Three Somebodies

by Kat Georges

  BERNARD and DOROTHY continue to speak at the same time.

  BERNARD: Beuys wrapped himself in felt, leaving only the stick protruding, and lay down on the floor. A sculpture. Brilliant. He stacked other pieces of felt into a pile from which the flashlight shone. He talked to the coyote and encouraged him to tug at the felt strips and tear them.

  Then the situation was reversed: the coyote curled up on the felt, and Beuys lay down on the coyote’s straw. From time to time, Beuys made “music” with a triangle, which he wore suspended around his neck. Then the taped sounds of turbines broke the silence.

  Three days and nights later, the two were used to each other. Beuys said goodbye to Little John, hugging him gently. He scattered the straw in the room in which he had lived with the animal. Once more, Beuys was wrapped in felt, laid on a stretcher, and taken to JFK airport in an ambulance. And so he left New York, having seen nothing of the city beyond the room with the coyote.

  DOROTHY: Valerie got involved with a sailor. She was only fifteen . . . he was a big brute with a car. I’m sure that’s what attracted her the most. I handed him Valerie’s bag at a hamburger stand . . . she didn’t have the guts to tell me goodbye. She was too weak. A whimpering, sulking, mindless coward, just another stupid girl. She really hasn’t changed much . . .

  I would do anything for her . . .

  VIVIAN speaks, overlapping BERNARD and DOROTHY.

  VIVIAN: My mother came to visit me here. She said she wanted to meet my friends. I helped her put on her makeup . . . We went to a party . . . She flipped out! The lights, the smells, the music, the people. There’s a table with some food on it—some cheese and fruit and salami, so I tell her, “Just stay here, Mom—I’ll be right back.” I get lost in some dancing, and Golem is doing his whip dance and next thing I know, two hours have gone by, and I’m saying, “I left my mom at the salami table—two hours ago!” So I go back. And she’s right where I left her. And she’s talking with Andy Warhol like they’re best friends or something. I mean, for the two of them, no one else exists! I’ve never seen her that happy.

  DOROTHY: Is there anything to eat here? I’m starving!

  VIVIAN: There’s always salami—over there!

  VIVIAN starts laughing hard, and continues laughing, staring at herself in a compact mirror, looking in her purse for another pill, and laughing some more. Spastic, then controlled.

  GOLEM changes reels on the projector.

  BERNARD elucidates further on Beuys, assuming everyone is listening to him. Which they aren’t.

  BERNARD: I was able to observe Beuys’ ritual—you can’t possibly demean it by calling it a “performance”—and I must say, it was stunning. This man, unarmed, willingly climbed into an area where he could be attacked—killed by a wild beast. He became the animal we see in zoos. He illuminated the animal in us all, and the baseness of what we call civilization.

  Though I must say, the straw was a bit much. And the felt—he chose, for some reason, a kind of forest green, a bit of an easy choice, if you ask me. Lavender would have added such a nice dimension.

  GOLEM finishes changing reels on project. Looks at BERNARD, who asks him—

  BERNARD: Don’t you agree?

  GOLEM crosses to small stage in corner, raises projection screens, strips off his shirt to a leather chest harness, strikes a pose.

  GOLEM: And now, I am ready to dance.

  VIVIAN: With me?

  GOLEM: Later. Watch.

  VIVIAN: Now?

  DOROTHY: Now?

  BERNARD: Now . . . ?

  GOLEM: Now.

  MUSIC cue: Velvet Underground’s “Venus in Furs.”

  LIGHT off except STROBE LIGHT and BLACK LIGHT. PROJECTOR starts with psychedelic arty film, aimed toward stage on which GOLEM dances.

  GOLEM dances like a dominatrix with a florescent whip. DOROTHY and VIVIAN watch him with intense interest. BERNARD watches him, loses interest quickly and turns his back to watch one of the televisions instead.

  DOROTHY: He’s very good.

  VIVIAN: He’s a master of the dance. I wish . . . I never . . . had to see him dance again.

  DOROTHY: He seems like such a nice man. He reminds me of Valerie’s father in a way. Strong, clever . . . good dancer.

  VIVIAN: I can’t watch him . . .

  DOROTHY: Why not?

  VIVIAN: He mesmerizes me . . . When I see him dance, I see the dance of time.

  VIVIAN becomes a snake, begins sidewinding sexily toward GOLEM on the stage. She speaks in a trance.

  VIVIAN: I become a snake, crawling through an endless sea of broken glass and rusted plastic. I try to hold on, but the rope has frayed with the fire of presence. Falling into flames of desire . . . I lose . . . my sense . . . of incense . . .

  DOROTHY loses interest, eats salami, and speaks to BERNARD.

  DOROTHY: Great salami. I love good food . . . It makes me forget . . .

  BERNARD: Oh, I had a fabulous lunch today at the de Menil Foundation with Nelson. He had some rather unusual ideas for a retrospective of leaf rubbings from the Galapagos Islands. Apparently, a tenth of the trees in the Galapagos do not grow anywhere else in the world. And really—why should they?

  BERNARD laughs heartily.

  BERNARD: Very interesting. Nelson figured that we could take the de Menil’s jet down there, pluck a few leaves, fly back, and have Jasper and-or Andy and-or Robert each take a turn with a rubbing. “Perfect,” I told Nelson, as we were sipping our digestifs. I indicated that I would speak to Dominique immediately. Leaf rubbings by today’s most significant artists. Brilliant.

  VIVIAN grows increasingly wide-eyed, dancing in circles in front of the stage.

  VIVIAN: Speed is the ultimate all-time high. That first rush . . . wow! . . . Just that burning serum, the ultimate sense of perfection . . . that twenty-four-hour climax . . . that can go on for days . . .

  SOUND cue: Change MUSIC to Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale.”

  LIGHT cue: Increasingly weird.

  GOLEM dances with phosphorescent glow tape. VIVIAN crawls up to the stage. They dance.

  DOROTHY: . . . and remember a simpler time. I used to tuck Valerie in every night with a fairy tale. She loved to hear that song Little Red Riding Hood sang as she was skipping through the forest.

  Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf?

  The big, bad wolf

  The big, bad wolf?

  I must have sung it to her a hundred times. And she would always look up at me and say, “Mommy, are you afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”

  And I would think about all the bills that were due and the rent and her father showing up every once in a while drunk and violent, and how I had no idea if I was going to be able to survive even one more day in this world.

  And I would look back into her big, innocent eyes, that wanted only the truth.

  And I would hide all my fear and tell her, “Valerie, honey, I know the Big Bad Wolf. I know him very well. And I am not afraid for one second. He can’t scare me.”

  From the back of audience, where she has been commenting every so often on the action on stage, VALERIE suddenly gets extremely upset at her mother, and shouts.

  VALERIE: Liar!

  VALERIE rushes onto the stage. During her next comment, all action stops.

  VALERIE: LIFE in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex.

  DOROTHY: You’re too late, Valerie.

  MUSIC starts again. GOLEM and VIVIAN resume dancing, though both with occasional worried glances at VALERIE.

  VALERIE: I’m right on time. There is no place left for men in this world. Not if we are to avoid getting the whole marble blown to smithereens by a power-crazed psycho who is pissed off one day because his wife won’t suck him off before his morning press conference from th
e Oval Office. Men are a walking disease, cured only through elimination. Castration alone is not the answer.

  DOROTHY: What do you mean?

  VALERIE: The male has a negative Midas touch—everything he touches turns to shit. Completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, incapable of love, friendship, affection, or tenderness, a half-dead, unresponsive lump, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob.

  VALERIE paces restlessly, like a COYOTE.

  BERNARD elucidates, alternately addressing GOLEM and VIVIAN, DOROTHY, and VALERIE, all with a clear sense of precision, to which no one pays any attention. All start speaking at simultaneously.

  GOLEM and VIVIAN continue to dance, getting closer and more erotic, and speak/sing.

  BERNARD: My father loved the Galapagos, as a young adventurous troubadour. But the Galapagos today? Leaf rubbings by abstract expressionists and pop artists? Yes, well—old Nelson is affable enough, but somebody must have slipped something in his morning coffee. Perhaps I’ll send him a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Glen Farclas to cheer him up in his demise.

  VIVIAN: I think my favorite sensation of all is the sense of sight. I mean—let the hippies have all that touchie-feelie stuff. And taste is okay, but I don’t really like to eat much. What’s left? Sight . . . beautiful sight. Open your eyes and just look at your thumb—it’s as if you’re seeing another world. All those ridges are like highways that lead to other highways that lead to other highways that lead to anywhere you want.

  Stop looking at your thumb and step outside and the whole world is just there and it looks different every second. The light changes, the people change, it’s all action, action, action, and a blur of color and motion.

  BERNARD: It is not the Nelson Rockefellers of this world that are going to be creating the masterpieces that last into the 21st century and beyond. There are no new masterpieces—Artaud. Except for one or two deKoonings, a couple of Pollacks, a Rauschenberg or three, several of Warhol’s silkscreens. Near-genius. No, perhaps not so near.

  Picasso was the last great master and even the majority of his work is not up to the level of Guernica. I don’t care one iota for masterpieces anyway. Let the nouveau riche think in terms of masterpieces. Helps expand the marketplace for art and increases the value of one or two modern painters, preferably ones I represent.

  GOLEM: Is the person worth the inspiration? Am I worth the time it takes to absorb it all, throw it all out? and . . . who is . . . transformed?

  VALERIE: The male’s greatest need is to be guided, sheltered, protected and admired by Mama (men expect women to adore what men shrink from in horror—themselves) and, being completely physical he yearns to spend time wallowing in basic animal activities—eating, sleeping, shitting, relaxing, and being soothed by Mama. Passive, rattle-headed Daddy’s Girl, ever eager for approval, for a pat on the head, for the “respect” of any passing piece of garbage, is easily reduced to Mama, mindless minstrator to physical needs, soother of the weary, apey brow, booster of the puny ego, appreciator of the contemptible, a hot water bottle with tits.

  VIVIAN: In front of the mirror I can make myself look like the most beautiful woman in the world, or with just a little change of makeup, the worst hag on the block. And it’s all sight, eyes, seeing. Everything that matters is visual.

  All the radiant beauty, all the ugly disasters. That’s what television is all about. That’s why it’s going to change the world. It’s not what the people on TV are saying that counts—what people are saying never really matters. It’s what they look like they’re doing . . . and how they look when they’re doing it. That’s the only form of communication that really matters . . . And most people don’t do it very well at all . . .

  GOLEM: We must wake people up. Upset their way of identifying things. It is necessary to create unacceptable images. Make people foam at the mouth. Force them to understand that they live in a mad world. A disquieting world, not reassuring. A world which is not as they see it.

  BERNARD: Art is the market, nowadays; it can be defined only in those terms. Understand the marketplace and you understand the value of art. Buying and selling art today is like being a stockbroker; it has nothing to do with beauty, technique, originality, or catharsis of the soul.

  From this point on, the great artists will come from the advertising industry. Of course, this may be disappointing to a few inspired youths who hold a paintbrush with a trembling hand, buy a piece of canvas with money scraped together by selling their shoes and family heirlooms . . . but hey—art is no longer for the weak of spirit. And if your spirit is weak, the advertising industry needs you.

  DOROTHY speaks to the audience.

  DOROTHY: I’m certainly not proud of what she did. When I go to the beauty parlor on Saturdays, all I hear is the snickering of women under hair dryers. Telling each other, pointing fingers. “Look, if it isn’t Dorothy . . . You know about her daughter? . . . Shot Andy Warhol. A-N-D-Y W-A-R-H-O-L, that fairy New York artist that painted soup cans and made those god-awful disgusting pornographic films of homosexuals and naked heiresses. You know the fellow. Dorothy’s daughter shot him. With a gun. Bam! Bam! Bam! Who could imagine?”

  GOLEM: Am I anything more than the fear that others have of me? Is this important?

  VIVIAN leaves the dance stage and takes VALERIE by the hand, leading her to sit by the stump sculpture, downstage left. VALERIE calms down, they act like two best friends.

  LIGHTS: Dim all stage except bring up glowing red and gold light around stump—like a campfire.

  MUSIC: Lower volume or play something sweet and innocent.

  VIVIAN: I missed you! How was the hospital?

  VALERIE: They tried to destroy me.

  VIVIAN: Shock treatment?

  VALERIE: Everything. They raped me twice.

  VIVIAN: Oooh—did you report it to anyone?

  VALERIE: If they think you’re crazy no one listens.

  VIVIAN: Why don’t you tell me about it . . . I’ll listen . . .

  VALERIE: Okay, to men sexual relations is a redundancy. To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he’s a machine, a walking dildo.

  VALERIE grows increasingly agitated. VIVIAN grows increasingly bored.

  VALERIE: It’s often said that men use women. Use them for what? Surely not pleasure. It’s females that are reduced to animals.

  VIVIAN stands and returns to little stage to dance again with GOLEM. VALERIE stands and begins pacing again, growing increasingly more agitated at the realization that no one will listen to her.

  VALERIE: Reducing the female to an animal, to Mama, to a male, is necessary for psychological as well as practical reasons: the male is a mere member of the species, interchangeable with every other male. He has no deep-seated individuality. Completely self-absorbed, males differ from each other only to the degree and in the ways they attempt to defend against their passivity and against their desire to be female.

  DOROTHY: Every week I hear my friends laugh behind my back and I pretend not to. I don’t say a word. Let them fill in the blanks on what happened to my Valerie. They don’t deserve honesty. They’re good people. Bridge and bowling, potlucks and family reunions. They can have it all. I’ve got Valerie, and no one can take her away.

  DOROTHY reaches out and grabs VALERIE’s hand. VALERIE reacts as if she’s been bitten by a snake. All conversation ceases, and the stage goes into a hallucinogenic dark trip with slow strobe light flashing colored lights.

  All five actors begin to move in extreme slow motion.

  Pre-informed AUDIENCE MEMBERS are invited to come up on the stage to do various acts including, but not limited to, play music, adopt a pose of alienation, paint on a canvas, stare into a light, or make one or two striking remarks to themselves. At least one takes flash photos of the audience.

  SOUND cue: Music is now a collage of Velvet Underground’s “European Son” and opera or “Over the Rainbow” with occasional sound bites from TV commerci
als of 1968.

  During this slow-motion interlude, DOROTHY is unable to concentrate on any one scene; she looks with fear and interest at the extras, at BERNARD, and most of all at VALERIE, who paces and speaks silently, without concern for audience. GOLEM and VIVIAN dance in extreme slow motion.

  When VALERIE has had enough (approx. 3–4 minutes) she begins to orate, with her back to the audience. Once she starts to speak, lights come up and stage is cleared.

  VALERIE: The male is completely egocentric. Women don’t have penis envy; men have pussy envy. The male is obsessed with screwing; he’ll swim a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit if he thinks there’s a friendly pussy awaiting him. Screwing is a desperate, compulsive attempt to prove he’s not passive, not a woman, but he is passive and does want to be a woman.

  When the male accepts his passivity, and defines himself as a woman, he becomes a transvestite, loses his desire to screw, and gets his cock chopped off.

  BERNARD turns to speak to DOROTHY, who does not listen, but rather talks to him at the same time.

  BERNARD: Oh, I forgot to mention, about Beuys. Anyway, when Beuys left the gallery, for him the piece was over. But the gallery still had a cute little coyote urinating on its floors and whining for food, howling at the moon, and so forth.

  The owner—a good friend of mine—didn’t know quite what to do.

  He considered releasing the coyote back into the wilderness, but it had become so domesticated through Beuys’s piece, that to do so would be homicidal. He thought about donating it to the zoo, but Beuys’s people were strictly opposed because it would be too demeaning to the coyote.

  He finally just decided to keep it as a kind of pet, and prepared to bring it to his home.

  But once outside the gallery door, the coyote was shocked by the noise and calamity of the street, and escaped. The rest of the story is tragic.