DOROTHY: Nine years old and the prettiest in all America.
VALERIE: You are the pretty one, Dorothy.
DOROTHY: Louis thinks I’m beautiful. I intend to carry on being beautiful until I die. I have no intention of accepting the march of time, of my face looking like a war zone. Louis will stay with me as long as I’m radiant. Don’t forget to be radiant, Valerie. Don’t ever forget.
VALERIE: You’re radiant.
DOROTHY: But I’ve had to work at it. Beauty doesn’t come free, pretty eyes aren’t free. What would you like for your birthday?
VALERIE: I’d like you.
DOROTHY (spreads her arms wide): Happy Birthday.
VALERIE: And I’d like it if we didn’t live with Louis.
DOROTHY (crestfallen, lets her arms drop to her sides): He’s your father, Valerie.
VALERIE: He might be. But I don’t like him.
DOROTHY: Without him, I’m nobody.
VALERIE: O.K.
DOROTHY: Without you, America is nothing.
*
And you return from the river in Louis’ car, but Louis is not there, only Dorothy and you, and she continues to sing at the top of her voice, roughened by sweet wine and cigarettes, as the roads disappear behind you, poplars and telegraph posts and deep black shadows, and she sings like a gushing waterfall and holds your gaze in the rear-view mirror. On the hard shoulder the remains of dead animals flash past – foxes, dogs and snakes, and on the porch of the desert house Louis waits for you both to return and for Dorothy to go back to her work at the bar. And on the back seat huge blood-stained tears of wretchedness and no way to get around the simple facts of Louis and Dorothy and Valerie Solanas. Dorothy falls to pieces without Louis and Valerie falls to pieces without Dorothy. So Dorothy carries on singing and driving, knowing all about the world, but not wanting to know, and as she whistles and hums and casts fathomless glances in the rear-view mirror, she wishes it were possible to keep everything and lose nothing.
Dorothy
Dorothy
Nightfall takes such a long time, and when you come home someone has taken your collection of snake skins; it must have been a desert dog. After Dorothy has melted away to the bar in her leopard-skin dress with her leopard-skin bag, Louis lies on the porch swing drinking beer and the night is black with insects, total darkness without stars or lamps. For the last time he takes his chicken soup out into the garden. For the last time he shouts to you to come out of the house. With a beer in your hand you walk slowly across the sand still hot from the sun, and the heat has burned all your thoughts away and when it is dark outside you might as well be dead.
*
Afterwards he smokes a cigarette and watches the smoke blend into the night. When the dark recedes and the hens wake, he packs his things and disappears into the distance. When Dorothy finally returns, she is tired after the night and smokes a cigarette on the porch and listens to the birds fly by in the first light. Then she walks slowly through the rooms and she already knows, but does not want to know, and she shouts and weeps and goes through his empty drawers and none of his clothes are there and no money in the cake tin under the sink, only the forsaken wedding ring, lying in the sun. In Hiroshima shadows of fleeing people are seared onto buildings forever. You tell Cosmo about it later:
it was nothing special, it was just that Louis used to rape me on the porch swing after Dorothy had driven into town and the treetops wafted about in the night sky and the seat creaked in resistance because it needed oiling again and we were always waiting for new light bulbs for the garden and Louis should have done a bit more exercise because the flab on his arms wobbled when he strained on top of me and his chest against my face heavy and suffocating and he was a jumbled agony of tears and lust and the seat cover fabric was a mesh of wild pink roses that Dorothy had embroidered at nights and I counted the roses and the stars in the sky and all flesh was sun-scorched grass and the dark took its time and my eyes pricked and burned and the desert dogs in their deepest sleep were chasing the wind and the stars in the sky had long been dead and I rented out my little pussy for no money and afterwards he always wept and tried to untangle the knot of chewing gum in my hair and I don’t know why it always got stuck in my hair while I was counting wild roses that were blood roses and death roses and the gum always fell out of my mouth and afterwards my hair smelled of menthol and his shirt was marked with chewing gum and the stars were still dead in the night sky and remnants of cloud had caught in the trees floating above and Louis cut out the stickiest menthol snarls and chain-smoked long afterwards and I smoked his cigarette ends and we listened to the geckos chirping around us and there was nothing left to cry about except America would keep on fucking me and all fathers want to fuck their daughters and most of them do and only a few don’t and it’s not clear why except the world will always be one long yearning to go back
Manhattan Criminal Court, June 3, 1968
The hearing continues after a short break. You refused to answer “adequately” and “properly” to the questions of the court and it withdrew for a while. Silver clouds dart like shadows on the ceiling. It is hard to decide if they are balloons or silver cushions or if they are floating mirrors that have escaped from the ladies’ toilets. A daydream running alongside all the other daydreams, a land of mirrors outside time, and around you only black holes opening in the marble floor, and a hundred thousand silver wigs falling from the sky. An echoing courtroom and endless rows of benches in different kinds of dark wood and someone holding your arm all the time. Andy is obsessed with death; he loves making screen prints of electric chairs and suicides and crashed cars. Cosmo would have laughed at his phony art and the hearing, and this proceeding feels as if his silver wig were being rammed down your throat.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Will the accused, Valerie Solanas, please stand.
VALERIE: Remember, I’m the only sane woman here.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: You have the right to a lawyer. There are people prepared to pay to defend you. Monsieur Maurice Girodias, proprietor of Olympia Press, has offered to pay for your defense.
VALERIE: I don’t want his lawyers. I did the right thing. I regret nothing. I had plenty of reasons. It’s not often I shoot someone. I didn’t do it for nothing. They had me tied up and it wasn’t very pleasant. They were going to do something that would have ruined me.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Redact all the defendant’s statements.
VALERIE: Redact nothing. All that has to be recorded. I repeat. I will continue to repeat. I can repeat any number of times. I did the right thing. I regret nothing. I had plenty of reasons. It’s not often I shoot someone. I didn’t do it for nothing. They had me tied up, a very unpleasant experience. They were going to do something that would have ruined me. I want you to write that down in the record of proceedings.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: No statements by the accused will be recorded. Hearing terminated; court adjourned. The accused is to be taken into psychiatric care for observation.
VALERIE: I refuse to be redacted and censored in this way.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: The defendant will leave the courtroom.
VALERIE: I’m going nowhere until I’m included in the record.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Court is adjourned until further notice.
VALERIE: I demand that all my statements are documented in the record. I am not leaving this court until I know my statements have been included.