Valerie

by Sara Stridsberg

  VALERIE: Hello, Andy, it’s only me.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: How are you feeling, little Andy?

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: Merry Christmas, Andy.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: Merry Christmas, I said.

  ANDY: Merry Christmas, Valerie?

  VALERIE: Why haven’t you been to see me?

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: I read in the paper that you’ve forgiven me.

  ANDY: Yes?

  VALERIE: Have you forgiven Valerie?

  ANDY: Yes?

  VALERIE: If you’ve forgiven Valerie, how come you haven’t been to see her?

  ANDY: I have to hang up now…?

  VALERIE: Are you celebrating Christmas in the Factory?

  ANDY: Goodbye, Valerie?

  VALERIE: I don’t understand.

  ANDY: I’m not angry, Valerie. But goodbye, Valerie. I can’t talk anymore, Valerie. We’ve got to work now, Valerie…?

  VALERIE: Really. My next suggestion is that you exhibit your body parts in some old museum in London and we call the whole thing Haute Couture.

  (call ends—)

  CHRISTMAS EVE, CONVERSATION TWO

  ANDY: Hello?… Mom?…

  VALERIE (disguises her voice): Yes, it’s only little Mama Warhola … I just want to know if you’ve taken off your bandages …

  ANDY: M-m-mom?…

  VALERIE: If anything happens to you, I’ll never forgive you. That awful male-female will never get near my little boy again.

  ANDY: No?

  (Silence.)

  ANDY: Mom?

  (Silence.)

  ANDY: Mom?

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: Valerie, not Mom. I need twenty thousand dollars for my manuscript. I need money to defend myself in court. I need money now. Withdraw all the charges against me. And then I want you to do a new film about me. I need to be on a TV show. I have no White House to work out of. Ring that man again, Mr. Carlson, that show where you sat painting your nails and called yourself Warhola, and tell him I need him, tell him I need TV. I want you to come and see me at Elmhurst. Visiting time is every Sunday at three. I’m sorry if I hurt you, but it wasn’t as bad as all that.

  (call ends—)

  CHRISTMAS EVE, CONVERSATION THREE

  VIVA RONALDO: Andy Warhol’s office. To whom am I speaking?

  VALERIE: Ask Andy Warhol to come to the phone. I’m in a great hurry.

  VIVA RONALDO: You have to stop these nuisance calls.

  VALERIE: Whatever … Wigs. Paranoia. Fake artists. Plagiarists. Kleptomaniacs. Dracula. Bloodsuckers. Leeches.

  VIVA RONALDO: We’ve reported your calls to the police, Valerie.

  VALERIE: Okay. Exciting. But if he has really forgiven Valerie, how come he hasn’t been to visit her?

  VIVA RONALDO: Goodbye, Valerie.

  VALERIE: I’d also add that I’ve reported your art and your man’s faces to the police. Tell him to find my play. Tell him I’ll forgive him if I get my play back. Tell him, for as long as the sun shines and the sky is blue, I’ll keep my promise.

  (call ends—)

  UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, AUTUMN 1959

  It is the end of McCarthy’s protracted fifties, and the sixties are on their way in. You have a part-time job as a night student in the laboratory. Dwight David Eisenhower has become the president of America. You think about Dorothy all the time, daydream about Dorothy in her flowery hat beside your graduation hat, Dorothy with shining eyes and confetti, bowing and scraping in her high heels to everyone who passes. Dolly, that’s only a student. Ah. You don’t need to bow to everyone who’s here. Nah. They’re just ordinary people. Education is just a way of separating people, Dorothy. Ah, but I haven’t been to any school at all, little Valerie, I’m so proud of you, little Valerie. Dorothy should see you now, in your white lab coat, running along the corridors at the university. She would be frightened of everything here, of the books, the buildings, the professors. Sometimes you think you should write and tell her how you are swanning around in the sciences, with unlimited access to literature and long nights in Shiver Laboratory.

  The other girls have white pearl necklaces, they have their old-lady perms, which is all wrong but all right. You have dungarees under your lab coat and you are happy and wide awake all night in Shiver Laboratory. The nights with the animals are long and humid. The pygmy monkeys are comatose in their cages, and the mice, hamsters, and rabbits never sleep, running in their wheels all night, as you walk along the corridors in your white clogs, waiting for the alarm to go off in one of the cages. Flight responses in laboratory animals are heartrending; a little colony of white mice works in unison for days on an underground escape system. Cosmogirl and you keep a log of their breakout plans.

  And while you wait for morning to come, you drink coffee with the night watchman and spend a long time in the toilets washing your hands and under your arms. You love walking through the glacial light emitted by the fluorescent lamps in the animal rooms. The red-eyed mice have cancerous tumors on their backs. A human ear has been grafted onto one of them. Cosmogirl has christened her Samantha. You like her best of all. She moves slowly with the full-grown ear, waiting for death. Before she dies, you will cut the ear off her. Cosmogirl and you dream of an underwater world of female mice where Samantha rules.

  Nights in the animal laboratory among the luminous cages and animal experiments are endless. The animals run around in the epileptic flicker of the lights and the strong odor of disinfectant. Their animal eyes become infected, the albino mice get cancer, the alcohol mice and drug mice degenerate in the experiments. The white mice become addicted first. After just a few weeks they stop eating and working, they stop looking after their young, and the youngsters stop playing and running in the wheel. Life in the cages turns into a desperate wait by the water bottle. Dead animals are collected in huge steel containers and burned collectively every week.

  THE PSYCHOANALYSTS

  A. Dr. So-and-so. All doctors eat Mogadon and turds for breakfast. I feel like a goddamn whore. When can a woman spend time outdoors? Never. Language is merely a structure, says Dr. Fuck, and breathes a wind of rape into my face.

  B. The decision was taken to remove her brain. There had been years of international conferences. The speakers shook their heads. Reports and diagnoses eddied around the conference halls. Outside it was completely calm. Deserted buildings, hotel complexes, beta-blockers. They drove their cars along the promenades. Hotels abandoned, hearts bombarded, utopias mutilated. Death’s field. They drove their cars across death’s field. They shared a bed with the enemy.

  C. The child’s paranoid universe. Childhood as a long line of terrifying fields to scurry through. Light coming down from the trees onto his hands.

  D. Paranoid associations. Unseemly comparisons. How should I describe it? How should the story be told? There is nothing to tell.

  E. We walk through the hospital grounds. Everyone is wearing white patients’ apparel and everyone’s hands are shaking. The tablets do not help. Nothing helps. I do not want to go to the mental hospital. I do not like that hospital park. The signs, the alarm bells, the visiting times. All the white light on his hands.

  F. All my friends are whores. They burn every bridge as soon as they have a chance. Let me know if you need a character witness. How would you like to describe that night?

  G. I do not want to describe it.

  H. How about giving it a try?

  I. I do not want to.

  J. How would you describe that night?

  K. Black birds hurtling down. Mammalian fetuses, bleeding, burning. End of story.

  L. The conferences continued. Erica Jong sucks a cock a mile above the Atlantic. The repulsive mile-high club. The cock in the cunt. It was so goddamn disgusting.

  M. I know you like it. My heart beats red, beats blue, beats rage.

  N. The Future of an Illusion. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The Interpretation of Dreams, G
roup Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. The Ego and the Id. Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy. “Wild” Psychoanalysis. The Dynamics of Transference. Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through. Denial. Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through. Denial. Analysis Terminable and Interminable. The Theory of Sexuality. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses. Wolf Man. Seduction Theory. Screen Memories. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Infantile Genital Organization. Amendment to the Theory of Sexuality. The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis. Dostoevsky and Parricide.

  O. She stayed in bed all day long. She had no references, she lacked persuasion. Her heart clamored, venting its wrath. Men chased over her face.

  P. I drive through town in my silver car. I drive across the sky. I arrive in my silver car. I have fluffy white hair; you can call me what you like. You will never know my real name.

  Q. It was a passion. Why did I have such high heels? Why did I have such short dresses? I only wanted to get closer to the sky. I was looking for my sisters. I could not find a sister. I sat in front of the television and submitted to compulsory treatment. I seldom saw a doctor.

  R. But thanks very much for your comments. I am very interested in your views on the red-light district. I am very interested in the way you call yourselves educated and then call other people white trash. You are very welcome to earn a living as prostitutes for a year in the Tenderloin and then come back and tell me what you think. In general, please deliver all your opinions concerning the red-light district, regardless of how little time you have had to consider the matter.

  S. My theory is that there is no theory. I went there quite voluntarily. I visited that doctor of my own free will. I had my own training, but they said it was irrelevant in the context. They said I had no sense of time. Do you know what day it is? Rape. Rape. Rape. Rape. Rape. Rape. Do you know where you are? Fuck me harder.

  T. There is a psychology for everything. Red-light psychology. Red-light theory. My theory is that there is no theory. Dough. Dames. Dicks. That is the right way to describe it.

  U. How do you want to describe the phenomenon?

  V. I do not want to describe the phenomenon.

  W. How would you describe the phenomenon?

  X. Sharks in all my thoughts. The taste of death. Grainy white fluid in all my dreams. Abjection.

  Y. I would like to point out that I am here voluntarily. You are not here voluntarily. I would like to point out that I am attending these psych appointments of my own free will. The appointments, yes. Yes, I know you are forcing me to be here. Tell me something about your childhood. I can tell you something about my ass, if you like.

  Z. Why do you have to tell the truth when it is so easy to lie? I was raped by a bird in the desert.

  BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 18, 1988

  NARRATOR: Do you have a few minutes?

  VALERIE: Sorry, I’m working. Ten for a fuck. Five for a blow job. Two for a hand job. The whole repertoire. No kissing. No bullshit. No fingers. No licking. Sex is just a hang-up.

  NARRATOR: I’d like to know what you think about prostitution.

  VALERIE: Currently I have more practical experience than knowledge.

  NARRATOR: Then tell me about it.

  VALERIE: It’s like that boat accident in the Pacific where hundreds of people died. The ones who survived were utterly unable to speak when they were questioned by the police and later interviewed by the newspapers. One of them said long afterward that what happened the night of the disaster was not something the living should know about. People stamping on other people’s hands when they tried to get into the overcrowded lifeboats. Men kicking young children out of the way to get to the front. A man spoke about a girl who was trapped, her head pinned under a cupboard. Their eyes met, and he went out to the lifeboats. It’s testimony that belongs with the dead.

  NARRATOR: You’re not dead.

  VALERIE: It’s like being dead. It’s testimony that belongs with the dead.

  NARRATOR: You’re not dead.

  VALERIE: Everything is interchangeable. Thought systems work like that, organization of flesh and mind. The logic of transportation hinges on a certain predetermined quota being filled. If someone is missing, someone else is taken out in her place. There’s no point in running away.

  NARRATOR: Your way of thinking is distorted by so much senseless, destructive defeatism.

  VALERIE: Not defeatism. Not submission. Not masochism. There are no good victims. I just find it unworthy to save my own ass when my people are being annihilated. When pussy-souls are sent to the slaughter. Otherwise another pussy-soul will have to do the work. I might just as well do it. There will always be men who like to fuck drowning people.

  NARRATOR: Selling intimacy undermines the soul and self-esteem.

  VALERIE: There’s more to intimacy than that. Sex organs. A whore never sells intimacy. She sells a black hole in space. She isn’t there. Cosmo and I dreamed of being America’s first intellectual whores. I always said to her she was the most brilliant whore in America. I sold my pussy all my life, but I never sold my soul. My pussy is not my soul. I never compromised on anything. I have never cared what happened to my cunt. I’ve always hated it. Everyone else has always hated it. I’m going to work now. I need cigarettes. You’ll have to take your questions somewhere else.

  NARRATOR: I have two hundred and fifty thousand university credits and all I dream of is a faculty like you.

  VALERIE: And I dream of being able to sleep for a while instead of being subjected to these interrogation methods.

  UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, AUGUST 1962

  MARILYN MONROE IS DEAD

  Inside the phone booth in the student dorm during the hot summer of 1962, you call home over and over again to tell Dorothy you have been accepted to do postgraduate research. Some middle-class boy has dropped out at the last minute and you have been given his place. Cosmo is happy and invites you onto the roof for cigars, champagne, and marshmallows.

  VALERIE: Valerie Jean Solanas is going to be a university researcher.

  COSMO: Did you get hold of her?

  VALERIE: There’s no answer.

  COSMO: Come and sit here.

  VALERIE: There are only happy endings.

  COSMO: What do you wish for, Valerie?

  VALERIE: I wish I hadn’t gotten this place because a middle-class boy dropped out. I wish I had a hundred thousand Sprague Dawley white rats.

  COSMO: I’m so proud of you. Now you can do what you want. No limits, no compromises.

  VALERIE: It was just a waiting-list place.

  COSMO: That doesn’t matter. You got it because you deserve it.

  VALERIE: I still have to raise my own money.

  COSMO: But you’re the department’s shining star, just as much as ever. Everyone knows that.

  VALERIE: I still have to get myself a pearl necklace for the seminars. And an oh-so-respectable frock.

  The night sky floats above like a black veil. Cosmo holds your hand tightly and you have listened to the ringing tone from the desert for so long it keeps reverberating in your head after you put the receiver down. A single star shoots through the darkness. Cosmo draws her fingers over the sky, as if wanting to drag more stars down for you, but the sky remains black and the darkness arcs gently over the park. The rabbits dash between the trees like white lamps.

  One day Cosmo has arranged for fireworks and a cascade of artificial stars over Laboratory Park and she has promised you a wish for every star. You have wished for the postgraduate admission. You should have wished for Dorothy to figure out how to answer the telephone.

  COSMO: What do you wish for, Valerie?

  VALERIE: I wish that this moment would last forever. You. Your hand. The starry night. The postgrad slot. The opportunity.

  COSMO: What did you say?

  VALERIE: I said, I wish for money for the experiment.

  COSMO: You’ll be swimmi
ng in money. The others are nothing compared to you. Everyone knows. They know that you know.

  VALERIE: I’ll let them know I’m there.

  Telephone signals, dark, forlorn, across the desert. It is August 4, 1962, and there are headlines and radio broadcasts far and wide: Marilyn Monroe is dead. Marilyn Monroe died on Helena Drive, Brentwood, California. Moran answers, out of breath, and behind you students stamp their feet and eavesdrop while they wait for you to finish your call.

  VALERIE: May I speak to Dorothy, please?

  MORAN: How are you? How’s it g-going at the u-u-u-u- …

  VALERIE: U-NI-VER-SI-TY. Fine, thanks. I’ve just been accepted as a postgraduate. Is Dorothy there?

  MORAN: Ah! P-p-postgraduate. Congratulations, Valerie. We’re always rooting for you, Valerie, you know. We’re always waiting for you to send us a book.

  VALERIE: May I speak to Dorothy?

  MORAN: Dorothy’s asleep. She’s been crying all day over Marilyn. She’s had a sleeping tablet now.

  VALERIE: Wake her up.

  Dorothy, streaked with tears, is lying behind the bedroom curtains in her sleeping-pill slumber. She dreams of Marilyn’s blond hair, her tragic childhood. All the letters she wrote to Miss Monroe. Dear, dear Miss Marilyn Monroe, I admire your work, your figure, your blond curls. I’m just Dorothy. A poor babe in the desert with a tragic background. I wish we could meet sometime and have a coffee.

  In the desert house the transistor radio is on in the background, news bulletins at full volume. Students walk past all the time in the dorm. You try to stand absolutely still in your clammy summer clothes.

  Then suddenly Dorothy’s voice purrs into the telephone. Fuzzy, gentle. Light me a menthol cigarette, Red. A menthol cigarette so I can concentrate.

  DOROTHY: Hello, Valerie?

  VALERIE: I got a spot as a postgraduate.