MARSHA: Yeah, and he owes Zinner money too.
VINCENT: He does?
MARSHA: He owes them four thousand dollars. At least.
VINCENT: He should marry a rich girl. He should marry your father.
MARSHA: He could tell Oliver Haupt he’ll go with him if he pays off his debts.
EMILY: Or tell Zinner he has some hot information worth four thousand dollars. Like he’ll tell the world Dolph Zinner is queer. By the way, Vinnie, I found out in this book that masturbation is completely homosexual.
VINCENT: Masturbation is no good. I don’t do it anymore.
EMILY: Don’t be ridiculous, darling, it can be very important. It prevents social crime, because a criminal lives out a fantasy life when he masturbates. With the risk of unsettling you a little bit, Marsha, I’m going to lean my head on your leg.
MARSHA: Vinnie, she’s threatening me.
VINCENT: Marshie, you’re getting an erection.
EMILY: She’s been masturbating too much.
VINCENT: Or not enough.
EMILY: Vinnie, you have beautiful hands.
VINCENT: Thank you, and you have a beautiful face. You know, I can get away with all sorts of physical things with women.
EMILY: Vinnie, I do not like erotic behavior on the beach.
VINCENT: Why? It’s a good answer for social crime. It all depends how you do it. Style is everything. That’s why most actors are lousy, because they’re not intelligent. I was telling Emmy that before. I told her she’s got everything: she’s got looks, talent, she’s got that special something to make her the intimate star of the theatre.
MARSHA: I don’t think she wants to be a star.
VINCENT: She doesn’t. She doesn’t even want to be in the theatre. You know what she wants? She wants when she’s out here in three years to come on this beach and for everyone to know who she is.
EMILY: I’ve always had that need.
VINCENT: I have it too.
MARSHA: I would love to be famous.
VINCENT: I want to go to the laundromat, come out with my bag, and have all the people waiting for the bus in front of it know who I am.
MARSHA: Famous artists don’t become that much of a star.
EMILY: Famous actors do.
VINCENT: Andy Warhol is.
MARSHA: What about writers?
EMILY: Rona Jaffe, people don’t know her.
VINCENT: Mary McCarthy they do.
MARSHA: No, not on the street.
VINCENT: Susan Sontag’s gotten pretty famous. But I don’t want just anyone to know me, I don’t want to be like an Andy Griffith or an Andy Williams.
MARSHA: I do.
EMILY: Can’t we be serious for a minute? Can’t we all interpret the meaning of something? Like what does it mean that this beach ball is between my legs? Beyond the obvious, what do you think it means, Vinnie?
VINCENT: I think it means that it’s a boring idea. What do you think it means?
MARSHA: That she’s trying to simulate one of Tim’s sculptures.
VINCENT: Okay, what does it mean what Marsha thinks it means?
EMILY: That I’m trying to make one of his sculptures?
VINCENT: Simulate does not mean make. Simulate means to get along with all groups.
EMILY: My analyst says that I interpersonally relate quite well.
VINCENT: Let’s try not to talk about you for thirty seconds and see if we can survive.
EMILY: Okay, what can we talk about?
VINCENT: What book was I reading recently? Oh yes, it was Mailer, An American Dream, and the strangest thing, he fucks a girl in it, it was his wife, and they both know that they made a baby right in that second.
EMILY: I’ve heard that before.
MARSHA: I’ve felt it but it hasn’t been true.
EMILY: I’ve known it and the guy’s known it, but the baby hasn’t known it.
VINCENT: Let’s pretend we don’t see them.
EMILY: Why, what are they doing? What are they doing?
VINCENT: They’re leaving.
EMILY: We’re not saying goodbye to them. Did you say hello to them?
VINCENT: No.
EMILY: I think that was the height of rudeness, their not saying goodbye.
VINCENT: Darling, they’re very corny, cheap people. Why don’t you get it through your head?
EMILY: He’s corny and cheap and he’s also the man I gave up my husband for.
VINCENT: Tell me, this Roy Husband of yours, I’m very curious about him. Was he a wonderful person?
EMILY: Fantastic.
MARSHA: No he wasn’t.
EMILY: No he wasn’t.
MARSHA: He had no soul as far as I could ever see.
EMILY: He had a soul.
MARSHA: Is there any more lemonade?
EMILY: Yeah, tons.
VINCENT: What was your responsibility to him? Your relationship?
EMILY: We were in love with each other, we were both our first loves.
VINCENT: What was the age?
EMILY: The age was twenty.
VINCENT: Was he good in bed?
EMILY: As a matter of fact, he wasn’t bad for that age at all.
VINCENT: Are you kidding? That’s the age when they’re supposed to be good. Passion. I consider passion the important thing, not know-how.
EMILY: I don’t. I consider sensual involvement.
VINCENT: That’s passion.
EMILY: I have terrible regrets about it at this point.
VINCENT: About the divorce?
EMILY: Yeah, because even though never in a million years would I have wanted to stay married to Roy, he was rich.
MARSHA: Oh God, if you have one single regret about that, you don’t deserve our friendship.
VINCENT: You know the thing about you, Emily, you really want to be rich. But for all the wrong reasons, for comfort and security.
EMILY: I want to be rich for one reason only: money. Not so people will think of me as rich, but so I can have whatever I want.
VINCENT: Like what?
EMILY: There’s a certain kind of Jaguar car I’ve always wanted, that has a wooden inside, four doors, it’s very, very small.
VINCENT: I know the car.
EMILY: Well I want that car, I really love that car. You know what happened to me, Vinnie? I was at someone’s house the other night and a girl offered to drive me home. She was a lesbian, she had just been rejected by some woman, and I said fine. She told me to wait a second while she went down to the garage. She was a very simple girl. She came back up in this car, it wasn’t even black, it was so fantastic, it was very, very dark blue. I said where did you get it? She said my boyfriend gave it to me for my birthday.
MARSHA: Maybe you should become a lesbian.
VINCENT: If you were rich and I was a homosexual, you could buy me a car. You know something, if we had money, we’d all be very good to each other.
EMILY: Hey, look at that handsome creature over there. Hi, Mister Man, want to be my new hub-hub? I would now like to make some announcements. The month of September is going to bring important tidings for alclass="underline" the opening of a show of a fine young painter, Vincent Miano, and the publishing of a major breakthrough American novel by Miss Marsha Zoxbaum. More important will be the month of October when Zinner Gallery will surrender cunning Timothy Cullen to another gallery higher up on the artistic spectrum. Then in November we will have the death of Miss Emily Benson, because she just couldn’t face all her friends becoming so famous.
VINCENT: There isn’t an iota of truth in that, is there, Emily, my darling?
7. MARSHA’S LOVE STORY
MARSHA: My average relationship with a man, actual talking to each other, loving each other, relating to each other, sleeping with each other, is usually one to two weeks in duration. The amount of time I spend feeling rejected, crying over it, not seeing him but living it out, is three to four years.