of wild pink roses that Dorothy had embroidered at night and I counted the roses and the stars in the sky and all flesh was sun-scorched grass and the dark took its time and my eyes pricked and burned and the desert dogs in their deepest sleep were chasing the wind and the stars in the sky had long been dead and I rented out my little pussy for no money and afterward he always wept and tried to untangle the knot of chewing gum in my hair and I don’t know why it always got stuck in my hair while I was counting wild roses that were blood roses and death roses and the gum always fell out of my mouth and afterward my hair smelled of menthol and his shirt was marked with chewing gum and the stars were still dead in the night sky and remnants of cloud had caught in the trees floating above and Louis cut out the stickiest menthol snarls and chain-smoked long afterward and I smoked his cigarette butts and we listened to the geckos chirping around us and there was nothing left to cry about except America would keep on fucking me and all fathers want to fuck their daughters and most of them do and only a minority refrain and it’s not clear why except the world is always one long yearning to go back
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT, JUNE 3, 1968
The hearing continues after a short break. You refused to answer “adequately” and “properly” to the questions of the court and it withdrew for a while. Silver clouds dart like shadows on the ceiling. It is hard to decide if they are balloons or silver cushions or if they are floating mirrors that have escaped from the ladies’ toilets. A daydream running alongside all the other daydreams, a land of mirrors outside time, and around you only black holes opening in the marble floor, and a hundred thousand silver wigs falling from the sky. An echoing courtroom and endless rows of benches in different kinds of dark wood and someone holding your arm all the time. Andy is obsessed with death; he loves making screen prints of electric chairs and suicides and crashed cars. Cosmo would have laughed at his phony art and the hearing, and this proceeding feels as if his silver wig were being rammed down your throat.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Will the accused, Valerie Solanas, please stand.
VALERIE: Remember, I’m the only sane woman here.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: You have the right to a lawyer. There are people prepared to pay to defend you. Monsieur Maurice Girodias, proprietor of Olympia Press, has offered to pay for your defense.
VALERIE: I don’t want his lawyers. I did the right thing. I regret nothing. I had plenty of reasons. It’s not often I shoot someone. I didn’t do it for nothing. They had me tied up and it wasn’t very pleasant. They were going to do something that would have ruined me.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Redact all the defendant’s statements.
VALERIE: Redact nothing. All that has to be recorded. I repeat. I will continue to repeat. I can repeat any number of times. I did the right thing. I regret nothing. I had plenty of reasons. It’s not often I shoot someone. I didn’t do it for nothing. They had me tied up, a very unpleasant experience. They were going to do something that would have ruined me. I want you to write that down in the record of proceedings.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: No statements by the accused will be recorded. Hearing terminated; court adjourned. The accused is to be taken into psychiatric care for observation.
VALERIE: I refuse to be redacted and censored in this way.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: The defendant will leave the courtroom.
VALERIE: I’m going nowhere until I’m included in the record.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Court is adjourned until further notice.
VALERIE: I demand that all my statements are documented in the record. I am not leaving this court until I know my statements have been included.
Decision of the court: All statements by the accused are to be redacted from the transcript. Valerie Solanas is to be taken to Bellevue Hospital for observation.
VENTOR, SUMMER 1945
And the world is always one long yearning to go back. The river, Ventor, treetops, blood roses, those skies that never will return. Flimsy shreds of clouds reflected in the river, black branches in the murky water. The trees bowed toward the river, their roots engulfed by dark water, their crowns longing to be drowned, and Dorothy walking into the river wearing her clothes. She has pulled together her prettiest things, her brilliant white dress and designer handbag that looks like an aspirin tablet and is stolen from some bar in Ventor. Her hair in perfect curls under a scarf and the sun shining on her face. Dorothy steps into the river in her dress, the water streaming into her underclothes and eyes; she walks until she can no longer touch the bottom and she cannot swim so she just carries on into the deep, dreaming of winning everything and losing nothing (winning Louis and not losing you, losing Louis without losing herself).
You will always wish it was not your fault Louis left and you will always save her when she walks out into the water and the sun spots touch her pale hands so tenderly when you pull her onto the edge, onto the earth and grass and rubbish of a riverbank that has no beauty, only the stench of stagnant water and old underclothes and a strange, acrid chemical smell. And the black shadows of the towering trees shelter you from the sun, and while you wait for her to wake up again the cold comes. Slowly her pale freckled hands begin to move, opening and closing like night plants, and her dress is dark with mud and sand. When she comes round she vomits water and sand and wine and pie and tablets and blood. Her mottled pink chest heaves violently, her breath cold and blue, the dress ruined forever, makeup all over her face. She cries then because someone threw her handbag into the water while she was in the river. Taking your hand, wretched with shame, not even good at drowning.
DOROTHY: Sorry, Valerie, little one. I shouldn’t have eaten that pie.
VALERIE: You shouldn’t have gone in with your clothes on.
DOROTHY (closes her eyes and fumbles for your face): Free fall.
VALERIE: What do you mean?
DOROTHY: Free fall into the light. Dorothy’s dead to me. Radiant. Radiant. I will always be. Happy. So happy. Happy and free.
VALERIE: You’re talking nonsense, Dorothy. You’re not dead yet, you’re here, normal as ever, you haven’t changed. You’ve got vomit on your hands. Wash yourself and stop your babbling. You didn’t turn into a poet in the river.
DOROTHY: I turned into nothing in the river. How’s my dress?
VALERIE: Fuck the dress. It’s dirty, you’ll have to wash it. And your makeup’s a complete mess.
DOROTHY: I’m an idiot.
VALERIE: You’re an idiot, Dorothy.
You walk home hand in hand. Dorothy has washed herself and her dress in the sweet, dark river water. The house in the desert is full of goodbye letters. Dorothy writes hundreds of farewell pages on pink paper before sealing them with a parting kiss. Valerie, my love. It will be better for you when I am no longer here. And then she burns them all behind the house and swears on her breasts that she will never do it again and she laughs at the smoke, as if there were no danger. Then she starts to set fire to the sleeves of her dresses again, to scarves, coats, tablecloths; she sets fire to curtains in the bar, to
items in shops, and she goes home with a stranger and burns down his rose garden.
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 9, 1988, YOUR BIRTHDAY
NARRATOR: Happy birthday, Valerie.
VALERIE: Are they funeral flowers?
NARRATOR: I don’t really know. I brought them for you because I liked them. They smell so nice, a birthday smell. They can be funeral flowers if you want.
VALERIE: I don’t like flowers.
NARRATOR: There are only one or two magnolias.
VALERIE: I don’t want to have a religious funeral. I want to be buried as I am. I don’t want them to burn my body when I’m dead. I don’t want any man to touch me when I’m dead. I want to be buried in my silver coat. I want someone to go through my notes after my death.
NARRATOR: My faculty of dreams—
VALERIE: —and no sentimental young women or sham authors playing at writing a novel about me dying. You don’t have my permission to go through my material.
(Silence.)
(The narrator picks at the flowers.)
NARRATOR: Can you hear the ocean?
VALERIE: I can hear the ocean and I don’t want to hear it.
(More silence.)
VALERIE: I used to read from the manifesto at lunchtimes in Manhattan restaurants until I got thrown out.
NARRATOR: I can imagine. Did they like it?
VALERIE: You bet they did! They loved it. Who lives here apart from me?
NARRATOR: Junkies and down-and-outs. Prostitutes. AIDS sufferers. Mental-health cases with no hospital to go to. Ailing bag ladies.
VALERIE: Do you like them?
NARRATOR: I don’t know. I’ve not met them.
VALERIE: Tell them we’ll be out again soon. Tell them I’ll arrange a day trip to the ocean for them. A day of blowy umbrellas and summer drinks for dying whores.
Valerie Page 2
