The Faculty of Dreams

by Sara Stridsberg

  ANDY (laughs and takes off the wig): My face looks like an ulcer without it. I look like an evil doll.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: Why are you crying?

  ANDY: I don’t know.

  VALERIE: It’s O.K. not to know. What are you thinking about?

  ANDY: I’m thinking that I don’t have any memories. I have nothing. I’m just a blank. The wig emphasizes the anonymity in my character.

  VALERIE: I think you’re quite cute without the wig.

  ANDY: I don’t want to be Andy Warhol.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: I’ve seen your other films.

  ANDY: Do you like them?

  VALERIE: No.

  ANDY (laughs): Why don’t you like them?

  VALERIE: Because they suck. Because they’re bad art. They’re just screwing art and voyeur art and nothing art.

  ANDY (laughs and cries): I don’t like being Andy Warhol.

  VALERIE: It’s O.K. to make bad art. There’s no price on your head for doing it.

  Elmhurst Psychiatric Hospital, June 1969

  The American Flag Waves from the Moon

  The television room is hot and sticky and it is deadly to linger in there. In the ward, summer increasingly holds sway. The patients are permitted to sunbathe in the hospital grounds wearing only their underwear. On the television are further reports of the murder attempt on Andy Warhol. It has nothing to do with you. You have always been in the hospital and here you will stay, letting the trees bleed to death outside your window.

  *

  Everything is in a torpor and your sheets smell of doom and nether realms, but time still evidently goes by outside. The ban on going farther than the flagpole is suddenly lifted and you are allowed to roam freely around the hospital grounds. Dorothy flickers past on the television screen and the picture sends lightning flashes of pain through your brain. And Sister White is there with her sweet voice in her persuasive nurse’s uniform, circling round you like one of Dorothy’s bluebottles and changing the channel every time Andy Warhol appears on the screen.

  *

  A reporter has been snooping around in Ventor with a camera team, this much you gather.

  Pets? Sexual assault? Blue-collar or white-collar? Issues around impulse control as a child?

  Dorothy is ravishing in sunglasses and polka-dot blouse. Her eyes cut to the camera and she uses difficult words that sound foreign in her mouth, as if dealing with a massive lump of foul-tasting chewing gum. The desert rises like a wild animal behind her face as she concentrates intently on the camera. Carried away by the attention or simply desperate? Probably carried away – the reporter is very good-looking – and it is a long time since you heard anything from Ventor.

  VALERIE: Where’s my doctor?

  SISTER WHITE: Who is your doctor?

  VALERIE: Dr Ruth Cooper.

  SISTER WHITE: She’s not here just now. She could be on vacation, could be leave of absence.

  VALERIE: Oh.

  SISTER WHITE: Would you like to go out in the park for a while?

  VALERIE: No thanks. I’m going to watch a show.

  SISTER WHITE: Walking in the park is good for the mind.

  VALERIE: Television shows are good for the mind. Do you have “Daddy Knows Best” here?

  SISTER WHITE: Of course. Shall I help you tune to the right channel?

  VALERIE: Tell Dr Cooper I’m glad she’s not here anymore.

  SISTER WHITE: She’s probably only on vacation. Don’t take it personally.

  VALERIE: I definitely won’t do that. I’ll ring Andy and tell him it wasn’t personal. Sharks are never personal. They’re never after personal revenge.

  Dr Ruth Cooper does not come back. The flowers behind her curtains are left to die; her coat hangs white and abandoned somewhere in the darkness; no longer does she sit at her window, closing her eyes, smoking cigarettes, and laughing at your jokes. The sun moves back and forth across the hospital grounds and she is there no more to show you the attic and the cellar and all the formaldehyde embryos, deformed and iridescent pink, and the stuffed birds. No more of her little questions, nor the cigarette lighter always at the ready in her coat pocket. Dr Ruth Cooper’s white coat disappears from Elmhurst, her jacket drowns in sunshine as she hurries across the hospital park, and, like all the rest, she forgets to say goodbye.

  *

  Dr Ruth Cooper liked letting you hold forth about different subjects, letting you wander at random between the stuffed animals, letting you join in the diagnoses; it did not matter that she wanted to talk about Dorothy the whole time. Sunshine streamed through the formaldehyde and all you wanted to speak about was male destructiveness, the way embryo boys swallow their girl twins, fetus in fetu, about the experiments in Maryland’s yellow laboratories. You found an old lectern and there you stood, giving a lecture in her white coat while she sat by the window making a note of everything you said. Without her glasses she looked like a little boy.

  . . . I only want to speak to Dr Ruth Cooper . . .

  VALERIE: Will someone be so kind as to fetch Dr Ruth Cooper?

  PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC: Dr Ruth Cooper is no longer here. Today you’re talking to me.

  VALERIE: I can help you with your diagnoses. Dr Ruth and I collaborated. I wore her white coat when we worked on diagnoses. Dr Ruth Cooper let me give lectures in the attic on all sorts of subjects.

  PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC: Thank you, Miss Solanas. You just need to answer my questions. You’ve said that Dorothy was away for entire nights. Did she hit you? Were you an unloved child?

  VALERIE: I’ll help you. Diagnosis: Fucking angry. Pissed off. Man-hating tigress. Hustler. All married women are whores. Are you married? Meat is murder. Sex is prostitution. Prostitution is murder. A piece of dead meat. Where’s Dr Ruth Cooper?

  PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC: Tell me about Dorothy.

  VALERIE: I can tell you about my ass, if you like.

  PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC: Despite your energetic attempts to appear a hard, tough and cynical misanthropist, you are in fact a terrified, depressed child. That’s my impression. A terrified little child. Dorothy didn’t look after you. There was no home to speak of. I would describe your early life as wretched and miserable. No money, no love, no caring to speak of, sexual abuse, assault. You’re just a child. Schizophrenic reaction of the paranoid type with deep depression and serious potential for destructive acts.

  VALERIE: Etcetera etcetera. O.K. Thanks very much. Cut. It’s very, very interesting, but we’ll cut it there. That’s it for today. Thank you and goodbye.

  *

  It is stormy in the hospital garden. Dr Ruth Cooper hurries through the trees to collect her things after office hours. You sit by the large window in the dining room and look at her bright summer jacket flailing ominously between the trees. From a distance she looks like a huge bird in distress. Everything you wish for now is connected with death. Cosmogirl, for example.

  Chelsea Hotel, February 1968

  Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press moves into the Chelsea Hotel and you agree to meet in the hotel bar downstairs. You spread your texts out over the bar and smoke cigarettes in a black holder while you wait for Maurice.

  VALERIE: How’s it going for this little dive?

  BARTENDER: I think it’s alright, thanks.

  VALERIE: Things would improve if you stopped playing Muzak.

  BARTENDER: It’s not Muzak.

  VALERIE: Bullshit. Switch the Muzak off.

  BARTENDER: It’s not Muzak.

  VALERIE: Whatever you call it, turn it off.

  BARTENDER: It’s Sammy Davis.

  VALERIE: Muzak.

  BARTENDER: Sammy Davis is a great artist.

  VALERIE: Never heard of him. Muzak.

  BARTENDER: You can pick up your papers. This isn’t a garbage dump.

  VALERIE: It’s my peripatetic office.

  BARTENDER: Call it what you want. Take the office away.

  VALERIE: I’m waiting for someone. An important meet
ing. An important contact. A publisher. I’m a writer. You can put that in the little notebook of yours. W-R-I-T-E-R.

  BARTENDER: Pick your papers up.

  VALERIE: It’s an important meeting. I’m nervous. You ought to offer me a couple of long cocktails instead of standing here distracting me.

  BARTENDER: We don’t give away free drinks here.

  VALERIE: Maurice Girodias. Publisher from France. He’s advertised for new talent. I telephoned him immediately. You’ll regret it if you don’t give me a few drinks. S.C.U.M. will come after your ass.

  BARTENDER: Remove your papers now, madam.

  VALERIE (prods him in the chest with the mouth of her cigarette holder): If you remove the Muzak, sweetheart.

  BARTENDER: O.K., madam. What would you like to drink? A cocktail on the house for guests who are kind and take their papers away.

  VALERIE: Thanks. I’ll have vodka with ice and lemon. And you can turn that Muzak down a bit.

  Maurice is elegant and pinstriped and he kisses your cheeks with lips that are cool. He is full of politesse and pleasantries and smells strongly of cologne and deep pockets. It is quite obvious he is “your man”.

  MAURICE: I’m happy we could meet so soon.

  VALERIE: Me too.

  MAURICE: What would you like to drink?

  VALERIE: Spirits.

  MAURICE (to the bartender): A whisky for the lady.

  VALERIE: Alright. If you’re having a whisky, I’ll have a vodka with ice and lemon.

  MAURICE (laughs): O.K. A vodka for Valerie Solanas and this lady has changed her mind and will have a glass of red wine instead. A Beaujolais Nouveau.

  VALERIE (knocks back her vodka when it arrives and taps the empty glass on the bar): Very French.

  MAURICE: We’ll have another straightaway . . . Tell me about yourself, Valerie.

  VALERIE: Will I get a dollar if I tell you something really disgusting?

  MAURICE: Of course.

  VALERIE: O.K. . . . M-E-N.

  MAURICE: What did you say?

  VALERIE: Give me a dollar.

  MAURICE: Let’s hear it then . . .

  VALERIE: Thanks. Nice handkerchief, by the way. Is it for blowing your nose into?

  MAURICE: It’s not that sort of handkerchief. Tell me now, or there won’t be any money.

  VALERIE: I’ve already said it. You’ll have to give me another dollar if you want to hear it again.

  MAURICE (takes a banknote out of his breast pocket): Here you are.

  VALERIE: M-E-N.

  (After a moment’s thought, Maurice laughs.)

  MAURICE: Tell me about yourself.

  VALERIE: Man-hater. Writer. Scientist. Surfer.

  MAURICE: Interesting. What have you written?

  VALERIE: A play. “Up Your Ass”. A manifesto. S.C.U.M. Society for Cutting Up Men. And other works in progress.

  MAURICE: Interesting. What sort of play?

  VALERIE: About Bongi. About a man-hating tigress who plays around with everything and everybody. A rescue mission for world literature and world drama.

  MAURICE: And the manifesto?

  VALERIE: Man-haters’ manifesto. The only book worth buying.

  MAURICE: Interesting. Tell me, why do you write?

  VALERIE: Men’s flagrant inferiority. Nature’s true order. We need an agenda for Eternity and Utopia.

  MAURICE: And men?

  VALERIE: Creeps and masochists. You ride the waves to your own demise.

  MAURICE: I mean – may I read the things you’ve written?

  VALERIE: You shall read them. Give me another of those brown cigarettes and a few dollars and you can read straight out of my ass if you like.

  MAURICE: What did you say the play was called?

  VALERIE: “Up Your Ass”.

  Maurice, Bongi and you dance to the wonderful disco music of the Chelsea bar. In the music you hear the sound of plane after plane taking off. Maurice has given you an advance of six hundred dollars to write a novel based on the manifesto.

  MAURICE: Where do you live?

  VALERIE: Nowhere.

  MAURICE: Where do you come from?

  VALERIE: The desert.

  Elmhurst Psychiatric Hospital, June 1969

  The Patients Are Exhausted with the Heat, the Trial Approaches, Andy Has Decided Not to Testify

  Sister White keeps you company in the corridor outside Dr Cooper’s consulting room, where the notice on the door will remain the same for the rest of the summer: BACK SOON. PLEASE BE SEATED WHILE YOU WAIT. Sister White appears to have the power to walk through walls and suddenly she is there beside you; she is unlike anyone else on the staff of the hospital, the only one who is not obsessed with Andy Warhol’s medical condition and the only one dressed in white who is gentle as well.

  *

  Waves of freckles swarm across her arms; she listens without interrupting and she offers you mints and ice-cold water in small white paper cups.

  *

  For the time being it is not clear whether she is an angel or a nurse, but equally, for the time being, that does not matter. There is so much that is unclear right now. All you know is that the trees have huge wounds on their trunks, and if someone asks you where you come from, the answer is that you come from your mother’s hands.

  VALERIE: I. Will. Only. Talk. To. Dr. Ruth. Cooper.

  SISTER WHITE: Dr Ruth Cooper isn’t here at the moment, but she’s written a report about you that’s going to be used at the trial. A very nice report. Would you like me to read it to you?

  VALERIE: You can read whatever you want. While you’re at it, please read something out of the hospital administration’s policy for confiscation of personal belongings and the psychiatrists’ action plan for hypothetical emergencies of an acute and – from the patient’s point of view – incomprehensible nature.

  SISTER WHITE: Dr Ruth Cooper writes: “Valerie Solanas is fantastic. Valerie Solanas has a fabulous use of words. Valerie Solanas has a magnificent sense of humor, black as night and idiosyncratic. Valerie Solanas is obsessed with sex. Valerie Solanas is brilliantly intelligent. Valerie Solanas turns all conversation to her favorite topic, Men’s Flagrant Inferiority.”

  (Silence.)

  SISTER WHITE: You’ve made quite an impression on Dr Ruth Cooper.

  VALERIE: It’s fantastic of Dr Ruth Cooper to have produced this piece of paper. I myself have been working on my report about Dr Ruth Cooper all summer. If you take out the shorthand book, Sister White, perhaps we can put this in the trial too.

  SISTER WHITE: I’d like to hear your report.

  VALERIE: Out with the notebook . . . keep up, Sister White . . . Valerie is fantastic. Dr Ruth Cooper kills time in the tedium of the psychiatric clinic. Valerie has a fabulous use of words. Dr Ruth Cooper makes notes in the medical record and believes that one day they will become a novel or a collection of poetry. Foundation course in psychiatry. All psychiatrists are failed psychopaths and mental patients. Valerie has a magnificent sense of humor. Dr Ruth Cooper should have paid for a ticket. Besides, she has a serious tendency to mistake tears for laughter. Foundation course in psychiatry and linguistics. Laughing is a substitute for weeping in the same way that words are a substitute for screams. Valerie is obsessed with sex. Dr Ruth Cooper is obsessed with Valerie. She is obsessed with the idea there are two separate biologically based genders that determine everything from the weather to childhood. She has so much to learn. A space rocket is ready for Dr Ruth Cooper, destination next century. Foundation course in bedside manner. Most patients prefer to project themselves toward the future, rather than their dirty, piss-soaked past. Valerie turns all conversation to her favorite topic, Men’s Flagrant Inferiority. Dr Ruth Cooper uses her working hours to improve her skills at the patient’s expense. The patient will eventually send a bill, but at the moment lacks a current address for Dr Ruth Cooper. The hospital administration will not cooperate. And the trees outside her window bleed to death.

  SISTER WHITE: I understa
nd you miss having a doctor.

  VALERIE: No. Incidentally, forget that last part, cross out the part about the trees. It’s possible they’ve stopped bleeding by now, it’s a while since I looked out. I don’t need a doctor; I need a decent life.

  SISTER WHITE: When you arrived at Elmhurst your face was white and you were having epileptic fits. You said: Well, if they could put one man on the moon, why not all of them? I laughed and let you smoke indoors. You were electric and epileptic. You returned continually to man’s flagrant inferiority.

  VALERIE: I lost my way in America. I never found the road home.

  It was all cold, blue sharks. I was a sick child. I longed for Louis. I longed for the electricity, the tingling sensation in my legs and arms. It was impossible to love me. I raced across the desert. It was bright and white and lonely and I took my things and left. Everything inside me screamed, my heart, Dorothy, the flickering light. The soup bowls and bottles from the night before were still on the table, wine stains, a filthy cloth, Dorothy’s pink letters, the insects chasing each other across the plastic tablecloth. It smelled of rain and water and gasoline and old wine. There was sun. Ventor. Desert animals. Dorothy. A lizard was standing in Moran’s old whisky glass, looking at me. It was windy that day. I put the lizard inside my jumper and ran.

  SISTER WHITE: I think you should sleep for a while.

  VALERIE: I laughed and flew straight into the light. I’m a suicidal goddamn whore. Is this story almost over? Is Dr Ruth Cooper coming back soon? Cosmogirl? Dorothy? Andy Warhol, is he still in hospital, playing dead?

  SISTER WHITE: It’s night-time, Valerie. You’re tired. I’ll hold your hand while you fall asleep.

  VALERIE: I don’t intend to sleep. Remember, I’m the only sane woman here.

  Bristol Hotel, April 21, 1988

  VALERIE: I think I’ve wet myself again.

  NARRATOR: Then it’s lucky I’m here.

  VALERIE: Will you hold my hand when I go?

  NARRATOR: I’ll hold your hand.

  (Silence.)

  NARRATOR: What are you thinking about?

  VALERIE: Blood oaks. Sugar maples. I dream about enormous American trees. I dream I’m under the huge blood oaks doing some target practice with Cosmogirl. I dream about her laugh.