Linda Rosenkrantz - Talk

MARSHA: Certainly. So what Nathan said was the most obvious thing in the world.

EMILY: Of course. What did he say?

MARSHA: That when I get married, I’m not going to be spending night and day with Vinnie. Doesn’t Vinnie know that?

EMILY: What do you think would happen to him if you cut off your relationship?

MARSHA: According to what he said last night, he’d just find him another Marsha.

EMILY: Bullshit. I know how I function without my friends: I break down, but I get through. Like when I was in Europe, we were writing each other letters and you were sending me tubes of toothpaste, but that wasn’t supportive, it wasn’t structural. One thing your relationship with Vinnie and me does is make you know who you are.

MARSHA: Yeah, sure, it all has to do with identity. Because in the early days, when I used to go to Vinnie’s first apartment with Clem on 89th Street, I would feel that I was going to visit myself, to find my identity. When I was there I was myself and when I left I wasn’t. I was constantly looking to Vinnie to establish who I was. There’s also a very strong Pygmalion thing: Vinnie created me, in a sense.

EMILY: Do you have any honey in the house? I’ve got to get some honey for my cold, that’s the first thing I’ve got to get today. Let me ask you an important question: what do you think would happen if you and Vinnie slept together?

MARSHA: I think it would end the relationship. But on the other hand, it could conceivably be very unimportant.

EMILY: If going to bed with Vinnie’s unimportant, it’s only part of your whole problem of going to bed with men being unimportant. Do you think for one minute that if you finally went to bed with Vinnie, the two of you are alone in a room and he makes love to you…

MARSHA: I think I’d burst out laughing.

EMILY: I bet you both would.

MARSHA: No, actually it would become deadly serious — that’s what happens when we look at each other now and he’s got his hand on my breast or something — it gets deadly serious. You know I had one moment of absolute terror last night.

EMILY: What was the moment of terror?

MARSHA: When Nathan came out and said I wouldn’t be able to have a marriage until this relationship with Vince ends.

EMILY: What he was saying was as long as you have Vinnie, why do you need a husband? Of course that’s too pat, life isn’t about things getting that simple. But what do you really want in another man? The only other relationships you have with men are fucking relationships, they don’t have any of the range that you have with Vinnie, right? You have purely sensual relationships with the other men.

MARSHA: They’re not sensual, they’re sexual. There’s very little sensuality in those relationships.

EMILY: This bread is too thick to fit into the toaster. Look, any man coming close to you must feel fantastically threatened by Vinnie.

MARSHA: Of course, he’s a powerhouse, a knockout.

EMILY: Not only that but he’s madly in love with you.

MARSHA: Is he?

EMILY: He is, but you can also say I’m madly in love with you. Let me ask you, are you closer to Vinnie than you are to me? After all he is a man with cock and balls.

MARSHA: No, I think I’m closer to you, even though he thinks I’m closer to him.

EMILY: I asked you that not in a competitive way.

MARSHA: I know. They’re both very close — I think it shifts. With Vinnie it’s such a delicate balance of picking and criticizing and then building up and love. They’re both very strange relationships. Do you really think he is madly in love with me? In any sense of the term?

EMILY: It’s very hard to say. What do you think?

MARSHA: I’m not sure I know what it means.

EMILY: It doesn’t mean anything.

MARSHA: Nathan was really relentless with him though, he kept sticking the knife in and in and in.

EMILY: What knife, darling?

MARSHA: That Vince is ruining my life.

EMILY: He didn’t say that.

MARSHA: Yes he did, he said that this relationship is screwing up my life, and as long as I cling to it, I can’t have any other.

EMILY: Yeah, but then he said that Vinnie was the one getting done in.

MARSHA: That was an afterthought.

EMILY: No, it was a second thought that became very important. You don’t have all your important thoughts first.

MARSHA: What role does Vinnie play in my relationships with other men? With Tim it was certainly very blatant — he almost couldn’t go to bed with me because of Vinnie. He kept saying I was Vinnie’s girl, it wasn’t right for us to go to bed together because I was Vinnie’s girl. Almost every time I’m in bed with someone, Vince is there too.

EMILY: You know Vinnie’s encouraging you with all these different men, but I’m sure it’s partly because he has no faith in any of them sticking. He can encourage you with Tim Cullen because he knows it doesn’t stand a chance. About 70 % of his feeling is absolutely genuine, I’m sure, but there’s that other percentage that’s more selfish. He knows that if you go with this one and that one, he can still maintain what he has with you.

MARSHA: Which is much stronger.

EMILY: And he’s happy to have that final fulfillment done by this one or that one. But Nathan was right to some extent— there are few men who could feel complete enough against this strong relationship you have with Vinnie. Which doesn’t mean the relationship has to end. In time you’ll change, Vince will change, and the other man who comes along will be a different man. But I think you always will have a relationship.

MARSHA: Is there more tea?

EMILY: Yeah, in the antique pitcher. Okay, so the thing is that on a certain level, your relationships with me and Vinnie are not constructive, they’re camouflages and excuses and props. We both serve. I won’t go into what you and Vinnie serve for me . I’m also interested in the affect thing, that you said you didn’t feel anything while all this combat was flying around your head. You still don’t feel anything now?

MARSHA: Who knows?

EMILY: I get this very often myself — someone says something to me and I get two contradicting, conflicting feelings, so I end up feeling neither and nothing, I end up feeling zero.

MARSHA: Is that me?

EMILY: Well, you say you don’t feel anything.

MARSHA: What I felt last night was locked, I felt such walls of defense around me. I just wouldn’t let myself enter into it, I was very cool. Tim Cullen would have been proud of me, I was so cool.

EMILY: What did he say to you that time? Cool it?

MARSHA: Yeah, and it’s funny because in a sense I’m the coolest person in the world, right?

EMILY: Right, 100 % right. That’s what’s so ridiculous. But let’s talk about this for a second. What do you think your relationship with Vinnie’s really about? Take it on a very ordinary level, not the soaring love level of it.

MARSHA: I don’t know. I’ve never known what was going on.

EMILY: You have to have some sneaky hunchy clue, you have to have some idea. Like in my friendship with Joan, I know what’s going on there . But I also don’t.

MARSHA: I assure you that what you don’t know is much more important than what you know.

EMILY: But at least I’m able to talk about the relationship and seemingly what it is.

MARSHA: I hope you’re being very careful with the disposal of the tissues. You know in a sense last night was like listening to the voice of the public, condemning my relationship with Vin.

EMILY: You also have to bear in mind that some of the things Nathan said are true, and the question remains how do you handle those things?