The Faculty of Dreams

by Sara Stridsberg

  VALERIE: I want my play back.

  VIVA: Valerie, that play was too dirty even for us.

  VALERIE: It’s not nice to steal other people’s plays.

  VIVA: The amusing thing about your paranoia is that you have nothing any sensible person would be interested in stealing.

  MORRISSEY: Goodbye, Valerie. I hope we don’t see you again. There’s no point in hanging around outside the Factory. Andy still won’t want to speak to you.

  VALERIE: Remember . . . Remember . . . Remember I’m the only sane woman here.

  The Presidents

  A. Political machines. Political paradoxes. I had my fluffy silver fox fur. High white boots. I missed all the protests and demonstrations.

  B. Amendment to the constitution. The Treaty Factory. The White House. The white president. Some things do not change. Some things never change. You have to stand still when I speak to you. You have to close your eyes and open that sexy little mouth of yours. That sexy little hole in your face and between your legs. Sexual politics. The whole world would have loved me by now.

  C. They were only false promises. There never was an amendment to the constitution. They walked along the streets of Chicago in their white skirts. They shed tears on the tarmac. A hundred thousand handbags washed up on the beaches.

  D. August 26, 1980. Sarah Weddington. Eleanor Smeal. Florence Howe. Bella Abzug. Someone chains herself to the railings outside the Republican Party’s headquarters in Washington. The Second Stage. Betty Friedan sucks cock in the White House. The white architecture. The white witch. Sex is, itself, a sublimation.

  E. I walk across New York in my bra and girdle. Welcome to happiness. Who is president of America? I actually have no idea. The Lavender Menace. They toss their bras and girdles into The Freedom Trash Can.

  F. Remember that I am sick and longing to die. Remember that I am the only sane woman here. The feminine mystique. Self-proclaimed revolutionaries. Disorders in every thought. Patriarchal hegemony.

  G. Paranoid associations. They dreamed of publishing the manifesto. They dreamed of a feminist sanctuary. Time passed, publishing houses kept their bordello wallpaper, their overgrown vocabulary. In Washington, women’s rights became a bad joke, embarrassing. The first wave came and went. The second wave rinsed every thought away.

  H. The Equal Rights Amendment turned into a social club, where ex-suffragettes came out with their confessions. Emma Goldman was deported, cases of insanity increased, tuberculosis, diabetes, various nasty cancerous tumors on society and the social mother. Obviously, I knew they were lying to me. Obviously, I knew nothing was for real. That novel. That play. The manifesto, the satire. When I left, they laughed at me like a pack of desert animals.

  I. There were only superwomen. It was the second wave. They were all courageous, they all loved sucking cock. Passion. Obviously, I knew they were laughing at me.

  J. Suffragettes. One by one they joined the underworld. Lung cancer, heart attacks, shark attacks. The inquests never ended. Formalities were set aside. It was overrun with weeds around the house. There were no people left in the old house in Washington. Former HQ. Women’s Party. The suffrage movement.

  K. It was no game. These were not fun-sized demonstrations. Miss Pankhurst chained herself to a lamppost. Rioters set fire to themselves in the street, went on hunger strike, were imprisoned. The future. Future generations. They are dead now. Miss Pankhurst. Clark Gable. The moon.

  L. The performative dynamic in those girls. Their pseudoradicalness. The biological relationship between men and women. They always returned to that. Sexual love between men and women without martyrdom. Welcome to happiness.

  M. We chained ourselves to the lampposts. We went on hunger strikes. Women died in the demonstrations. Strangers sent turds and semen through the post. They locked us up, we got out again, they locked us up, we were back on the streets. Fuck you Miss Pankhurst. The white blouse. That was 1913. I had seen her on Fifth Avenue. The next summer she died from her injuries at the racecourse.

  N. Atlantic City emptied of tourists and casinos and demonstrators. The Freedom Trash Can abandoned on the boardwalk. Underclothes destroyed by rain. Of course, I knew they were all laughing at me.

  O. There was not a problem I could put my finger on. Yet still I was in despair. I walked around my backyard all day long. With nothing to do.

  P. It was after the revelation of the feminine mystique, after Watergate, after Agent Orange. They did their gardening on Long Island. They no longer attended demonstrations. Sexual politics. You dreamed of a revolutionary in every bedroom. You dreamed of occupying and eradicating every bedroom. In retrospect, they said: It was not political at all, it was simply personal. In retrospect, they said: It was not the enemy who frightened us; it was our violent sisters.

  Q. I was dressed in a flowing white fur. High white boots. I did not fit in anywhere. I had my pockets full of filthy knives. There was Muzak playing in my ears. Flimflam artists and other sharks shouting (or wanking, or pissing, or crying) in my face. I wanted to go home. I cried out for someone like you.

  R. The meetings were lonely white fields. The laboratory mice would have wept if they had seen you there. Samantha would have wept. Women’s movement. There were no amazons. It was a mixed gathering. An experiment. It is never too late to change.

  S. The suffragettes rejected all forms of male company. I am the only sane woman here. The little songbird flew out of the doll’s house. The future gave her the right. The white blouse. She threw herself in front of the king’s horse. The white blouse was stained with blood then. Skirts torn to shreds. After the funeral they decided to join forces with the men, they decided to employ peaceful methods. Mixed demonstrations. You can’t fight communism with perfume.

  T. I had to stand absolutely still, or I would have fallen apart.

  U. There were no stars. There were only crystal nights, crystal-clear thoughts, a concentration of human fluids. Take it all from me, do it, that’s what I want. I should have learned to say no. Take it all from me, do it, that’s what I want you to do. If he had been drinking, it was of no consequence. Another act of brutality. Brutality of the kind I do not want to remember, cannot remember. The sky was wild that night. An emptiness I could relate to. Trapped in a fool’s reality, and enjoying it.

  V. Sexual politics. Intimate structures. Organization of love. Organization of rape. Red-light districts. Special areas of the city sprang up. Take it all from me. Do it. It’s what I want.

  W. National Organization for Women. We decided right at the start that we wanted to join forces with men. Without men, no women’s movement.

  X. Blue smoke between the trunks. Frost in all the trees. Burning white witches. Millet. Atkinson. Brownmiller. Firestone. Solanas. Davis. Morgan. Steinem. Flowerpots dead in all the windows.

  Y. N.O.W.’s founders. Kay Clarenbach looked after her three children in a corrugated shack in the desert while her husband studied at Columbia. Muriel Fox had a husband who was a brain surgeon. (God, how unhealthy, no surprise she was an airhead.) While the first meeting took place, he waited in a hotel room nearby with the children. When she returned, the television screen was flickering.

  Z. Politics. Sexual politics. Why should we care about politics? Why should we care about what happens when we’re dead?

  33 Union Square, Morning of June 3, 1968, Like Being in a Dream

  It is a dream with black claws again, perhaps the last. You are back in Union Square. A smell of smoke lingers around you and you remember you have set fire to all the waste bins in the park. You and Andy are at the doors to the elevator in the entrance to the Factory. Andy has just returned from Coney Island and you have lipstick around the edges of your lips (remember it is a political act) and the gun aimed at his heart (a .32 caliber). In the dream you have been waiting there all evening and into the night and replica Andy never comes, and now it is morning and the blinding sun comes streaming in. There is a strange calm in the Factory, no complicated fancy art l
amps yet, no furniture, no assistants, no tortuous psychedelic music, just bare light bulbs crackling, just you and the monster art parasite Andy Warhol, and Andy Warhol already has the marks of three gunshots on his upper body. It seemed unreal, like watching a movie. Only the pain seemed real. The film stars on the walls are your character witnesses, staring at you, bewitched, out of their frames: Shirley Temple, Mae West, Joan Bennett, Lana Turner, Louise Brooks, Marlene Dietrich, Kay Francis.

  *

  The desert birds screech in the desert and Andy takes off his wig and covers his chest and heart with it and cries like a forlorn child and for one burning second you wish you could save him, but the gunshot wounds are already showing on his body. There is only one manuscript, and all you need now is concentration and tunnel vision. And at that very moment in the dream (and it is always the same dream) your hearing goes and black pools of blood spread over your coat and a gigantic silver screen with all of Andy’s lines drops down from the ceiling. A crystal clarity unfolds in the room. Andy holds the silver wig to his heart.

  Valerie, no, no . . . don’t do it . . .

  Andy holds the silver wig like a shield in front of his chest. Seconds of pain like snow on fire in your heart and the room a sea of voices around you. There is Dorothy, Cosmogirl, Silk Boy and Sister White. The hem of your dress in your mouth, the taste of blood, a heart of stone, you concentrate on clearing the voices from your head. The reason for the amphetamine, cocaine, heroin, benzodiazepine and the L.S.D. has only ever been the voices that never stop booming in your head. I do not want to die. I do not want to live. I do not want to have a story. I do not want to know how it ends.

  Valerie, no, no . . . Don’t do it . . .

  God damn it, Valerie. Leave. It’s a stupid plan, anyone can see that. Remember New York State has the death penalty for homicide. Remember New York State hates women. Remember governors and presidents get a hard-on when they see women die in the electric chair. Drop the gun and leave.

  *

  My little horse. What are you doing here? What were you thinking just now? You have got it all completely wrong, even I can see that. I have always done everything wrong, back to front, upside down, but this, my darling, even I can see this is not a brilliant idea. You should be a professor, writer, president of America, not standing here, pointing a nasty gun at some faggoty little faggot. Or artist. Or whatever he calls himself. I have never liked artists, actually.

  Just run fast and don’t look round, my sweetheart. To the right is the elevator, immediately behind you, take it down to the street and go out as quickly as possible. Go home to your hotel room, call somebody, anybody, get yourself to a hospital. There is help, there are white nurses.

  *

  Come on, Valerie . . . if you drop the gun, I promise I will learn the alphabet . . . I will read to you . . . Mr Biondi has moved now . . . drop it now . . . here . . . take my hand . . . silly . . .

  *

  Little horse . . . Little president . . . My dearest little horse . . . My little sugar cube . . . My little Valerie . . . My little baby pussy . . . My feral creature . . . My treasure trove . . . My little brainbox . . .

  *

  You hold your life in your hand. You are a girl, not an animal. A girl mammal, a little she-child standing on the borderline between human being and chaos. Let’s face it, you have really strayed off course this time. Do you remember, Valerie? Do you remember what we wrote in the manifesto? A woman knows instinctively that the only wrong is to hurt others. The only wrong is to hurt others . . . Do you remember, Valerie? And that the meaning of life is love . . .

  *

  I will tell you how it ends, my friend . . .

  *

  I forbid you to, Valerie. Consider that I am your mother. I never wanted to be anyone’s mother, but I wanted to be your mother. Everything I have touched has broken, you know that. Everything except you. You are the only thing in my life that was beautiful. I wish I could be a velvety embrace for you now, that we could be looping together in perpetual dreamless sleep. Oblivion. Clouds of pink.

  *

  It is like an eclipse of the sun. This is the beginning of the end, Valerie. The moment you shoot Andy Warhol, you throw away all possibility of being someone other people listen to, the only thing you dream about, writer, artist, revolutionary, psychoanalyst, rebel. There are so many options, there is a world that can be yours out there, if only you drop the weapon and leave. Remember, Valerie, this is New York, it is 1968 and you have your university degree, your wild heart, your rich talent of raw poetry and a fantastic sense of humor. You can do whatever you want. In a few years’ time the women’s movement will move into the universities and everywhere women’s cafés will appear, reading circles, feminist groups, and in San Francisco half a million women will demonstrate, dressed in white, in protest against sexual politics based on fear and systematic rape. A radical women’s movement will grow up and radical sexual politics. There will be a place for you there, Valerie. The new age will be your age.

  Film Sequence, the Last One from the Factory

  When the voices around you clear, there is only Andy and you and the whirring, flickering fluorescent light. There are no happy endings.

  *

  Andy goes down on his knees and prays to God.

  *

  You hold the gun to his heart. Then you pull the trigger and blow a hole in his chest and a hole in all prospects for the future. You blow a hole in everything you should have been. You blow a hole in your only, tiny, silver-colored hope and your clothes are seared forever onto your skin. A sea of blood spreads out beneath your feet. It seemed unreal. Like watching a movie. Only the pain seemed real.

  *

  Andy is engulfed by white back drops and disappears. You close your eyes and drop the gun into your raincoat pocket. You leave the Factory, take the elevator down. The trees outside look as though they are decked in silver tape.

  *

  You run across Manhattan, hand in hand with Cosmogirl. Her hair like dirty honey in the sunlight, her eyes ready to drown in her face. You run out of the story.

  Andy and Death

  During the ’80s Andy was obsessed with painting revolvers. Apart from that, he made no public comment on the murder attempt. In an interview he says he has forgiven you, that is all he ever says about you. On one occasion, much later, when asked if he is afraid of death, he replies: I am already dead. I’ve been dead a long time.

  *

  At Columbus-Mother Cabrini Hospital he finally regains consciousness. Your .32-caliber bullets have damaged his chest and his stomach (liver, spleen, esophagus and lungs). He never completely recovers physically and afterwards he suffers from severe, lasting paranoia. The Factory is a closed book. The spirits no longer go in and out of the building at will, the freaks are no longer welcome and only a few carefully chosen people are admitted to 33 Union Square.

  *

  On arrival at the hospital on the afternoon of June 3, Andy is at first pronounced dead, but when the doctors realize (with Viva Ronaldo’s help) that the victim is Andy Warhol, they manage to keep him alive in an unconscious state. Five doctors then work for five hours to bring him back from the dead. It is his name that saves him, and when he dies twenty years later during a routine operation (residual complications following the shooting), he dies because he does not have a name. He is admitted to the hospital as the anonymous character Bob Roberts, and Bob Roberts dies because he is not monitored in the immediate postoperative recovery period.

  People say Andy Warhol never really comes back from the dead, they say that throughout his life he remains unconscious, or one of the living dead.

  *

  You do not return from the underworld, either, after June 3, 1968.

  Arithmetic and Surfing I

  In June 1969 you are sentenced to two years in prison for the attempted murder of Andy Warhol and his associates. What is regarded as an extremely lenient penalty is probably due to Andy Warhol’s refusal to a
ppear in court, the demonstrations outside the courthouse every day in support of your release from hospital, and not least Florynce Kennedy’s blistering defense.

  *

  In September 1971 you get out of prison and in November the same year you are rearrested for making telephone threats to a number of men, both famous and not famous, among them Andy Warhol. In 1973 you spend the entire year in and out of various mental hospitals.

  *

  In the winter of 1974–75 you return to the sun and surf of the Alligator Reef beaches. But after only a few weeks in Florida you are committed to South Florida State Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, where you spend the rest of the year strapped to beds with restraints and diagnoses.

  Arithmetic and Surfing II

  In February 1977 you are back in New York and issue a mimeographed version of the manifesto with your own introduction.

  Olympia Press has gone bankrupt and the publishing rights to S.C.U.M. Manifesto have reverted to me, VALERIE SOLANAS, and now I am issuing the CORRECT edition, MY edition of S.C.U.M. Manifesto . . . I will let anyone who wants to hawk it do so, women, men, Hare Krishna. Maurice Girodias, you’re always in financial straits. Here’s your big chance – hawk S.C.U.M. Manifesto. You can peddle it around the massage parlor district. Anita Bryant, you can finance your anti-fag campaign selling the only book worth selling – S.C.U.M. Manifesto. Andy Warhol – you can peddle it at all those hot-shit parties you go to . . . Minimum order for peddlers is 200. No credit, no discount. I don’t like arithmetic. And don’t have gang wars over territories. It’s not nice.

  In an interview with Howard Smith in The Village Voice the same year, you say the manifesto was just a literary prank and there never was an organization called S.C.U.M.

  *