VALERIE: I liked surfing so much, Cosmo.
COSMO: Shh …
THE NARRATORS
A. A heart full of black flies. The loneliness of a desert. Landscape of stones. Cowboys. Wild mustangs. An alphabet of bad experiences.
B. Blue smoke on the mountains. I am the only sane one here. There were no real cowboys. There were no real pictures. I vacuumed all the rooms; the dust was still there. I cleaned all the windows; I still could not breathe. It had something to do with the construction. The sun burned through the umbrellas.
C. The American film. The camera’s lies. World literature’s. America was a big adventure with its unreal blue mountains, its desert landscape.
D. They were filming in the desert. Wild horses chased by helicopters. She never understood what was in the script; she could never remember her lines. They were always covered by something plastic. Men had a tendency to be sucked into her mother. Men are happy in my company. It does not mean that I am happy.
E. I, a Man and Bike Boy by Andy Warhol. The story of the dissident, of frontier language, of the scream, of suicide. All these compelling mutations and machinations, without being regarded in retrospect as a tragic fate. She vented her heart between the high-rise blocks. Death’s field was hers.
F. There should be a story set in the desert. There was no electricity. There were no telephone lines. How might the story be told? There would be endless dead blondes.
G. Stories. Overdoses. Sleeping tablets. Everything reaches its end.
H. Dead trees. Dead stories. Hold your horses. You must hold your horses, darling.
I. Valerie. Marilyn. Roslyn. Ulrike. Sylvia. Dorothy. Cosmogirl. A kind of insane genius. She has lost her marbles. That means we will wipe out her memories. Electroshock, injections, straitjackets, Elmhurst.
J. Remember, I am ill and I am waiting to die. Remember, I am the only sane woman here. Remember, he took my plays and killed them. They were already dead, miss. My plays were not dead. Your plays were already dead, miss. I want it added to the record of proceedings that he has killed my plays. What record, miss?
K. They had waited for hours. The harsh light over the set. That little white polka-dot dress. It was quite epic, timeless. I could have told you from the start how it would end. It could have had a different ending. There are other narrators. There are happy endings.
L. Experiments. Horses. Sunset.
M. I think you are the saddest girl I have ever met. There are no paths in the dark. There is nothing to tell. I cannot tell you how sad I am. I cannot talk about it. It is not possible to think outside your thoughts.
N. The compulsive calling forth of fragments of text and body tissue. Pain’s sickness. Defense and defeat. Smiles and tears. The blues. Trying to relate to the matter then was like relating to fresh snow on an August day in New York.
O. If we called the text The Snow, it would not be censored. It could happily be sentimental and dirty. That was actually an ideal. What was the point? There were only filthy texts. What was the point? There were only filthy girls. Unclean, overblown, much too rhythmic. I dreamed of spotless white paper and clean unblemished people.
P. The story’s flight response. A demonstration of pain. The sentences are blank. Rhetorical clumsiness. Contagious universes.
Q. Everyone else in the world would have loved me by now. Take everything from me, do it, that’s what I want. When I have got what I want, I never want it again. How many times can my heart break? I am the only one here without a soul. I could have told you from the start how it would end. Take everything from me, do it, that’s what I want.
R. I write for the dead. What does it matter if everyone is dead?
S. She keeps on being dead. She will always be dead. She is the only one I think about. A lie. All I want is to be with her. Rubbish. What does it matter if the narrator lies? What does it matter who tells the story?
T. Black-clad female grasshoppers and screaming fetuses. You cannot write yourself out of patriarchy. You cannot film yourself out. You stand in a desert, alone, frightened, weeping. You cannot think outside your thoughts. It is not the character’s structure. Massive hegemony. The death of languages in exile.
U. Daddy’s Girls unite. Isn’t that American white-trash girl far too violent and naïve? You mean that dreadful woman with the manifesto, shrilling hysterically? What is she trying to say anyway? No, I really cannot hear what she is trying to say in that deep, animal voice.
V. She is saying: I dream that you will never stop searching for me.
W. How will I find my way back in the dark?
X. Darkness. Silence. The desert does not reply.
Y. She says: Follow the star. The lost highway.
Z. Follow it to the end.
VENTOR, SUMMER 1948
Dorothy and Valerie in the desert kitchen again. Dorothy is cleaning the floor and the cupboards and everything in her path. Wearing her big black scarves and newly pressed skirts, she is washing away all her woes so that Red Moran cannot sniff them out, she says. In character, Red Moran is something of a disaster, but Dorothy is happy once more, lighting candles in all the rooms without burning her sleeves, stuffing desert animals and nailing them up on the wall, selling fox boas and having her handbag full of dollar bills, playing music on the radio without drinking wine; and all the time freckled hands swarm around your face. Never quieting, liable to come back later in your dreams.
DOROTHY: Housewives all love using soap.
VALERIE: Oh.
DOROTHY: Housewives clean away old misery and they love their daughters.
VALERIE: But you’re no housewife. You’re a barmaid. A working girl.
DOROTHY: You shouldn’t be so smart and split hairs, Valerie. Splitting hairs is just a fool’s way of making a point. I may not be a housewife on paper, but I feel like one. Happily married. Happy for my daughter. Flypaper and flyswatters to keep the shit away. Soap. Hydrogen superoxide. Soap flakes. You know you have a standing offer from Moran, Valerie?
VALERIE: I intend to carry on without a father.
DOROTHY: It’s a nice offer to a nice girl.
VALERIE: There are no nice girls.
DOROTHY: You’re a nice girl.
VALERIE: There are only nice girls.
DOROTHY: Well, it’s a nice offer anyway.
VALERIE: It’s a shit offer, Dorothy.
DOROTHY: I made some soap bubbles. Run and have a look in the kitchen.
VALERIE: I’m too old for soap bubbles. And you’re definitely too old.
The soap bubbles float in and out of the window and Dorothy tries to catch them with the flyswatter. She is obsessed with cleaning the house, as if she were under a spell. Then she chases you with soap bubbles through the junk and rubbish in the backyard until you both crash onto the sand among the fallen dragonflies and quenched bubbles and she laughs and smokes and waves the swarms of flies from your face and foretells a happy ending for everything. You hopeless, feral creature. You burning paradise.
Dorothy has remarried, to Red Moran. Moran is dark and obese, he pops sleeping pills like sweets and takes pride in never drinking anything other than whisky. He puts you into a Catholic school and wants you to call him Daddy and he sits napping at the filling station instead of selling gasoline and papers. The fans go like planes above his head and there he sprawls, slumped over the counter, letting the customers drive past. You take some boys back after school and steal cigarettes and piss in his hip flask. He and Dorothy are closeted for hours in the bedroom with the blinds down and it is dark and draughty and cramped in the house and at any moment Moran could be standing in the middle of the kitchen floor, naked, rooting in the refrigerator. Dorothy is known for her bad taste and her bad judgment.
Dorothy groans from the next room. Red Moran and she are wrapped in sheets and sunlight and only you and the rose wallpaper can see them. Moran is on his knees, his huge body rocking. His stomach is tense and hairy and Dorothy loves it so much she almost bursts and he bends li
ke a swaying baton over her as she lies there gazing at the cream-colored curtains billowing out of the window. Then he is on his knees in the bed and Dorothy is on all fours tensed like a desert dog; her thin, glowing body trembling in ecstasy. Her mouth is a gash on her face that you wish you could mend instead of standing there with the flies, staring into their pulsating pit of sweat and glassy eyes. And their smell that will follow you through the forest. A smell of something sour and sweet, like old fish or hamburgers.
VALERIE: I intend to keep the name Solanas.
DOROTHY: A father’s name is beautiful on a girl.
VALERIE: I’m going to keep it because it means ocean bird.
DOROTHY: Your father will always be able to find you.
VALERIE: I have no father.
DOROTHY: You know I love you?
VALERIE: I know.
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 11, 1988
When you wake again patches of sunlight are spreading over the hotel room; you are not sure if the shimmering and flickering by the window are disco lights, or minuscule neon cities or only little fairgrounds on the wallpaper. For once there is silence in the corridor and on the street, just a gently buzzing light, the sound of overstrained electricity and a hazy strip of sky behind the curtains. By the window it looks as though someone has left a silver fox fur or a fox boa, and her perpetual cloud of menthol smoke obscures the view of the room. A silver thread flashing in her hand.
Dorothy?
DOROTHY: My little sugar lump.
VALERIE: What are you doing?
DOROTHY: Sewing lucky threads.
VALERIE: In what?
DOROTHY: In your silver coat.
VALERIE: It’s too late.
DOROTHY: Threads of gold and silver. Lucky threads in your clothes at all times.
VALERIE: It’s too late and they’ve never worked. Like your fortune-telling cards.
DOROTHY: Sometimes my predictions were right.
VALERIE: Bullshit. What do the cards say now?
DOROTHY: They say that you’re not going to die. That love is eternal. That by May or June you’ll be out again in your silver coat. And I’ve been sewing lucky threads in it. It will all be all right. You have to believe that.
VALERIE: Your predictions have never come true.
DOROTHY: They did sometimes.
VALERIE: Put your cigarette out and name one occasion when they did.
DOROTHY: Lots of men thought I was beautiful and I predicted they would carry on thinking that.
VALERIE: And now you’re an ugly, hunched old hag with rustling skin and bad teeth and nicotine hands.
DOROTHY (looks at her hands as she splays her fingers): Red Moran said I was beautiful. Mr. Emin said I was beautiful … Everybody said it … By the way, did I tell you Moran died of that terrible lung disease?
VALERIE: You told me, yes.
DOROTHY: I thought everything was all right. That we were doing fine. And then he went and got that cough keeping me awake at night. I went to see him in the hospital every day. He should never have taken the job at the filling station. I said all along it was full of poisonous fumes and gases and shit.
VALERIE: He cut up all your clothes and pulled huge chunks of your hair out.
DOROTHY: What did you say?
VALERIE: You’ve got a memory like a sieve, Dorothy. All you’ve got in your head is sweet wine.
DOROTHY: I can’t remember anything anymore, Valerie.
VALERIE: I remember everything.
DOROTHY: I know, thank you very much. It’s like a photograph being developed inside that sharp little brain of yours. I have always chosen to remember only the wonderful things … clouds of pink flamingos flying low over the house … those skies that never return … kites and soap bubbles … a petticoat of the Stars and Stripes that I sewed for Independence Day … I looked fantastic in that cretion.
VALERIE: Cre-a-tion, Dorothy.
DOROTHY: Oh yeah. You’ve always thought words were important. I’ve always had so much else to think about.
VALERIE: I can remember Alligator Reef, for instance, and the ocean …
DOROTHY: That’s right. I could see it in my cards. You and I on that beach. The umbrellas. The miles of sand.
VALERIE (emits a laugh edged with steel): And then what, Dorothy? What happened then, Dorothy?
DOROTHY (her needle moving faster and faster, up and down): I don’t remember. There are lots of things I don’t remember. I haven’t thought about my hands before. It’s true, Valerie. Completely yellow with smoke and nighttime. But it’s nighttime now. You’re going to go to sleep now, my baby.
VALERIE: I’m not a baby. And there is a very literal beach. There are a number of unanswered letters. Did we stay on the beach? You have to answer my questions.
DOROTHY: I’m going to concentrate on sewing now. And you’re going to concentrate on sleeping now. Goodnight, little Valerie.
VALERIE: Fuck you, Dolly.
THE OCEANS
BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 12, 1988
THE NARRATOR: I can help you sort out your papers. I can change the light bulbs so you don’t have to lie in the dark. I can help you get up for a while.
VALERIE: Thank you, but I’m fine like this. And I prefer lying alone. But you go ahead. Knock yourself out. I’ll sleep for the time being.
NARRATOR: We need to talk some more about prostitution, talk some more about the American women’s movement. You have to tell me more about your relationship with the emancipation project.
VALERIE: I don’t have to do anything. I need to lie here and wait and see if I opt for life or death. My heart is still beating. I am still full of hate. I can still see you. And all your papers. That means I’m not dead yet.
NARRATOR: Being close to authentic material.
VALERIE: Am I the material?
NARRATOR: There’s more than one kind … You are the subject of this novel. I admire your work. I admire your courage. I’m interested in the manifesto’s context. Your life. The American women’s movement. The sixties.
VALERIE: Whore material. Screwing material.
NARRATOR: The context—
VALERIE: —there’s no such thing as context. Everything has to be wrenched out of its setting. Frames of reference can always explain away the most obvious causal connections. Buyers, sellers, slack dicks, slack pussies. It’s a question of phenomena that can be totally taken apart.
NARRATOR: I’m interested in your world.
VALERIE: This is not a world I want to live in. Marilyn Monroe. Sylvia Plath. Cinderella. Lying raped and murdered on the beach. I ran home to Dorothy across the desert with dying creatures in my arms. I waited for the animal to decide on life or death. Sometimes it chose death, sometimes life. Sometimes it was a giant dragonfly that would die before nightfall anyway. It has always been like that with me, I’ve always found it hard to decide. It’s been neither life nor death. And it seems from now on it will just be death. Well, at least it’s a decision to abide by. Something of a lasting nature.
NARRATOR: Tell me about the manifesto, about SCUM.
VALERIE: A worldwide antiviolence organization. A utopia, a mass movement, a raucous slather slowly spreading across the globe. A condition, an attitude, a way of moving across the city. Always filthy thoughts, filthy dress, filthy low intentions.
NARRATOR: Number of members?
VALERIE: Unknown.
NARRATOR: Which members?
VALERIE: Arrogant, selfish women in the whole wide world too impatient to hope and wait for the de-brainwashing of millions of assholes. Rulers of the universe in every country … Women of the whole world, or just Valerie …
NARRATOR: And you?
VALERIE: The loneliness of a desert.
NARRATOR: May I hold your hand?
VALERIE: No.
NARRATOR: May I sit with you while you sleep?
VALERIE: Remember that I’m ill and I’m waiting to die. Remember, I’m the only sane woman here.
&nb
sp; NARRATOR: I love you.
VALERIE: Fuck you.
VENTOR, FEBRUARY 1951
THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT CONDUCTS ATOMIC TESTS IN THE NEVADA DESERT CLOSE TO LAS VEGAS
The glint of the sun as it shines on a summer that has been feverish with desertions and reconciliations. Dorothy has chased through the nights across Bambiland. The trees are dark and somber, and her dead desert animals rot at the back of the house. Moran drifts aimlessly through the rooms when she disappears into the darkness; longing for her return, he weeps, and then sits for days on end, looking through her farewell letters. There is a smell of unwashed underwear and old tinned food and corpses and finally Dorothy calls you, her voice quavering, the crackling line from the city breaking up. This time he has tried to smash her face into an oil drum.
DOROTHY: I’m so stupid, darling. I should have realized ages ago that he’s a jerk. I look awful. My whole face is blue. My eyes. He cut my dress up, my white one.
VALERIE: Hello, Dorothy.
DOROTHY: I’m so stupid. I’m so naïve.
VALERIE: Yes, you are.
DOROTHY: I’m going to go away. And I’m going to take you with me.
VALERIE: I don’t want to stay here.
DOROTHY: Can you look for my white dress? I don’t want to go around in my nightdress. It makes me look like a mental patient.
VALERIE: You said it’s been cut up, the white one.
DOROTHY: Fuck. I forgot. I hate him. I’m useless.
VALERIE: You’re smarter than Moran.
DOROTHY: Yes.
VALERIE: It’s not difficult to be smarter than Moran.
DOROTHY: Come to the ocean, darling.
VALERIE: When am I leaving?
DOROTHY: The dress. You can bring another dress. And shampoo.
VALERIE: You crazy cow. Are you wearing only your nightdress now?
DOROTHY (giggles and sniffs): I think so … I look ridiculous. Nightdress and boots. No handbag, nothing. Sweetie. My little sugar lump. Bring things for yourself as well. Bring a book. Bring lots to read. I’ll buy you new books. I’ll buy whatever you like. I’ll sort money out when we get to the ocean.
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