The Faculty of Dreams

by Sara Stridsberg

  *

  This is your place. New York, Chelsea, the ’60s, political beings and paradoxes, freaks, artists, utopias. People who write and people who make art. Telephone calls down to the hotel’s little desk clerk make you happy and calm. His fleeting giggle down the line and the rays of sunshine cast into the room.

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: Lobby.

  VALERIE: Is that the little clerk?

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: How can I help you, daaarling?

  VALERIE: I need a new telephone. A dry telephone with no crap on the wires.

  LITTLE DESK CLERK (laughs): We’ll change your phone immediately.

  VALERIE: I’d like a black telephone. It has to be clean, you need to wash it carefully. I don’t want to have other people’s breath and thoughts when I make my calls.

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: I’ll change your telephone myself.

  VALERIE: I want to have the phone disconnected up to six o’clock. I’m writing. You can put that in that logbook of yours. Put that I’m writing. Put that I’m writing the manifesto. Put that the phone has to be disconnected and clean. Listen to me.

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: Yes.

  VALERIE: And another thing, I need more light in the room. The ceiling light is too faint. I’m going blind writing in the dark all night.

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: I’ll fix it.

  VALERIE: Tomorrow?

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: Tomorrow, first thing.

  VALERIE: And I don’t want anyone going into my room when I’m not there. No cleaning. No cleaning needed here. I’m an excellent cleaner. Listen to me now, listen stupid little—

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: —I’m listening . . .

  VALERIE: Don’t interrupt me . . . Sex . . . Sex is a refuge for the mindless. The more mindless the woman, the more deeply embedded in masculine culture. In short, the nicer she is, the more sexual. The nicest women in our society are raving sex maniacs . . . Do you follow?

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: I follow.

  VALERIE: To continue . . . On the other hand, women who are least embedded in masculine culture are least nice. Crass, simple souls who reduce fucking to fucking; who are too childish for the grown-up world of suburbs, mortgages, mops and baby shit; too selfish to raise kids and husbands; too uncivilized to give a shit about anyone’s opinion of them; too arrogant to respect Daddy, the Greats or the deep wisdom of the Ancients; who trust only their own gutter instincts; who equate Culture with chicks . . .

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: That’s very funny . . .

  VALERIE: Thanks . . . To continue . . . Unhampered by propriety, niceties, discretion, unhampered by public opinion and morals, unhampered by the respect of assholes, and always cool, lowdown and dirty, S.C.U.M. gets around . . . and around and around . . . they’ve seen the whole show, every bit of it, the fucking scene, the blow-job scene, the dyke scene – they’ve covered the whole waterfront, been under every dock and pier, the peter pier, the pussy pier. You’ve got to go through a lot of sex to get to anti-sex and S.C.U.M.’s been through it all, and now they’re ready for a new show; S.C.U.M. wants to crawl out from under the dock, move, take off, burst out. But S.C.U.M. isn’t in control yet; S.C.U.M. is still in the gutter of our society, which, if it’s not deflected from its present course, and if the bomb doesn’t drop, will hump itself to death . . .

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: Valerie.

  VALERIE: Yes?

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: Everyone’s going to love you.

  VALERIE: I know. You can be part of S.C.U.M.’s Secret Auxiliary. I mean Men’s Auxiliary. You give things away, you’re kind. You know the meaning of life is love. Love is like friendship. Sex is not part of a relationship. It’s a very solitary experience, not at all creative. Sex involves a gross waste of time. You have to go through a lot of sex to get to anti-sex.

  LITTLE DESK CLERK: I have to work now. I’ll come up in a while.

  VALERIE: Come as soon as you can. Knock first. Otherwise you can forget what I said about the auxiliary. Remember. As soon as you can. Move your little ass. And no sex. Sex is a hang-up. Write that down in that little hotel book of yours. Please send a postcard to Cosmo Duncan and tell her that sex is just a hang-up.

  *

  It should have been you and Cosmo and New York. It does not matter it is only you. It makes no difference anymore that Cosmo is in Maryland, screwing lab directors. Because everything suddenly seems to fall into your lap: an abandoned typewriter, easy fuck-money, Andy Warhol and the Factory, lucidity in your writing. The words strike like lightning inside you. This is your city, your land. Everything up to this point has been depression; you decide that you have always been unhappy and now you are sharp, unbreakable.

  *

  Early in the mornings you sit at the typewriter, working. As soon as light breaks, you leap out of bed, run down and buy a pot of coffee with vodka, light your cigarettes, and there is that crystal clarity, the irritation, like masturbating for hours in vain. You write as if the typewriter were attached to your arms, a strange brightness in your head that keeps you awake and makes you run between the skyscrapers in your lace nightgown to deliver new versions of your play to the Factory.

  New York is snowy, febrile, skittish. November is a remarkable month and the skyscrapers reach for the heavens and you do not yearn for Maryland, for Alligator Reef or Ventor; for the first time you yearn for nowhere and your nights are dreamless, snow-white. At the Chelsea Hotel a male artist pays you a visit with a dildo and pays the rent for the rest of the month; your groin does not stop bleeding afterwards and the killing machine keeps operating in Florida, Arkansas, Nevada, Texas, California.

  *

  Cosmogirl has stopped writing threatening letters to the state that murdered her mother. Instead she calls you in New York, rapid drowning breaths, the pounding of the sea in the background, her voice wandering and thick with smoke and too much unfamiliar skin, as if her words have spent too long under water. The smell of car and ocean forces its way into the hotel room, her deepest, wildest doe-eyed look, a scientific rhetoric crumbling more and more. Everywhere signs of Cosmo infiltrate, inside your dirty underclothes and into the hotel room, blinding white with sunshine and promises. But increasingly Bongi from “Up Your Ass” takes over; mounds of drafts pile up around you. The typewriter, the pace, the loneliness, the conviction. The moment you replace the receiver, you forget her.

  COSMO: It’s me, Valerie.

  VALERIE: Hello my treasure, what are the rabbits doing?

  COSMO: Larking about in the park.

  VALERIE: Have they written any new novels?

  COSMO: The black-and-white pudgy one did.

  VALERIE: What happened?

  COSMO: She finished it and then she read through it and said it was the best novel she’d ever read. Then she left it under a tree and forgot she’d written it.

  VALERIE: And the mice?

  COSMO: Revolution in the cages.

  VALERIE: Have you wiped out the male mice yet?

  COSMO: Soon.

  Your Long Silences with Cosmo

  Cosmo loves twirling the telephone cord around her while she talks. You can see her in your mind, making the cord into a dress in a student dorm that is moving farther and farther away from you. You cannot concentrate, her voice is a foreign, murky pool, and as she speaks, you read through the last sheet of paper in the typewriter, put in a new one and light a cigarette. You know, Cosmo, it’s like having a lucky engine in my body when I write. I’m so tired of stuffed animals and professors. You know, Cosmo, when I write, the trees outside look as though they’re clad in gold paper. She takes long, uneven breaths, and sometimes it sounds as though she is asleep. You have time to write another page, before the conversation carries on and then she might suddenly be wide awake, electric.

  COSMO: What are you doing? Do you miss me? When are you going to come? When are we going to get married?

  VALERIE: Working. Soon. Already married. In our hearts. Any news?

  COSMO: A New York artist was here and he planted a wish tre
e in the park. Visitors could fasten their wishes onto the tree on little slips of pink paper. I’ve been there several times and made a wish.

  VALERIE: What did you wish for?

  COSMO: Elizabeth. You. Most of all that she’ll come back. That you’ll come back. How’s New York?

  VALERIE: Cold. I’ve invited myself to various hot parties with various hotshots. I’ve been to Andy Warhol’s at the Factory a few times. I’ve drunk expensive champagne and looked at his ridiculous pop art.

  COSMO: Has he said anything about your play?

  VALERIE: Soon. Everything’s on the turn now. I know it. Soon Andy will decide he’s going to produce it.

  COSMO: The mice miss you. And the rabbits. All their novels are about you now.

  VALERIE: And the Lab Rat. Do you see him?

  COSMO: Sometimes.

  VALERIE: Do you suck his cock?

  COSMO: I’d rather be with you. You know that.

  VALERIE: Sex is a hang-up. You know that.

  COSMO: I’ll be back soon. Are you keeping me a place in the Chelsea bar?

  VALERIE: Sure.

  COSMO: He thinks you’re the most talented one in the university, Valerie.

  VALERIE: I think he’s an asshole. He’s the supervisor of a load of incarcerated mice, that’s all. If he’d been smart, he’d have given me money for the project. Smart lab directors don’t stop smart projects. Smart lab directors don’t shit their pants because male mice turn out to be superfluous, self-destructive and a danger to the species. He shouldn’t have taken it personally, he should have kept on riding the waves to his own demise.

  COSMO: It was because you didn’t want me.

  VALERIE: Kiss my ass.

  COSMO: You know I’d love to kiss your ass. I dream about it at night. Why don’t you let me do it?

  VALERIE: I don’t have time for sex. I don’t have time to talk any longer. There’s a publisher in my sights. They advertised for new writers and it’s me they’re looking for. They just don’t know it yet.

  COSMO: Will you call?

  VALERIE: I’ll call.

  Bristol Hotel, April 20, 1988

  NARRATOR: Shall I light a cigarette for you?

  VALERIE: I’m writing. And I can’t smoke anymore because of my lungs.

  NARRATOR: What are you writing?

  VALERIE: It’s about mice and language and loneliness.

  NARRATOR: And why did you stop writing?

  VALERIE: Silence of the mammal.

  NARRATOR: You’re a girl, not an animal.

  VALERIE: A she-mammal or a female child. I was on the borderline between human being and chaos. Cosmo dreamed about filming captive animals in America and Europe and she planned to visit every zoological institution open to visitors. She loved animals, dead and living. One summer we travelled around filming stuffed animals in museums.

  NARRATOR: And why did you stop writing?

  VALERIE: Up to now the history of all societies has been the history of silence. Rebel, psychoanalyst, experimental writer, woman’s potential as dissident. Language has become increasingly a physical substance whose only function is to underline my loneliness.

  The Factory, December 1967

  New White Industrial Buildings on Union Square

  Andy’s pockmarked face opens to the spotlight. A gently droning, drowsy sound from his film camera, only you and the silver wig and your wooden chairs in an orb of light, the rest of the Factory in compact darkness. Andy has red patches on his cheeks, his eyes are infected, and he has invited you for pink champagne and fried chicken. A light breeze in the room from an open window somewhere in the dark and a bouquet of flowers under your chair. Strangers move around in the blackness, it does not matter who listens, the light shines only on you and Andy Warhol.

  VALERIE: May I say whatever I want in the film?

  ANDY: Say what you want. We’re improvising.

  VALERIE: Aren’t there any lines we have to use?

  ANDY: You’re talented enough not to need lines.

  VALERIE: I’ve never been in a film before.

  ANDY: I’m not interested in actors; I’m interested in people.

  VALERIE: I don’t like them.

  ANDY: Who?

  VALERIE: People.

  ANDY: Why?

  VALERIE: Because they fuck me in my face as soon as they get a chance.

  ANDY (laughs): The camera’s rolling.

  VALERIE: What sort of film is it?

  ANDY: Is it true you went to grad school?

  VALERIE: Grad school was shit.

  ANDY: What did you study?

  VALERIE: Can’t remember. It was a shit faculty.

  ANDY: And your upbringing?

  VALERIE: I was raised all over.

  ANDY: Where?

  VALERIE: In the desert. Blue-collar America.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: You know, I like being in the Factory.

  ANDY: It’s great having you here.

  VALERIE: I didn’t think you liked women.

  ANDY: I like you.

  VALERIE: Do you sleep with men?

  ANDY: I suppose so.

  VALERIE: I don’t know what to do with my arms. Shall I look into the camera?

  ANDY: It’s good when you look into the camera while you’re speaking. You have intense eyes; you’re observing your surroundings like an artist.

  VALERIE: I mean – do you sleep with men?

  ANDY: If I slept with anyone it would be with men. Now tell me where you come from. Tell me about your father.

  VALERIE: I have no father. Politically I’m a lesbian, politically I’m fatherless, and politically I’m a woman.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: I still have his name. It’s incredible.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: Louis Solanas.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: Dorothy loved him, she wept a river of tears when he left. Dorothy has always had extremely bad taste.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: Sex is a refuge for the mindless.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: The nicest women in our society are raving sex maniacs.

  ANDY: Tell me more, Valerie. I like it when you tell me about your childhood. You describe it like an artist.

  VALERIE: There was a darkness that descended just before my seventh birthday. The darkness was called Louis Solanas and I behaved like an idiot. There was always one picnic or another by the river. Dorothy was there every time and the light was so strong and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I fell asleep and dreamed I was flying over snow-capped mountains and that people were standing underneath, applauding. When I woke, Louis was lying beside me and I’m still called Solanas. It’s unbelievable. My dress was snow-white, I never had a white dress after that.

  ANDY: Don’t stop.

  VALERIE: It was the way things always are, I suppose. He had his hands inside my white dress, the desert animals were screeching in the distance, there was a smell of sausage, a smell of water. There was little more to it than me letting him. And then a darkness like any other, and then the light coming out of the trees onto his hands.

  ANDY: Tell me more about Louis.

  VALERIE: When it’s black outside you might as well be dead.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: Why should I tell you about all this?

  ANDY: I like listening. I have no memories myself. I like other people’s memories. It connects me to other people. It makes me real. Just tell me, I’ll listen, we’re the only ones here.

  VALERIE: It was nothing special, really. Louis used to screw me in the porch seat after Dorothy had gone into town. The fabric on the seat cover was covered with roses and I counted the roses and the stars while I rented out my little pussy for no money. And I don’t know why, but some chewing gum got stuck in my hair every time. It must have fallen out of my mouth. We used to cut out the stickiest snarls afterwards and he would chain-smoke. The strange thing is, I sometimes miss the electricity and that tingl
ing sensation in my legs and arms.

  ANDY: I just want to cry when you talk about it.

  VALERIE: There’s really nothing to cry about. All fathers want to fuck their daughters. Most of them do. A minority refrain, for some unknown reason. I’ve been fucked by America. It’s absolutely alright and absolutely all wrong. The world is one long yearning to go back.

  ANDY: Being born is like being kidnapped and then being sold as a slave.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: What do you look like without the wig?

  ANDY: I never take it off, ever.

  VALERIE: Why is it silvery gray?

  ANDY: I want to fend off aging and death.

  VALERIE: And how well do you think you’re succeeding?

  ANDY (laughs): So-so.

  (Silence.)

  ANDY: I agree with you that sex is vile.

  VALERIE: The intimacy factory. Fucked to death in every country in the world. Alienated and aliens.

  (Andy stops filming and lets the camera slowly drop to his knee. You reach for it and continue filming.)

  ANDY: I love all that in the manifesto about sex.

  VALERIE: The whole manifesto is about sex.

  ANDY: About the peter pier and the pussy pier.

  VALERIE: I know. Sex is a hang-up. We don’t have time to waste on pointless sex. We have to make art now, little Andy.

  ANDY: You have to go through a lot of sex to get to anti-sex.

  VALERIE: I see you’ve been reading your S.C.U.M.

  ANDY (holds his hand motionless over the wig): I daren’t show myself without it anymore.

  VALERIE: Take it off.

  ANDY: I look awful.

  VALERIE: It’s O.K. All men do.