Valerie

by Sara Stridsberg

  DR. RUTH COOPER: I have a visual impairment. Myopia. I have to be able to see my patients in order to work.

  VALERIE: Take your glasses off.

  DR. RUTH COOPER: I would prefer you to sit back down on your chair.

  You have climbed up onto Dr. Cooper’s shiny, sexy desk (it is strictly forbidden to climb on hospital furniture) and removed her glasses (it is strictly forbidden to touch hospital staff). Through her spectacles there is mist and vague outlines, and Dr. Ruth Cooper’s naked little boyish face, and Dr. Cooper waving her arms and wanting her glasses back. Without her smart, dark frames, she is no one. Dr. Ruth Cooper gives one of her West Coast laughs, a laugh of salt and beach wrack and sea anemones. She is very bad at playing Dr. Stern.

  DR. RUTH COOPER: Give me my glasses.

  VALERIE: Do you like girls?

  DR. RUTH COOPER: No.

  (Silence.)

  DR. RUTH COOPER: Or rather, I mean, obviously I like girls. I like girls. I like boys. I like all sorts of people. Girls don’t turn me on sexually, if that’s what you’re asking.

  VALERIE: You’re sweet when you’re lying.

  DR. RUTH COOPER: I’m not lying.

  VALERIE: Do you like me?

  DR. RUTH COOPER: You know I do. I like you as a patient and as a person. You could be my child.

  VALERIE: Your little human baby. I don’t want to be anyone’s child. Children don’t exist.

  DR. RUTH COOPER: If you’d been my child, you wouldn’t have ended up here.

  VALERIE: You’re beautiful without your glasses.

  (Dr. Ruth Cooper blushes and flicks through her notes.)

  DR. RUTH COOPER: The trial is fast approaching.

  VALERIE: And you want us to talk about my childhood.

  DR. RUTH COOPER: What do you want to talk about?

  VALERIE (gives back the glasses): Do you know why you lose all the time?

  (Dr. Ruth Cooper laughs and puts her glasses back on.)

  VALERIE: Because I prefer being lucky at games, and you prefer being lucky at love. The concept of romantic love is just a method of keeping half the population imprisoned in suburban backyards. A devastatingly simple way of giving intelligent people the idea that dishcloths are more important than literature.

  DR. RUTH COOPER: I know nothing about love.

  VALERIE: Well then, Dr. Cooper, I suggest we have another round so you have a chance to recoup your losses.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: Dr. Ruth Cooper?

  DR. RUTH COOPER: I lied before. I dream of shooting all the men I meet. I hate the way that after intercourse they ask if they can do anything for me.

  VALERIE: Take your glasses off, Cooper.

  DR. RUTH COOPER (takes off her glasses): I don’t want to be a psychiatrist any longer.

  VALERIE: It’ll be all right, Doctor. Concentrate now so you don’t lose any more money.

  DR. RUTH COOPER: Ever since you arrived here, I haven’t known what to do.

  VALERIE: All we know is that you have an exceptionally underdeveloped poker face, Dr. Cooper. But it’s okay, Dr. Cooper. There’s no reason to tell the truth when it’s so easy to lie.

  NEW YORK, OCTOBER 1967

  YOU ARE INVITED TO THE FACTORY BY POP ARTIST ANDY WARHOL

  In the elevator on the way up to the Factory, the mirror is dominated by your smile, your cherry-red lipstick and rosy-fevered cheeks, and in your coat pocket is the play, wrapped in tissue paper. Billy Name greets you in the lobby with open arms and piercing eyes and Andy Warhol appears from nowhere with kisses on the cheek and leftover streamers festooning his sweater and a Polaroid camera.

  Columns of hash smoke rise above their back-combed pop-art hairstyles and Andy Warhol has that habit of gliding in and out of the wings, surfacing out of nowhere and then quietly vanishing into a sea of white walls and guests. His apparition emerges, a shimmering, glittering fagginess, only to melt away; his wonderful manner of emasculating and disarming himself.

  ANDY: Hello, Valerie.

  VALERIE: Andy Stupid Warhol.

  BILLY: Valerie Solanas.

  VALERIE: I see you’ve de-manned yourself in an exemplary fashion.

  ANDY: Welcome to the Factory, Valerie. You haven’t been here before, have you?

  VALERIE: Not as I recall. We need to get on with this Turd Session right away.

  BILLY: Sure, Valerie. Wouldn’t you like something to drink first?

  VALERIE: Some bubbly, please. And something strong to smoke. But first you have to list all the ways in which you are all turds. Say after me. I am a low-ly ab-ject t-urd.

  ANDY: I am a turd, a lowly abject turd.

  VALERIE (points at Billy): Good.

  BILLY: What am I supposed to say?

  VALERIE: I am a lowly abject turd.

  BILLY: Oh yeah. I’m a turd, a lowly abject turd.

  VALERIE: Great.

  BILLY: What the hell is a Turd Session?

  VALERIE: To help men in the Men’s Auxiliary of SCUM, SCUM will conduct Turd Sessions, at which every man present will give a speech beginning with the sentence: “I am a turd, a lowly abject turd,” and then proceed to list all the ways in which he is. His reward for doing so will be the opportunity to fraternize after the session for a whole, solid hour with the SCUM who will be present.

  ANDY: That sounds fantastic.

  VALERIE: I’ve brought my play with me, Andy. Up Your Ass. I had some alternative titles: Up from the Slime, The Big Suck, and a few more. I want you to read it. And you, Mr. Fat Turd (pokes Billy in the stomach), can run along for some bubbly. Then you can list all the ways in which you are.

  ANDY: Are what?

  VALERIE: Low-ly ab-ject t-urds.

  ANDY: Sure, Valerie. Come and say hello to the others first.

  VALERIE (takes the play out and hands it to Andy): For you, Andy. The only play worth putting on.

  ANDY (leafs through it, smoking): Interesting, Valerie.

  VALERIE: What do you think?

  ANDY: Interesting, Valerie. It could be, Valerie, that we decide to produce it.

  Andy’s face looks like an inflamed wound, his laugh reveals his decaying teeth beneath his silver wig, his clothes smell faintly of seaweed, he stammers and giggles. People have dispersed and are sitting on the shiny white floor, whispering to one another. They look up hastily without saying hello. Paul Morrissey passes with a bouquet of roses. Andy is swallowed up by one of the large white backdrops. You tell Sister White about it later:

  when I got an invitation to the Factory, I went with no expectations and left with my handbag full of promises. I didn’t know much about Andy Warhol, mainly that he was a hotshot in New York, something to do with imitations and screen prints. I’d seen him on television when he was painting his nails and calling himself Miss Warhola and Miss World. I knew he was illiterate, he was leafing through fashion and muscle magazines without even understanding the captions and he used to spread a rumor about himself that he dressed as a bag lady and sneaked around New York at night giving out food to other bag ladies. I liked the Factory at once, there was always food and something to drink, they were all freaks and all around the walls drug addicts and prostitutes sat waiting for Andy to come and make art out of them. I decided straightaway that Andy would lead the Men’s Auxiliary of SCUM, he was perfect, this sparkling little gay creature, the albino look, the silver wig

  Open arms, wide gestures, champagne fizzing and popping in your mouth. The Silver Factory is a gigantic mirror and you are not sure how many people are actually prowling around; the silver mirrors reflect tenfold and distort, and when you are high, you speak to mirrored figures as well, and you are gratified to see that you look a freak even among freaks, in your floppy, sweaty boots and dirty fur coat. And it might be rather tedious to talk to mirrors, but since everything around Andy has the same flat, smooth surface, it does not matter.

  Andy’s films are projected on the walls, and when you are not high, you stay close to them, instead of the mirror
s. You are a black spider who loves the Factory. You tell Sister White about it afterward:

  there were shopping bags everywhere in the Factory. Andy loved shopping. He always had money. He bathed in money and grass. Shopping was part of art. He was involved in something to do with the boundaries between art and shopping. Art, my ass. The guy loved new things, he loved buying, loved having limitless money. He was a materialistic faggot, that’s all. The male “artist” is a contradiction in terms. Andy slid like a shadow across the Factory, a parasite on other people’s bloodstained memories. He brought me champagne and wanted to know all about my childhood and my plans for the future. I liked being there so very much, I wanted to be one of those needle junkies and fag-whores who sat along the walls, sweating and mumbling and waiting for Andy to come and make art out of them. They were very happy days. Andy laughed at everything I said. I read aloud from the manifesto. Those huge surfaces. I wanted the Factory to swallow me up forever.

  “GREAT ART”

  You stand in the Factory under an enormous screen on which Andy’s films are shown around the clock. Blow Job. Taylor Mead’s Ass. Vinyl. As Viva wanders around nearby, straightening pictures and vases, she casts a long look in your direction; she sounds like a reference book when she answers your questions.

  VALERIE: Is that Andy’s film?

  VIVA: Blow Job, from 1964.

  VALERIE: What’s it about?

  VIVA: A male prostitute who bleeds and snivels into the camera while he’s getting a blow job.

  VALERIE: Ah. What else?

  VIVA: That’s what it’s about.

  VALERIE: Why is it about that?

  VIVA: Because it’s art.

  VALERIE: I think it’s a good thing for Andy that Up Your Ass turned up here at the Factory.

  VIVA: It’s great art, Valerie.

  VALERIE: Sure. It’s fantastic.

  ELIZABETH DUNCAN AND DEATH, SEPTEMBER 1967

  It is nighttime and Cosmogirl stands beneath a fluorescent light in the laboratory, screaming, wearing her lab coat with nothing underneath. She has called you in New York and you have taken the night train back and when you eventually arrive she does not recognize you. The decision has come from San Quentin that Elizabeth is to die on October 9, 1967, and this time it is final; your decision to live in New York without Cosmo is also final and irreversible. You are tired of phony science and stuffed animals and of her habit of spending her nights in strange adventures with strange men in strange cars.

  The most beautiful girl, and the most grotesque. Her skin is dead and white, clammy and unfamiliar, and there is only one thing to do: take a taxi to the Supreme Court one last time and kneel before the court, weeping and begging. You make her put on respectable clothes and you gather up all the documents on Elizabeth Duncan’s hopeless case.

  There is not a judicial cock in this state that Cosmo has not taken care of. For a number of years, she has kept Elizabeth alive with the help of the soft tongue in her mouth. But this time neither the tongue nor the featherlight fingers can help, nor any other form of pleasure. America murders Elizabeth Duncan with three lethal injections and Cosmo loses everything that she was, her brilliance, her impudence, her will of steel, she even stops taking payment for her services, she becomes a missing laboratory animal, sleeping under the trees in University Park.

  NOTICE TO UNKNOWN WRITERS, PUBLISHED AUTUMN 1967 IN NEW YORK MAGAZINE

  Olympia Press, founded in Paris in 1953 (on a shoestring) by Maurice Girodias, with the function of perverting American tourists and selling pornography, published The Story of O in 1954, Lolita and The Ginger Man in 1955, all of de Sade’s novels and most of Henry Miller’s best works, Candy in 1958, Naked Lunch and Durrell’s Black Book in 1959—not to mention dozens of other interesting authors, masterpieces, and diversions.

  Today, as a consequence of the climate under de Gaulle, Maurice Girodias and Olympia Press have left Paris to make a fresh start in New York.

  We are not interested in anyone famous, or half famous. Our function is to discover talent. Unknown authors are our specialty. You have been rejected by all existing publishing houses: well and good, you have a chance with us. We read everything—carefully, impartially, and optimistically. Send your masterpiece to the Editorial Department, Olympia Press, 36 Gramercy Park East, New York, N.Y. 10003—and don’t forget to include a stamp for return mailing, as, after all, we may return your manuscript.

  CHELSEA HOTEL, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 1967

  At the Chelsea Hotel you write A Young Girl’s Primer, which you intend to publish in The Village Voice, and you continually produce new versions of the manifesto. All your notes from Maryland lie spread out in the hotel room, all your letters to the editor, columns in the student newspaper, essays, all the texts you wrote with Cosmo. At night you sit outside on the fire escape, working. Everything falls into place, you write without thinking and without the abyss in your soul. There is no emptiness, no loneliness, no yearning for Cosmo, only oceans of joy and the heat of the tarmac. Every day new bouquets of vivid flowers in the lobby and your handbag filled with fabulous pillboxes.

  This is your place. New York, Chelsea, the sixties, political beings and paradoxes, freaks, artists, utopias. People who write and people who make art. Telephone calls down to the hotel’s little desk clerk make you happy and calm. His fleeting giggle down the line and the rays of sunshine cast into the room.

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: Lobby.

  VALERIE: Is that the little clerk?

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: How can I help you, daaarling?

  VALERIE: I need a new telephone. A dry telephone with no crap on the wires.

  LITTLE DESK CLERK (laughs): We’ll change your phone immediately.

  VALERIE: I’d like a black telephone. It has to be clean, you need to wash it carefully. I don’t want to have other people’s breath and thoughts when I make my calls.

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: I’ll change your telephone myself.

  VALERIE: I want to have the phone disconnected up to six o’clock. I’m writing. You can put that in that logbook of yours. Put that I’m writing. Put that I’m writing the manifesto. Put that the phone has to be disconnected and clean. Listen to me.

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: Yes.

  VALERIE: And another thing, I need more light in the room. The ceiling light is too faint. I’m going blind writing in the dark all night.

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: I’ll fix it.

  VALERIE: Tomorrow?

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: Tomorrow, first thing.

  VALERIE: And I don’t want anyone going into my room when I’m not there. No cleaning. No cleaning needed here. I’m an excellent cleaner. Listen to me now, listen stupid little—

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: —I’m listening …

  VALERIE: Don’t interrupt me … Sex … Sex is a refuge for the mindless. The more mindless the woman, the more deeply embedded in masculine culture. In short, the nicer she is, the more sexual. The nicest women in our society are raving sex maniacs … Do you follow?

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: I follow.

  VALERIE: To continue … On the other hand, women who are least embedded in masculine culture are least nice. Crass, simple souls who reduce fucking to fucking; who are too childish for the grown-up world of suburbs, mortgages, mops, and baby shit; too selfish to raise kids and husbands; too uncivilized to give a shit about anyone’s opinion of them; too arrogant to respect Daddy, the Greats, or the deep wisdom of the Ancients; who trust only their own gutter instincts; who equate Culture with chicks …

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: That’s very funny …

  VALERIE: Thanks … To continue … Unhampered by propriety, niceties, discretion, unhampered by public opinion and morals, unhampered by the respect of assholes, and always cool, lowdown, and dirty, SCUM gets around … and around and around … they’ve seen the whole show, every bit of it, the fucking scene, the blow-job scene, the dyke scene—they’ve covered the whole waterfront, been under every dock and pier, the peter pier, the pussy pier. You’ve
got to go through a lot of sex to get to anti-sex and SCUM’s been through it all, and now they’re ready for a new show; SCUM wants to crawl out from under the dock, move, take off, burst out. But SCUM isn’t in control yet; SCUM is still in the gutter of our society, which, if it’s not deflected from its present course, and if the bomb doesn’t drop, will hump itself to death …

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: Valerie.

  VALERIE: Yes?

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: Everyone’s going to love you.

  VALERIE: I know. You can be part of SCUM’s Secret Auxiliary. I mean Men’s Auxiliary. You give things away, you’re kind. You know the meaning of life is love. Love is like friendship. Sex is not part of a relationship. It’s a very solitary experience, not at all creative. Sex involves a gross waste of time. You have to go through a lot of sex to get to anti-sex.

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: I have to work now. I’ll come up in a while.

  VALERIE: Come as soon as you can. Knock first. Otherwise you can forget what I said about the auxiliary. Remember. As soon as you can. Move your little ass. And no sex. Sex is a hang-up. Write that down in that little hotel book of yours. Please send a postcard to Cosmo Duncan and tell her that sex is just a hang-up.

  It should have been you and Cosmo and New York. It does not matter it is only you. It makes no difference anymore that Cosmo is in Maryland, screwing lab directors. Because everything suddenly seems to fall into your lap: an abandoned typewriter, easy fuck-money, Andy Warhol and the Factory, lucidity in your writing. The words strike like lightning inside you. This is your city, your land. Everything up to this point has been depression; you decide that you have always been unhappy and now you are sharp, unbreakable.

  Early in the mornings you sit at the typewriter, working. As soon as light breaks, you leap out of bed, run down and buy a pot of coffee with vodka, light your cigarettes, and there is that crystal clarity, the irritation, like masturbating for hours in vain. You write as if the typewriter were attached to your arms, a strange brightness in your head that keeps you awake and makes you run between the skyscrapers in your lace nightgown to deliver new versions of your play to the Factory.