Linda Rosenkrantz - Talk

MARSHA: You can’t even get your blood test.

VINCENT: That’s a dirty trick, I’m sorry, he should have warned them. Anyway, see, I have this deep problem of not being able to talk in school. The doctor comes in, after I had had this marvelous green-eyed brown-haired Jewish East Side Salinger-type analyst, this new doctor comes in, he says mmmmmmmy nnnnnnnnname is uhuhuhuh Docdocdocdoctor Hhhhhherne.

EMILY: And you said mmmmmmmmy nnnnnname is Pppppppatient Mmmmmmiano.

VINCENT: So there are two things I want to tell you about him. The first is I walked out of my last session during Christmas vacation that year, I’m two blocks away, it’s winter, very cold but not snowing or wet, and I hear someone calling Vincent! Vvvvvincent! I didn’t even turn my head, I just stopped in my tracks, and there he was with this Christmas present for me. It was a ballpoint pen in a box, and it had Merry Christmas Vincent written on it.

EMILY: Oh my God, it’s so sad!

VINCENT: Very sad. I’m not even going into the other thing, it’s even sadder. I’m getting bored. I’m the only one all evening who’s had any vitality.

MARSHA: That’s not true — I’ve been flipping it in.

VINCENT: Have you ever had to show a man how to get to your vagina? I mean take his penis and push it in?

MARSHA: Yeah, just the other week.

VINCENT: Boy, Tim must be such a sad guy.

MARSHA: He’s half a person.

VINCENT: You have no sympathy for him. All of a sudden he’s half a person. A couple of weeks ago he was three times a person. You know I like this room, it’s got good proportions.

EMILY: The walls are a nice color.

VINCENT: Yeah, you couldn’t have them in the city this color, but it’s nice out here. By the way, last Thursday night, I didn’t really go to a friend’s house, I went to a gay bar.

MARSHA: I knew you did when you said you were going to visit a friend in Water Mill. I know how many friends you have in Water Mill.

VINCENT: It was a beautiful thing, it took about a half hour to get there, through side roads and potato fields. I think we should go there tonight. They do line-up dancing and there are beautiful girls.

EMILY: I’m not going anywhere. I’m relaxing here and I have things to do in the morning.

MARSHA: What was it like? All boys?

VINCENT: No, I just told you, beautiful girls.

MARSHA: Lesbians?

VINCENT: No.

EMILY: Were there a lot of people? Attractive people?

VINCENT: A news commentator from NBC was there. What’s his name? Very thin, with blond hair?

MARSHA: Did you meet anyone?

VINCENT: No. There was one guy there who looked just like Eliot Simon. I’ll tell you something about Eliot Simon — he’s really ugly.

EMILY: No he’s not.

VINCENT: He is, with his loafers and white socks and short green pants.

MARSHA: That’s not what ugliness is. Besides, he’s changed his style. He wears black socks now with shiny black shoes.

EMILY: He has no class, but he’s a lovely guy.

MARSHA: He’s a horrible guy.

VINCENT: By the way, Emily, you know that’s a beautiful thing, the fact that the Reinhardts took Sick Joan to the insane asylum. How did that happen? Did you get in touch with them?

EMILY: I called Joan a couple of times, she wasn’t home. Finally she called me , and she was out of her mind. I talked to Diana Reinhardt and told her I wasn’t too interested in taking Joan to the bin.

VINCENT: So you called Diana to ask her to take her?

EMILY: Diana called me to ask me to take her.

VINCENT: You’re very hostile to me tonight, don’t think I’m not noticing it. And don’t tell me that you’re calm either.

EMILY: I don’t feel related to you or Marsha, but it has nothing to do with hostility.

MARSHA: I don’t feel well.

VINCENT: You know you’re both very bad at relating if you don’t have total love.

MARSHA: I need total love.

EMILY: So anyway, are you listening? What am I talking about?

VINCENT: Sick Joan.

EMILY: Oh, so I said I’d take her even if I didn’t want to. I knew that if she didn’t get in, I would have to deal with her not getting in and that’s what I was afraid of, the aftermath of her being rejected from the hospital. Not only that, I just didn’t want to go; I was all alone, I was feeling good, I wanted to do something for myself. But I went anyway, the Reinhardts picked me up and we all took her to the hospital. Apparently she belongs in one because after all the interviews and everything they wanted to accept her. If they want to accept you, you must belong.

VINCENT: Sometimes they accept you just to calm you down.

EMILY: They thought she was in very bad shape. We said we didn’t want to accept the responsibility and the doctor said I don’t blame you for a minute.

VINCENT: You know what the guy I went to the gay bar with asked me that night? He said if I called up Emily, would she come here and dance with me?

EMILY: I don’t like to be used as an escort in that way, Vinnie.

VINCENT: I know that.

MARSHA: I don’t either, except I am.

VINCENT: By me? I never used you that way.

MARSHA: Never, except on Ischia.

VINCENT: That was terrific.

MARSHA: You know that story? When Vinnie used me as Suddenly Last Summer? When I was his pimp?

VINCENT: This will be very interesting for me, because I’ll finally hear her version of it.

EMILY: Can I have your version of the ashtray?

MARSHA: You want to hear the story? You know I had had this beautiful Sienese summer with Vin and Clem, my ideal of romantic love? I thought they were the perfect couple, they would never break up, they were going to come back and live in Bucks County from here to eternity? All winter we corresponded, and the following summer they invited me over again because I had been such a good guest.

EMILY: Where was this?

MARSHA: They were living in Rome, they had left Siena. So I get there, I see my ideal couple, and after about ten minutes, the news starts to filter through that they’re not so ideal anymore, they’re not even a couple. I had a complete internal breakdown. I mean their union was my whole security against the world at that time. I had never really thought of them as homosexual, you see, just as a happily married couple, because they were very private, their bedroom door was always closed and everything else. Even though their bed did have a white wedding veil over it in Siena.

VINCENT: Oh wait a minute.

MARSHA: Mosquito netting, they called it. So anyway it was a total shock to me.

EMILY: Vinnie’s so sunburned. Look at him.

MARSHA: Vince was a nervous wreck, both of them were, all they did was comb their hair. They were constantly combing their hair. I had never seen them with a comb in their hands before, now they were never without one.

VINCENT: Is that really true?

EMILY: I’d like to take a photograph of your hands, Vinnie, they are not to be believed.

MARSHA: And the phone calls were pouring in, Alberto, Paolo, Cici, all these guys calling up night and day, with liaisons and rendezvous and everything else. I was a wreck, Vince was a wreck, so we decided we should go away, take a little trip together to Ischia.

EMILY: Jonquil!

MARSHA: Oh stop it, let her sleep. Boy, you’re going to be some mother. Anyway, to make a long story short, we were there, we hated Ischia, it was very ugly.

VINCENT: She’s not listening to a word you’re saying. She’s got venom in her ears.

MARSHA: Are you listening to me?

EMILY: Ischia.

MARSHA: We were staying at separate places for some reason, and the maid in my pensione kept winking at me and saying don’t worry, he can stay over anytime he wants to. I was quite a distance from the center of town, it was an area where they were building, sort of lonely, deserted, with workmen and things. Dig we must.