*
Decision of the court: All statements by the accused are to be redacted from the transcript.
Valerie Solanas is to be taken to Bellevue Hospital for observation.
Ventor, Summer 1945
And the world is always one long yearning to go back. The river, Ventor, treetops, blood roses, those skies that never will return. Flimsy shreds of clouds reflected in the river, black branches in the murky water. The trees bowed toward the river, their roots engulfed by dark water, their crowns longing to be drowned, and Dorothy walking into the river wearing her clothes. She has pulled together her prettiest things, her brilliant white dress and designer handbag that looks like an aspirin tablet and is stolen from some bar in Ventor. Her hair in perfect curls under a scarf and the sun shining on her face. Dorothy steps into the river in her dress, the water streaming into her underclothes and eyes; she walks until she can no longer touch the bottom and she cannot swim so she just carries on into the deep, dreaming of winning everything and losing nothing (winning Louis and not losing you, losing Louis without losing herself).
*
You will always wish it was not your fault Louis left and you will always save her when she walks out into the water and the sunspots touch her pale hands so tenderly when you pull her onto the edge, onto the earth and grass and rubbish of a riverbank that has no beauty, only the stench of stagnant water and old underclothes and a strange, acrid chemical smell. And the black shadows of the towering trees shelter you from the sun, and while you wait for her to wake up again the cold comes. Slowly her pale freckled hands begin to move, opening and closing like night plants, and her dress is dark with mud and sand. When she comes round she vomits water and sand and wine and pie and tablets and blood. Her mottled pink chest heaves violently, her breath cold and blue, the dress ruined forever, make-up all over her face. She cries then because someone threw her handbag into the water while she was in the river. Taking your hand, wretched with shame, not even good at drowning.
DOROTHY: Sorry, Valerie, little one. I shouldn’t have eaten that pie.
VALERIE: You shouldn’t have gone in with your clothes on.
DOROTHY (closes her eyes and fumbles for your face): Free fall.
VALERIE: What do you mean?
DOROTHY: Free fall into the light. Dorothy’s dead to me. Radiant. Radiant. I will always be. Happy. So happy. Happy and free.
VALERIE: You’re talking nonsense, Dorothy. You’re not dead yet, you’re here, normal as ever, you haven’t changed. You’ve got vomit on your hands. Wash yourself and stop your babbling. You didn’t turn into a poet in the river.
DOROTHY: I turned into nothing in the river. How’s my dress?
VALERIE: Fuck the dress. It’s dirty, you’ll have to wash it. And your make-up’s a complete mess.
DOROTHY: I’m an idiot.
VALERIE: You’re an idiot, Dorothy.
*
You walk home hand in hand. Dorothy has washed herself and her dress in the sweet, dark river water. The house in the desert is full of goodbye letters. Dorothy writes hundreds of farewell pages on pink paper before sealing them with a parting kiss. Valerie, my love. It will be better for you when I am no longer here. And then she burns them all behind the house and swears on her breasts that she will never do it again and she laughs at the smoke, as if there were no danger. Then she starts to set fire to the sleeves of her dresses again, to scarves, coats, table cloths; she sets fire to curtains in the bar, to items in shops, and she goes home with a stranger and burns down his rose garden.
Bristol Hotel, April 9, 1988, Your Birthday
NARRATOR: Happy Birthday, Valerie.
VALERIE: Are they funeral flowers?
NARRATOR: I don’t really know. I brought them for you because I liked them. They smell so nice, a birthday smell. They can be funeral flowers if you want.
VALERIE: I don’t like flowers.
NARRATOR: There are only one or two magnolias.
VALERIE: I don’t want to have a religious funeral. I want to be buried as I am. I don’t want them to burn my body when I’m dead. I don’t want any man to touch me when I’m dead. I want to be buried in my silver coat. I want someone to go through my notes after my death.
NARRATOR: My faculty of dreams—
VALERIE: —and no sentimental young women or sham authors playing at writing a novel about me dying. You don’t have my permission to go through my material.
(Silence.)
(The narrator picks at the flowers.)
NARRATOR: Can you hear the ocean?
VALERIE: I can hear the ocean and I don’t want to hear it.
(More silence.)
VALERIE: I used to read from the manifesto at lunchtimes in Manhattan restaurants until I got thrown out.
NARRATOR: I can imagine. Did they like it?
VALERIE: You bet they did! They loved it. Who lives here apart from me?
NARRATOR: Junkies and down-and-outs. Prostitutes. AIDS sufferers. Mental-health cases with no hospital to go to. Ailing bag ladies.
VALERIE: Do you like them?
NARRATOR: I don’t know. I’ve not met them.
VALERIE: Tell them we’ll be out again soon. Tell them I’ll arrange a day trip to the ocean for them. A day of blowy umbrellas and summer drinks for dying whores.
NARRATOR: My dream is for another ending to the story.
VALERIE: You’re not a real storyteller.
NARRATOR: I know.
VALERIE: And this is not a real story.
NARRATOR: I know. And I don’t care. I just want to sit here with you for a little while.
VALERIE: I don’t have much to add.
NARRATOR: I don’t want to live in a world where you die. There must be other endings, other stories.
VALERIE: Death is the end of all stories. There are no happy endings.
(Silence.)
NARRATOR: I just want to talk to you, Valerie.
VALERIE: And I don’t want to die like this.
Ventor, June 1946
Steelworkers Are on Strike, Coal Miners Are on Strike, Railway Workers Are on Strike
You and Dorothy in the kitchen. It is hot and sticky and there are black flies everywhere in this never-ending summer. It is the first summer since Louis left and you have to duck to avoid Dorothy’s jungle of flypaper to reach your place at the table. She has emerged from her bed, emerged from the black river water and bought a new plastic handbag. The old one has water stains and stands on the kitchen windowsill with a bunch of wild roses stuck in the opening. The flowers in her garden are dead, but she cooks again and laughs again, incandescent with despair.
DOROTHY: Eat up, my little pony, and you’ll grow.
VALERIE: Is it flies or people you’re intending to catch with that flypaper?
DOROTHY: Fellers.
VALERIE: I thought you’d gone off them.
DOROTHY: There’s men and there’s men.
VALERIE: Yeah.
DOROTHY: You have to beware of certain men.
VALERIE: Yeah.
DOROTHY: Not all men are pigs.
VALERIE: Nah.
DOROTHY: Your father’s a pig.
VALERIE: Yes.
DOROTHY: A girl can do anything she wants. And you know I love you.
VALERIE: Yes.
DOROTHY: Good. Eat up now. Watch out for that fly.
Electric light in the desert. Dorothy on the porch with peroxide on her hair, the tinfoil reflecting in the sun, a women’s magazine in her hand, glossy pages, daydreams. You walk under the trees with skyscraper thoughts. Huge American trees, blind, bloodied shadows between the trunks, in your memory Louis’ blond hair covering your hands, the sunlight, gasoline fumes, pins and needles in your arms. You dream of a typewriter, of Dorothy giving you a typewriter at last, you dream about moving away from the desert and your filthy little life in Ventor. Your hands are sparks flying over the black keys taking you onto the highway out of there.