The following “game” is an excerpt from my book Earnest Games, the e-book version of which will be FREE on Amazon from Wednesday, May 31, through Sunday, June 4. Download your copy today and please remember to rate and review the book on Amazon, Goodreads, and BookBub. Thanks, as always, for your support.
PAUL
Yes, I gave Valerie the money to buy the gun. At least, I think I did. Obviously, that was never my intention. What happened was this: A couple of days before that fateful afternoon when she made her mark as an historical footnote to this tumultuous decade, I ran into Valerie on the streets of Greenwich Village, where she was wont to peddle her writing. Seeing me pass by, she said: “Hey, Krassner, you self-hating Jew, let me borrow fifty bucks.” We were quite familiar with one another, as you may surmise, so I replied: “Hey, Solanas, you man-hating lesbian, why should I?” She explained that she had some unforeseen expenses related to the mimeographed copies of her SCUM Manifesto. I did not believe her of course, but as an outsider, a free speech advocate, and an independent publisher myself—you’ve heard of my magazine The Realist, right?—I felt obliged to help her out. Needless to say, I did not expect to ever be paid back.
She had given me a copy of her manifesto a couple of weeks previous, and I took this occasion to offer my critique. I began with effusive praise, telling her that her writing made me laugh harder than I had laughed in years. I said she would have to forgive me for comparing her to one of the “Great Artists” of the patriarchy, but I found her work to be positively Swiftian in its satirical power. I told her I especially appreciated her analysis of war, oppression, and the money system, and I thought her disruptive strategies of “fucking up” and “unwork” were brilliant in their evocation of Mario Savio’s call for workers and activists to put their bodies on the gears of the machine in order to stop it. I may be wrong, but I think she was pleased with this feedback.
I furthermore told her that although I would be happy to join what she called “the SCUM Auxiliary”—the only position a male such as myself could occupy in her movement—I nevertheless had to tease her a bit about some of the content of the manifesto. I explained that as a “self-hating Jew” myself—and as a male—I took particular issue with her “genocidal” animus against men. She was not the least bit offended by my use of that adjective when describing her ideology. In fact, she seemed to welcome it. “Men, with their Y chromosome, their incomplete set of X chromosomes, are an abomination,” she often said. “You don’t deserve to live.” Partly in jest, I accused her of being a female supremacist. She did not deny it, and she did not seem to be troubled in the least when I pointed out that this was exactly the kind of philosophical arrogance which characterized the male chauvinism she despised.
Somewhat more crassly—I’m not surnamed Krass-ner for nothing: remember I’m the guy who accused LBJ of buggering JFK’s bullet wound—I nitpicked her notion that a man will swim across a river of shit (or however she put it) as long as there is a friendly pussy waiting at the end of it. I told her it simply wasn’t true that a man would fuck any woman whatsoever, and I accused her of reifying PUSSY in an absurdly simplistic way. She of all people, I said, should know that there is a great diversity of pussies: ugly pussies and beautiful pussies, pink pussies and brown pussies, dry pussies and wet pussies, smart pussies and dumb pussies, hairy pussies and shaved pussies. Such wonderful variety proved that no two pussies were the same and, as a welcome corollary, there was at least one pussy for everybody, including her. She laughed good-naturedly and told me to go fuck myself.
Then I asked her if she really supported the utopian “automation” she champions in the manifesto. I am too much the Luddite to think that mechanization will lead to human happiness. She dismissed this concern as well and said that the only reason labor-saving machines had not been made universal is because men wanted to keep women in a condition of permanent enslavement. I tried to offer a class analysis of this state of affairs, but she insisted that it was all down to gender differences.
“OK, Valerie,” I finally told her, “I won’t keep you any longer. Thanks for the philosophical discussion. You’ve earned your fifty bucks. Don’t spend it all in one place.” She snatched the money from my hand and stuffed it in the pocket of her workman’s jacket. And then she was off.
Now that I think about it, there was something else she said that in retrospect seems relevant. She mentioned that she was extremely angry with Maurice Girodias. I even remember her muttering: “Somebody should kill that motherfucker.”
I always took Valerie’s work seriously, but I wouldn’t say I took it literally. After what happened, I began to wonder whether I hadn’t misinterpreted her intent. But I’m still unsure. Was she playing a game or was she in earnest? Was her act merely a vulgar crime or was it also some kind of surrealist performance? Why did she leave a sanitary napkin behind after she shot Warhol? What did it all mean? I don’t think she herself knew where the boundaries between her writing and her life ended and began. Even when she went to the Factory with the gun I had inadvertently given her the money for, even when she pulled the trigger, I think she was probably asking herself: “Is this real?” Even now, as she sits in the psychiatric ward at Bellevue awaiting trial in a court of law, I’m guessing she doesn’t know.
MAURICE
They say I was Valerie Solanas’ original target. The same afternoon that she went to the Factory to confront Warhol, she reportedly went looking for me at the Chelsea Hotel first. Then, not finding me there, she went to my office at Olympia Press, where my secretary informed her that I was away on business, which happened to be true. Only then, I am told, did she make the trip to the Upper East Side.
I first met Valerie at the Chelsea, where I was a permanent resident and she was an occasional tenant, in the summer of 1967. She approached me and introduced herself as a writer. She said she had heard I was called “the Prince of Porn” and specialized in the publication of “dirty books.” She explained that she had written some erotica for men’s magazines and was now working on a novel. I told her that Olympia Press did indeed publish pornography (the books with pink covers and the “Ophelia Press” logo) but we also published some of the most influential avant-garde authors of the twentieth century (the books with green covers in the “Traveller’s Companion” series). She described her writing as being both “smut” and “of great literary merit.” I was in a bit of a rush at that time, but I told her I would be pleased to see some of her work later. I gave her my business card and bade her farewell.
She dropped by Olympia the next day just before noon and demanded to speak with me. My secretary was put off by Valerie’s behavior and there was something of a ruckus in the main office, but I intervened and defused the situation by suggesting Valerie join me for lunch so that we could discuss the possibility of our working together. She readily agreed, and we went to Le Coucou, which I consider the only decent French restaurant in Manhattan. She ate ravenously and drank numerous glasses of red wine, talking non-stop about a subversive organization called SCUM, of which she seemed to be the only member. I was only half-listening, but she spoke with such passionate intensity that I felt intrigued enough to offer her a contract without having read a word of her writing. It was the standard boiler-plate agreement I offer all my writers, with terms advantageous mostly to me but not, by most industry standards, terribly unfair to them. She was to receive $500 up front, and upon submitting the manuscript of her novel she would receive $500 more. I heard later that she was upset with this arrangement and accused me of cheating her somehow, but nobody forced her to sign. I don’t think she even read the contract. In any case, she was more than happy to take the advance.
I frankly do not understand what she had to complain about. She had been living a hand-to-mouth existence, pimping her writing—and her body allegedly—on the streets of New York, and here I was offering her the opportunity to be published by Olympia Press—which, along with its predecessor, Obelisk Press, founded by my father Jack Kahane—had fought the censors and won on behalf of such authors as Vladimir Nabokov, D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, J.P. Donleavy, William Burroughs, and Jean Genet. Furthermore, if she actually delivered the novel she contracted with me to write, she would be paid in total the handsome sum of $1,000 to join such elite company. I am certain that she had no better option at the time.
But she never did write that novel. Instead, she gave me the mimeographed manuscript she had been selling like a hot dog vendor at the price of one dollar for men and fifty cents for women: SCUM Manifesto. And although she did not hold up her end of the deal by delivering a novel, I agreed to accept the manifesto for publication anyway and gave her an additional $500, as I had originally promised. And yet, according to her, this was somehow an example of the patriarchal oppression of women.
I had not prioritized Valerie’s work before, but now that she has thrust herself into the limelight—done a bit of self-promotion, as it were—I am preparing her book for immediate publication. Paul Krassner is writing an introductory essay, which he is calling “Wonder Waif Meets Super Neuter.” According to him, the former alludes to Valerie and the latter is a reference to Monsieur Warhol, but I wonder whether the two are not interchangeable.
I am making a slight change to the title, which will appear as S.C.U.M. Manifesto. I think it looks sexier with such punctuation. Valerie herself once used this acronym—which she explained meant “Society for Cutting Up Men”—when she advertised her work in The Village Voice. There is nothing in the contract which prevents me from making this editorial emendation, and perhaps I will make a few others as well. I look forward to further pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the realm of transgressive literature, and I believe Valerie’s brand of radical feminism will be very marketable indeed.
MARGO
My name is Margo Feiden. A resident of Crown Heights, twenty-three years old, I am known in New York theatrical circles (under my stage name Margo Eden) as something of a wunderkind for having produced an adaptation of Peter Pan on Broadway at the age of sixteen. I am also the agent and publicist of the Pakistani mystic and magician Kuda Bux, whom you may have seen walking across hot coals on TV.
On the morning of June 3, 1968, when I returned home from shopping with my baby daughter, I found someone waiting for me on my stoop. This person was wearing a bulky blue peacoat and a wool hat. Initially, I could not determine whether the person was male or female. My curiosity was piqued.
The person self-identified as Valerie Solanas. I invited her in because she said she had something extremely important to discuss with me. As she entered the apartment, I was taken aback by a funky, sweaty smell emanating from the heavy, disheveled winter clothing which enshrouded her body on this warm summer’s day. She immediately made herself at home, and sitting upright on a couch in the living room, she demanded—with an urgency which bordered on desperation—that I produce a play she had written. She explained that the thesis of the play emphasized the need to “eliminate” the male sex. The male, she explained, was an incomplete female and did not deserve to exist. Women must rise up and kill men, she insisted. Playing along, I told her I had had such thoughts myself, but I asked her if it was really necessary to murder all males. With a mischievous laugh she admitted that a certain number of men would be kept in cages for stud service if any backsliding females happened to desire heterosexual companionship with a male.
Somewhat to my surprise, I found her charming, witty, very polite, and highly intelligent, and I must say that many of her ideas were intriguing, even ingenious. I was also sympathetic to her on a personal level. Here was clearly a damaged soul, a wounded angel of sorts. I was filled with pity when she told me of the abuse she had suffered at the hands of men. She even claimed that her own father had raped her throughout her childhood and adolescence.
Nevertheless, I told her directly that I could never involve myself in the production of a play which promoted the annihilation of half the human race. I had a husband after all, I argued, and I actually rather liked him, along with male members of my family and certain male friends. Even in the context of a provocative theatrical production, I couldn’t advocate for their complete destruction.
We went back and forth like this for almost four hours—I adamant in my refusal to promulgate violent misandry from the stage, and she ceaselessly waging her polemical battle against men while hectoring me to dramatize her theories. Finally, Valerie pulled something out of her clunky handbag. Pointing it at the ceiling, she said:
“Do you know what this is?”
“It looks like a gun, Valerie.”
“That’s right. And if you don’t agree to produce my play, I’m going to go shoot Andy Warhol with it right now. Then I’ll become famous, and my play will become famous, and you’ll have to produce it.”
I was stunned by the dispassionate, matter-of-fact manner in which she made this pronouncement, but somehow I had the presence of mind to reply with equal composure:
“Valerie, I absolutely will not produce your play under any circumstances, and I must ask you to leave my home this instant.”
She smiled, put the gun back in her handbag, and stood up. Looking me straight in the eyes, she said somewhat cryptically:
“See you on the evening news with Walter Fucking Cronkite.”
And then she was gone.
I noticed she had left behind the manuscript she had been trying to foist upon me. The title page said SCUM Manifesto. Flipping through the pages, I realized it was exactly what it purported to be: a manifesto, a kind of essay. It wasn’t a play at all. How did she expect me to stage it?
I immediately phoned the Crown Heights police, who brushed me off. I then called the Union Square precinct, the central police station in Soho, and even the office of Mayor John Lindsay: “A woman who was just in my house has a gun and she’s going to kill Andy Warhol!” I realize that must have sounded ridiculous and possibly even hysterical. They all thought I was making a crank call. One desk sergeant said: “Look, lady, we’re very busy today and don’t have time for this.” Another mockingly asked: “How would you even know what a gun looks like anyway?” I remember thinking he wouldn’t have dared to speak like that to a man.
Later that night, I actually did see Valerie on the news. She calmly and indeed proudly admitted to the crime I was unable to prevent. “Warhol was a piece of garbage and he got what he deserved,” she said. She also claimed that he stole a play she had given him. Did she mean SCUM Manifesto, which as I’ve said wasn’t even a play? Some people have been suggesting that Valerie actually went to shoot the French publisher Maurice Girodias first and then, not being able to find him, settled on Andy Warhol instead. I don’t believe any of this. She told me herself exactly what she intended to do. She wanted her fifteen minutes of fame, and she got them.
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