EMILY: You can whip them off too, you know. Learn a little something about your car.
VINCENT: I don’t want them going slow, I like action. Emily, I’m going to take four aspirins when I get home. Do you think that will kill me?
EMILY: I don’t know, but I’ll give you a couple of quotes from Lawrence Durrell and you see whether or not you’ll want to read The Alexandria Quartet this week.
VINCENT: Want to go back to the gay bar?
EMILY: No.
VINCENT: Want to go to the gay beach?
EMILY: No. One quote is “We all lead lives of selected fictions.”
VINCENT: Brilliant.
EMILY: Another line is “We always fall in love with the love objects of the person we love.”
VINCENT: Beautiful.
EMILY: Vinnie, I’m telling you you’ve got to read it. “We use each other like axes to destroy the ones we really love”—something like that. I’ve been thinking a lot about Durrell lately and I’m coming to the conclusion that I don’t think novels can be written without the very sad and pitiful knowledge that they are totally self-conscious and ridiculous and untrue. I’m curious to see what Marsha does with hers. At least it’ll be true.
VINCENT: They’re all passing me, Emmy.
EMILY: It’s just as well, you don’t have your license yet.
VINCENT: That’s right. You taught me from the very beginning that it doesn’t matter how fast the others want to go. Maybe they’re on their way to the city and they have to get there in a hurry. Emmy, you’ve taught me so much.
EMILY: I really have. I’m one of your great mentors.
VINCENT: Mentor health. Let’s pick up some boy and suck him. I don’t know why I talk to you this way, I don’t even suck boys.
EMILY: I have no idea why.
VINCENT: Emmy, are you at all in love with me?
EMILY: Deeply.
VINCENT: And I’m terribly in love with you because you’re so pretty and versatile.
EMILY: Marsha told you I looked beautiful, but she wouldn’t say it to me. That’s my Marsha.
VINCENT: Marsha has a fantastic affection for you, and I think she’s very demonstrative, I really do.
EMILY: She’s patting my head all the time these days. Very touching. I think Marsha’s in good shape.
VINCENT: Wouldn’t you love to drive to Idaho or someplace tonight?
EMILY: Let’s go.
VINCENT: It’s silly though, because we don’t have any money.
EMILY: And we don’t have any licenses. And we’re in Marsha’s car.
VINCENT: We could get through the entire country on her free Mobil credit.
EMILY: We certainly could.
VINCENT: And take tomatoes and corn from farms.
EMILY: But how long could we last?
VINCENT: We could last forever.
EMILY: And what about the opening of your show?
VINCENT: Oh, I don’t care about that; I hate it.
EMILY: How do you like the way I gauged the gas situation?
VINCENT: Fantastic, but we’re not home yet. You know I’m very happy, are you?
EMILY: I have to teach you something about psychodynamics, Vinnie. You must have asked me a hundred times tonight if I was having a good time. That just means you were projecting your anxiety about having a bad time, right?
VINCENT: I kept saying it because you were so reluctant to go.
EMILY: I wasn’t reluctant, I was ready from the start.
VINCENT: To the gay bar?
EMILY: To the gay bar, I was reluctant, yes I was. I was reluctant not because I was afraid, but because I wasn’t sure I’d have a good time, that’s all.
VINCENT: And instead we had a very good time. It’s always that way dancing in gay bars.
EMILY: That’s right, because there are no inhibitions.
VINCENT: And there’s no threat for you. If anything, you were performing fantastically. You were performing for the nature of gay men, which is like the positive, open part of straight men.
EMILY: Exactly. I even liked the line-up dancing.
VINCENT: What’s lilac dancing?
EMILY: Line-up dancing, sweetheart.
VINCENT: I love line-up, I think it’s terrifically orgiastic.
EMILY: Keep on the inside of the road, it’s raining again.
VINCENT: Thank you. I love you because you’re so sober when you’re drunk.
EMILY: I’m not at all drunk. I had nothing to drink.
VINCENT: I know. How many drinks did we have? You had a dry martini.
EMILY: I had one dry martini.
VINCENT: Two of them, darling, it was filled for two.
EMILY: No, it was one shot in a small glass. Listen, if you have some honey, you should take a couple of spoonfuls when you get home.
VINCENT: Really?
EMILY: It sobers you up, it restores Vitamin B to the system, which is what the alcohol consumes in digestion.
VINCENT: You know all things well.
EMILY: All things well and true.
VINCENT: You believe in me driving, don’t you?
EMILY: I believe in your driving, you’re a marvelous driver.
VINCENT: Shall I drop you off and then take the car home? I’m not saying that because I’m threatened by the fear of going to bed with you, either. I’ve got such a headache you wouldn’t believe it. What time do you think it is?
EMILY: About three.
VINCENT: Is it really that late? We’ve been out for five hours?
EMILY: Sure. We didn’t get to that Out-of-the-Ordinary until about 12:30, right? I mean to the Out-of-the-Gay. Vinnie, it was so beautiful when we didn’t leave that guy a tip.
VINCENT: That waiter was so hostile.
EMILY: So queer and so hostile, I couldn’t stand it.
VINCENT: He was much more hostile than queer.
EMILY: I also loved it because we saved fifty cents.
VINCENT: That’s something I learned from Nico. He said if people aren’t nice to you, don’t be intimidated by them.
EMILY: Yeah, but why didn’t that waiter like us, Vinnie? We’re perfectly nice personages. I think he was attracted to you and he knew nothing was going to come of it.
VINCENT: We can’t ever go back there now.
EMILY: I wouldn’t want to go back, would you?
VINCENT: No. I can go back next year and he won’t know I’m me.
EMILY: Without me, nobody will recognize you. You know I walked in there as a teenager, not as a woman who’s just punched thirty.
VINCENT: We should have found some rich people and had them pay everything.
EMILY: Did I ever tell you about the night of Michael’s official opening in the gallery? Let me tell you exactly what happened.
VINCENT: Is there any reason to scream?
EMILY: No. That night I went to the gallery, from there I went to the Plaza for a drink, then I met Michael, who took me to the Guggenheim opening, from there we went to a party, and from there, it was about four in the morning, we went to the Brasserie. This is his taste — he ordered three bottles of champagne and two or three dozen snails.
VINCENT: Who paid?
EMILY: When Michael called for the check, the waiter came over and said the check has been taken care of, sir.
VINCENT: By who?
EMILY: He refused to tell us.
VINCENT: And you never found out?
EMILY: We never found out. We were sitting there kissing each other.
VINCENT: You kiss each other in the Brasserie?
EMILY: Yeah. So Christy pulled out a ten-dollar bill and gave it to the waiter as a tip, and the waiter said I’m sorry, sir, but it’s all been taken care of.
VINCENT: You’re kidding. Now that’s very high class, that’s beautiful. But you mean there was no one in that room you knew?
EMILY: There obviously must have been.