The Faculty of Dreams

by Sara Stridsberg

  *

  This silk boy is so beautiful. So beautiful and frightened and unfettered. He loves swimming where it is deepest and darkest. He loves swimming when the warning flags are up on the beach. He spends all his nights in strange cars, but he does not dare take the bus the twenty-odd miles north to register at college. Only you can save him with your books, your schools and your faith in the future.

  Elmhurst Psychiatric Hospital, August 10, 1968

  Dr Ruth Cooper appears to have unlimited time for meaningless consultations with patients, and in the end they are preferable to walking around amid the ward’s wreckage of girls and women. And after a couple of conversations with Dr Cooper, you no longer remember who you are. You are Dorothy, Samantha, Cosmogirl, you are a hundred thousand murdered women prostitutes on the beaches. Sereena, Mona, Jacqueline, Heather, Diane, Angele, Brenda.

  Hey, Hey, Hey, Dr Cooper. What do you know about love?

  The curtains are being sucked out of the window and are flapping sharply against the hospital concrete. Dr Cooper, under her impeccable hair, sits and waits for you to start crying, but you do not cry, as there is nothing to cry about. It is the hottest summer in New York for seventy years. It is 1968. Andy Warhol is dying and Cosmogirl is not there anymore. On Fifth Avenue Daddy’s Girls are marching with their ridiculous posters about abortion and the pill and date rape, moronic demands to be brood-mares and cock-suckers on their own conditions. A female political agenda not even laboratory mice would accept. Daddy’s Girls read aloud from the manifesto. They kiss each other and burn their middle-class underwear, while all you do is wander along asylum corridors in a second-hand dress, black with yearning for death.

  *

  After persistent requests and entreaties, Dr Ruth Cooper has obtained permission for you to wear your own dress in the ward, not the raincoat, not the mirrored spectacles, but the dress. Your bag is still impounded and the manifesto and your notes have been confiscated indefinitely.

  DR RUTH COOPER: It’s O.K. to cry here. Everything you say will remain in here.

  VALERIE: Andy Warhol is in hospital playing dead and I have no desire at all to die.

  DR RUTH COOPER: You can rely on me absolutely for complete confidentiality. I’ve spoken to the hospital administration and I’ve obtained permission for you to wear your own clothes in the ward.

  VALERIE: And my bag? Is it still impounded?

  DR RUTH COOPER: You’ll get all your things back when you leave the hospital.

  VALERIE: Still confiscated then. I’ve got nothing good to read, just those romantic novels they bring round on their stupid little library trolley.

  DR RUTH COOPER: I think you should read Alice in Wonderland.

  VALERIE: I bet you do. But it wasn’t quite what I had in mind.

  DR RUTH COOPER: I still think you should read it. I’ll get it for you. It has meant a lot to me. There are similarities between you and me. We’re both women, we’ve both studied psychology at university.

  VALERIE: I won’t read it.

  DR RUTH COOPER: You’re extremely gifted, Valerie.

  VALERIE: I’m bored.

  DR RUTH COOPER: Don’t throw all that talent away. You can be whatever you want.

  VALERIE: Half a nation on its knees prevents me from doing that. Millions of doormats are spoiling my view of the sea. A room of one’s own is a fiction that doesn’t work.

  DR RUTH COOPER: Half a nation and a million doormats are beyond your control.

  VALERIE: And all those waiting outside in the corridor?

  DR RUTH COOPER: That’s my responsibility. And the hospital’s.

  VALERIE: Then I think you should grant entrance to all those who are waiting. I have more important things to do.

  DR RUTH COOPER: Things change. Women no longer accept life as second-class citizens.

  VALERIE: Thanks. I know. An army of lobotomized Barbie dolls is marching along Fifth Avenue with their ridiculous posters about abortion and the pill and date rape. I can’t even remember if they’re for or against date rape.

  DR RUTH COOPER: Being alone is a utopia. Two people thinking the same thing makes a reality. They might be reading from your manifesto.

  VALERIE: Of course they’re reading from the manifesto. That’s the problem. I assume they’re kissing each other. I assume they’re burning their middle-class underwear. I assume they’ve got round-trip tickets to hell.

  DR RUTH COOPER: Next time we see one another, I’ll have a book for you.

  VALERIE: Absolutely, Miss Higgins. Can we consider this little consultation concluded now?

  DR RUTH COOPER: One last question. Did you finance your college education by means of prostitution?

  VALERIE: You’re darned right I did, Doctor.

  Laboratory Park

  Bristol Hotel, April 16, 1988

  NARRATOR: Did you fuck up your doctorate?

  VALERIE: There’s more than one way to fuck up . . .

  NARRATOR: Did you?

  VALERIE: Is it you or I who’s going to die?

  NARRATOR: Did you?

  VALERIE: Is it you or I who’s narrating this?

  NARRATOR: I’m the narrator.

  VALERIE: And I’m the subject of this muddle-headed, fucked-up text. You’re not a real narrator, baby.

  NARRATOR: I’m just a sentimental fool, I know. But since I’m the only narrator present and interested, maybe you could answer my questions.

  (Silence.)

  NARRATOR: Did you screw up your doctorate?

  VALERIE: It’s probably more the case that I always had great difficulty grasping what was in the script. I always forgot my lines.

  April proceeds towards doom and every time you fall asleep in the Tenderloin, you think you will never wake again, but you always do and it is still the cruelest month. You dream of huge television sets with giant monsters inside and their arms sticking out into the room; and when you wake up, you cannot remember any names, you cannot remember if they are female mammals or male mammals, but they all had face powder for T.V. and wolf make-up. In your dreams you fight your way through fields of murdered prostitute girls. She was covered in leaves and earth. She lay strangled behind the church. The john fled on a woman’s bicycle. She was discovered murdered in the cellar. She was found strangled in Madison Square Park. She was the victim of rape and murder in September 1982. She was discovered on a demolition site. She disappeared from the street in June. She was suffocated in her hotel room at the Pink Flamingo Hotel.

  *

  But just a breath away is the boy who looked like your sister, a dog-eared Polaroid of ragged clouds moving unhurriedly above the sands and the pulse of the giant waves under your surfboard.

  SILK BOY: Hello, Valerie.

  VALERIE: What are you doing over there?

  SILK BOY: The freaks are aristocrats, they say. It was the cold white shark. That icy breath sweeping over the beach. It was night-time and everything was quiet. Just the white shark furthest in on the shore. Do you remember the dead orca? It had huge black wounds on its body. The smell of blood on the beach. Mr Biondi drove over animals on the roads on purpose.

  VALERIE: You cried into your little powder compact afterwards. Sharks aren’t personal. They never seek personal revenge. They kill indiscriminately. There’s no reason to be sad about it.

  SILK BOY: I wish I could help you.

  VALERIE: Little cry-baby. Little shark . . .

  SILK BOY: You’ve ruined your life.

  VALERIE: I liked being on drugs. I never accepted the paradigm.

  SILK BOY: But it all went down the tube, Valerie.

  VALERIE (opens her silver coat, the room is hot and clammy, the stench of illness rises from the coat): You can have sex with me, if you like. Five for a fuck, three for blow job, one for a hand job.

  SILK BOY: You’ve got the stink of death on you, Valerie. The stink of dead orcas and dead shark dolls. I’ll help you close that coat.

  VALERIE: Nasty little nancy boy . . .


  Alligator Reef, Autumn 1956

  An American Satellite Has Exploded over Florida

  When you return to Alligator Reef, the trailer is deserted. You have been away too long, arranging accommodation, course documents, registration – everything and nothing. Classes have already begun, time has passed in the student dorm, and all along you meant to go back and fetch him. In the end Mrs Cox sent a postcard from the campsite. The boy was full of water and drugs when he was found. A drowning accident or drug-related. I identified him at the morgue. They said he had been raped by some customers and he was not your little brother at all. Silk Boy or little brother, it doesn’t matter. He was as pleased as Punch about your college acceptances. Happy with that little bag in his hand all the time. He kept reading the books from cover to cover until they fell apart. He sat at the bus stop day after day, waiting for you to come back. Why didn’t you come back?

  *

  Mrs Cox holds your hands when you try to smash everything around you. She sorts out ice cream and hamburgers for you, gives you money and joints. The campsite smells of grilled meat and sweaty old men and the clouds hang absurdly low over the shore. Your things have gone, notes, clothes, photographs, and Biondi’s villa is empty. There are strangers sleeping in his garden and the solarium no longer has windows. The doors slam in the wind. No-one knows where Mr Biondi has gone. You stay at the campsite, waiting for him to return, but he does not come. You are down on the beach, shouting at the sea, kicking at seabirds rotting on the sand, no-one to bury them now; bedraggled white feathers, eyes pecked away, forlorn corpses, the waves crushing everything around you. One more time you take the bus to Jacksonville alone, your bag full of your shared college savings, and inform them you will definitively be one instead of two; you move back into the student room with his little duffel bag, place a tiny dried-up male seahorse in the window and a sunset photograph of Dorothy, and you start reading.

  *

  Days and nights at the desk with a view of the park. Frosty windows, candles instead of lamps, but it is still warmer than in the trailer in winter. No ocean, no beach, just page after page of American history, the presidents, the world wars, and Silk Boy’s tremulous underwater voice trailing you through the books. Valerie Jean Solanas will be president of America. Valerie Jean Solanas, you are my dog against the night.

  Jacksonville College, Jacksonville, Florida, Early Summer 1958, Two Years Later

  Sun in all the trees, white dresses and fireworks, popping corks, hamburgers. In your hand your college diploma from Jacksonville, in your bag the scholarship to Maryland. Students walking joyfully through the park, everything drowning in light, parents arriving in family cars. You sit under the huge oak trees and lecture the other girls. Always students. Never housewives. Never wipe up a man’s shit or wash his wacked-off underpants. Always study. Always read and write. Don’t let boys have the last word, don’t let any strange men force their way into your thoughts. Do research, become professors and writers. Keep on your toes all the time. Never take drugs. They laugh at your jokes and your card tricks, laugh when you win their money off them, blink back when you flirt with them. Everyone is impressed with your awards. All the girls want to invite you to their graduation dinners with their families. You are the poorest, and the most parentless, and have been awarded more scholarships at Jacksonville than anyone else. You have eclipsed everyone with your scintillating mind and quick wit. The principal, Sister Hyacinth, has stroked your hair and foretold a brilliant future for you in the American education system.

  *

  Later you walk in the park with your diploma and your scholarships. You are filled with happiness and possibilities. The park is dark and deserted, champagne bottles and sandwich wrappers littering the grass, and walking around with all that optimism under your dress makes you giddy. You lie under the starry sky all night, imagining the future, that Silk Boy is there with you, that he is such a happy student beside you on the grass, a carefree scholarship recipient and ruler of the universe, not drowned by Mr Biondi and Alligator Reef. It wasn’t hard, Silky. There was no competition, chicken. You would have made it too, Silly Boy.

  Jacksonville College, Late Summer 1958

  The whole night under a tree, smoking, looking at the grass, the buildings, the sky, and you cannot stop reading the welcome letter, twisting it, squeezing it, wondering if it is real. Valerie Jean Solanas, born 1936 in Ventor, Georgia, is accepted into the graduate program at the University of Maryland, Department of Psychology. The phone booth is lined with condensation again, the student park transformed into a lake of rain and desolation. The other students have been taken back to the suburbs by their daddies, and there is only the rain, falling onto your hair while you attempt to call home to Dorothy.

  *

  Remote, soot-black ringing tones across the landscape of sand; you remember them so well, slicing through the kitchen and the heat, while Dorothy proudly flew through the house to answer, but the desert does not answer now, only a little desert fox scampering across the yard at home in Ventor. And when the signals drop and the rain outside falls, you see Dorothy in Red Moran’s arms, immersed in a deep and dreamless sleep. Dorothy in bed under the rose wallpaper, a chubby hand protectively round her head, her nightgown drawn up to her waist. Her pubic hair is dark, matted, coarse, newly fucked, and around the two of them hangs that wretched underwear smell. And no-one in Ventor answers, and the words on the welcome letter from Maryland drain away in a pale blue mist, a river of loneliness to drown in.

  *

  It is like trying to call the ocean, trying to call Silk Boy to say that you are burning with pride and prospects. No answer, no matter how long you wait, just the mass of water, the submerged sounds and the oceans of time without him. Outside the phone booth, only gray curtains of rain and in the distance people walking under their umbrellas. The student town is dark and windy and you take your bicycle down to the sandy blue beach and address all that water and the heartless skies: There are only happy endings. There are only opportunities. There are only Silk Boys, flimflam boys, toy boys, university places, poverty scholarships. The dashing of falling birds, falling dreams, of falling power systems. Only Valerie Jean Solanas will be president of America. The sound of rain, waves and under-waters, the cold, translucent weight on your chest and the taste of salt in your mouth, the cold breath of the white shark sweeping over the beaches.

  VALERIE: I got into graduate school.

  —(ring-ring)—

  VALERIE: I’m going to study psychology. I’m going to be a psychologist and find out why everything’s made up of sharks . . . Congratulations, Valerie, I knew you’d make it . . . Thank you very much, but it’s no big deal . . . Congrats, congrats, congrats, my little psychologist . . . Thank you humbly, Silky, but it’s no big deal . . . Hooray for Valerie Solanas! Thanks, thanks, but enough now.

  —(ring-ring)—

  VALERIE: You always said I should apply to school. You said I would be president of America. Where are you now?

  —(ring-ring)—

  VALERIE: You’re in the ocean, because you want to be in the ocean.

  —(ring-ring)—

  VALERIE: You said I had that crystal gaze . . . And I can see you now . . . swirls of light in the green-black density . . . your underwater laugh . . . your childlike smile . . . You never came to Jacksonville . . .

  —(ring-ring)—

  VALERIE: I’m going to hang up now. I have to get ready for school. I’m going to read Mr Freud and everything else I can find. Do you think I’ll have to wear glasses there?

  —(ring-ring)—

  VALERIE: Nah, I don’t suppose you could know that, you little seahorse scientist. Seahorse scientists only work in the ocean and not on land, and none of you need glasses in the sea, just a Cyclops’ eye, and you all work in the ocean because you don’t like living on land . . .

  Goodbye . . .

  —(ring-ring)—

  VALERIE: Wet kisses from Valerie . . .

 
; —(ring-ring)—

  Elmhurst Psychiatric Hospital, September 8, 1968

  The National Organization for Women Demonstrates Against Miss America Contests in Atlantic City, Olympia Press Publishes The S.C.U.M. Manifesto

  The patients are no longer permitted to use the telephones, but everyone, other than new arrivals, is entitled to receive one call a week. You accept one from Maurice; it is unthinkable that you chose his call, as he took everything you had away from you, but all the other calls are from journalists, and there is still no call from Ventor and absolutely nothing from Cosmogirl and the netherworld.

  *

  The staff, or more precisely Dr Ruth Cooper, got ahold of the Olympia Press version of S.C.U.M. and for a couple of afternoons has let you look through it. A study in violence, Maurice calls the book in the foreword, and in the afterword Paul Krassner has written something about his ass and many more irrelevancies. You said you liked what I wrote. You said the manifesto was a brilliant analysis of the state of the world. You said that I spoke like an artist, that I was ingenious, that I was entertaining, but all that does not matter now. It must have been the walls you were talking to, and not me.

  *

  Maurice has chosen a photograph of you for the front cover and on the back the headlines after the shooting: Andy Warhol Fights for His Life.

  MAURICE: Valerie, hello. How are you feeling?

  VALERIE: Never felt better.

  MAURICE: I’ve been thinking about you.

  VALERIE: I’ve been thinking about you.

  MAURICE: Whereabouts are you?

  VALERIE: In the White House. Washington D.C.

  MAURICE: I mean which hospital. Is it a hospital in New York?

  VALERIE: Washington D.C., United States of pimps and balls.

  MAURICE: Can I help you?

  VALERIE: You can recall your copies of the manifesto and cut out the whole foreword, afterword, fake analysis and sham commentary. I recommend that you cut all superfluous words, which in this case in plain language means all the words that aren’t mine. That is more or less exactly how you can help me.