24. VINCENT HAS A SEIZURE ON THE BEACH
VINCENT: Psychoanalysis is a crock of shit.
EMILY: What are you saying, darling?
VINCENT: I’m saying we’re living in some kind of medieval time where analysis is all we have, it’s probably the most intelligent thing we can do at the moment, but certainly in a hundred years people will look back on it like we look back on the naiveté of the past. And I’m also saying another two or three days of this wild kind of group therapy we’ve been going through would be permanently damaging.
EMILY: It can only be damaging if the truth is damaging. Look at that little girl over there in the polka-dot bathing suit. She’s so beautiful she’s breaking my heart. She’s going to be a first-class beauty.
VINCENT: She’s gorgeous. How old? Ten?
EMILY: To be so beautiful at that age is scary.
VINCENT: The thing is, I just don’t know how good it is to go into such fantastic analysis of your closest friends. I can’t tell you how on edge I feel with Marsha right now because of the Nathan Fass episode, I feel all the implications of the complexity of our relationship.
MARSHA: But don’t you think they’re things we should try to understand?
VINCENT: No, because they weren’t hurting us. It was someone outside who brought us to the damaging point, to our tether’s end. That’s where we are, at the end of our ropes, our summer’s ropes. You just can’t get down to these really basic feelings without an analyst to protect you from certain pitfalls. I’m sorry, I found myself, with the help of that man last night, digging a kind of grave for our relationship. It’s like LSD, if you don’t take it with a doctor or someone who can guide you, it’s very dangerous. Or it’s like if you want to improve your muscles and you start using barbells without any preparation, you can break your muscles.
EMILY: But we’re all highly equipped to deal with these things. It happened you were victorious last night, you emerged very strong, you were not beaten.
VINCENT: Let me just finish what I was saying. I, only in the last few weeks, have really been anxious to get back to my analysis. Marsha has too, especially seeing her doctor on the beach all the time. It’s been a long hot summer and it’s been a very important one for all of us. But we’ve been trying to substitute our own analysis for the real thing and that’s why we’ve gotten into trouble. My doctor, when I asked her shall I remember my dreams this summer, she said no, try not to get too involved in them.
EMILY: Why?
VINCENT: Because of just this, the misinterpretation and the feeling that you’re in over your head. This is a time for me which is very crucial and very meaningful and very, very loaded and confused and raw. And right now, all my anxieties are about Marsha, she has become for me a terrible figure.
MARSHA: Why have I?
VINCENT: I don’t know, I just feel it. I’m filled with a tremendous antagonism.
EMILY: I have one more thing to say about last night. First Nathan attacked Marsha and then he attacked you. You came to her defense, and I’m sure you expected her to do the same for you.
VINCENT: She never did.
EMILY: Right, and so you’re angry. I told Marsha to expect that, but the point is she didn’t stand up for your friendship because she wasn’t standing up for anything, she wasn’t participating on any level. It wasn’t about you, it was about her reaction to the whole situation.
VINCENT: Yeah, but I’m talking in a very deep way right now. This summer, because Nico’s been away so much, my love relationship has essentially been with Marsha. And it was coming to a very serious point, like last Friday my getting her on the bed and everything, even before the thing with Nathan. So that in a completely feeling way, my relationship is out of control with you now, Marsha. I have been continually hurt by you in the last two or three days, really terribly, terribly hurt, like this morning when you wouldn’t speak to me on the phone.
MARSHA: When I was trying to work?
VINCENT: Yes, it hurt me to the quick.
EMILY: That’s the paranoia that was aroused by the whole attack.
VINCENT: No it wasn’t, it was my total anxiety about loss. But we’ve been through all that. God, I’m anxious today. I’m anxious because on one level I want the sun and on another level I really want to paint. Did all those things I just said frighten you, Marsh? She hasn’t uttered one word, Em.
MARSHA: I guess they did.
VINCENT: And you totally withdrew, didn’t you?
MARSHA: It doesn’t matter. I’d rather know about it, I don’t want any bullshit I love you I love you I love you when you’re really feeling antagonism. I can’t live that way.
VINCENT: You see, she doesn’t understand a thing. That’s why it’s impossible to talk to her.
MARSHA: What don’t I understand?
VINCENT: That what I’m talking about is love, and when I say I love you, I mean I love you. From everything I said, all she got was that I was antagonistic.
MARSHA: No! All I’m saying is I’m glad you expressed that too.
VINCENT: Okay, okay. Look at that man over there. He’s very old, but he still has a fantastically tight body.
EMILY: He’s not old, he’s about forty-three, Nathan Fass’ age.
VINCENT: How can you mention that name? Look at your doctor over there, Marsh, how skinny he is. He probably has an enormous complex about it. He’s the skinniest man I’ve ever seen.
EMILY: Oh he is not. Philippe’s skinnier than that.
MARSHA: I like that kind of body.
EMILY: You never did before. You like hairy Eliot-bodied muscular men.
VINCENT: Merrill Johnston is one of the handsomest men I’ve ever seen.
EMILY: He’s got a real pre-Columbian face — you were right about that, Marsha.
MARSHA: Should I go over and tell him he’s needed here?
VINCENT: What do we need him for?
MARSHA: I have to remember to get gas on the way home.
VINCENT: We should all read that book about games. We’re all terrifically involved in them, particularly you two. You diminish everything to games.
EMILY: No, we start out with everything as games.
VINCENT: No, I mean diminish in terms of sexual interests, people interests — everything becomes name games.
EMILY: That’s true, it is on a very childish level.
VINCENT: It’s really a very ego thing, like to see which of you is cleverer, it’s a continual competition back and forth.
EMILY: No it’s not. Marshie and I are in cahoots, we’re on the same team against whoever the opponent happens to be, Tim Cullen or whoever.
VINCENT: I’m sorry, I see it as a kind of love play, I really do, a performance thing. It’s the way athletes, without being openly homosexual, a lot of their playing on the same team is that.
EMILY: Am I heavier than that girl over there?
VINCENT: Definitely, your ass is twice as big. You have an enormous ass.
EMILY: And as fat as my ass is, your face is twice as fat. I don’t think I’ll ever get over what you just said.
VINCENT: It’s true, Emmy. Nico said you should absolutely get a reducing machine. Concentrate on that. You can’t walk across a stage with that ass. By the way, did I tell you what Clem said to Tim? He said Vince isn’t as nice as he used to be, and it’s all because of his analysis. And that’s true, I know I’m going to lose many, many friends this year.
EMILY: That’s marvelous.
VINCENT: I’m even going to lose Clem and it will hurt him terrifically.
MARSHA: You’ve essentially lost him already, darling.
VINCENT: Not really, I’m still very committed to him emotionally.