Linda Rosenkrantz - Talk

MARSHA: Those are the things to handle.

EMILY: Right. After all, Vinnie can be fantastically honest about himself, incredibly open and honorable, but he also has a tremendous facility for turning things to his own advantage.

MARSHA: But it didn’t work that way last night — he broke down at the end and his mind was flailing out in every direction. Emily, what do you think the mock sex business with Vinnie is really all about?

EMILY: I’ll tell you about the mock sex if you put up some more mock tea. Mock sex, that’s a soup made with mock genitals and mock come, and as far as I can see, mock sex is more fun than real sex. When is the moron coming over here anyway? I don’t get it. How come he wants to go out dancing tonight all of a sudden?

MARSHA: I have no idea, it must be some kind of inverse reaction. I mean here he is, destroyed and distraught and drained, his legs aching, he can’t paint, and then he wants to go out dancing.

EMILY: He’s not getting any chicken because I’m having a whole half of it.

MARSHA: And I’m having the other.

EMILY: Jonquil, come here. God, I’m in love with her. I’m not just fond of Jonquil, I’m in love with her.

MARSHA: I’m damaged, Jonquil, I’m damaged goods. Come on, Emily, please tell me about mock sex.

EMILY: OK, what do you think it’s about?

MARSHA: I think it’s about real sex.

EMILY: That’s your comprehensive answer to such an incredibly complex question? No, what mock sex is is heterosexual groping, like testing the water with your toe. Vinnie’s feeling things out. See, when he shows his penis, he’s exposing himself, but it’s still very passive aggression. He’s not showing you an erected penis, he’s just showing you a penis, right? Don’t you have these kinds of insights? I mean don’t you ever correlate what you do on the outside with Merrill Johnston?

MARSHA: Sure, didn’t I immediately when I threw Tim Cullen out on the Fourth of July correlate it with Merrill Johnston?

EMILY: Did you?

MARSHA: Of course. But I do sometimes get the feeling that I’m very dumb. I seem not to allow myself any perceptions — but maybe they’re not even there. Like last night, I just sat like a dumb animal.

EMILY: Well, it may be lucky that you are dumb in that sense. Come on, Jonquil, giù, giù, giù!

MARSHA: Catholic, Catholic, Catholic!

EMILY: She’s very hungry but I think this meat’s too cold for her to eat.

MARSHA: Put it on top of the tea kettle for a second.

EMILY: Good idea. My Marshie’s such a smart person, my Marshie’s really not dumb after all.

MARSHA: You know you can’t say my analysis has stopped this summer. It’s continuing on and on and on right under our noses.

EMILY: Analysis doesn’t stop.

MARSHA: No, but I mean it’s not like going off to Europe and having a real vacation from it. Uh-uh.

EMILY: I’m calling Vinnie right now and telling him he has to bring me some honey for my cold when he comes. Maybe we should all go to the beach for a little while and relax.

VINCENT: Psychoanalysis is a crock of shit.

EMILY: What are you saying, darling?

VINCENT: I’m saying we’re living in some kind of medieval time where analysis is all we have, it’s probably the most intelligent thing we can do at the moment, but certainly in a hundred years people will look back on it like we look back on the naiveté of the past. And I’m also saying another two or three days of this wild kind of group therapy we’ve been going through would be permanently damaging.

EMILY: It can only be damaging if the truth is damaging. Look at that little girl over there in the polka-dot bathing suit. She’s so beautiful she’s breaking my heart. She’s going to be a first-class beauty.

VINCENT: She’s gorgeous. How old? Ten?

EMILY: To be so beautiful at that age is scary.

VINCENT: The thing is, I just don’t know how good it is to go into such fantastic analysis of your closest friends. I can’t tell you how on edge I feel with Marsha right now because of the Nathan Fass episode, I feel all the implications of the complexity of our relationship.

MARSHA: But don’t you think they’re things we should try to understand?

VINCENT: No, because they weren’t hurting us. It was someone outside who brought us to the damaging point, to our tether’s end. That’s where we are, at the end of our ropes, our summer’s ropes. You just can’t get down to these really basic feelings without an analyst to protect you from certain pitfalls. I’m sorry, I found myself, with the help of that man last night, digging a kind of grave for our relationship. It’s like LSD, if you don’t take it with a doctor or someone who can guide you, it’s very dangerous. Or it’s like if you want to improve your muscles and you start using barbells without any preparation, you can break your muscles.

EMILY: But we’re all highly equipped to deal with these things. It happened you were victorious last night, you emerged very strong, you were not beaten.

VINCENT: Let me just finish what I was saying. I, only in the last few weeks, have really been anxious to get back to my analysis. Marsha has too, especially seeing her doctor on the beach all the time. It’s been a long hot summer and it’s been a very important one for all of us. But we’ve been trying to substitute our own analysis for the real thing and that’s why we’ve gotten into trouble. My doctor, when I asked her shall I remember my dreams this summer, she said no, try not to get too involved in them.

EMILY: Why?

VINCENT: Because of just this, the misinterpretation and the feeling that you’re in over your head. This is a time for me which is very crucial and very meaningful and very, very loaded and confused and raw. And right now, all my anxieties are about Marsha, she has become for me a terrible figure.

MARSHA: Why have I?

VINCENT: I don’t know, I just feel it. I’m filled with a tremendous antagonism.

EMILY: I have one more thing to say about last night. First Nathan attacked Marsha and then he attacked you. You came to her defense, and I’m sure you expected her to do the same for you.

VINCENT: She never did.

EMILY: Right, and so you’re angry. I told Marsha to expect that, but the point is she didn’t stand up for your friendship because she wasn’t standing up for anything, she wasn’t participating on any level. It wasn’t about you, it was about her reaction to the whole situation.

VINCENT: Yeah, but I’m talking in a very deep way right now. This summer, because Nico’s been away so much, my love relationship has essentially been with Marsha. And it was coming to a very serious point, like last Friday my getting her on the bed and everything, even before the thing with Nathan. So that in a completely feeling way, my relationship is out of control with you now, Marsha. I have been continually hurt by you in the last two or three days, really terribly, terribly hurt, like this morning when you wouldn’t speak to me on the phone.

MARSHA: When I was trying to work?

VINCENT: Yes, it hurt me to the quick.

EMILY: That’s the paranoia that was aroused by the whole attack.

VINCENT: No it wasn’t, it was my total anxiety about loss. But we’ve been through all that. God, I’m anxious today. I’m anxious because on one level I want the sun and on another level I really want to paint. Did all those things I just said frighten you, Marsh? She hasn’t uttered one word, Em.

MARSHA: I guess they did.

VINCENT: And you totally withdrew, didn’t you?

MARSHA: It doesn’t matter. I’d rather know about it, I don’t want any bullshit I love you I love you I love you when you’re really feeling antagonism. I can’t live that way.