Linda Rosenkrantz - Talk

MARSHA: Why?

VINCENT: The sight of the penies got her so upset.

MARSHA: You don’t eat that, Vinnie.

VINCENT: Of course you do, are you kidding? It’s the combination of this softness and that hardness that’s the great thing.

MARSHA: I love them. I love seafood.

VINCENT: They’re really exquisite. Don’t ever eat any raw clams though.

MARSHA: I like raw clams.

VINCENT: Okay, get hepatitis.

MARSHA: Boy, I’m glad the weekend’s over.

VINCENT: When’s Timothy coming out again?

MARSHA: I don’t know. I’ll tell you, when I threw him out, I was sure that was the last I’d see of him. The next day, when I finally found him at your house—

VINCENT: As though you were even looking.

MARSHA: No, after I explained to him what had happened, the pressures on me of Emily’s drunkenness on the beach, seeing Merrill Johnston with that blonde, but that it was still very bad of me and I was sorry, and he forgave me, I was really taken aback because most people I know aren’t forgiving.

VINCENT: Catholic. Priest.

MARSHA: You never heard the whole story. On the phone I said you know you left your bathing suit here and everything, Tim, do you want to come and get it? He said yes and then I got very nervous. I thought it was going to be awful, I mean I still thought he must be furious with me. I was doing the dishes when he came in, I had my back to the room.

VINCENT: Were you aware he arrived?

MARSHA: I guess so, but I really didn’t know how to handle it, so I just kept washing the dishes. And he came up behind me and kissed me.

VINCENT: On the neck?

MARSHA: On the cheek. He took me in his arms and held me, and I got fantastic waves of love. I mean I really loved him and he really loved me.

VINCENT: Your father forgiving you.

MARSHA: We talked a little bit and it was very very beautiful, very loaded. I didn’t want him to leave, but he was determined to go.

VINCENT: You’re almost in tears, you know.

MARSHA: I was very sad, but in a deep, wistful, loving way. I walked him out to the car and we talked some more. His last words before he drove off were “sometimes I think I care about you more than I know.”

VINCENT: That’s a beautiful story.

MARSHA: I’ll tell you the weirdest thing though — he said he wouldn’t be at all surprised if the next time he came out you and I were married, and that he didn’t even think it would be so sick.

VINCENT: Don’t you think we should have some white bread?

MARSHA: If we’re getting married, we should definitely have some white bread. I think it would be very sick, don’t you, Vinnie?

VINCENT: I wouldn’t sleep with you, but it would be an interesting experience.

MARSHA: I wouldn’t either.

VINCENT: Why, because I’m too much like a brother?

MARSHA: No, I just wouldn’t. I told my doctor I wouldn’t.

VINCENT: What does that mean, what you told your doctor?

MARSHA: It means it’s the truth.

VINCENT: You told your doctor you wouldn’t to defend yourself against the possibility of being attracted to me. That’s how sick you are, Marsh.

MARSHA: Is this good?

VINCENT: No, it’s a bad one. How did you know?

MARSHA: Because the last one I had was so bad and it looked like that. Oh, all of them are that way.

VINCENT: That’s the inside, stupid. It’s their shit, but it tastes good. Psychology I’m using so I can finish the whole thing.

MARSHA: You know I think it’s terrible the way you get upset at Nico every time he has to go away for a weekend. You’re completely hypocritical, with your liaisons dangereuses and your thises and your thats, saying people can screw whoever they want.

VINCENT: But Nico never does screw around; he’s a good boy.

MARSHA: I don’t mean that specifically. He just doesn’t have the least bit of freedom to go away without your starting to sulk. In the end you’re as possessive and jealous as any ordinary person. They’re very unreal and idealistic, all your highflown ideas, because jealousy is basic to love, I don’t care what you say.

VINCENT: No it’s not, darling. Jealousy is basic to insecurity.

MARSHA: Well, everyone is insecure.

VINCENT: What you don’t understand about having a one-to-one adult relationship with another human being is that it’s not one-to-one, it’s A-to-ah, two things which are similar but different. The beauty is not in finding the mirror image, like you’re looking for with Tim, but complementary things. I think the ideal relationship is when you look into the other person and realize things you couldn’t possibly realize alone or with anyone else. That’s my success, in a humanistic way, with Nico, because he’s so very different from me, and that’s one of your basic problems with Tim.

MARSHA: You think we’re alike?

VINCENT: I think you’re very similar. The only thing is that you’re stronger and that’s bad because you need someone more powerful than you.

MARSHA: That’s the problem — to find one.

VINCENT: They exist. And as you get stronger, through your analysis, through living, you’ll be able to deal with them. I think Tim would actually make you a perfect first marriage. And I don’t mean that to be cynical, I mean it in a very realistic way. I think you’d each learn a lot from being married to each other. Tim has great capacity.

MARSHA: He has great potential, let’s face it.

VINCENT: He really does, that’s what I’m afraid of in your involvement with him, that he’ll reach his potential through you and then—

MARSHA: Drop me.

VINCENT: And then drop you. But that’s what life is, that’s what all first marriages are about. And just because you’re thirty-one doesn’t mean it still can’t be a first marriage. You’ve never lived with anyone full-time, and he hasn’t either. Just if you were to live in his studio and have to buy him food on your way home from work and cook for him and bring his dirty underwear to the laundromat.

MARSHA: That’s still not a commitment. It’s a step further, but it’s not a commitment. I want to have children.

VINCENT: You will. Besides, having children’s becoming a different thing now; it’s becoming that you make them and look after them, but not necessarily in a family atmosphere. I mean the parents can be split, like with all the kids on the beach.

MARSHA: That’s the way it is becoming. You know we have to be very brave people.

VINCENT: It’s becoming that way because of the nature of giving women their independence. The reason marriages lasted before was women were put down, they were in the kitchen and out of the question. Now women find that they need more than one man in a lifetime. We’re each too many people for one mate to satisfy. Look at the symbols of man and woman — the man’s arrow points up because he isn’t monogamous, he wants to screw and move on. But I’m not sure women don’t want exactly the same thing. If they do bend aside and choose one man, in order to make it work over a long period of time, they’ve got to be very very independent and have, not affairs necessarily, but the sort of freewheeling thing Emil and Diana have.

MARSHA: But they’re very unhappy people.

VINCENT: You know why? Because they’re pioneers, we’re all pioneers going through new frontiers, new jungles, we’re breaking psychic, social land so that people following us will be able to lead better lives.

MARSHA: I don’t think Emil and Diana have the guts really to do it.

VINCENT: You know, when I think of myself having a child, in a way I’d love to have one, but I also feel very selfish about it. I always remember what I think it was Motherwell said, he had these two sons or something, and he said when he takes them to the zoo, he feels guilty about not staying home and painting, and when he stays painting, he feels guilty about not taking them to the zoo. I see men on the beach embracing and caring about their children, and that’s what you really have to do, give yourself up to them.