MARSHA: I don’t get that much out of it though.
VINCENT: She’s adorable. Can you swallow it? Don’t you gag?
MARSHA: I gag.
VINCENT: I love this cat. You know what she is? She’s the feline you when you realize yourself.
EMILY: Jonquil! Get down on the floor and play your games, Jonquil.
VINCENT: She loves me, she loves me because she knows I’m a man. Animals do know, that’s why Gide was so wrong.
MARSHA: What did he say?
VINCENT: He looked to animals and tried to make an argument about homosexuality.
EMILY: Yeah, animals are very homosexual.
VINCENT: No they’re not, just bees and ducks. Look at this cat— has it ever loved anyone quite as much as me? She understands the whole secret of what Marshie doesn’t understand with men. I didn’t pay any attention to this cat for twenty-four hours, none whatsoever. Then at the end it happened.
EMILY: Why is that the secret? I don’t get it, Vinnie — what are we supposed to do with these men? You know when my doctor was teaching me how to let go and give and love with Philippe, I achieved all those things, but look at the object I had chosen. I still owe that doctor five hundred dollars.
VINCENT: You do? And you’re lying there? Why aren’t you working as a waitress somewhere, getting the money to pay him?
EMILY: Because I worked as a waitress for two years and put myself through thirteen, fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of analysis.
VINCENT: Let me tell you a very quick story. I had an analyst once named Dr. Herne, I never knew his first name.
EMILY: Just tell Jonquil you’re not rejecting her.
VINCENT: She knows it, cats are fantastic. Look how symmetrical she is in the chair. Anyway, I had been going to this analyst at the N.Y.U. clinic for bright, talented children, where I had this other doctor who went into the service. I had dreamt I fell in love with him — I was eighteen years old and I didn’t know about transference or anything.
EMILY: Shrinking at eighteen, huh?
VINCENT: Of course, darling, I was an extraordinary child. That’s what’s wrong with American civilization; we think at eighteen you’re still a child. So anyway, I told him this fantastic dream I had, and at the end of the session, he announced that he was drafted and would have to leave in three weeks. It was horrible. It set up one of the basic patterns of my life. Then they found a substitute for me, this Dr. Herne. I was going there because I couldn’t speak in my art history class and I was failing. Oh, parenthetically, Johnson, in his press conference today, did an unbelievable thing. He announced that anyone married after midnight tonight would not be exempt from the draft. Isn’t that awful, giving people eight hours’ notice?
MARSHA: You can’t even get your blood test.
VINCENT: That’s a dirty trick, I’m sorry, he should have warned them. Anyway, see, I have this deep problem of not being able to talk in school. The doctor comes in, after I had had this marvelous green-eyed brown-haired Jewish East Side Salinger-type analyst, this new doctor comes in, he says mmmmmmmy nnnnnnnnname is uhuhuhuh Docdocdocdoctor Hhhhhherne.
EMILY: And you said mmmmmmmmy nnnnnname is Pppppppatient Mmmmmmiano.
VINCENT: So there are two things I want to tell you about him. The first is I walked out of my last session during Christmas vacation that year, I’m two blocks away, it’s winter, very cold but not snowing or wet, and I hear someone calling Vincent! Vvvvvincent! I didn’t even turn my head, I just stopped in my tracks, and there he was with this Christmas present for me. It was a ballpoint pen in a box, and it had Merry Christmas Vincent written on it.
EMILY: Oh my God, it’s so sad!
VINCENT: Very sad. I’m not even going into the other thing, it’s even sadder. I’m getting bored. I’m the only one all evening who’s had any vitality.
MARSHA: That’s not true — I’ve been flipping it in.
VINCENT: Have you ever had to show a man how to get to your vagina? I mean take his penis and push it in?
MARSHA: Yeah, just the other week.
VINCENT: Boy, Tim must be such a sad guy.
MARSHA: He’s half a person.
VINCENT: You have no sympathy for him. All of a sudden he’s half a person. A couple of weeks ago he was three times a person. You know I like this room, it’s got good proportions.
EMILY: The walls are a nice color.
VINCENT: Yeah, you couldn’t have them in the city this color, but it’s nice out here. By the way, last Thursday night, I didn’t really go to a friend’s house, I went to a gay bar.
MARSHA: I knew you did when you said you were going to visit a friend in Water Mill. I know how many friends you have in Water Mill.
VINCENT: It was a beautiful thing, it took about a half hour to get there, through side roads and potato fields. I think we should go there tonight. They do line-up dancing and there are beautiful girls.
EMILY: I’m not going anywhere. I’m relaxing here and I have things to do in the morning.
MARSHA: What was it like? All boys?
VINCENT: No, I just told you, beautiful girls.
MARSHA: Lesbians?
VINCENT: No.
EMILY: Were there a lot of people? Attractive people?
VINCENT: A news commentator from NBC was there. What’s his name? Very thin, with blond hair?
MARSHA: Did you meet anyone?
VINCENT: No. There was one guy there who looked just like Eliot Simon. I’ll tell you something about Eliot Simon — he’s really ugly.
EMILY: No he’s not.
VINCENT: He is, with his loafers and white socks and short green pants.
MARSHA: That’s not what ugliness is. Besides, he’s changed his style. He wears black socks now with shiny black shoes.
EMILY: He has no class, but he’s a lovely guy.
MARSHA: He’s a horrible guy.
VINCENT: By the way, Emily, you know that’s a beautiful thing, the fact that the Reinhardts took Sick Joan to the insane asylum. How did that happen? Did you get in touch with them?
EMILY: I called Joan a couple of times, she wasn’t home. Finally she called me, and she was out of her mind. I talked to Diana Reinhardt and told her I wasn’t too interested in taking Joan to the bin.
VINCENT: So you called Diana to ask her to take her?
EMILY: Diana called me to ask me to take her.
VINCENT: You’re very hostile to me tonight, don’t think I’m not noticing it. And don’t tell me that you’re calm either.
EMILY: I don’t feel related to you or Marsha, but it has nothing to do with hostility.
MARSHA: I don’t feel well.
VINCENT: You know you’re both very bad at relating if you don’t have total love.
MARSHA: I need total love.
EMILY: So anyway, are you listening? What am I talking about?
VINCENT: Sick Joan.
EMILY: Oh, so I said I’d take her even if I didn’t want to. I knew that if she didn’t get in, I would have to deal with her not getting in and that’s what I was afraid of, the aftermath of her being rejected from the hospital. Not only that, I just didn’t want to go; I was all alone, I was feeling good, I wanted to do something for myself. But I went anyway, the Reinhardts picked me up and we all took her to the hospital. Apparently she belongs in one because after all the interviews and everything they wanted to accept her. If they want to accept you, you must belong.
VINCENT: Sometimes they accept you just to calm you down.
EMILY: They thought she was in very bad shape. We said we didn’t want to accept the responsibility and the doctor said I don’t blame you for a minute.
VINCENT: You know what the guy I went to the gay bar with asked me that night? He said if I called up Emily, would she come here and dance with me?