MARSHA: No, I just wouldn’t. I told my doctor I wouldn’t.
VINCENT: What does that mean, what you told your doctor?
MARSHA: It means it’s the truth.
VINCENT: You told your doctor you wouldn’t to defend yourself against the possibility of being attracted to me. That’s how sick you are, Marsh.
MARSHA: Is this good?
VINCENT: No, it’s a bad one. How did you know?
MARSHA: Because the last one I had was so bad and it looked like that. Oh, all of them are that way.
VINCENT: That’s the inside, stupid. It’s their shit, but it tastes good. Psychology I’m using so I can finish the whole thing.
MARSHA: You know I think it’s terrible the way you get upset at Nico every time he has to go away for a weekend. You’re completely hypocritical, with your liaisons dangereuses and your thises and your thats, saying people can screw whoever they want.
VINCENT: But Nico never does screw around; he’s a good boy.
MARSHA: I don’t mean that specifically. He just doesn’t have the least bit of freedom to go away without your starting to sulk. In the end you’re as possessive and jealous as any ordinary person. They’re very unreal and idealistic, all your highflown ideas, because jealousy is basic to love, I don’t care what you say.
VINCENT: No it’s not, darling. Jealousy is basic to insecurity.
MARSHA: Well, everyone is insecure.
VINCENT: What you don’t understand about having a one-to-one adult relationship with another human being is that it’s not one-to-one, it’s A-to-ah, two things which are similar but different. The beauty is not in finding the mirror image, like you’re looking for with Tim, but complementary things. I think the ideal relationship is when you look into the other person and realize things you couldn’t possibly realize alone or with anyone else. That’s my success, in a humanistic way, with Nico, because he’s so very different from me, and that’s one of your basic problems with Tim.
MARSHA: You think we’re alike?
VINCENT: I think you’re very similar. The only thing is that you’re stronger and that’s bad because you need someone more powerful than you.
MARSHA: That’s the problem — to find one.
VINCENT: They exist. And as you get stronger, through your analysis, through living, you’ll be able to deal with them. I think Tim would actually make you a perfect first marriage. And I don’t mean that to be cynical, I mean it in a very realistic way. I think you’d each learn a lot from being married to each other. Tim has great capacity.
MARSHA: He has great potential, let’s face it.
VINCENT: He really does, that’s what I’m afraid of in your involvement with him, that he’ll reach his potential through you and then—
MARSHA: Drop me.
VINCENT: And then drop you. But that’s what life is, that’s what all first marriages are about. And just because you’re thirty-one doesn’t mean it still can’t be a first marriage. You’ve never lived with anyone full-time, and he hasn’t either. Just if you were to live in his studio and have to buy him food on your way home from work and cook for him and bring his dirty underwear to the laundromat.
MARSHA: That’s still not a commitment. It’s a step further, but it’s not a commitment. I want to have children.
VINCENT: You will. Besides, having children’s becoming a different thing now; it’s becoming that you make them and look after them, but not necessarily in a family atmosphere. I mean the parents can be split, like with all the kids on the beach.
MARSHA: That’s the way it is becoming. You know we have to be very brave people.
VINCENT: It’s becoming that way because of the nature of giving women their independence. The reason marriages lasted before was women were put down, they were in the kitchen and out of the question. Now women find that they need more than one man in a lifetime. We’re each too many people for one mate to satisfy. Look at the symbols of man and woman — the man’s arrow points up because he isn’t monogamous, he wants to screw and move on. But I’m not sure women don’t want exactly the same thing. If they do bend aside and choose one man, in order to make it work over a long period of time, they’ve got to be very very independent and have, not affairs necessarily, but the sort of freewheeling thing Emil and Diana have.
MARSHA: But they’re very unhappy people.
VINCENT: You know why? Because they’re pioneers, we’re all pioneers going through new frontiers, new jungles, we’re breaking psychic, social land so that people following us will be able to lead better lives.
MARSHA: I don’t think Emil and Diana have the guts really to do it.
VINCENT: You know, when I think of myself having a child, in a way I’d love to have one, but I also feel very selfish about it. I always remember what I think it was Motherwell said, he had these two sons or something, and he said when he takes them to the zoo, he feels guilty about not staying home and painting, and when he stays painting, he feels guilty about not taking them to the zoo. I see men on the beach embracing and caring about their children, and that’s what you really have to do, give yourself up to them.
MARSHA: Only for about ten years.
VINCENT: The thing is the older we get the less energy we have. An artist is already an accelerated, intensified human being and you cannot spend eight hours painting and then be a good, creative father.
MARSHA: Well you’re not ever going to be a father, so what are you talking about?
VINCENT: Who knows? Anyway that’s not the point. I said something to my analyst and she said you’re right, or did I say it to Nico and he said you’re right? I think I said it to Nico and he said I was right. But when you’re going through a good creative period, you have very light sexual needs and when you’re going through a bad creative period they’re very strong. That is to say the creative act is sexual and the sexual act is creative.
MARSHA: The fun of this dinner is reaching over and pulling the clams out.
VINCENT: If Tim asked you to marry him in September, would you?
MARSHA: No, I’d say I’d try living with him.
VINCENT: You would live down in his dirty loft?
MARSHA: No, but I’d see him a lot and test it out. I couldn’t rush into marrying him, Vinnie.
VINCENT: I wouldn’t want you to, hon, I don’t think you should.
MARSHA: I mean it’s dangerous.
VINCENT: When I was a little boy, each child in my family was allowed to have whatever they wanted for their birthday dinner and—
MARSHA: You had clams?
VINCENT: I would have steamed clams and something else, I don’t remember what, and then pineapple upside-down cake.
MARSHA: Let’s not talk about pineapple upside-down cake.
VINCENT: Why, don’t you like it?
MARSHA: You only threw one in my face after I made it for your birthday, if you recall.
VINCENT: Well, you didn’t make it the way I wanted, and I was almost dead with hepatitis, which you didn’t even appreciate.
MARSHA: Who cares? I baked you a cake and it was beautiful, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.
VINCENT: It wasn’t right, it wasn’t upside-down.
MARSHA: It was so!
VINCENT: It wasn’t like my mommy’s.
MARSHA: Well maybe she made it wrong. Do you realize that I used to come see you every single day when you were in the hospital?
VINCENT: God, if we talk about that some more. So what if you did? You worked just down the street.
MARSHA: It was still a drag.
VINCENT: You didn’t enjoy seeing me?
MARSHA: No, you were nasty and abusive.
VINCENT: I was not. You were my girl — I wouldn’t have gotten better if it hadn’t been for you.