Linda Rosenkrantz - Talk

VINCENT: Yes I do.

EMILY: And in the middle of the night, some marino shakes me on the shoulder. I wake up and I go huh? He says vieni con me . He wants to fuck me, I should go with him to his cabina. That’s all I need, I’m almost puking over the side of the deck, with the sharks and the fins and the dolphins swimming around. Then a little later I’m sound asleep and all of a sudden I get it into my head I’ve got to find my Marshie.

VINCENT: Why?

EMILY: Because I miss her. I’m sick, it’s three o’clock in the morning, I find my Marshie curled up with her bowlegs around some bar stool and I say Marshie, come out onto the deck. She walks out and immediately falls back to sleep on my materassino . Then I’m talking to a Milanese journalist and the Milanese journalist falls asleep. So I’m all alone again on the fucking side of the ship because I’ve been so sick, dawn is slightly coming up, I look and I see a black cone jetting out from the land, from the sea, into the gray sky. I say to myself this is incredible, it’s Stromboli. I wake Marshie up and we look, the boat comes a little bit closer and it’s the scariest fucking thing I’ve ever seen, this black volcanic island.

MARSHA: I’m giving these pants into the laundry.

EMILY: You know, Vinnie, I just decided that I’m never listening to you again, I’m serious.

VINCENT: She interrupted you, I didn’t.

MARSHA: He didn’t. It was my fault, I’m sorry.

EMILY: It has nothing to do with interruptions, it has to do with straight brown hair in front of a tanned forehead and an open mouth and a lying soul.

VINCENT: And very good teeth.

EMILY: Nice teeth. Are you listening to my story?

VINCENT: I’m not carrying your extras to the laundry, Marsh.

EMILY: I think it’s important to discuss your laundry, much more important than Stromboli.

VINCENT: Marshie, the pictures in this album don’t look anything like you, you look much older younger.

MARSHA: Can I ask you something? If I haven’t been to the beach in a week, how come I’m full of sand?

EMILY: Because you haven’t been to the beach in a week.

VINCENT: Marshie, you are unbelievable. Your face changes from hairstyle to hairstyle. What was this dark mark you used to have on your face? I’m sorry, it’s no longer there.

MARSHA: It is so, it’s my mole, hon. I pluck it every Thursday.

VINCENT: When you look at this album, do you think the things you wrote in it were a lot of hogwash and bullshit?

MARSHA: I can’t stand them.

VINCENT: Boy, we’ve all changed so much. That’s why when I look at teenagers, I admire them because of their youth, but I know that their minds are shy. Marshie, you look horrible in these pictures. You’ve gotten so beautiful. Look, Clem lifting you up. In Siena, they must have thought Clem and I were gorgeous.

EMILY: What a time to go through her album. It’s such a bore.

VINCENT: You know I just looked at this picture of Clem and I got sad for the first time since we broke up. This is where all the zinnias were planted, Marsha, next to the herb garden. And look at this picture of little Sam Gold.

EMILY: Not so little.

VINCENT: He was the most intelligent man you were ever involved with.

EMILY: Can we name our men and their professions and what they looked like?

MARSHA: Okay, Number one: Jewish ne’er-do-well.

EMILY: Stanley Siskind. It has to be real number one, not guys who just put it near but never really got it inside, it has to be a real prick going into a real cunt, not any fooling around like coming between the breasts. I had about three of those.

VINCENT: You have such big breasts to come between?

EMILY: All right, you start. Number one?

MARSHA: I told you, Number one: Jewish blond ne’-er-do-well.

EMILY: Number two, I have no matches.

MARSHA: Number two, Sam Gold. You?

EMILY: Handsome man with a huge head.

MARSHA: Roy Imber.

VINCENT: This is a very hostile game, because I’m left completely out of it.

EMILY: Aren’t you looking at the fucking album and not saying anything to anyone? Number three?

MARSHA: Catholic on call at Mount Sinai Hospital.

VINCENT: You slept with Bill Meehan? What kind of dick did he have?

MARSHA: I just remember there was a big scar above it.

EMILY: I’d like to sleep with Bill.

VINCENT: Would you really? Would you like to suck him off too? Have you ever had sperm go into your mouth?

MARSHA: Of course.

VINCENT: I asked Emily, not you.

MARSHA: I suck Tim Cullen off.

VINCENT: No wonder he doesn’t respect you.

EMILY: Why, is it wrong to suck a man off?

VINCENT: You shouldn’t do it too often. Don’t forget in English there’s an expression “you dirty cocksucker.”

EMILY: Michael Christy made me do it all the time.

MARSHA: So does Tim.

VINCENT: Then you’re both involved with the wrong men.

EMILY: All men want it, Vinnie, they all want everything, and so do we.

MARSHA: I don’t get that much out of it though.

VINCENT: She’s adorable. Can you swallow it? Don’t you gag?

MARSHA: I gag.

VINCENT: I love this cat. You know what she is? She’s the feline you when you realize yourself.

EMILY: Jonquil! Get down on the floor and play your games, Jonquil.

VINCENT: She loves me, she loves me because she knows I’m a man. Animals do know, that’s why Gide was so wrong.

MARSHA: What did he say?

VINCENT: He looked to animals and tried to make an argument about homosexuality.

EMILY: Yeah, animals are very homosexual.

VINCENT: No they’re not, just bees and ducks. Look at this cat— has it ever loved anyone quite as much as me? She understands the whole secret of what Marshie doesn’t understand with men. I didn’t pay any attention to this cat for twenty-four hours, none whatsoever. Then at the end it happened.

EMILY: Why is that the secret? I don’t get it, Vinnie — what are we supposed to do with these men? You know when my doctor was teaching me how to let go and give and love with Philippe, I achieved all those things, but look at the object I had chosen. I still owe that doctor five hundred dollars.

VINCENT: You do? And you’re lying there? Why aren’t you working as a waitress somewhere, getting the money to pay him?

EMILY: Because I worked as a waitress for two years and put myself through thirteen, fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of analysis.

VINCENT: Let me tell you a very quick story. I had an analyst once named Dr. Herne, I never knew his first name.

EMILY: Just tell Jonquil you’re not rejecting her.

VINCENT: She knows it, cats are fantastic. Look how symmetrical she is in the chair. Anyway, I had been going to this analyst at the N.Y.U. clinic for bright, talented children, where I had this other doctor who went into the service. I had dreamt I fell in love with him — I was eighteen years old and I didn’t know about transference or anything.

EMILY: Shrinking at eighteen, huh?

VINCENT: Of course, darling, I was an extraordinary child. That’s what’s wrong with American civilization; we think at eighteen you’re still a child. So anyway, I told him this fantastic dream I had, and at the end of the session, he announced that he was drafted and would have to leave in three weeks. It was horrible. It set up one of the basic patterns of my life. Then they found a substitute for me, this Dr. Herne. I was going there because I couldn’t speak in my art history class and I was failing. Oh, parenthetically, Johnson, in his press conference today, did an unbelievable thing. He announced that anyone married after midnight tonight would not be exempt from the draft. Isn’t that awful, giving people eight hours’ notice?