Julian:
Larry? Don’t let’s do this to each other. I’m beat, and I know you must be flattened by this double-cross at the station. It’s rotten. Maybe we can both think more clearly tomorrow. I know there must be some way to fight it. If you don’t want me involved, okay, fine. But—well, one way or another … something’ll come up, you’ll find something else, or—
(Cut to two-shot, as Laurence leans forward from the sofa:)
Laurence:
Oh for crying out loud, Jule! Cut the crap! Little Ms. Supportive! Go write out more checks to the women’s movement. Leave me in peace. Go sit for another session with Iliana, so she can drool over the object of her lust. Another book, another jacket photo, another admirer to feed your omnivorous ego.
(Cut to tight-shot of Julian’s hands gripping the arms of her chair. Quick cut to Laurence in close-up, wincing at what he’s just said. Quick cut to Julian, her jaw tightening:)
Julian:
Watch it, Larry. I’m so tired I might say what I feel for once. Don’t take out your wretchedness on me. Or on the one friend I can trust.
(Cut to Laurence, seeing it’s too late to take it back, unable to stop now:)
Laurence:
Wow, I’m pleased to know that twenty-one years together don’t earn us a friendship we can trust, whereas the properly credentialed Third World dyke can waft in out of nowhere and become the one friend you can trust. Sorry about the boring decades of commitment, ma’am. I guess I haven’t washed enough dishes, given back to you enough flattering images of the great Julian Travis to qualify.
(Quick cut to Julian:)
Julian:
God damn you, Larry! Iliana’s not your rival, you are! I’m still so gripped by the person you were and could still be that I can’t confront the you that non-exists now! I’m so bloody tired of bottling up my rage I could burst! The fact that I’m so little potentially lesbian has helped me stay with you in spite of enormous pressure from within and from without. And you know it!
(Widen to long two-shot, to emphasize the space between them and their smallness in the loft livingroom. Julian buries her face in her hands, but the voice that comes out of her leaks rage:)
Iliana loves me—and she knows how to show it. She’s never approached me sexually, though Christ knows what that’s cost her. The so-called flattering images she gives back to me happen to be of a me I’ve never seen before—
(Cut to Laurence, his rage open now, meeting hers:)
Laurence:
—not dreary and drained by me, I suppose. No, for me you save the tight-lipped long-suffering saint face, the silent accusation. Never once in over twenty years celebration never …
(Bring down his voice level to barely audible except for the refrain of “never,” and fade up superimposed over his furious face montage clips in fast-paced sequence:)
You never trusted me. Never loved me. Never let your tight puritan self go with me. You always held back. There are places in me you’ve never touched, never dared reach for. Never never never …
(Montage: Julian and Laurence flat on their backs in bulky coats, lying on snowy ground, waving their arms and laughing wildly. Dissolve to: Laurence and Julian, hammers in their hands, flailing at tearing down a wall in the loft, giggling at one another through clouds of plaster dust coating their hair. Begin rapid montage: Julian tearing herself out of a helmeted cop’s clutches and racing toward Laurence, who is being nightsticked by another cop; Julian running offstage from a lecture into Laurence’s arms where he waits in the wings to welcome her with a hug; waist-shot of young Julian sitting cross-legged on the loft floor, looking up at Laurence with adoration; Laurence and Julian striding down the street, arms around each other, singing at the top of their voices; Julian at stove, stirring, as Laurence comes from behind and embraces her; Julian naked in bed, her arms lifted, reaching up. Dissolve montage down and bring up Laurence’s close-up face and voice:)
Never a moment of joy never a simple giving of the self never a trust! That you save for others! That was never on the Larry Agenda, never.
(Cut to close-up of Julian, dry-eyed with equal fury:)
Julian:
Sorry I was such a failure as Mrs. Red Menace, not providing you with rose-covered wife, child, home. Poor little boy, terrified of his daddy, lonely for his momma, out to change the world not to save humanity but because he was scared shitless of functioning minimally in it as an adult.
(Medium two-shot:)
Laurence:
(His face contorting deliberately:) Gribbitz.
Julian:
What did you say?
Laurence:
Gribbitz. Gribbitz grunt oink gribbitz.
Julian:
Are you insane or what? What are you saying!
Laurence:
Croak. Gribbitz. It’s no good talking to America’s. Darling; she’s deaf to anything but praise—except when she’s doing self-lacerating self-criticism in order to co-opt anybody else from it. So I won’t talk. The Feminist Prince is dead. Long live the Frog. Gribbitz.
(Julian rises. Dolly back to show her starting toward her suitcase.)
Julian:
I won’t descend to this. I’m going to bed. Maybe tomorrow we can talk in real lang—
(Laurence follows her, shouting:)
Laurence:
Gribbitz! Croak! Gribbitz!
(Julian spins to face him. Fast up superimpose shot of The Mother’s face, screaming with anger, then Julian in close-up, her features following the same lines:)
Julian:
You wanna croak instead of talking, then I’ll talk, by god. Except it’s hard to know where to start, considering all the items I’ve shredded in the Unspeakable Bin for years—
(Cut to close-up of Laurence:)
Laurence:
—and saved like stored-up ammunition for just such a moment! The little martyr shows her hand? The victim picks up the electrodes she’s actually wielded all along?
(Cut to: rapid montage of students rioting in the street, throwing Molotov cocktails; The Mother’s face; a Chinese mother binding the feet of a weeping child; The Mother’s face; a chador-garbed figure spreading the legs of a girlchild and bending over her with a razor to clitoridectomize her; The Mother’s face. Bring up close-up of Julian, spitting venom now:)
Julian:
It’s time. Time, Laurence. Time you grew up and became an adult. Time you hung up your clothes. Time you hung up your clothes. Time you answered your mail. Time you earned a living, yeah. Time you remembered to do a laundry yourself without it getting so bad I have to remind you we don’t have any clean clothes left. Time you came out of catatonia and made some contacts which could actually godforbid I know the thought alarms you come through with some actions, projects, better jobs for a change. Time you learned how to wash a glass clean, not just as a reward for nagging old me. Time you stopped leaving dirty sox and shoes and underpants strewn through rooms that I happen to share—which do not contain piles of my clothes all over the place—
(Cut to two-shot:)
Laurence:
This whole loft used to be mine! First we had to tear down walls to accommodate the great Travis. Then the terms changed and we had to build ’em so you could have a study. Now we have The Julian Sector. The Laurence Sector.
Julian:
(Undeterred from her assault:) Time you learned that the dropping and breaking and losing of tools and cups and gloves isn’t a cute trait but shows stupidity and contempt for other people’s consideration, comfort, even basic rights. It’s time you noticed, after twenty years, where the wooden spoons go in the kitchen, and where the knives go. If you don’t like their placement, say so and change it. But the truth is that all along the Feminist Prince has been too froggishly busy proclaiming allegiance to the abstract politics to give a shit for such “petty” details!
(Top-shot down from catwalk, showing each of them isolated in a pin-shot of intense light, the room around th
em now in darkness. They face each other as adversaries.)
Laurence:
You’re a loveless robot. You’re a leech. Christ, you’ve stolen my soul! What’d you do, fold it and put it away in a drawer ’cause I left it lying around somewhere?
Julian:
For that matter, it’s time you goddamned learned how to take decent criticism—and I mean decent. I’m sick of your emotional blackmail in claiming that any criticism of you at all undermines your frail self-confidence at this point in your frail life! Which has been for years. It’s time you actually put records back in their jackets. Every time I want to play some music, I find records—some of which I had before I knew the eternally promising young Lenin, Laurence Millman, and others of which I went to delighted lengths to acquire for you—left in heaps, scratched beyond use, or stacked on the floor with cat-hair crudded over them. Because you apparently believe in vacuuming only on the equinoxes and solstices. This isn’t fragility. It’s plain male bullshit and laziness. It’s time you put the toilet seat down, don’t you think? Time you changed the bed linen on your own, without its being a major production or waiting until the bed is ready to get up and walk or outwaiting my waiting to see if you’ll notice until I give up and finally do it myself. Petty, petty complaints. Just like “The Politics of Housework” noticed so long ago in some damned feminist anthology or other. Just like you yourself proclaimed on the radio in order to receive the curtsyed praise of feminists, grandstanding for the sake of appearances!
(They circle each other, combatants. Cut to long-shot of them pooled in reddening light:)
Laurence:
Appearances! Look, look world! (He spreads open his arms in appeal to invisible witnesses:) Look who’s talking about appearances! This is real life, Julian! It’s scummy and unromantic! It’s filled with shit and piss and cum! It ain’t pretty! And Julian Travis is not the star of it all, with everybody else relegated to playing Rosencrantz or Guildenstern or Hope in her various ugly faces or the phantom daddy David! People live and work and get depressed and try again and fail and have kids—
(Quick flash-shot of The Child, about age three, running laughing through a park; cut to close-up of Laurence:)
—and love and suffer and die! You go through life like some infant yowling for its mommy’s arms,
(Quick shot close-up of The Mother’s face, smiling, suffused with love; cut back to Laurence:)
some infant lying in its crib while the muscles in its face try on expressions it doesn’t even know how to feel yet. I’ve watched babies, I know! (Laurence begins to cry.) I’ll never have one of my own, I know that. I know I’ll never be a father. But I watch ’em—in the street, in carriages and strollers, in the supermarket carts—other people’s kids, other people’s lives, other people’s … (He breaks down and sobs.)
(Dolly in to loose two-shot of them standing, his head hanging like a beaten dog’s. She too cries, soundlessly. Slowly, as if heavy weights were attached to each wrist, she raises her arms toward him. As she touches him, he changes, lifts his head, and snarls at her:)
And I don’t want your pity-garbage, either. Why are you doing this to me? You wouldn’t be who you are if it wasn’t for me!
(Flash-shot of The Mother’s face, shouting, crying; quick cut to Julian in close-up, her expression hardening. She yanks back her hands as if singed.)
Julian:
Why am I doing this? The question I’ve asked myself for the last ten years of our exercise called a marriage. For love? Larry, you wear down my love day after week after month with your sulks and your fourteen-hour depressive sleeps. For sex? Don’t make me laugh, I might get truly hysterical!
(As she continues the following J’accuse, her voice level drops to almost inaudible, with only the emphasized words coming through clear; her image fades in slow dissolve as we get another rapid montage: a younger Laurence in tight close-up, smoking a pipe and talking; Laurence in blue jeans and T-shirt dancing with a broom; Laurence chairing a meeting, looking at Julian suddenly and grinning; Laurence shouting into a bullhorn, finishing to rally-cheers, turning to Julian with a roguish wink.)
Does it never occur to you that whenever you express interest in what I’m doing, it’s in the power and public aspect of what I do for our survival? You love what you attack me for: appearances. The same tacky kid doing her tap-dance Portia routine to support another version of the same loving family which in turn will claim it has Given Its All to Make Her What She Is Today. That’s not me. I have my own business being alive on this planet and in this skin and in this brain—and it’s not to provide you with a lifelong fellowship-grant and confidence-boosting. Never, never, never consideration from you, never any courtesy, any kindness.
(Montage continues: Laurence giving Julian a back-rub while she sits at her typewriter; Laurence hauling shopping bags of groceries; Laurence presenting a bunch of flowers from behind his back with a flourish; Laurence grabbing the telephone receiver out of Julian’s hand as she sits weeping, and hanging up with a bang; Laurence interposing his body between Julian and three white men menacing her in a civil-rights march:)
Never never any communication or intimacy anymore
(Montage: Laurence and Julian in a rapid-fire series of two-shots at different ages over the years—hunched together over an open book, necking on the floor before a Franklin-stove fire, walking together down the street—always animatedly talking, talking, talking.)
God! The waste, the living death of this situation! I’m so tired of being the decider, the doer, the energy source, the strong one!
(Quick flash to The Mother’s face, and bring up fragments of her words: “He’s a weakling! They all are! You could be anything you want!”)
I could be anything I want! I don’t have to choose this death-in-life that began with you!
(Rapid cut to Laurence, stunned, his face turning almost unrecognizable with hurt and hate:)
Laurence:
Began with me! You began it! I was a full and happy human being before you!
(Quick flash-shot to Laurence in bed, angrily turning away from Joyce, who stands crying, her outstretched hands open in a plea.)
I began it? You began it!
(Tight combination shot, first of Laurence over Julian’s shoulder, then of Julian over Laurence’s shoulder:)
Julian:
You began it!
(Rapid montage: street riots in Northern Ireland; Arabs lining up at West Bank checkpoint for strip search; missiles rising in silos. Both their voices at the same instant, crying out in voice-over:)
Laurence voice-over:
Jule!
Julian voice-over:
Larry!
(Quick dissolve to loose two-shot again, wide-angle of them still circled by darkness. The light cools from red to blue-violet. Julian and Laurence freeze. Superimpose over their figures, in slow-motion, lyrical, soft-focus: a younger Laurence and Julian walking over the Brooklyn Bridge and following the action described in the ensuing voice-overs:)
Laurence voice-over:
We finally walked over it, the great keening Brooklyn, the span of passage. She phoned me in her despair and shock, the child of her trying to balance gamely on Hope’s quicksand of lies. And I went with her—
Julian voice-over:
—hand in hand under the Gothic arches through the hum of energy along steel ropes expertly stretched to carry whatever weight necessary without breaking—
Laurence voice-over:
—that was the day after, I remember. After the night I’d seen Joyce again, for the first time in three years, and knew I still wanted her. Told her I’d finally even marry her now. But it was too late. She told me it was over. For all time. And I went into hell and finally fell asleep after dawn—
Julian voice-over:
There was one human being on the planet who could understand, still be able to see something real about me. One person who knew that if you could turn it into art, turn it into politics, save the whole
vile hateful lying brutal bloodsick world with it, then you could forgive it, not repeat it—
Laurence voice-over:
—but how could she have known? Feral child, driven by her own loss: “I need to talk to you,” she said, “Can we—
Julian voice-over:
—walk across the Brooklyn Bridge like you always said we might someday? I’ve still never been.”
Laurence voice-over:
Tidal wave, ship’s prow bearing down on me while I was drowning, no way to resist her.
Julian voice-over:
“Meet me in fifteen minutes on the Manhattan side? Please?”
Laurence voice-over:
And to my own astonishment, I did. Heaved myself up from my bed of mourning and I did. Whatever words poured out of her that day, I hardly heard. I was too busy seeing her: ship’s figurehead into the wind, hair rushing backward like plumes from the warrior-queen helmet of her skull. The wise child who knew enough to want something different from what she’d been trained to want. The virgin who’d trusted me and already given herself into my hands. The friend who loved me. Seeing her as if we’d just met. The raw possibility of her, vibrating—
Julian voice-over:
We swayed toward each other, so slowly. And the Bridge swayed in the wind. And the gulls wheeled bloodwinged in the twilight, and the towers of the city loomed toward us in envy. Everything—bridge arches wings waves current concrete granite translucent grains of air everything yearned toward us at that moment, toward who we were and who we might become—
Laurence voice-over:
—where we stood, eye to glistening eye, mouth against mouth, body to body shaking with the wind and the force of that touch. And I said
Laurence:
Julian—
Laurence voice-over:
“Julian,” I said. “Julian,” shouting above the wind and the shrieking of the gulls, “Julian,” I yelled in recognition in full joy and never abandoned not by anyone all grief evermore struck from me by the dazzle of her face, “Julian,” I said, “Will you marry me?” And—
Julian:
Yes—
Laurence voice-over:
Dry Your Smile Page 29