MARSHA: That’s also something I share.
VINCENT: Well, for that matter of fact, almost all sensitive, advanced people have something of it, but in your two cases, it’s exaggerated.
EMILY: But Marshie, you know very well that in our relationship, which is basically a love relationship too, you’re completely non-smothering and independent, very ungiving essentially. It’s a totally autonomous relationship.
MARSHA: Something else interesting came up with Tim this morning. I asked him what he thought I liked about him, and he said his forgiveness, and he was right, because the one moment when I really loved Timothy Cullen was when he forgave me.
EMILY: Forgave you for what?
VINCENT: When she threw him out on the Fourth of July and he was willing to come back and forgive and forget.
MARSHA: I was flowing over with love for him when he came back that next day and forgave me. Something came up with my doctor once about this — I had had that pat theory of my father rejecting me at some point, turning off without my knowing why, and so all my life since, I’ve had the feeling that if only some man would come along and punish me once and for all — that’s why I let Eliot hang me on the wall probably— then the guilt would be expiated and my father would love me again. And Merrill Johnston said maybe the same thing could be accomplished if you were forgiven instead of punished. I think it must be true, because when Tim forgave me, I really felt the most freeflowing love I’ve ever felt. It wasn’t any of that hysterical stuff — it was a moment of pure true love.
EMILY: That’s marvelous. Vinnie, are you going to stay and eat with us?
VINCENT: No, I have to go home. To paint, now that it’s dark.
23. EMILY AND MARSHA REACT TO AN ATTACK ON VINCENT
MARSHA: We never should have let Nathan Fass come over here last night.
EMILY: It was really incredible. Vinnie said he felt he was attacked by him on the most crucial, primary level as a man, that his life was threatened.
MARSHA: What do you mean, his life was threatened?
EMILY: That his free spirit as an artist was in danger, that Nathan was cutting it down, this soaring spirit that he doesn’t know anything about.
MARSHA: What have you got in there?
EMILY: Tea.
MARSHA: That’s a very expensive antique pitcher and you put tea in it?
EMILY: It’s very pretty, isn’t it a nice thing to put tea in?
MARSHA: Yes. So what’s going to happen to Vinnie today? Will he be able to paint?
EMILY: He’s out of his skull. Look, let’s discuss it on this leveclass="underline" you and Vince both seriously threatened with the end of the friendship. Vinnie lost his father just before the summer, he’s afraid of losing Nico because of the heterosexual shift with his doctor; he’s being threatened with the loss of love objects all around, and last night Nathan Fass comes along and threatens to kill you off too. That’s why Vinnie feels he was stabbed in a life way.
MARSHA: Have you told him what you think?
EMILY: No, I’m still working it out. I talk a lot, but I think a lot too. Last night, Vinnie was really threatened with the loss of you, which your eventual marriage will mean to him someday, just as it will to me. When I was with Philippe, darling, you had to give up a great part of me. Our relationship changed, didn’t it?
MARSHA: Certainly. So what Nathan said was the most obvious thing in the world.
EMILY: Of course. What did he say?
MARSHA: That when I get married, I’m not going to be spending night and day with Vinnie. Doesn’t Vinnie know that?
EMILY: What do you think would happen to him if you cut off your relationship?
MARSHA: According to what he said last night, he’d just find him another Marsha.
EMILY: Bullshit. I know how I function without my friends: I break down, but I get through. Like when I was in Europe, we were writing each other letters and you were sending me tubes of toothpaste, but that wasn’t supportive, it wasn’t structural. One thing your relationship with Vinnie and me does is make you know who you are.
MARSHA: Yeah, sure, it all has to do with identity. Because in the early days, when I used to go to Vinnie’s first apartment with Clem on 89th Street, I would feel that I was going to visit myself, to find my identity. When I was there I was myself and when I left I wasn’t. I was constantly looking to Vinnie to establish who I was. There’s also a very strong Pygmalion thing: Vinnie created me, in a sense.
EMILY: Do you have any honey in the house? I’ve got to get some honey for my cold, that’s the first thing I’ve got to get today. Let me ask you an important question: what do you think would happen if you and Vinnie slept together?
MARSHA: I think it would end the relationship. But on the other hand, it could conceivably be very unimportant.
EMILY: If going to bed with Vinnie’s unimportant, it’s only part of your whole problem of going to bed with men being unimportant. Do you think for one minute that if you finally went to bed with Vinnie, the two of you are alone in a room and he makes love to you…
MARSHA: I think I’d burst out laughing.
EMILY: I bet you both would.
MARSHA: No, actually it would become deadly serious — that’s what happens when we look at each other now and he’s got his hand on my breast or something — it gets deadly serious. You know I had one moment of absolute terror last night.
EMILY: What was the moment of terror?
MARSHA: When Nathan came out and said I wouldn’t be able to have a marriage until this relationship with Vince ends.
EMILY: What he was saying was as long as you have Vinnie, why do you need a husband? Of course that’s too pat, life isn’t about things getting that simple. But what do you really want in another man? The only other relationships you have with men are fucking relationships, they don’t have any of the range that you have with Vinnie, right? You have purely sensual relationships with the other men.
MARSHA: They’re not sensual, they’re sexual. There’s very little sensuality in those relationships.
EMILY: This bread is too thick to fit into the toaster. Look, any man coming close to you must feel fantastically threatened by Vinnie.
MARSHA: Of course, he’s a powerhouse, a knockout.
EMILY: Not only that but he’s madly in love with you.
MARSHA: Is he?
EMILY: He is, but you can also say I’m madly in love with you. Let me ask you, are you closer to Vinnie than you are to me? After all he is a man with cock and balls.
MARSHA: No, I think I’m closer to you, even though he thinks I’m closer to him.