Valerie

by Sara Stridsberg

  R. The meetings were lonely white fields. The laboratory mice would have wept if they had seen you there. Samantha would have wept. Women’s movement. There were no Amazons. It was a mixed gathering. An experiment. It is never too late to change.

  S. The suffragettes rejected all forms of male company. I am the only sane woman here. The little songbird flew out of the doll’s house. The future gave her the right. The white blouse. She threw herself in front of the king’s horse. The white blouse was stained with blood then. Skirts torn to shreds. After the funeral they decided to join forces with the men, they decided to employ peaceful methods. Mixed demonstrations. You can’t fight communism with perfume.

  T. I had to stand absolutely still, or I would have fallen apart.

  U. There were no stars. There were only crystal nights, crystal-clear thoughts, a concentration of human fluids. Take it all from me, do it, that’s what I want. I should have learned to say no. Take it all from me, do it, that’s what I want you to do. If he had been drinking, it was of no consequence. Another act of brutality. Brutality of the kind I do not want to remember, cannot remember. The sky was wild that night. An emptiness I could relate to. Trapped in a fool’s reality, and enjoying it.

  V. Sexual politics. Intimate structures. Organization of love. Organization of rape. Red-light districts. Specific areas of the city sprang up. Take it all from me. Do it. It’s what I want.

  W. National Organization for Women. We decided right at the start that we wanted to join forces with men. Without men, no women’s movement.

  X. Blue smoke between the trunks. Frost in all the trees. Burning white witches. Millett. Atkinson. Brownmiller. Firestone. Solanas. Davis. Morgan. Steinem. Flowerpots dead in all the windows.

  Y. NOW’s founders. Kay Clarenbach looked after her three children in a corrugated shack in the desert while her husband studied at Columbia. Muriel Fox had a husband who was a brain surgeon. (God, how unhealthy, no surprise she was an airhead.) While the first meeting took place, he waited in a hotel room nearby with the children. When she returned, the television screen was flickering.

  Z. Politics. Sexual politics. Why should we care about politics? Why should we care about what happens when we’re dead?

  33 UNION SQUARE, MORNING OF JUNE 3, 1968, LIKE BEING IN A DREAM

  It is a dream with black claws again, perhaps the last. You are back in Union Square. A smell of smoke lingers around you and you remember you have set fire to all the waste bins in the park. You and Andy are at the doors to the elevator in the entrance to the Factory. Andy has just returned from Coney Island and you have lipstick around the edges of your lips (remember it is a political act) and the gun aimed at his heart (a .32 caliber). In the dream you have been waiting there all evening and into the night and replica Andy never comes, and now it is morning and the blinding sun comes streaming in. There is a strange calm in the Factory, no complicated fancy art lamps yet, no furniture, no assistants, no tortuous psychedelic music, just bare light bulbs crackling, just you and the monster art parasite Andy Warhol, and Andy Warhol already has the marks of three gunshots on his upper body. It seemed unreal, like watching a movie. Only the pain seemed real. The film stars on the walls are your character witnesses, staring at you, bewitched, out of their frames: Shirley Temple, Mae West, Joan Bennett, Lana Turner, Louise Brooks, Marlene Dietrich, Kay Francis.

  The desert birds screech in the desert and Andy takes off his wig and covers his chest and heart with it and cries like a forlorn child and for one burning second you wish you could save him, but the gunshot wounds are already showing on his body. There is only one manuscript, and all you need now is concentration and tunnel vision. And at that very moment in the dream (and it is always the same dream) your hearing goes and black pools of blood spread over your coat and a gigantic silver screen with all of Andy’s lines drops down from the ceiling. A crystal clarity unfolds in the room. Andy holds the silver wig to his heart.

  Valerie, no, no … Don’t do it …

  Andy holds the silver wig like a shield in front of his chest. Seconds of pain like snow on fire in your heart and the room a sea of voices around you. There is Dorothy, Cosmogirl, Silk Boy, and Sister White. The hem of your dress in your mouth, the taste of blood, a heart of stone, you concentrate on clearing the voices from your head. The reason for the amphetamine, cocaine, heroin, benzodiazepine, and the LSD has only ever been the voices that never stop booming in your head. I do not want to die. I do not want to live. I do not want to have a story. I do not want to know how it ends.

  Valerie, no, no … Don’t do it …

  God damn it, Valerie. Leave. It’s a stupid plan, anyone can see that. Remember New York State has the death penalty for homicide. Remember New York State hates women. Remember governors and presidents get a hard-on when they see women die in the electric chair. Drop the gun and leave.

  My little horse. What are you doing here? What were you thinking just now? You have got it all completely wrong, even I can see that. I have always done everything wrong, back to front, upside down, but this, my darling, even I can see this is not a brilliant idea. You should be a professor, writer, president of America, not standing here, pointing a nasty gun at some faggoty little faggot. Or artist. Or whatever he calls himself. I have never liked artists, actually.

  Just run fast and don’t look round, my sweetheart. To the right is the elevator, immediately behind you, take it down to the street and go out as quickly as possible. Go home to your hotel room, call somebody, anybody, get yourself to a hospital. There is help, there are white nurses.

  Come on, Valerie … if you drop the gun, I promise I will learn the alphabet … I will read to you … Mr. Biondi has moved now … drop it now … here … take my hand … silly …

  Little horse … Little president … My dearest little horse … My little sugar cube … My little Valerie … My little baby pussy … My feral creature … My treasure trove … My little brainbox …

  You hold your life in your hand. You are a girl, not an animal. A girl mammal, a little she-child standing on the borderline between human being and chaos. Let’s face it, you have really strayed off course this time. Do you remember, Valerie? Do you remember what we wrote in the manifesto? A woman knows instinctively that the only wrong is to hurt others. The only wrong is to hurt others … Do you remember, Valerie? And that the meaning of life is love …

  I will tell you how it ends, my friend …

  I forbid you to, Valerie. Consider that I am your mother. I never wanted to be anyone’s mother, but I wanted to be your mother. Everything I have touched has broken, you know that. Everything except you. You are the only thing in my life that was beautiful. I wish I could be a velvety embrace for you now, that we could be looping together in perpetual dreamless sleep. Oblivion. Clouds of pink.

  It is like an eclipse of the sun. This is the beginning of the end, Valerie. The moment you shoot Andy Warhol, you throw away all possibility of being someone other people listen to, the only thing you dream about, the writer, artist, revolutionary, psychoanalyst, rebel. There are so many options, there is a world that can be yours out there, if only you drop the weapon and leave. Remember, Valerie, this is New York, it is 1968 and you have your university degree, your wild heart, your rich talent of raw poetry and a fantastic sense of humor. You can do whatever you want. In a few years’ time the women’s movement will move into the universities and everywhere women’s cafés will appear, reading circles, feminist groups, and in San Francisco half a million women will demonstrate, dressed in white, in protest against sexual politics based on fear and systematic rape. A radical women’s movement will emerge and with it a radical sexual politics. There will be a place for you there, Valerie. The new age will be your age.

  FILM SEQUENCE, THE LAST ONE FROM THE FACTORY

  When the voices around you clear, there is only Andy and you and the whirring, flickering fluorescent light. There are no happy endings.

  Andy goes down on his knees and pray
s to God.

  You hold the gun to his heart. Then you pull the trigger and blow a hole in his chest and a hole in all prospects for the future. You blow a hole in everything you should have been. You blow a hole in your only, tiny, silver-colored hope and your clothes are seared forever onto your skin. A sea of blood spreads out beneath your feet. It seemed unreal. Like watching a movie. Only the pain seemed real.

  Andy is engulfed by white backdrops and disappears. You close your eyes and drop the gun into your raincoat pocket. You leave the Factory, take the elevator down. The trees outside look as though they are decked in silver tape.

  You run across Manhattan, hand in hand with Cosmogirl. Her hair like dirty honey in the sunlight, her eyes ready to drown in her face. You run out of the story.

  ANDY AND DEATH

  During the eighties Andy was obsessed with painting revolvers. Apart from that, he made no public comment on the murder attempt. In an interview he says he has forgiven you, that is all he ever says about you. On one occasion, much later, when asked if he is afraid of death, he replies: I am already dead. I’ve been dead a long time.

  At Columbus–Mother Cabrini Hospital he finally regains consciousness. Your .32-caliber bullets have damaged his chest and his stomach (liver, spleen, esophagus, and lungs). He never completely recovers physically, and afterward he suffers from severe, lasting paranoia. The Factory is a closed book. The spirits no longer go in and out of the building at will, the freaks are no longer welcome and only a few carefully chosen people are admitted to 33 Union Square.

  On arrival at the hospital on the afternoon of June 3, Andy is at first pronounced dead, but when the doctors realize (with Viva Ronaldo’s help) that the victim is Andy Warhol, they manage to keep him alive in an unconscious state. Five doctors then work for five hours to bring him back from the dead. It is his name that saves him, and when he dies twenty years later during a routine operation (residual complications following the shooting), he dies because he does not have a name. He is admitted to the hospital as the anonymous character Bob Roberts, and Bob Roberts dies because he is not monitored in the immediate postoperative recovery period.

  People say Andy Warhol never really comes back from the dead, they say that throughout his life he remains unconscious, or one of the living dead.

  You do not return from the underworld, either, after June 3, 1968.

  ARITHMETIC AND SURFING I

  In June 1969 you are sentenced to two years in prison for the attempted murder of Andy Warhol and his associates. What is regarded as an extremely lenient penalty is probably due to Andy Warhol’s refusal to appear in court, the demonstrations outside the courthouse every day in support of your release from the hospital, and not least Florynce Kennedy’s blazing defense.

  In September 1971 you get out of prison and in November the same year you are rearrested for making telephone threats to a number of men, both famous and not famous, among them Andy Warhol. In 1973 you spend the entire year in and out of various mental hospitals.

  In the winter of 1974–75 you return to the sun and surf of the Alligator Reef beaches. But after only a few weeks in Florida you are committed to South Florida State Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, where you spend the rest of the year strapped to beds with restraints and diagnoses.

  ARITHMETIC AND SURFING II

  In February 1977 you are back in New York and issue a mimeographed version of the manifesto with your own introduction.

  “Olympia Press has gone bankrupt and the publishing rights to SCUM Manifesto have reverted to me, VALERIE SOLANAS, and now I am issuing the CORRECT edition, MY edition of SCUM Manifesto … I will let anyone who wants to hawk it do so, women, men, Hare Krishna. Maurice Girodias, you’re always in financial straits. Here’s your big chance—hawk SCUM Manifesto. You can peddle it around the massage parlor district. Anita Bryant, you can finance your anti-fag campaign selling the only book worth selling—SCUM Manifesto. Andy Warhol—you can peddle it at all those hot-shit parties you go to … Minimum order for peddlers is 200. No credit, no discount. I don’t like arithmetic. And don’t have gang wars over territories. It’s not nice.”

  In an interview with Howard Smith in The Village Voice the same year, you say the manifesto was just a literary device and there never was an organization called SCUM.

  In the summer of 1977 you travel to Atlantic City in Virginia to surf. Miss America contests are taking place in the city at that time. You do not do much surfing. Instead, on the lookout for Miss America contestants, you go back and forth along the boardwalk, selling sex and losing your money in the casinos.

  ARITHMETIC AND SURFING III

  At the end of the seventies you are sometimes seen at Tompkins Square Park and St. Mark’s Place in Manhattan. You are always hungry, dirty, and alone. You are always selling sex and always trying to sell the manifesto.

  At the beginning of the eighties you hitch to San Francisco to surf in the Pacific Ocean. You never reach the sea. You end up instead in the Tenderloin red-light district.

  You never return to Ventor and Georgia after 1951. Dorothy and you never see each other again.

  NEW YORK STATE PRISON FOR WOMEN IN BEDFORD HILLS, 1969–1971

               I’m scared of the other inmates, Sister White …

               Are you still there, Sister White…?

  SISTER WHITE: I’m always here.

  VALERIE: When I was a teenage whore. I hoped I would die. I’ve seen your hate. Leave my house. I don’t want those underpants. I don’t want those dresses.

  SISTER WHITE: Valerie … it’s not me you’re talking to.

  VALERIE: You suck everything out of me. You take my energy. You’re so much bigger than me. You’re so much bigger than me. Watch me disappear. Darling. I’m destroying you. I’m destroying you. Darling. I can’t save you. Darling. I want you to be on fire. I want to burn every bridge. I’ve burned them all. I regret burning all the bridges. Look at me now. You’re not going to miss me when I’m gone. No one is going to miss me when I disappear from the story.

  SISTER WHITE: There is help, Valerie. There are white pills and white-clad nurses. I’m here. And nurses all smoke, more than most. There’s a perception that we don’t, that on the inside we’re clean and white. I’ve always smoked. I want to get out of here.

  VALERIE: Where the hell were you when I needed you? You didn’t want to look at me. Let me out. What could I do in you, apart from fall? I never wanted to have you. I didn’t know where to go in you.

  SISTER WHITE: I dream about living somewhere quite different. In a different state, perhaps. By the ocean, maybe.

  VALERIE: You suicidal goddamn bitch. You suicidal goddamn bitch. Leave her in peace. Let her go. And you did let her go. Her heels clipped the moonbeam. She laughed and smiled. And you let her go. All this has been wasted. Where were you when I needed you? Don’t ask me again. Don’t ever speak to me again.

  SISTER WHITE: You’re strong, Valerie. You’re strong and bright. A ray of light. There are dead people lying in the desert, you said. You laughed and flew straight into the light.

  VALERIE: I’m a killing machine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I kill. Open him up, look inside. I’ll bury you, darling. I’ll bury you deep within me.

  SISTER WHITE: You had your bag of notes. We weren’t allowed to touch it. We didn’t touch it. Your eyes flicked all over the walls. We kept asking you: Should we call someone? There was no one we could call.

  VALERIE: Hey you, hey you, hey you, my beloved in the desert. Don’t let anyone look into your eyes. You only have to die and smile at me. You know I want you. Here’s what you get when you fall. Why don’t you just wave goodbye? Heroin. Amphetamine. Cocaine. Who’s the daughter of suicide? I’m in your eyes. I’m on fire. Now I’m on fire. Don’t shut your eyes. Don’t shut your eyes. Your pulse. You’re sucking my scars and wounds. It’s best if you open your eyes. When I come, it’s best if you open your eyes. I’m coming now. I’m just getting olde
r, just charged up. Charged up now. I’m a killing machine.

  SISTER WHITE: You were incoherent. Your voice was high-pitched, cracking. Someone had left you. You said it had been a holiday, a defeat, a thunderstorm.

  VALERIE: Is she beautiful on the inside? Is she beautiful from the back? Is she ugly on the inside? Is she ugly from the back? Promise her everything, even if she’s ugly on the inside. That grotesque girl rabbit. So smooth and beautiful on the inside.

  SISTER WHITE: There’s no more mist in the park now. We can go out. We can walk between the trees. The other patients aren’t there any longer. I can hold your hand if you like.

  VALERIE: The blond rabbit girl has a dead rabbit in her rabbit handbag. The blond girl dissects the lab director’s little family dog. Family values. Wonderlands. Wonder girls. She carries on ringing and terrorizing from the underworld. Being unloved is an act of terror. When they’ve taken what they want, they never want it again.

  SISTER WHITE: You laughed and flew straight into the light.

  VALERIE: I laughed and flew straight into the light. I’m a suicidal goddamn whore. Will the story soon be over? Is Dr. Ruth Cooper coming back soon? Cosmogirl? Dorothy? Andy Warhol, is he playing dead or alive?

  BRISTOL HOTEL, APRIL 25, 1988, THE LAST DAY

  VALERIE: I think it’s raining again.

  NARRATOR: It is April.

  VALERIE: What day is it?

  NARRATOR: The twenty-fifth of April 1988.

  VALERIE: Whereabouts are we?