by Breanne Fahs
“AUNTIE WAHOO”
Just as Geoffrey’s letter to Maurice outlined Valerie’s complaints against him, a letter he wrote to Andy detailed Valerie’s feelings about the shooting and her reasons for it. He wrote on December 3, 1968, “I’m not sure if Valerie would have shot you if Girodias had been as well known as you are, but she does, nevertheless, have a number of complaints against you, as well as against him.” Valerie felt Andy, who she often called “Auntie Wahoo,” was “playing games with her.” The complaints included several points. She believed Andy wanted to stage a two-part dramatic production using her panhandling article and her play and that it would be staged at the Grove Press Theatre. Valerie thought Andy had spoken to Maurice and decided not to stage the play after hearing that Maurice had claim over her works. Shortly after she signed the contract with him, she believed that Andy had “changed his mind, became vague, and did nothing more about the production—despite [his] former enthusiasm.”38
Valerie felt particularly betrayed that Andy recognized Maurice’s prior claim on her work and cooperated with Maurice to maintain it. She remembered Paul Morrissey saying, “You know, you just signed away your play” and, hearing that she should give Maurice a blow job, that she was tough and could “take it,” or “have yourself committed to a mental institution, in order to frustrate him,” or “write him a novel a day, on file cards, and give those to him,” and so on. She thought her twenty-dollar payment for I, a Man insulted her work and that Andy used material from the philosophy of SCUM and from the manifesto in his lecture tours too often. Geoffrey summed this up by writing in his letter to Andy, “In order to cooperate with Girodias, you were blocking her efforts to have her work produced or published and to have her ideas and activities publicized.” Pleading with Andy to forgive Valerie, drop all charges, and assist with her case, he ended the letter by asking Andy if he had done all he could to help her.39
Valerie continued to write to Andy herself in the fall and winter of 1968, sending him one letter that, in her own way, tried to make amends:
I’m writing this letter because I’m a compulsive communicator.
For the past few weeks I’ve been evaluating + reevaluating everything. My morale has gone way up; I no longer feel demoralized, + my attitude towards a lot of things has changed. I no longer feel any hostility towards you or towards anyone else; I feel at peace with the world, + I feel, now that the Manifesto’s been published + now that with all the publicity I have a chance to earn money without being dependent on men, that I’m in a much better position than I was to deal with you, Girodias, + all the other vultures I encounter.
I intend to forget the past—harbor no grudges, regret no mistake—+ begin completely anew. I also have a new attitude about my contract situation; I made a terrible mistake signing it, but I don’t intend to continue to be gotten by it; I intend to chalk it up to experience + begin anew.
I’m very happy you’re alive + well, for all your barbarism, you’re still the best person to make movies with, +, if you treat me fairly, I’d like to work with you.
Valerie40
Valerie’s fear of Andy’s desire for publicity had some basis in reality, but it seems that Andy also had some affection for Valerie, according to Ultra Violet: “It’s normal he didn’t press charges. He got a lot of publicity from the shooting and he loved publicity. Why would he press charges? How much money was there to recover from her? Nothing probably! So what would he gain by pressing charges? He had the front page news of the Post so that was good enough. That doesn’t mean he didn’t care for her.”41
With Andy’s hunger for fame in mind, Valerie wrote to Andy in late September stating that she did not want any publicity for SCUM or the trial, as it would only benefit him and Maurice. She expressed her willingness to do another film with him: “I’m not asking you to do a film with me; I’m telling you that if you want to—+ I know for certain that you do, + nothing you put in the paper to the contrary will dispel my certainty; let’s just say my intuition tells me where it’s at—I’ll be willing to, if you treat me fairly, + that’s a big if, as fairness isn’t your forte.” Believing that Andy had not pressed charges because he knew the district attorney would do so, she accused him of selfishness: “You’re trying to get credit for great nobility + compassion without doing one noble or compassionate thing. If you really wanted to be noble, you could get the D.A. to drop the charges, but I know you’d never do that, because you want me to have a trial because of the great publicity value involved.”42 She concluded by accusing Andy and Maurice of trying to ride her coattails:
What gives me a fantastic edge over you + the Great Toad is that I feel no compulsion to do a movie with you, do any more works or even get the play produced, nice as all of those things would be. I have a lot of projects in mind that don’t constitute works + that, therefore, The Great Toad, + hence you, would have no claim on. You, on the other hand, having no intrinsic worth, are limited to who you can find + use, + you can ride along only so far with Viva, Bridget Polk, and the rest of your trained dogs. Having worked + associated with me, you’ve had a taste of honey, + it must be awfully difficult to have to go back to Viva saying “Fuck you” in restaurants. . . . Weren’t you saying something, Boy, last June 3 about how if I turned in 2 more works, signed a bunch of contracts with The Great Toad with you, then did the movie, you’d allow me a few crumbs of publicity? I won the first round; I’ll win the rest.”43
As Valerie further distanced herself from her previous claims of goodwill toward Andy, she wrote another letter in late October 1968 telling him to drop the charges: “A few weeks ago I felt good will toward you + a willingness to work with you if conditions were right, but your running on about not pressing charges against me while charges remain is fast mitigating that good will. . . . Who I work with + what projects I work on is determined largely by my feelings, not just business considerations. You seem to feel a need to be hailed as Good Guy of the Year. Seeing that the charges against me are dropped would do much to enhance that image.” She ended the letter saying, “One more thing you should’ve learned by now is that I mean what I say.”44
MATTEAWAN, BEACON, NEW YORK
In late August 1968, Valerie was moved from Elmhurst Hospital—where she received care that would qualify as “acceptable”—to Matteawan, where she entered the chaotic world of the criminally insane. Using a diagnosis of “Paranoid State with Affective Features and Emotional Instability,” the courts ordered Valerie’s transfer to Matteawan on August 16, 1968. Two days later, she was admitted to the hospital where she would spend the next four months at one of the most notoriously hellish places any “mentally ill” person could go.
Matteawan State Hospital, officially established in 1893, was a hospital for the criminally insane, particularly high-risk women. Sharing the grounds with the Beacon Institute for Defective Delinquents after 1966, Matteawan had by then earned a reputation for some of the worst human rights violations in New York State history. According to Robert Spoor, director of the Clinical Information Department at the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, “There were terrible accusations of abuse at Matteawan. It was closed after a court decision. They used to send violent cases of the mentally ill there, but then it was declared unconstitutional because they were mixing people who had committed crimes with people who were regarded as dangerous enough to commit them.”45
Several news stories at that time reported outlandish abuses at Matteawan, where fourteen psychiatrists served six hundred patients. A string of lawsuits exposed conditions as “incredible.” Guards and doctors routinely beat and killed patients and forced them to engage in experimental surgeries. Guards regularly denied patients basic medical care and habitable living conditions. At the time Valerie entered, patients received a slice of bread and a half cup of leftover coffee a day to subsist on. Patients were often kicked and stomped on and sometimes beaten to death by sadistic guards. Overcrowding, withholding of necessary medications, and
lack of doctors were cited in reports, and some lawmakers who had visited the institution called Matteawan the worst mental hospital they had ever seen. In the late 1960s, to control the patients, doctors prescribed tranquilizers to over 40 percent of Matteawan inmates, while massive numbers of patients received electroshock therapy (known to cause brain damage) or were placed in straitjackets. At times, guards forced patients to live in rooms with no toilets, no mattresses, and no consistent water or food; they sat in the dark, receiving a meal once every three days.46
As the institution where criminally insane women were typically placed, Matteawan housed the suicidal, the eccentric, and the self-destructive, including several regulars from the Factory. In fact while Valerie was at Matteawan, a curious coincidence occurred: Edie Sedgwick, Warhol superstar, became a fellow inmate as she continued her downward spiral with barbiturates. Valerie met Edie during this time, now under quite different circumstances from their first meetings among the Andy Warhol elite. Ultra Violet recalled the curious parallel between the two figures; Valerie was under examination to find out if she was rational enough to stand trial for shooting Andy, while Edie “struggled to recover the sanity she lost in the Warhol years.”47 Valerie also encountered Andy’s friend Vera Cruise, who told Andy in late 1969 that she had gone to Matteawan earlier that year for car theft and “was seeing a lot of Valerie.” She mentioned that Valerie had talked about “getting Andy Warhol” when she got out.48
Though Valerie was quite withdrawn while at Matteawan, she did spend time with Geoffrey LeGear during his regular visits to the hospital. Geoffrey came to New York from where he lived in California and rented an apartment in Beacon so he would be in close proximity to Valerie. He visited her twenty-six times between August and early December 1968, mostly to discuss her grievances toward Andy and Maurice. While little is known about Geoffrey’s background or why he and Valerie became close (he refused to talk about this), his relationship with her helped her to survive her hospitalization at Matteawan. He did whatever he could to secure her release and earnestly tried to help her communicate with those she felt anger toward.
In writing to Andy and Maurice, Geoffrey pleaded with them to assist Valerie and, in particular, for Andy to forgive her. He wrote to Andy, “You yourself have said you have forgiven her, and also that you take her seriously as a writer, and therefore, presumably, also as a thinker. And finally, Valerie was, and probably still is, on the verge of suicide, believing that you could, but aren’t, doing anything to help her. . . . As far as I am able to know, Valerie has given up on her own affairs. And if, because of anything I failed to do, she were lost, this would be a great sadness to me.”49
Outlining Valerie’s complaints about Maurice, he wrote that she perceived him as responsible for her eviction from the Chelsea Hotel and the subsequent loss of her trunks and for tapping her phone, preventing her from consulting lawyers and celebrities to assist her, forcing her to write a novel, and blocking Andy from producing her play. He concluded the letter by saying, “It’s obvious I agree with her, in a certain way. In another way, I could say she’s wrong in fact but right in truth—that is, she is essentially right. In still another way, I could say it’s all a delusion. You see, I’m not sure.” Valerie also told Geoffrey to stop visiting (“It’s nothing personal”), that Maurice had killed SCUM Manifesto, that she was dead already, and that “Valerie Solanas” no longer existed. At the end of his letter he wrote, “Valerie has said she is through with trying to kill people (excepting, evidently, herself).” Valerie later wrote to Andy and Maurice that it was wrong for Geoffrey to interpret her wishes, saying, “Only I can interpret me.”50
Questions still arose about Valerie’s mental competence and ability to stand trial for the shootings. On December 9, 1968, Matteawan officials declared her “sufficiently recovered from her psychotic state and now mentally well enough to be returned to court of original jurisdiction for further disposition of her case.”51 On December 12, she returned to court and Judge Schweitzer ordered another psychiatric examination by a court-appointed doctor and set her bail at ten thousand dollars to prevent her release. The same day, Geoffrey arrived at the court and handed over the full amount in cash, an act that convinced Valerie that Geoffrey had connections to the Mob. The Mob had no connection to the Mafia, but were a group of men—among them Maurice Girodias, Howard Hughes (famed businessman, aviator, and agoraphobic), Robert Sarnoff (from NBC Studios), Mark Zussman (from Playboy Enterprises), and Barney Rosset (publisher of Grove Press)—who Valerie believed paid off doctors and wanted to steal her ideas, writings, and work from her. (From then on, she refused to trust Geoffrey and even told others they had never met before. Geoffrey said they last spoke in 1971.)52 Valerie had gained her freedom, giving her plenty of opportunity to seek contact again with her nemesis, Andy Warhol.
“ANDY WARHOL’S FEMINIST NIGHTMARE”
Valerie’s shooting Andy marked a major turning point for both of them: Valerie entered a sphere of both fame and madness, while Andy became paranoid, withdrawn, fearful, and forever changed. What each of them had always embodied—for Valerie, a descent into madness and for Andy, the delirium of a consumerist world—only intensified after the shooting. In this way, they found the limits of their own logic; passionate, wild Valerie found herself locked up, and Andy drifted further into his life-as-dream state.
Given the vitriolic sentiments of many Factory regulars toward Valerie (Taylor Mead referred to her as having a “gutter-snipe idiot-mind”), Andy took a surprisingly forgiving and almost respectful tone toward Valerie in the post-shooting years.53 He never pressed formal charges against Valerie despite the urgings of his entourage (though, as mentioned earlier, Valerie interpreted this as a way to make himself look generous because he knew the DA would press charges), and he never spoke particularly negatively about Valerie. He clearly believed that Valerie had in some way acted as her nature dictated. Whenever questioned about Valerie, he would respond in a typically distant and apathetic way, even when discussing her attempt on his life. Two weeks after the shooting, he admitted in an interview, “It’s too hard to care. . . . I don’t want to get too involved in other people’s lives. . . . I don’t want to get too close. . . . I don’t like to touch things. . . . That’s why my work is so distant from myself.”54 Valerie had an equally complicated emotional tone when addressing Andy. Writing to him from Elmhurst and Matteawan, she sometimes threatened him and at other times was needy and almost appreciative of their relationship. She spewed hate and then asked to work with him again. She renounced him as a selfish, sniveling coward and then asked him to drop the charges against her.
Even as Valerie’s tone grew increasingly hostile and threatening toward Andy, her letters also communicated that she felt some remorse for the shooting. Jeremiah Newton confirmed this, saying that she regretted shooting Andy and was wounded by the rejection she faced from others after her release from Matteawan.55 Her dealings with Andy revealed a hostile ambivalence. In a letter of December 21, 1968, she wrote to Andy, “I just want you to know that if the charges against me aren’t dropped, I will never make a movie with anyone. I have many projects in mind + feel not the slightest compulsion to ever do a movie.”56
On Christmas Eve 1968, out on bail, Valerie contacted both Maurice and Andy, telling Maurice in a letter that she knew of his plots against her, that he purposefully wanted to stir up problems with her so she would seem like a “ranting & raving” lunatic, and that she would not give up insisting on a correct version of SCUM Manifesto: “Our struggles boil down to a waiting game, & I’m prepared for a long, long wait, and I can wait anywhere in & out of jail or in the bughouse. You must realize that I’m intensely ego involved over this situation; I have an enormous amount of pride. You offended, insulted & degraded me so deeply & in so many ways that I’m psychologically incapable of doing even a little of what you want without your fulfilling all the conditions I’ve imposed on you, even if not doing so means the practical destruction of
me.”57
Valerie wrote Maurice a second letter on the same day detailing that she had written Up Your Ass and a document called “Wrap Up” and that she intended her next book to be Why I Shot Andy Warhol and Other Chit Chat. In the letter, she demanded a “decent editor,” the ability to publish without any preface or with a preface approved by her, that the entire manuscript have no errors or “corrections,” and that the cover contain a written statement denouncing previous editions of SCUM Manifesto and declaring that edition as the correct one. She also demanded all her fan mail, that Maurice return all copies of SCUM Manifesto to her, and that she receive a decent contract for the book.58
Valerie included a formal statement for the New York Daily News that was to precede the publication of SCUM Manifesto in the corrected edition: “Olympia Press’s edition of SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas was, for reasons that will be explained in the future, a deliberate botch. The publisher of Olympia Press rendered some paragraphs and sentences of the original SCUM Manifesto unintelligible; he left some sentences of the original, for no sound reason, out of his edition; he substituted for completely apt words in the original weak, ineffective, inept and often times downright inaccurate words in his edition. To partially rectify the gross injustice the publisher of Olympia Press perpetrated against SCUM Manifesto we are here printing the original SCUM Manifesto in its entirety.”59