EMILY: I really do believe that Michael is pure.
MARSHA: I don’t for a minute, and I hardly even know him.
VINCENT: The thing is, Emmy, you are a product of the nineteenth century: you believe that sadness implies goodness and suffering implies purity. And you think that when you find someone who is sick in the head, they must be good because they’ve suffered.
MARSHA: Yes, you’re always saying that deep underneath all the shit, somewhere at the bottom of the left toe, they’re good. Zeke has ruined the lives of his wife and his children, and I’m sure Michael has ruined the lives of his wife and child. That’s not being so good, is it, Vinnie?
EMILY: But I know all that. I don’t get what you’re telling me that you think I don’t know.
MARSHA: I’m saying that most people are not nice, that they’re selfish and that’s their main motivation in life, to get what they can for themselves.
EMILY: Well let me ask you this then — why is Michael Christy very well loved?
MARSHA: Because he’s all fucked up and he’s suffering.
VINCENT: All right, and who are the people who love him?
EMILY: The people who love him are the people who’ve had the opportunity to really know him.
VINCENT: Yeah, but what are they?
EMILY: Fucked up.
VINCENT: Exactly.
EMILY: Some of them aren’t.
VINCENT: There are very few people in that whole art world who aren’t fucked up, darling.
EMILY: Well, Zeke Sutherland may be an idiot and everything else, but he does love Mike.
VINCENT: Is he some sort of love meter? You say to me people love him, then you point to somebody who’s got not one bit of love in him.
EMILY: Now you’re saying something which philosophically just doesn’t hold water. You’re saying if someone is really very well loved, then you have to examine all the people who love him and think oh my God, they’re so manqué and they’re so deficient emotionally that of course they could love him. I’m sorry, there’s something beyond that. If someone is well loved, he is well loved.
VINCENT: I think lots of people are well loved who are very un-lovable. Just look at idols, public idols.
EMILY: Darling, public idols are not well loved. Who? L.B. Johnson? Besides, there are all kinds of sensational public relations things going to elicit love for these people.
VINCENT: Oh what’s love anyway? Love is a very subjective thing, don’t bullshit me.
EMILY: Who’s saying it isn’t subjective?
VINCENT: Well you’re making it like some ultimate truth. You know it’s possible to love people for their defects as well as their virtues. And don’t get arrogant just because we happen to be talking about the man you love. What you’re saying is that because people love him, he’s not defective.
EMILY: I’m not saying he’s not defective.
VINCENT: You know I love little dogs that have hurt themselves much more than ones that can run and have a good time.
EMILY: I still think there must be a basic goodness in someone who is loved by a lot of people. I’m sorry, I really do.
VINCENT: I think there’s a goodness about the people who can love, I don’t know about the object. There’s more goodness in you… You see you can’t admit it because that would mean you’re completely wrong. I’ll tell you something, your love is really very egotistical, because it’s always for people who are fantastically less than you and destroyed and distraught. And by loving them, you’re helping them; it’s egotistical because it makes you something more than you are. Love someone equal to you and see if you can give something to that person.
EMILY: Well I’ll go along with that, but I don’t understand how it relates to what you want me to learn about people being bad.
VINCENT: Oh listen, I didn’t say that, it was Marsha. I certainly don’t think Michael Christy is a bad person.
EMILY: I think Zeke Sutherland is like fifty times worse than what’s- his-name, Michael. I really do.
VINCENT: That’s like taking two defective apples out of a bushel and saying one’s better than the other.
EMILY: I think Zeke socially is one of the most evil people in the whole world. He makes anyone who speaks to him feel like a piece of shit.
MARSHA: I agree. He’s awful. And yet he’s loved too. Believe me, I love him still, even though I think he’s evil.
VINCENT: You see, Emily, I’m not talking about Christy, I’m not talking about anyone specific. I’m talking about you; I’m talking about setting up situations in which you cannot have a positive love relationship, you can only have a negative one.
EMILY: What is a negative love relationship?
VINCENT: One in which there is no return.
EMILY: Oh Philippe loved me, darling, he really did.
VINCENT: I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about this past year, about you now, the length of time I’ve known you, and it seems to me a year is a long enough time to use as a barometer about one’s life, particularly at this crucial point, when you’re thirty years old.
EMILY: No, because this year has still been all about Philippe.
VINCENT: All right, so maybe we should put off this conversation until next summer.
EMILY: Is that true or isn’t it, Marshie, about this whole year?
VINCENT: Well that’s saying a lot about you, because this goes back again to how you let men completely destroy you and activate your whole life. The idea that someone you stopped seeing more than a year ago determines everything you do the whole following year, that makes his role in your life very positive. So when you talk to me about Philippe being a rat and weak and everything, I say Philippe’s a pretty genius of a kid.
EMILY: Darling, Michael Christy is about Philippe, he’s not about Michael.
VINCENT: I don’t think Philippe or Michael are about anything, I think it’s all hang-ups about your father. That’s what’s negative about these relationships. Love should be in terms of you and the other person. You know, there are certain people, like Genêt and Bacon, who probably can’t love, but they still function and have a strangely positive perverted kind of life. Your life is not that positive. And you know I wouldn’t be saying all this if I didn’t think you had fantastic potential. You’re like a gigantically big bud that you look at and say oh my God, this is going to make a big beautiful flower some day. But you know the thing about that bud? It’s got funny little bugs crawling all over it.
5. A STORY FROM EMILY’S CHILDHOOD
EMILY: I’m trying to think how old I was. I guess between the ages of five and twelve. I went to this school for very bright little girls and boys, and they had this bus that used to pick us up, called Jaybees.
MARSHA: The bus had a name?
EMILY: Yeah, it was a private bus that used to pick you up at your door. I lived at 10 East 79th Street, and I was picked up about a quarter of nine every morning, as the bus went along its selective route, picking these high-minded children up for school. All my friendships were formed on that bus. For instance I had one friend who was horrible, he was very rich and very fat, and his mother made him a lunch which he promptly ate as soon as he got on the bus.
MARSHA: What did he eat at lunchtime?
EMILY: Bought a school lunch. So he had breakfast, then he had his bag of lunch on the bus about a half-hour later, and then he had his regular lunch during lunch period. Also I remember there was this guy named Ernest Enfield who was absolutely madly in love with me. He was a shy, retiring boy and also a brat. But really very nice. He used to antagonize the teacher, Barbara Mulligan.