by Breanne Fahs
ANDY AND VALERIE
Valerie occasionally joined Andy for conversation at Max’s Kansas City, a bar and restaurant at 213 Park Avenue South, famous as a hangout for artists, celebrities, and hanger-ons and largely considered the “in” place to go. It was to become an epicenter of pop culture, sporting a vibe that crossed old-fashioned values with the young and hip. It had a marquee outside that said “max’s kansas city,” in lowercase letters, followed by “steak, lobster, chick peas.” A peculiar mix between a dive and fancy establishment, the place featured a dim, smoky atmosphere and red-cloth-covered tables set with bowls of chick peas, as well as colored lights that changed every twenty minutes and a tank of piranhas that needed feeding every hour (this came to an end when, after a disgruntled employee cut his finger and dropped blood in the tank, the piranhas tore each other apart in the frenzy). Max’s attracted everyone—the elderly, drinkers, artists, people from the world of fashion, Euroglitz, Lower East Siders, celebrities, and club kids. The only people blocked from entry were what Max’s owner, Mickey Ruskin, called OBs (other boroughs) and men in suits. (He once made Warren Beatty go back to his hotel to change into more casual clothes.)77 The place was especially famous for its back room, or as Mary Woronov called it, the “royal court of screaming assholes.”78 The back room was separated from the main area by a narrow corridor called the DMZ zone, which often became clogged with curious onlookers and harried waitresses. It was also called the celebrity room, a place where the hip, famous, and beautiful gathered to be seen and to gossip. Ostensibly, anyone could sit there if he or she had the nerve and was prepared to be challenged by Ruskin, who took great interest in the room’s occupants.79
Andy ate at Max’s Kansas City every night in those days, occupying the “captain’s table” (as Gerard Malanga called it) in the back room.80 Radical feminist and revolutionary Rosalyn Baxandall worked there as a waitress (enduring shifts in the mandatory leather miniskirt) and regularly encountered Andy Warhol and his entourage. She recalled that “they played music, they played jazz, and people drank a lot and tipped you well, except for Andy Warhol. They played Coltrane and good people played music there. It was an avant-garde place to go and talk. I guess you could see these people if you were interested in them. Artists and radicals. The food wasn’t good. I think they had steak and hamburgers. It wasn’t cheap but they’d let you sit there for ages in the old booths.” Rosalyn noted that artists, playwrights, and Wall Street types would all collide. “It was hip,” she said, “but Andy just seemed so awful and never tipped well. Other people tipped unbelievable. You could get a fifty dollar tip some nights! But not Andy. He was cheap.”81
In 1967, Valerie and Andy spent time together at Max’s Kansas City, Valerie musing about things she had on her mind while he held court over his emerging group of superstars. He listened to Valerie’s statements and then put some of them into his movies, which infuriated Valerie. “He would give the lines to Viva and Valerie told him to stop it and he kept doing it,” a friend recalled.82 Valerie repeatedly told Andy to stop stealing her lines, but he refused, continuing to feed them to different—and perhaps more conventionally attractive—female stars he surrounded himself with.83 Many of her lines appeared in Women in Revolt, clearly without her permission or approval. She often was angry at Andy, but he just shrugged her off, attributing her reactions to eccentricity.
Valerie and Andy developed a certain rapport during this period. On August 1, 1967, Valerie sent Andy a SCUM recruiting poster to put in the Factory bathroom and quipped, “Maybe you know some girls who’d like to join. Maybe you’d like to join the Men’s Auxiliary.” She asked if he would like to film SCUM forums and rallies: “I’m just about finished with the SCUM Manifesto. (Wasn’t when this poster was made up; thought I’d be, + I’ve been getting money through the mail for it), + I’ll be selling it on the street within a few days. In other words, SCUM’s about to get into high gear. . . . Shortly after The Manifesto hits the streets, lots of activities will follow quickly after—the world’ll be corroded with SCUM.”84 Two weeks later, she sent a second poster for him to post in “the Ladies Room,” and a third poster “to keep under your pillow at night.” She was, as always, relentless and fanatical about SCUM recruitment. She called the Factory frequently during spring and summer that year demanding Up Your Ass back and asking for money. Andy tape-recorded her calls because “Valerie was a great talker.”85
Perhaps Valerie’s energy, vigor, and ferocity did provide Andy with an amusing contrast to his own limp personality. As Ultra said, “I am struck by her activism in the face of Andy’s passivity. I contrast her passion for a cause, no matter how weird, to his indifferent voyeurism.”86 That summer, when Valerie was regularly showing up at the Factory and demanding support for SCUM, she interviewed Andy and he recorded the interview. With playful chitchat and mutual amusement, they engaged in the following banter, evidence of their dynamic at that time:
Valerie: the only thing I can think to say is that Andy Warhol, I think, is scared of SCUM. I think he’s scared to death of SCUM. . . .
Valerie: Why don’t you like to answer questions Andy?
Andy: Do you really work for the CIA?
Valerie: Yeah.
Andy: You do? Why?
Valerie: I like the CIA.
Andy: Really? What does it mean?
Valerie: It stands for, un, why should I have to answer questions? Why don’t you like to answer questions?
Andy: I really never have anything to say. . . .
Valerie: Andy! Did anyone ever tell you you were uptight?
Andy: I’m not uptight.
Valerie: How are you not uptight?
Andy: It’s such an old-fashioned word.
Valerie: You’re an old-fashioned guy. You really are. I mean, you don’t realize it but you really are. . . .
Valerie: Do you ever come, Andy?
Andy: No. . . .
Valerie: What do you use for stimulation when you think you need it? Bankbooks?
Andy: No, uh . . .
Valerie: George Washington’s picture?
Andy: No uh, An electric vibrator.
Valerie: The electric dildo?
Andy: Yeah. . . .
Valerie: Andy, how long do you think the money system’s going to be around?
Andy: Uhh, not too long.
Valerie: Do you envision a place for yourself in the world of the future?
Andy: I thought I was a member of the men’s auxiliary.
Valerie: You’re in the men’s auxiliary but you’re by no means on the escape list. . . .
Valerie: What effect has SCUM had on your life?
Andy: Uh, it makes me like girls more.
Valerie: Why?. . .
Andy: Before they were only boys.
Valerie: Now they’re what?
Andy: Girls. . . . That girls didn’t exist before.
Valerie: You thought there were only boys.
Andy: Yeah.
Valerie: That there was only one sex.
Andy: That’s right.
Valerie: And now you know there are two.
Andy: Now there are two. . . .
Valerie: Do you like the funky SCUM girls or do you like the male ones? . . . You know, like pretend they’re weak and have nothing to say and all that shit.
Andy: Uh, well—both. . . .
Valerie: Andy, you never had a kid?
Andy: Uh, no. I don’t believe in them.
Valerie: Sometimes accidents happen. You’ve never had an accident?
Andy: I don’t believe in kids.
Valerie: But you’ve never had an accident?
Andy: No, I don’t believe in them.
Valerie: You don’t believe in accidents? Have you ever had a wife?
Andy: Uh, yes.
Valerie: How long ago?
Andy: Years ago.
Valerie: How many years ago?
Andy: Fifteen years.
Valerie: How long were you married?
Andy: A few weeks.
Valerie: And what happened?
Andy: Uh, I uh, . . . Have you ever been married?
Valerie: No.
Andy: Why not?
Valerie: I don’t believe in it.
Andy: Oh. Where’s your girl friends?
Valerie: They just left. You know my girl friends. I picked them up in a gay bar last night. . . .
Andy: Oh, do you have a sex drive?
Valerie: Oh. I said I used to, but I don’t anymore.
Andy: Why not?
Valerie: Except that I have lapses—I have occasional lapses, but I have a pretty good record for the last few years.
Andy: Really?
Valerie: Yeah. I try to discipline myself.
Andy: Well, how do you do that?
Valerie: Willpower.
Valerie: Andy, will you take seriously your position as head of the men’s auxiliary of SCUM? Cause you do realize the immenseness of this position?
Andy: What is it? Is it that big?
Valerie: Yes, it is.87
Believing Andy had enough self-deprecation to participate in SCUM, Valerie asked him to fund a “SCUMMY thing” event at either the Electric Circus or Café Bizarre (two avant-garde spaces known for offbeat, edgy, and experimental theater), telling him she did not have any money and could not afford to advertise. She pleaded, “Well, I don’t have it worked out in detail, but it would be some sort of forum—except it wouldn’t be exactly a forum. . . . I don’t know what to call it. Just a SCUMMY thing. You know, sort of, not really a lecture, except that there’d be a lot of interaction with the audience. But it was similar to what I was doing at the SCUM forums and they were very successful, I mean, by successful I mean they were popular—they weren’t well known, they were popular.”88 (And, of course, Valerie did host two different SCUMMY thing events, first on April 28, 1967, at the Farband House, and then on May 23, 1967, at the Directors Theater.)
Valerie repeatedly reminded Andy that she had nothing and could afford nothing and, in an eager tone, that she was excited that he had agreed to produce and direct Up Your Ass. Whether Andy promised that he would produce the play is unclear, though she certainly became convinced of this and knew well the volume of films he had recently made. After numerous revisions and edits, she presented a polished version of her play to him in June 1967. This version of the script, a twenty-nine-page, single-spaced copy with a few handwritten notes and corrections, represented the culmination of years of work. Earlier drafts, which she kept in her possession, were never thrown out, even when she moved around from place to place after her various evictions from the Chelsea and other hotels.89 Valerie and Andy had started to negotiate different possibilities for the play, tossing around the idea of producing it at Grove Press’s Evergreen Theatre as a two-part production that would feature “The Primer” as the first part and Up Your Ass as the second. The momentum behind this plan had excited and energized Valerie.
Her pride in Up Your Ass consumed her. She wrote to her father detailing her pleasure in living in New York and her excitement about her manuscripts. A postcard of June 14, 1967, read:
Dear Pop, Thanks an awful lot for the money. This will really be such a help to me, + I deeply appreciate it. I’m looking forward to seeing you in 2 weeks. I’ll bring my play with me. Hope to finish my manifesto in a few days—Love, Val90
Two weeks later, in a postcard dated June 29 that she sent from her home address at the Chelsea Hotel, she pridefully told her father about her potential success with Up Your Ass:
Dear Pop, Just received your letter + the money. Thanks a lot. I don’t want to travel over the weekend or over the 4th of July holiday, as the roads are dangerous, so I’ll visit you Thurs, July 6th. I have some things cooking regarding my play. Hope something will have materialized by the time I see you. Love, Val91
Her giddiness and energy from the perceived promise that Andy would produce the play only intensified in the coming months. When she ran into Jeremiah in front of Carol Blanes, a store that catered to drag queens, Valerie related with enthusiasm that Andy would soon be purchasing a script from her. Her time had finally come to give her work a proper audience.
As the days went by Valerie grew increasingly impatient with Andy dragging his feet. She inquired repeatedly about his interest in the play. Andy didn’t answer. Eventually, he told her that he had lost the manuscript and, knowing that this would upset her, strategized about ways to get her off his back. In a later memoir, Andy recalled how he arrived at his ultimate solution:
When I finally admitted to her that it was lost, she started asking me for money. She was staying at the Chelsea Hotel, she said, and she needed the money to pay her rent. One afternoon in September when she called, we were in the middle of shooting a sequence for I, a Man, so I said why didn’t she come over and be in the movie and earn twenty-five dollars instead of asking for a handout. She came right over and we filmed her in a short scene on a staircase and she was actually funny and that was that.92
Valerie happily accepted his offer, and her faith in Andy was temporarily restored. As Maurice Girodias, Valerie’s eventual publisher, recalled, “She was extremely warm and friendly and easygoing with him. It was when I, a Man was in the last stages of production.”93
I, a Man, starring Ingrid Superstar, Ultra Violet, International Velvet, Ivy Nicholson, Brigid Polk, Viva, and Valerie, gave a snapshot of major players at the Factory. Loosely inspired by the Swedish sexploitation film I, a Woman (1965), Andy’s film featured a man’s encounters with six different women as he awkwardly tries to hit on them. Valerie appeared one hour into the film, playing herself, spouting ideas similar to those in the manifesto.
Valerie’s scene in I, a Man showcased a tough butch lesbian rejecting a pickup line from a man (played by Tom Baker) she encounters in an elevator. She talks about men’s “squishy asses” (“I’m a sucker for squishy ass, but what else have you got?”) and “men’s tits” and asks the man, “What am I doing up here with a finko like you?” She grabs his ass and tells him to “shove off,” reminding him, “Look, I got the upper hand, let’s not forget that.” When he makes sexual advances, she retorts, “I still don’t like your tits,” and “Come on, man, what’s this shit?” repeating, “We’re talking about tits. . . . You brought the subject of men’s tits up, now, let’s pursue the subject.”
After Valerie smiles directly at the camera, seemingly colluding in the absurdity of the scene, she returns for a funny, vicious, Valerie-esque exchange with Tom:
Valerie: You dig men sexually?
Tom: You mean have I balled men? Nah, uh, not since I was young.
Valerie: Why not?
Tom: It’s not my instinct.
Valerie: Why?
Tom: I have to follow my instincts.
Valerie: Why?
Tom: Why? My instincts tell me what to do.
Valerie: My instincts tell me what to do.
Tom: What do your instincts tell you to do now?
Valerie: Same thing your instincts tell you to do.
Tom: My instincts tell me to, uh, let’s go upstairs and get together.
Valerie: Your instincts tell you to chase chicks, right?
Tom: Right!
Valerie: My instincts tell me to do the same thing.
Tom: Oh. Wow.
Valerie: Why should my standards be any lower than yours?
Valerie’s scene ends with her explaining, after Baker proposes to “do” her roommate, “No, my roommate wouldn’t like you.” She pushes him out of the way, declaring, “I don’t live here. I wanna go home. I wanna beat my meat,” as she exits the stairwell.94
During the filming, according to Ultra Violet, Andy was “moaning” behind the camera, “a kind of approving moan. He liked her switch-blade pronouncements.” Andy liked her performance because he found her honest and funny.95 Tom Baker was energized by Valerie. He stated, “I felt no personal threat from Valerie. Just the opposite. I found her
intelligent, funny, almost charming, and very, very frightened.”96
Valerie insisted that she had never been paid the twenty-five dollars Andy owed her for appearing in the movie. She believed Andy had a habit of misleading and using other people. She honed in on his exploitation of the women at the Factory, at times urging them to fight back against his indifference and callousness.97 Ultra recalled Valerie telling her, during a shooting of I, a Man, “Those disgusting pigs, men! They’re all leeches. . . . Why do you let him exploit you? Why don’t you shove a shiv into his chest or ram an ice pick up his ass?” Valerie complained. “Talking to him is like talking to a chair.” Of her own measly (and nonexistent) payment for the film, she told the Village Voice, “A snake couldn’t buy a meal on what he pays out.”98
Still, Valerie was proud of having snagged a small part in one of Andy’s films. On August 24, 1967, just before the film I, a Man opened, she invited her sister, Judith, to visit New York and see the movie with her. The two attended an afternoon matinee at the Hudson Theater. Judith was appalled at the movie and Valerie, having been so proud of her role in it, did not take well to her reaction. Judith exclaimed, “It’s for the lecher crowd. No one ever went broke underestimating the American public.” Judith remarked that Valerie’s speech had changed, that her voice sounded more shrill than it once had. She noticed other changes: “I studied her face through my dark glasses. When had she stopped smiling? I suddenly realized that although she laughed at some things, she no longer smiled. . . . Only someone who knew her well could see it, the light had vanished.”99
Paranoia was growing in Valerie, particularly with regard to how others would potentially misuse her writings. She became so frightened that “they” would take her work that at one point she snuck manuscripts out with the laundry and hurried to another friend’s house because she thought her mail was being read and her room was bugged. She hated lawyers and cops, leaving her with few means to address these perceived violations. Showing frustration with Andy, she wrote to her father again, on August 4, 1967:
