Valerie

by Sara Stridsberg

  ANDY: Just one more question—

  VALERIE: —A woman knows instinctively the only wrong is to hurt others and that the meaning of life is love.

  MOVIE STAR 1968

  And then you are the film star Valerie Solanas in I, a Man, in which you have made up all your own lines. Andy is very pleased with the result, you are exceptionally pleased with the result, and Maurice Girodias comes to the Factory to watch the film. You sit in the cool, dark room with the fans and the striking black-and-white sequences, the soporific sound from the film projector, Maurice’s discreet cigarette glow, and it is very easy to learn to love the smell of new filmstrips.

  Andy never sits still during the screenings; the wig moves round the room and his associates shift respectfully like a nervous cloud around him. But you are the star now. Andy is impressed by your improvised lines, how easily you improvised in front of the camera. Andy, do you want to hear the line again? Gladly, Valerie. My instincts tell me to dig chicks—why should my standards be lower than yours? You’re a genius, Valerie. I know, Wiggy. Have you read my play yet? Not yet, Valerie. Soon, Valerie.

  When you leave the room in search of champagne and sandwiches, they talk about you, and you stand behind a skin-colored curtain and eavesdrop. Everything is going your way now. New York, the Factory, and Maurice Girodias are the answer to all your problems. The weather is fine, prospects are good, and soon you will have time to write that novel Olympia Press has given you money for. And Tropic of Cancer and Lolita and all the other shit books they publish will disappear from history without a trace.

  ANDY: How’s it going with Olympia?

  MAURICE: Olympia’s very successful at the moment. We’re expanding. We’re about to publish Henry Miller. Where did Valerie get to?

  ANDY: She’s out there somewhere.

  MAURICE: Shall we wait for her?

  ANDY: She’s looking for something to eat. She’s always hungry. Are you switching it on now, Viva?

  MAURICE: Have you read her play?

  ANDY: Not yet.

  MAURICE: Her use of words is fabulous.

  ANDY: Who knows, we might decide to produce it.

  THE PARASITES

  A. Black sun, black snow, black despair. Literary parasites, postmodern parasites. Take everything from me. Do it. That is what I want.

  B. A handbag full of dollar bills. A woman in a leopard-skin dress, dark men in dark plastic suits, dark snowscapes. They really want to have you. Talk dirty, talk sweet. Money is all worth the same and has no value.

  C. The sky was made of nothing that night. The stars were made of greaseproof paper. The porch seat creaked and squeaked. It was a straight story, a straight world. It was a heterosexual neurosis, there is no other way to describe it. You have to learn when you ought to leave. You have to learn to say no.

  D. There were only authentic American boys. Toy presidents. Roosevelt. Truman. Eisenhower. John F., Lyndon B., Nixon. Ford. Carter. Everything is made up. Miss World. Miss Universe.

  E. The American whore and the American women’s movement. Reagan’s spokeswoman, Faith Whittlesey, confused different types of material in her accounts of various contemporary phenomena. She described the twentieth century as one collective longing for hand-knitted underwear. There was Black Monday. The causes were sought in Wall Street and an old Hollywood film from 1947. Ronald Reagan drifted slowly into a garden of oblivion.

  F. A white fake fur, white tights, always a dress slightly too short. She had her dead flowers and the sunny veranda. She had her constant hopes and defeats. All married women are prostitutes. Hey, wait, mister!

  G. Because the child wished for a film projector, the mother was convinced she had produced a little artist. She knocked on doors in the neighborhood with assorted flower arrangements in jam jars wrapped in pretty paper, she read comic books to him in her incomprehensible English, and every time he finished a page of his coloring book she rewarded him with a sweet. This created a lifelong passion for painting and chocolate and for himself. He regarded his surroundings as giant coloring books and all other people as clones of his mother.

  H. The whole sky was purple that night. Violet. There was a taste of plastic. I held my hands in front of my face. I am the only one here without a soul. It was a high-class concentration camp. God was not there. No one was there.

  I. Metaphor. The rhetoric of sexual politics. Serious error. NOW had its roots in the American middle class and in the dreadfully boring decade that is referred to as the fifties.

  J. An unfortunate metaphor. How would you like to describe that bird?

  K. Metaphysical cannibalism. Predator of nature. Black birds hurtling down. A temporary deformation of the body for the sake of art. The parasitic fetus. Pathological condition. Mass neurosis. Happy housewife. Happy whore. A beautiful child.

  L. August 26, 1970. Thousands of women march along Fifth Avenue. They are burning their underwear, kissing one another, and holding hands. What is on the agenda? Is there actually anything on the agenda?

  M. Lunch meeting in the White House. Carter. Reagan. Friedan. The nation’s military and economic plunder. Rape. Vampires. Dracula. Andy Warhol sucking blood out of people. The personal is very individual. Makeup. Beauty salon. A revolutionary in every bedroom. An Andy Warhol in every thought.

  N. Mass prostitution. Mass murder. To meet is murder. Hey. Wait. Mister.

  O. They take what they want. They never want it again. Hey, wait, mister.

  P. Patriarchal projections. The world’s oldest and finest profession. I am the only one here without a soul.

  Q. Screen prints, projection screens, torture. An out-and-out man hater. An endangered species. I could have told you from the start how it would end.

  R. I do not want to submit to your laws. I do not want to carry all these paper bags around. I always walk too quickly between the counters in department stores. I always steal. My mother tries to maintain normal behavior and blend in with the surroundings. Hey, wait, mister!

  S. Experiences were not documented, they were eliminated, eradicated. Her signature was removed, her ideas devoured by an art factory. Loss of name. Of memory. Loss of everything. Andy’s collected works: Pain. Albino. Dracula. Prosthetics. Human experiments. Machinations. Massacre.

  T. What does it matter? I have doll eyes, doll mouth, doll legs, doll heart. They really want me.

  U. All civilization is based on sublimation. All civilization is based on money. All civilization is based on heterosexual neuroses. c/o The Factory, New York, 1968.

  V. Pornography. Prostitution. Presidents.

  W. All civilization is based on repetition. All civilization is based on money, masculinity, weapons. All civilization is based on previous civilizations’ mistakes. Make no mistake, make women. Make no mistake, make lesbians. Military intervention. Vietnam. Distraction.

  X. Money, shopping, surface. He worshipped America and its presidents. He celebrated his birthday on Hiroshima day. Be a SOMEBODY with a BODY. Hiroshima. My love.

  Y. You wanted to merge with the skyscrapers. Reach for the sky. Spread out. Not lose yourself in the night. You longed for your high-heeled sisters.

  Z. Explosivity and fear are the same thing. A morbid fear of running out of ideas or a morbid fear of strange people’s strange thoughts. He could not abide his earlier work. He was convinced he could outsmart death by wearing a silver-gray wig prematurely. He continued to be dependent on fictitious prosthetics. The accessories gave him a strange appearance.

  LOVE VALERIE

  NEW YORK, MAY 1968

  VIETNAM WAR IS THE LONGEST IN AMERICAN HISTORY, RIOTS IN HUNDREDS OF CITIES AFTER THE ASSASSINATION OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

  You loved Central Park. In those days, you cycled between the trees beyond the pedestrian paths. Cosmo and you rode your bicycles into the lake and left them there. All that was long ago; now there is only the monotone melancholy of the crows’ cries as they swoop down at your head while you try to walk slowly along with your shoppi
ng cart. You run across the park so fast your bottles nearly break. Thousands of cawing crows raid your possessions and your cap. When you emerge onto the street they sit in a row on the telephone lines and laugh at you. Even the crows laugh at you.

                       Caw-Haw-Caw-Haw

                                    Caw-Haw-Caw-Haw

      Caw-Haw-Caw-Haw

  At the police station outside Central Park, there are cops everywhere and a penetrating high-voltage light. Interrogation methods, hidden microphones, false smiles and knowing looks under the table. Gripping the hem of your jacket tightly, you drum the manifesto on the interview desk.

  Everything is going to shit. You cannot write with Cosmo calling all the time from the underworld, nagging you whenever you lose concentration. Andy is always busy and Maurice refers in an increasingly unlovely way to your so-called contract. You have the chance to appear on the Johnny Carson television show, but even that is a fiasco, it is obvious you have been invited so they can ridicule you. All you wanted was to send some pretty pictures home to Dorothy’s television set.

  And Andy never has time to read your play, even though you stand outside the Factory waiting every day, and the promise of taking part in more films imperceptibly fizzles out.

  VALERIE: I want to report a crime.

  THE STATE: What crime?

  VALERIE: There are crows in the park. I was hunted down. Almost killed.

  THE STATE: What do you want to report, miss?

  VALERIE: There were no people there. A crow. It sat in the middle of the footpath and stared. Black. It refused to move when I tried to get past. Then the whole flock came. They dive-bombed my face. They were laughing at me.

  THE STATE: That’s no crime. We can’t prosecute birds. What’s your name?

  VALERIE: Valerie Solanas. I flew straight into the light. I’m here to report a crime.

  THE STATE: Are you on drugs?

  VALERIE: You bet I am. Without amphetamines, it’s like a mini–world war in here.

  THE STATE: Where do you live?

  VALERIE: In the docks for the time being. On roofs during summer.

  (Silence.)

  (The State makes notes.)

  VALERIE: What are you writing in that notebook?

  THE STATE: I’m recording that you were here. You’re not suspected of any crime.

  VALERIE: And what are you writing? A little novel about Dostoevsky?

  THE STATE: I’m reporting.

  VALERIE: Write that I’m an author. You can write that. Author. A-U-T-H-O-R. I’m writing a novel for Olympia Press. You can record that.

  THE STATE: I’m recording that you were here, that you’re on drugs, and that you have nowhere to live.

  VALERIE: Write that I was here and reported my ass.

  THE STATE: Hustling isn’t allowed here.

  VALERIE: I’m not hustling. I’m selling the manifesto. Do you want to buy one, mister? A dollar.

  THE STATE: You’re known to us. You’ve tried your shenanigans in here before.

  VALERIE: For half a dollar I’ll tell you something really disgusting.

  THE STATE: Clear out before we arrest you.

  VALERIE: Okay … Men … You owe me half a dollar, just so you know. You can buy two hundred copies of the manifesto. But no credit, no discount. Minimum order of two hundred copies. I don’t like arithmetic.

  THE STATE: It is you posting flyers everywhere? There are penalties for that.

  VALERIE: In Washington I put up scientific texts and lab reports. Then I patrolled round to make sure no one took them down. It’s been a long time since I stuck up any notes or reports.

  THE STATE: That’s good, madam.

  VALERIE: That’s good, mister. I’ll come and collect my dimes tomorrow. By the way, I’m not a bag lady. I just find it unworthy to save my own ass when my people are being destroyed. When pussy souls are being sent to the slaughter. Otherwise another pussy soul will have to do the work. I might as well do it.

  CHELSEA HOTEL, MAY 1968

  You are in overdrive again, the colors in the lobby are unusually bright, and it seems as though everything is grotesquely large and coming at you very fast. The check-in desk is a pounding, florid heart advancing dangerously close to you, and the Little Desk Clerk is no longer there. You move along, hugging the walls, when suddenly something in your chest shatters, a crystal of silver and frost, making it easier to think, and quicker. Maurice is nowhere to be found; the office in Gramercy Park has been closed for several days.

  HOTEL PORTER: Are you okay, miss?

  VALERIE: I’m very much okay. Thanks for asking, but where the hell is Maurice Girodias? Has he checked out of New York?

  HOTEL PORTER: Mr. Girodias is working in his room.

  VALERIE: Which room?

  HOTEL PORTER: We can’t say.

  VALERIE: Has he changed rooms?

  HOTEL PORTER: Yes, miss. He thought it was too dark in the last one.

  VALERIE: Why hasn’t he said something?

  HOTEL PORTER: I don’t know, miss.

  VALERIE: I don’t know here and I don’t know there. Miss hither and thither. My name is Valerie Solanas. Would you be so kind as to tell me what you do know, instead of overloading me with everything you don’t.

  HOTEL PORTER: You can’t run up and down the stairs anymore.

  VALERIE: I have to speak to Mr. Girodias.

  HOTEL PORTER: You have to go home and sleep. You’re confused, miss.

  VALERIE: I have no home. I’ve never been clearer.

  MISSION DISTRICT, SAN FRANCISCO, MAY 1968

  YOU HAVE BEEN THROWN OUT OF THE CHELSEA HOTEL AND TAKEN A PLANE TO SAN FRANCISCO

  Cosmogirl would never have frequented a women’s café by choice, but Cosmo is no longer here, so new rules apply. The dogs in Dolores Park play under the trees and on the hill down to the Women’s Building you change your mind. The sun is blinding, but Daddy’s Favorite Girl, Gloria, has already seen you and there is no way you can turn back. And in your silver coat you are too early, only a few girls on their own have arrived, the coffee makers and one or two others. The boss (we have no hierarchies here, no leaders) gives out jobs and makes you draw the female symbol on some moronic leaflets.

  The girls touch each other’s hair the whole time, braiding and stroking. But the silver coat does not fit in here, nor the dress, nor the boots that gape and smell of sweaty feet. You do not fit in at all.

  The plan is that you will sit in a circle and hold hands, but your hand is perspiring and cold and you have to let go all the time to light more cigarettes. The female symbol made of plush indicates who can speak, but you have no idea what to say when it is your turn, you have absolutely nothing to say next to these four-eyed goody two-shoes. How nice of you to come, Valerie, we would be so pleased if you came back, would love to know what your opinion is, what you think, please tell us about your manifesto.

  VALERIE: I want to emphasize that I’m speaking about all men. They’ll screw any snaggletoothed hag as soon as they get the chance and, furthermore, pay for it. They’re obsessed with screwing, they’ll swim through a river of snot and wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit if they think there’ll be a friendly pussy waiting for them.

  DADDY’S FAVORITE GIRL GLORIA: A person’s biology is not her destiny. There are men who are better feminists than women are. And it frightens me, all this business with girdles, corsets, and heels that are way too high to run in. I think you should consider that, Valerie. We’re not judging you. I just think you should consider it.

  VALERIE: Cosmo and I are America’s first intellectual whores. And if I don’t do it, someone else will.

  DADDY’S FAVORITE GIRL GLORIA: If you had a little boy then, Valerie, would you hate him?

  VALERIE: I’d never have a little boy.

  DADDY’S FAVORITE GIRL GLORIA: But if you did.

  VALER
IE: It would never happen.

  DADDY’S FAVORITE GIRL GLORIA: Use your imagination.

  VALERIE: I would love him like a daughter. I would raise him as a woman, dress him in frocks and in the evenings dance with him in the kitchen. Let him have lipstick outside his lips if he wanted. If not. No lipstick. I would love him.

  DADDY’S FAVORITE GIRL GLORIA: His biology is therefore not his destiny.

  VALERIE: Man is a machine. A walking dildo. An emotional parasite. A biological accident. Maleness is a deficiency disease. Man’s biology is his destiny. I love black dresses. I regard it as a political act to wear lipstick outside my lips.

  DADDY’S FAVORITE GIRL GLORIA: That’s ridiculous, Valerie. It’ll lead nowhere. Without men, we’ll have no women’s movement. And to dress in the way you do leads nowhere at all. It can give men the impression that you’re—

  VALERIE (stands hastily): Okay. Thanks very much for nothing. All that about the women’s movement et cetera et cetera should be great. Good luck with your project for the future. It’ll certainly be very nice on your mixed demonstrations. I don’t have time to discuss men and male children and clothing styles. Lace or plush. One or the other. I have better things to do.

  DADDY’S FAVORITE GIRL GLORIA: Can’t you read a little bit from your text?

  VALERIE: Definitely not. But for six hundred dollars, I’ll gladly get to work in your panties.

  NEW YORK, MAY 1968

  BACK WITH NOWHERE TO LIVE, THE ADVANCE FROM OLYMPIA PRESS HAS RUN OUT

  You have a lot of shopping to do. If Andy is investigating the boundaries between art and shopping, you intend to investigate the boundaries between the abyss and shopping. Department stores are beautiful, shining palaces in the darkness. What you need now is a ship to embark. You have to buy lipstick and books for Cosmogirl; her lipstick was called Cherry Bomb and it was sticky and tasted of sugar.