Linda Rosenkrantz: Talk

EMILY: You mean as a Genet?

MARSHA: Yeah, he has a real Genet image of himself. He’s got in a way a very criminal mentality, he’s very death oriented. He picks up these rough truck-driver types and they have ménages à any number you can mention.

EMILY: He seems very vain.

MARSHA: Very vain, very bright, and he’s funny, he’s talented.

EMILY: Is he good?

MARSHA: You mean is he a good person? I don’t know. He’s vulnerable.

EMILY: Vinnie’s very vulnerable too.

MARSHA: I don’t want to get into Vinnie for the moment.

EMILY: But does he want to get into you? The one thing I don’t understand is his relationship with Nico. You don’t either, do you?

MARSHA: No.

EMILY: I just don’t get it, Marsha, so help me God. Listen, have you seen any one out here so far who’s available?

MARSHA: No one.

EMILY: If I find out about an interesting-sounding party tonight, are you interested in going?

MARSHA: What about Vinnie? Did he say he was coming over?

EMILY: No, I think he wants to be alone with his Nico before the weekend guests arrive. Look, Marshie, we’re two beautiful women and we have to start making inroads.

EMILY: I have multiple involvements and I think I always will. But I don’t really want to discuss it.

VINCENT: Do you feel any of them have come to fruition?

EMILY: No.

VINCENT: That’s the point. I don’t mind multiple involvements if a couple of them are fulfilled. My whole point is that you expend all your creative energies on your love objects.

EMILY: You think so?

VINCENT: I know so.

EMILY: Let’s discuss it. Tell me about my love objects and tell me why Michael Christy’s a waste of time.

VINCENT: He’s a waste of time, my dear, because he doesn’t love you. He’s just a sexual interest.

EMILY: No, he’s a love interest, he’s not a sexual interest.

VINCENT: He is a sexual interest, because your only relationship with him is sexual.

EMILY: You are insane!

VINCENT: Are you going to tell me it’s a talking, caring, affectionate relationship?

EMILY: When we’re together, it certainly is.

VINCENT: Then why do you both have to get immediately drunk every time?

EMILY: That’s not because it’s sexual, it’s because it’s emotional.

VINCENT: It’s because neither of you can relate emotionally. You always pick people, situations, which cannot give you any sort of return. You pick twisted trees to nourish, instead of giving your fertilizer to new young ones.

EMILY: Wait a second. What about Philippe Rocheau? Philippe Rocheau on the surface, at least on certain levels, is a very feeling, emotional kind of person, although he’s not really. My picking him was not because I’m afraid to give and afraid to love.

VINCENT: That was five years ago, I don’t know about that. I’m talking about now.

MARSHA: We know about now, let’s talk about the future.

VINCENT: All right, let’s talk about her future. How do you see yourself in the future? The future, you know, is what you’re doing about the present.

EMILY: Of course the future’s the present.

VINCENT: The future is like the next word I’m going to say, which then immediately becomes the past. There is no present, only the future and the past. Marshie, you’re getting a terrible sunburn. I would cover it up.

MARSHA: I have nothing to cover it with.

VINCENT: Take off your bathing suit and cover it with that.

EMILY: You know you criticize me, but you don’t understand certain things in my background. Do you know my father had an entire library of Indian philosophy, life after death? My father was a fantastic moral, spiritual person who wrote letters to the Pope which were printed in The New York Times and everything else. My sister thinks my father was a hero.

VINCENT: I’ve heard all that before.

MARSHA: So have I.

EMILY: But you must understand where it all comes from.

VINCENT: All right, so that’s where it all comes from. Does that mean you have to hold on to it forever?

EMILY: Okay, what am I supposed to believe?

MARSHA: Just that there is good and bad in people.

EMILY: Don’t you think I believe that? That’s the most simple-minded thing I ever heard in my life.

MARSHA: But you don’t believe it in a realistic way. You think they’re all good, they’re pure, they’re deep, they’re this, they’re that. You don’t basically believe that either Zeke or Michael could be anything but good and pure and sweet.

EMILY: I really do believe that Michael is pure.

MARSHA: I don’t for a minute, and I hardly even know him.

VINCENT: The thing is, Emmy, you are a product of the nineteenth century: you believe that sadness implies goodness and suffering implies purity. And you think that when you find someone who is sick in the head, they must be good because they’ve suffered.

MARSHA: Yes, you’re always saying that deep underneath all the shit, somewhere at the bottom of the left toe, they’re good. Zeke has ruined the lives of his wife and his children, and I’m sure Michael has ruined the lives of his wife and child. That’s not being so good, is it, Vinnie?

EMILY: But I know all that. I don’t get what you’re telling me that you think I don’t know.

MARSHA: I’m saying that most people are not nice, that they’re selfish and that’s their main motivation in life, to get what they can for themselves.

EMILY: Well let me ask you this then — why is Michael Christy very well loved?

MARSHA: Because he’s all fucked up and he’s suffering.

VINCENT: All right, and who are the people who love him?

EMILY: The people who love him are the people who’ve had the opportunity to really know him.

VINCENT: Yeah, but what are they?

EMILY: Fucked up.

VINCENT: Exactly.

EMILY: Some of them aren’t.

VINCENT: There are very few people in that whole art world who aren’t fucked up, darling.

EMILY: Well, Zeke Sutherland may be an idiot and everything else, but he does love Mike.

VINCENT: Is he some sort of love meter? You say to me people love him, then you point to somebody who’s got not one bit of love in him.

EMILY: Now you’re saying something which philosophically just doesn’t hold water. You’re saying if someone is really very well loved, then you have to examine all the people who love him and think oh my God, they’re so manqué and they’re so deficient emotionally that of course they could love him. I’m sorry, there’s something beyond that. If someone is well loved, he is well loved.

VINCENT: I think lots of people are well loved who are very un-lovable. Just look at idols, public idols.

EMILY: Darling, public idols are not well loved. Who? L.B. Johnson? Besides, there are all kinds of sensational public relations things going to elicit love for these people.

VINCENT: Oh what’s love anyway? Love is a very subjective thing, don’t bullshit me.

EMILY: Who’s saying it isn’t subjective?

VINCENT: Well you’re making it like some ultimate truth. You know it’s possible to love people for their defects as well as their virtues. And don’t get arrogant just because we happen to be talking about the man you love. What you’re saying is that because people love him, he’s not defective.

EMILY: I’m not saying he’s not defective.

VINCENT: You know I love little dogs that have hurt themselves much more than ones that can run and have a good time.

EMILY: I still think there must be a basic goodness in someone who is loved by a lot of people. I’m sorry, I really do.