Bristol Hotel, April 19, 1988
NARRATOR: I keep thinking of your wild-animal language, of your time at the university. Then I think about New York and the Factory. Questions central to this novel. Why did you stop writing? Why did you leave Maryland? Why did you shoot Andy Warhol?
VALERIE: Mirror, mirror on the wall. These are all the wrong questions. The right question is: Why did she carry on writing; why did anyone carry on writing? Why didn’t she leave the university; why did any girl stay in the faculty? Why didn’t she shoot; why did so many of her kind have no access to weapons? All her rights were under constant attack. Idle and beautiful, they walked around their gardens on Long Island. Why didn’t they just destroy their gardens? The feminine mystique.
NARRATOR: In an interview with Howard Smith in The Village Voice in 1977 you say . . . It’s after the women’s prison, after the mental hospitals, and you’ve just published the manifesto yourself—
VALERIE: —Thanks. If you want to give a lecture about my life, then maybe I’m the wrong audience. I’m not terribly interested. I fucked everything up, that’s the answer to all your questions. I couldn’t take living like a lobotomized brood cow, and the world around me couldn’t take that.
NARRATOR: In the interview with Howard Smith—
VALERIE: Imbecile. Infantile. Irritating. I remember he volunteered himself for a blow job after the interview.
NARRATOR: —you say of the manifesto that it’s hypothetical. Later you retract that. I’d like to know what you mean by hypothetical. You also say that S.C.U.M. was a literary prank, that there is no organization called S.C.U.M.
VALERIE: There was only me. I don’t like arithmetic.
NARRATOR: In my novel—
VALERIE: —You and your little novel will have to excuse me now, because I’ve got work to do.
NARRATOR: I have money.
VALERIE: How nice for you.
NARRATOR: I mean, I have money in case you need some, so you don’t have to . . .
VALERIE: Don’t have to what?
NARRATOR: I’m just saying, I have money if you need some.
VALERIE: Don’t have to what?
NARRATOR: Sell your body. Be a prostitute. Capitalize on intimacy. I don’t know what to call it.
VALERIE: Sexual politics. Organization of so-called love, i.e. rape. Red-light district. Special areas of the city sprang up, the women were summoned for government-funded tests every week to keep their clients, the johns, the boys, free from disease. Take everything from me. Do it. That’s what I want.
NARRATOR: It reduces to something deeply tragic if you hate men and are forced to sell yourself to them all your life.
VALERIE: Charge for rape. Organized rape. Systematized rape. Rape that can be preplanned. Structured sucking-off. Formalized fucking. Charging for rape. Rape isn’t free. It’s impossible to rape someone who does it of her own free will. All married women are prostitutes. Only real whores are real women and revolutionaries. I don’t sell my heart, I don’t sell my brain, I sell a few minutes and a part of my body that isn’t mine.
The Factory
Elmhurst Psychiatric Hospital, May 14, 1969
Dr Cooper does not tire of getting beaten at poker. Her losses accumulate and it is lucky for her that you are not playing for money. She is far too distracted to stand a chance, and it is obvious she imagines the game of cards will lead to a mini-discourse from you on your unhappy childhood. She is obsessed with childhood and seems as devoid of tactics as she is of natural competitive instinct.
VALERIE: Do you want to get your own childhood back, Doctor?
DR RUTH COOPER: I want you to tell me more about yours.
VALERIE: It was my childhood that made me into a feral creature.
DR RUTH COOPER: And the relationship with your father?
VALERIE: And into a devil at poker.
DR RUTH COOPER: And the relationship with your father?
VALERIE: I don’t have a father.
DR RUTH COOPER: And the relationship with your mother?
VALERIE: I chased after our kites across the desert. We were young and wild and free. I’m sorry, Dr Cooper, but I have to fuck up your theories. Dorothy was a light bulb, a shining piece of mica.
DR RUTH COOPER: And your childhood?
VALERIE: I counted roses on the swing seat cover. I dreamed of a typewriter. I pissed in a nasty boy’s juice.
DR RUTH COOPER: Your upbringing has been described as loveless and violent. Your language and your attitude is characterized by a strong sense of abandonment.
VALERIE: Motherhood is potential for social change. Everything of value has been built by mothers. Dorothy built a house without money. She gave me food for fifteen years. And sunshine and blood.
DR RUTH COOPER: The ability to love is directly linked to the ability of the small child to rouse tender feelings in the mother.
VALERIE: Hey, hey, Cooper! What do you know about love?
DR RUTH COOPER: I am not the patient.
VALERIE: Cosmogirl has gone for good. That’s all I know.
DR RUTH COOPER: I know you’re feeling despair.
VALERIE: Why do you always wear those ugly glasses?
DR RUTH COOPER: I have a visual impairment. Myopia. I have to be able to see my patients in order to work.
VALERIE: Take your glasses off.
DR RUTH COOPER: I would prefer you to sit back down on your chair.
*
You have climbed up onto Dr Cooper’s shiny, sexy desk (it is strictly forbidden to climb on hospital furniture) and removed her glasses (it is strictly forbidden to touch hospital staff). Through her spectacles there is mist and vague outlines, and Dr Ruth Cooper’s naked little boyish face, and Dr Cooper waving her arms and wanting her glasses back. Without her smart, dark frames, she is no-one. Dr Ruth Cooper gives one of her West Coast laughs, a laugh of salt and beach wrack and sea anemones. She is very bad at playing Dr Stern.
DR RUTH COOPER: Give me my glasses.
VALERIE: Do you like girls?
DR RUTH COOPER: No.
(Silence.)
DR RUTH COOPER: Or rather, I mean, obviously I like girls. I like girls. I like boys. I like all sorts of people. Girls don’t turn me on sexually, if that’s what you’re asking.
VALERIE: You’re sweet when you’re lying.
DR RUTH COOPER: I’m not lying.
VALERIE: Do you like me?
DR RUTH COOPER: You know I do. I like you as a patient and as a person. You could be my child.
VALERIE: Your little human baby. I don’t want to be anyone’s child.
Children don’t exist.
DR RUTH COOPER: If you’d been my child, you wouldn’t have ended up here.
VALERIE: You’re beautiful without your glasses.
(Dr Ruth Cooper blushes and flicks through her notes.)
DR RUTH COOPER: The trial is fast approaching.
VALERIE: And you want us to talk about my childhood.
DR RUTH COOPER: What do you want to talk about?
VALERIE (gives back the glasses): Do you know why you lose all the time?
(Dr Ruth Cooper laughs and puts her glasses back on.)
VALERIE: Because I prefer being lucky at games, and you prefer being lucky at love. The concept of romantic love is just a method of keeping half the population imprisoned in suburban backyards. A devastatingly simple way of giving intelligent people the idea that dishcloths are more important than literature.
DR RUTH COOPER: I know nothing about love.
VALERIE: Well then Dr Cooper, I suggest we have another round so you have a chance to recoup your losses.
(Silence.)
VALERIE: Dr Ruth Cooper?
DR RUTH COOPER: I lied before. I dream of shooting all the men I meet. I hate the way that after intercourse they ask if they can do anything for me.
VALERIE: Take your glasses off, Cooper.
DR RUTH COOPER (takes off her glasses): I don’t want to be a psychiatrist any lo
nger.
VALERIE: It’ll be alright, Doctor. Concentrate now so you don’t lose any more money.
DR RUTH COOPER: Ever since you arrived here, I haven’t known what to do.
VALERIE: All we know is that you have an exceptionally underdeveloped poker face, Dr Cooper. But it’s O.K., Dr Cooper. There’s no reason to tell the truth when it’s so easy to lie.
New York, October 1967
You Are Invited to the Factory by Pop Artist Andy Warhol
In the elevator on the way up to the Factory, the mirror is dominated by your smile, your cherry-red lipstick and rosy-fevered cheeks, and in your coat pocket is the play, wrapped in tissue paper. Billy Name greets you in the lobby with open arms and piercing eyes and Andy Warhol appears from nowhere with kisses on the cheek and leftover streamers festooning his sweater and a Polaroid camera.
*
Columns of hash smoke rise above their back-combed pop-art hairstyles and Andy Warhol has that habit of gliding in and out of the wings, surfacing out of nowhere and then quietly vanishing into a sea of white walls and guests. His apparition emerges, a shimmering, glittering fagginess, only to melt away; his wonderful manner of emasculating and disarming himself.
ANDY: Hello, Valerie.
VALERIE: Andy Stupid Warhol.
BILLY: Valerie Solanas.
VALERIE: I see you’ve de-manned yourself in an exemplary fashion.
ANDY: Welcome to the Factory, Valerie. You haven’t been here before, have you?
VALERIE: Not as I recall. We need to get on with this Turd Session right away.
BILLY: Sure, Valerie. Wouldn’t you like something to drink first?
VALERIE: Some bubbly, please. And something strong to smoke. But first you have to list all the ways in which you are all turds. Say after me. I am a low-ly ab-ject t-urd.
ANDY: I am a turd, a lowly abject turd.
VALERIE (points at Billy): Good.
BILLY: What am I supposed to say?
VALERIE: I am a lowly abject turd.
BILLY: Oh yeah. I’m a turd, a lowly abject turd.
VALERIE: Great.
BILLY: What the hell is a Turd Session?
VALERIE: To help men in the Men’s Auxiliary of S.C.U.M., S.C.U.M. will conduct Turd Sessions, at which every man present will give a speech beginning with the sentence: “I am a turd, a lowly abject turd”, and then proceed to list all the ways in which he is. His reward for doing so will be the opportunity to fraternize after the session for a whole, solid hour with the SCUM who will be present.
ANDY: That sounds fantastic.
VALERIE: I’ve brought my play with me, Andy. Up Your Ass. I had some alternative titles: Up from the Slime, The Big Suck, and a few more. I want you to read it. And you, Mr Fat Turd (pokes Billy in the stomach) can run along for some bubbly. Then you can list all the ways in which you are.
ANDY: Are what?
VALERIE: Low-ly ab-ject t-urds.
ANDY: Sure, Valerie. Come and say hello to the others first.
VALERIE (takes the play out and hands it to Andy): For you, Andy. The only play worth putting on.
ANDY (leafs through it, smoking): Interesting, Valerie.
VALERIE: What do you think?
ANDY: Interesting, Valerie. It could be, Valerie, that we decide to produce it.
*
Andy’s face looks like an inflamed wound, his laugh reveals his decaying teeth beneath his silver wig, his clothes smell faintly of seaweed, he stammers and giggles. People have dispersed and are sitting on the shiny white floor, whispering to one another. They look up hastily without saying hello. Paul Morrissey passes with a bouquet of roses. Andy is swallowed up by one of the large white backdrops. You tell Sister White about it later:
when I got an invitation to the Factory, I went with no expectations and left with my handbag full of promises. I didn’t know much about Andy Warhol, mainly that he was a hotshot in New York, something to do with imitations and screen prints. I’d seen him on television when he was painting his nails and calling himself Miss Warhola and Miss World. I knew he was illiterate, he was leafing through fashion and muscle magazines without even understanding the captions and he used to spread a rumor about himself that he dressed as a bag lady and sneaked around New York at night giving out food to other bag ladies. I liked the Factory at once, there was always food and something to drink, they were all freaks and all around the walls drug addicts and prostitutes sat waiting for Andy to come and make art out of them. I decided straightaway that Andy would lead the Men’s Auxiliary of S.C.U.M., he was perfect, this sparkling little gay creature, the albino look, the silver wig
Open arms, wide gestures, champagne fizzing and popping in your mouth. The Silver Factory is a gigantic mirror and you are not sure how many people are actually prowling around; the silver mirrors reflect tenfold and distort and, when you are high, you speak to mirrored figures as well, and you are gratified to see that you look a freak even among freaks, in your floppy, sweaty boots and dirty fur coat. And it might be rather tedious to talk to mirrors, but since everything around Andy has the same flat, smooth surface, it does not matter.
*
Andy’s films are projected on the walls and, when you are not high, you stay close to them, instead of the mirrors. You are a black spider who loves the Factory. You tell Sister White about it afterwards:
there were shopping bags everywhere in the Factory. Andy loved shopping. He always had money. He bathed in money and grass. Shopping was part of art. He was involved in something to do with the boundaries between art and shopping. Art, my ass. The guy loved new things, he loved buying, loved having limitless money. He was a materialistic faggot, that’s all. The male “artist” is a contradiction in terms. Andy slid like a shadow across the Factory, a parasite on other people’s blood-stained memories. He brought me champagne and wanted to know all about my childhood and my plans for the future. I liked being there so very much, I wanted to be one of those needle junkies and fag-whores who sat along the walls, sweating and mumbling and waiting for Andy to come and make art out of them. They were very happy days. Andy laughed at everything I said. I read aloud from the manifesto. Those huge surfaces. I wanted the Factory to swallow me up forever.
“Great Art”
You stand in the Factory under an enormous screen on which Andy’s films are shown around the clock. “Blow Job”. “Taylor Mead’s Ass”. “Vinyl”. As Viva wanders around nearby, straightening pictures and vases, she casts a long look in your direction; she sounds like a reference book when she answers your questions.
VALERIE: Is that Andy’s film?
VIVA: “Blow Job”, from 1964.
VALERIE: What’s it about?
VIVA: A male prostitute who bleeds and snivels into the camera while he’s getting a blow job.
VALERIE: Ah. What else?
VIVA: That’s what it’s about.
VALERIE: Why is it about that?
VIVA: Because it’s art.
VALERIE: I think it’s a good thing for Andy that “Up Your Ass” turned up here at the Factory.
VIVA: It’s great art, Valerie.
VALERIE: Sure. It’s fantastic.
Elizabeth Duncan and Death, September 1967
It is night-time and Cosmogirl stands beneath a fluorescent light in the laboratory, screaming, wearing her lab coat with nothing underneath. She has called you in New York and you have taken the night train back and when you eventually arrive she does not recognize you. The decision has come from San Quentin that Elizabeth is to die on October 9, 1967 and this time it is final; your decision to live in New York without Cosmo is also final and irreversible. You are tired of phony science and stuffed animals and of her habit of spending her nights in strange adventures with strange men in strange cars.
*
The most beautiful girl, and the most grotesque. Her skin is dead and white, clammy and unfamiliar, and there is only one thing to do: take a taxi to the Supreme Court one last time and kneel before the
court, weeping and begging. You make her put on respectable clothes and you gather up all the documents on Elizabeth Duncan’s hopeless case.
*
There is not a judicial cock in this state that Cosmo has not taken care of. For a number of years, she has kept Elizabeth alive with the help of the soft tongue in her mouth. But this time neither the tongue nor the feather-light fingers can help, nor any other form of pleasure. America murders Elizabeth Duncan with three lethal injections and Cosmo loses everything that she was, her brilliance, her impudence, her will of steel, she even stops taking payment for her services, she becomes a missing laboratory animal, sleeping under the trees in University Park.
Notice to Unknown Writers, Published Autumn 1967 in New York Magazine
The Olympia Press, founded in Paris in 1953 (on a shoestring) by Maurice Girodias, allegedly to pervert American tourists into a pornographic way of life, published The Story of O in 1954, Lolita and The Ginger Man in 1955, all of de Sade’s novels and most of Henry Miller’s best works, Candy in 1958, The Naked Lunch and Durrell’s Black Book in 1959 – not to speak of dozens of other interesting authors, masterpieces and diversions.
Today, Maurice Girodias and The Olympia Press, because of allergy, have left de Gaulle’s Paris to make a fresh start in New York.
We are not interested in anyone famous, or half famous. Our function is to discover talent. Unknown authors are our specialty. You have been rejected by all existing publishing houses: well and good, you have a chance with us. We read everything – promptly, discriminately, and optimistically. Send your MSs to: the Editorial Department, The Olympia Press, 36 Gramercy Park East, New York, N.Y. 10003 – and don’t forget to add stamps for return mailing – as, after all, we may return your manuscript.
Chelsea Hotel, New York, November 1967
At the Chelsea Hotel you write A Young Girl’s Primer, which you intend to publish in The Village Voice, and you continually produce new versions of the manifesto. All your notes from Maryland lie spread out in the hotel room, all your letters to the editor, columns in the student newspaper, essays, all the texts you wrote with Cosmo. At night you sit outside on the fire escape, working. Everything falls into place, you write without thinking and without the abyss in your soul. There is no emptiness, no loneliness, no yearning for Cosmo, only oceans of joy and the heat of the tarmac. Every day new bouquets of vivid flowers in the lobby and your handbag filled with fabulous pillboxes.
The Faculty of Dreams Page 14