Valerie Solanas: The Defiant Life of the Woman Who Wrote SCUM (26 page)

In practical ways, Valerie perceived Maurice as purposefully hiding information about the preface and commentary sections of future editions of the manifesto, and she accused him of failing to notify her of his plans for the manifesto or
Up Your Ass
(which he had apparently obtained a copy of shortly after the shooting). Valerie’s friend Geoffrey LeGear wrote to Maurice, “Why did you not have the guts, she asks, to let the
Manifesto
stand or fall on its own? Why were you so cowardly as to try to explain it away before it could speak for itself?” Valerie was enraged that Maurice had not sent her any mail from readers and that he had held back information about sales and reviews and other reactions to her work. She took particular issue with the comparison between
SCUM Manifesto
and Swift’s
Modest Proposal
, and Geoffrey explained that “there is no similarity between them whatsoever—the whole point about ‘A Modest Proposal’ is irony; the whole point about Valerie is that there is no irony.” Valerie also hated the notion that Maurice had compared her to Hitler and
SCUM Manifesto
to
Mein Kampf
. As Geoffrey wrote, “Hitler originated nothing (nationalism and racism are as old as history), but Valerie wants the end of nations and racism by ending the male sex which is responsible for them—really quite beyond Hitler’s range, don’t you think?
”
25

Further, Valerie took issue with the biography of her that Maurice had constructed in the preface to
SCUM Manifesto
, objecting to his discussing her “‘loveless childhood’ (in a certain way she had a groovy childhood); her ‘sexual immaturity’ (in a certain way Valerie has passed beyond sex); her ‘feeling of isolation’ (in a certain way Valerie had too many people around her).” She wondered if Maurice wanted to hurt her, by “superficial speculation on her supposed personal history,” noting that one only writes that way about a person once he or she had died and that Maurice knew little of her personal history because he had had no real personal relationship with her.

After Maurice published the first edition of
SCUM Manifesto
in August 1968, Valerie demanded that in the next edition he include a new preface signed by him but dictated by Valerie: “It’s to be called ‘Confessions of a Toad.’ The ‘SCUM (
not
S.C.U.M.) Manifesto’ part of the new book must be proofread by me. If you don’t fulfill these conditions, you’ve definitely had it with me in every way. I’d rather live my life in the bughouse than write one line for you under the present conditions. . . . I told you the shooting of Auntie Wahoo was a marking point, that all your offenses prior to then were shot away, but that everything you do afterwards counts. You’ve earned quite a few demerits since then; you almost reached the point of no return.
”
26

Valerie’s feelings of betrayal had reached a breaking point. Geoffrey explained to Maurice:

Valerie feels, or apparently feels, that you have so mistreated, misunderstood, and misjudged her that you have destroyed her. She feels that there is no hope left for herself or her work, that she will never have a chance to speak for herself, to justify herself and her ideas. She feels totally degraded and can see no way out, at least no way that will allow her to preserve her integrity. Not to get attention (a cruel thrust if it is not true), but to end her degradation is her motive in wanting to kill herself. . . . When it comes to her, where do you find yourself? Right with the establishment you always supposed yourself to be fighting.
27

In addition, Geoffrey defended Valerie not only before the shooting but also well after it, insisting to both Maurice and Andy that Valerie’s ideas in
SCUM Manifesto
had the force of truth behind them. Geoffrey, who worried constantly about the chance that Valerie would commit suicide out of despondency caused by Maurice’s treatment of
SCUM Manifesto
, wrote to him:

Let me ask you two questions. First, is not the world a mess, and are not the males in charge? And can you conceive, honestly, of the world ever being any different? Second, do men need women more, or do women need men more? And could you conceive, honestly, of a reason to go on living if there were no more women in the world? . . . Valerie may have the truth, the truth that didn’t exist. Wouldn’t it be strange if time justified Valerie? And if time did, wouldn’t it be a shame not to have been on the right side when it counted, at the beginning?
28

Valerie sensed that Maurice was unsympathetic toward the revolutionary gender dynamics presented in
SCUM Manifesto
; this was confirmed when she saw what he had written in the introduction: “This little book is my contribution to the study of violence.
”
29
Using the many letters he received from her during this period, he also described Valerie in sexist terms, telling a French radio station: “She was naïve. She was very smart. She could not come to terms with these contradictory forces: her outrageous feminism and the fact that she did not look quite like a woman but neither like a man. . . . It’s hard to figure out how she did not reach that crisis earlier. I would not have married her, of course, but I really did like her. I found her very funny.
”
30

Still, friends of Maurice’s claimed that Valerie’s threats affected him deeply and he became increasingly paranoid that she would shoot him in retaliation for his not complying with her demands. One friend, Iris Owens, said, “I don’t think that people regarded him to have stepped out on a ledge in having been associated with her. That only came after she showed herself capable of murder.
”
31
A year later, after repeatedly asking Valerie to stop contacting him, he wrote to her, “I am not interested in your other works, past, present, or future. I hope that this clarifies my position once and for all, and I must ask you to dismiss me from your thoughts, and not to write me again.
”
32

As did Andy, Maurice expressed a curious affection for Valerie, despite her constant threats and his well-documented fear of her. Responding to her constant name-calling—“Lowly Toad,”—Maurice described Valerie in rather warm terms: “Even though she keeps calling me Toad, there is in that name a background of friendship and tenderness. We got along really well, while fighting and hating each other like you would not believe.
”
33
Valerie hurled at him the ultimate rebuke: “I know you live for my letters. What else is in your grim, puny life?
”
34
She advised that he seek “SCUM therapy”: “The goal of this therapy is to rid you of certain hang-ups which are severely interfering with my rights & interests. The methods are my own & are derived from & consistent with SCUM doctrine. I’ve tested my methods out on other males & have achieved remarkable results.
”
35
Eerily prescient as always, Valerie foreshadowed Viagra: “One of the goals of the therapy will be to enable you to get a hard on as often as you want, any time you want, & to sustain it as long as you want. Achieving this sub-goal (among others) is a necessary step in achieving the final goals. . . . Achieving a perpetual hard on (PH) involves first being aware of certain truths, & 2nd undertaking a certain attitude that I’ve worked out.
”
36
She has, she goes on to say, cured several men of impotence. In regard to Valerie’s relationship with Andy, Maurice took a paternalistic outlook, describing Valerie’s hate mail to Andy as intimate and an expression of comfort; she had “something of the quality of a very rebellious and difficult child, writing the much resented and much needed father for money.
”
37

“Auntie Wahoo”

Just as Geoffrey’s letter to Maurice outlined Valerie’s complaints against him, a letter he wrote to Andy detailed Valerie’s feelings about the shooting and her reasons for it. He wrote on December 3, 1968, “I’m not sure if Valerie would have shot you if Girodias had been as well known as you are, but she does, nevertheless, have a number of complaints against you, as well as against him.” Valerie felt Andy, who she often called “Auntie Wahoo,” was “playing games with her.” The complaints included several points. She believed Andy wanted to stage a two-part dramatic production using her panhandling article and her play and that it would be staged at the Grove Press Theatre. Valerie thought Andy had spoken to Maurice and decided not to stage the play after hearing that Maurice had claim over her works. Shortly after she signed the contract with him, she believed that Andy had “changed his mind, became vague, and did nothing more about the production—despite [his] former enthusiasm.
”
38

Valerie felt particularly betrayed that Andy recognized Maurice’s prior claim on her work and cooperated with Maurice to maintain it. She remembered Paul Morrissey saying, “You know, you just signed away your play” and, hearing that she should give Maurice a blow job, that she was tough and could “take it,” or “have yourself committed to a mental institution, in order to frustrate him,” or “write him a novel a day, on file cards, and give those to him,” and so on. She thought her twenty-dollar payment for
I, a Man
insulted her work and that Andy used material from the philosophy of SCUM and from the manifesto in his lecture tours too often. Geoffrey summed this up by writing in his letter to Andy, “In order to cooperate with Girodias, you were blocking her efforts to have her work produced or published and to have her ideas and activities publicized.” Pleading with Andy to forgive Valerie, drop all charges, and assist with her case, he ended the letter by asking Andy if he had done all he could to help her
.
39

Valerie continued to write to Andy herself in the fall and winter of 1968, sending him one letter that, in her own way, tried to make amends:

I’m writing this letter because I’m a compulsive communicator.

For the past few weeks I’ve been evaluating + reevaluating everything. My morale has gone way up; I no longer feel demoralized, + my attitude towards a lot of things has changed. I no longer feel any hostility towards you or towards anyone else; I feel at peace with the world, + I feel, now that the Manifesto’s been published + now that with all the publicity I have a chance to earn money without being dependent on men, that I’m in a much better position than I was to deal with you, Girodias, + all the other vultures I encounter.

I intend to forget the past—harbor no grudges, regret no mistake—+ begin completely anew. I also have a new attitude about my contract situation; I made a terrible mistake signing it, but I don’t intend to continue to be gotten by it; I intend to chalk it up to experience + begin anew.

I’m very happy you’re alive + well, for all your barbarism, you’re still the best person to make movies with, +, if you treat me fairly, I’d like to work with you.

Valerie
40

Valerie’s fear of Andy’s desire for publicity had some basis in reality, but it seems that Andy also had some affection for Valerie, according to Ultra Violet: “It’s normal he didn’t press charges. He got a lot of publicity from the shooting and he loved publicity. Why would he press charges? How much money was there to recover from her? Nothing probably! So what would he gain by pressing charges? He had the front page news of the
Post
so that was good enough. That doesn’t mean he didn’t care for her.
”
41

With Andy’s hunger for fame in mind, Valerie wrote to Andy in late September stating that she did not want any publicity for SCUM or the trial, as it would only benefit him and Maurice. She expressed her willingness to do another film with him: “I’m not
asking
you to do a film with me; I’m
telling
you that if you want to—+ I know for certain that you do, + nothing you put in the paper to the contrary will dispel my certainty; let’s just say my intuition tells me where it’s at—I’ll be willing to,
if
you treat me fairly, + that’s a big if, as fairness isn’t your forte.” Believing that Andy had not pressed charges because he knew the district attorney would do so, she accused him of selfishness: “You’re trying to get credit for great nobility + compassion without doing one noble or compassionate thing. If you really wanted to be noble, you could get the D.A. to drop the charges, but I know you’d never do that, because you want me to have a trial because of the great publicity value involved.
”
42
She concluded by accusing Andy and Maurice of trying to ride her coattails:

What gives me a fantastic edge over you + the Great Toad is that I feel no compulsion to do a movie with you, do any more works or even get the play produced, nice as all of those things would be. I have a lot of projects in mind that don’t constitute works + that, therefore, The Great Toad, + hence you, would have no claim on. You, on the other hand, having no intrinsic worth, are limited to who you can find + use, + you can ride along only so far with Viva, Bridget Polk, and the rest of your trained dogs. Having worked + associated with me, you’ve had a taste of honey, + it must be awfully difficult to have to go back to Viva saying “Fuck you” in restaurants. . . . Weren’t you saying something, Boy, last June 3 about how if I turned in 2 more works, signed a bunch of contracts with The Great Toad with you, then did the movie, you’d allow me a few crumbs of publicity? I won the first round; I’ll win the rest.
”
43

As Valerie further distanced herself from her previous claims of goodwill toward Andy, she wrote another letter in late October 1968 telling him to drop the charges: “A few weeks ago I felt good will toward you + a willingness to work with you if conditions were right, but your running on about not pressing charges against me while charges remain is fast mitigating that good will. . . . Who I work with + what projects I work on is determined largely by my feelings, not just business considerations. You seem to feel a need to be hailed as Good Guy of the Year. Seeing that the charges against me are dropped would do much to enhance that image.” She ended the letter saying, “One more thing you should’ve learned by now is that I mean what I say.
”
44