MARSHA: The teacher?
EMILY: Yes, I had a teacher named Barbara Mulligan. She used to bring liverwurst sandwiches that were mixed up with mayonnaise and chopped pickles and she would eat them on this strange kind of tired-looking bread. It was very sad, she wrapped them in waxed paper. I couldn’t stand it. She was very skinny and she wore those heavy brown cotton stockings. One day she slapped Ernest Enfield across the face and I cried, because I really liked him. Anyway, I had all kinds of friends on that bus. There were twin girls who were both fat, Florence and her sister. I don’t know if they were twins or just looked like twins, but they had long blond hair that kept getting longer and longer. I saw one of them a couple of years ago in Central Park and she still had the long blond hair, I think it’s been growing ever since. So. The girl who got on the bus with me, who lived in my house, was named Wilma. She was very pretty because she was already mature, in a way that I didn’t know anything about. Her mother wanted her to be a little lady and she was very feminine. She used to wear a certain kind of cologne and she had short little hair that was in Shirley Temple ringlets. She was very sweet. She had a much better time usually than I did because her mother was very good to her. She had a doll collection. I had only one awful doll, and whenever we played dolls, she naturally always had the better doll. Finally one day, her mother said listen, I’ll take you two girls to a wig house and you can buy wigs for your dolls. So I went with Wilma and she picked out a wig and I picked out a wig. She picked out this absolutely gorgeous wig with red hair that you could wash and set.
MARSHA: Um.
EMILY: You could braid it, you could put it up or wear it down, you could have bangs, you could curl it, you could wear it straight, you could have a ponytail, anything. And I picked out a really ugly wig. I mean I didn’t know any better. I picked out this sad little wig and when we got home and started playing with our dolls, I began to realize how fantastic her wig was, Wilma’s wig.
MARSHA: Yeah.
EMILY: We kept playing and the weeks went by. Wilma had always coveted this collection I had of glamour girl trading cards. I had all those Esquire girls and Varga girls. There was one called The Lace Shawl, which was sort of a very old-fashioned girl wearing a lace shawl except she was nude. And Wilma really liked my collection. It was the only thing I had that I was proud of, that I had made an effort on, that was individual, that was mine. She really wanted it and I really wanted that gorgeous doll she had with the red hair. So one day, we were playing in her house, we made the trade: I gave her my whole collection of glamour girl trading cards and she gave me the doll with the red hair. I took that doll upstairs, I washed its hair, I set it, I combed it out, I set it again, I gave it this hairdo and that hairdo, and when I went to sleep that night I put the doll on the pillow right beside me. I was madly in love with that doll. The next morning the phone rang, I was getting ready for school, the phone rang and I heard hello? It was my mother. Oh yes, Mrs. Hargarther.
MARSHA: What was her name?
EMILY: No, maybe she called her Estelle. It was Wilma’s mother. Yes Estelle, yes she does. Oh. Oh, it’s Wilma’s doll. Oh, I see. No no no, I’ll tell her. That’s fine. Of course. Terrible. Yes I will. ’Bye. My mother told me that Wilma’s mother said Wilma wanted her doll back and she would return the trading cards. So my mother scolded me and sent me downstairs by myself with the doll in my arms and I waited for Wilma to come down. While I was waiting — I was out on the sidewalk looking for the bus — I forget if it was winter or spring or whatever the hell it was — I kept looking at the doll and looking at the post that held up the canopy, and at a certain point, I found myself bashing the head of the doll against the post. I started to stamp on the face, I completely destroyed the doll. I took the hair and I chewed it up.
MARSHA: Some story.
EMILY: Very sad story, isn’t it?
MARSHA: Yup.
EMILY: You should have seen what happened then. Wilma became hysterical, she called her mother, her mother called my mother, my mother came down and told them how terrible I was and everything else. Very sad story. I have so many sad childhood stories I could tell you.
6. WATCHING TIM ON THE BEACH
EMILY: Look at Tim over there. Doesn’t he look Persian, with the dark glasses and the moustache and the towel on his head?
VINCENT: He wants to do a work of art with me. A major American work of art — that’s the only kind I do.
MARSHA: Yes, but he can’t paint, you know. Although he used to do fantastic trompe l’oeils.
EMILY: Fool the eyes.
VINCENT: Foulards? Oh, I used to do those too, and also paisleys.
MARSHA: What could you do together?
VINCENT: I could paint on one of his white sculptures. Why not? They’re both real life.
MARSHA: No, yours is real-life pornography, his is abstract.
VINCENT: Mine is the most pornographic art in New York.
EMILY: Yours is obscene, to quote Dr. Fass.
VINCENT: Yes, Nathan Fass, major American art critic, says Vincent Miano’s work is obscene.
EMILY: And Emily Benson, major-major American art critic, says that’s not what it’s about at all. It’s about a juxtaposition of images, which arouses upsetting anxieties.
VINCENT: I want that piped into subway johns all over New York.
MARSHA: Subway johns, that’s where Tim said Clem hangs out. And funeral parlors. You know Clem told him he’s a necrophiliac?
VINCENT: He’s a negrophiliac? Clem makes love to Negroes?
MARSHA: No. They were talking about subway johns.
EMILY: That’s not negrophilia, that’s subwayphilia.
MARSHA: That’s metrophilia.
VINCENT: Feelyaphilia.
EMILY: Fellatiophilia. Did you hear what I said? Fellatiophilia.
VINCENT: What ever happened to plain old Ophelia?
MARSHA: He also makes it with many spades.
VINCENT: Well now that is perverse. I tried it once with a hoe, but never a spade.
EMILY: Look at Diana working with her needlework over there.
VINCENT: That family unit, it’s just like Coney Island.
EMILY: She’s sewing a cock cover.
MARSHA: A what?
EMILY: A cock cover.
VINCENT: He needs it. You know coming in contact with the art world again brings out all my anxieties and everything, it’s just fantastic. Tim is the art world, you know. Emily, how does that guy get such a tight body?
EMILY: It’s because he’s tight spiritually. You know it’s very interesting that Emil never comes over and says hello to anyone.
MARSHA: Yeah.
EMILY: Why do people always expect us to do the going over and saying hello? I’m sorry.
VINCENT: We’ll wave to them when we leave.
MARSHA: You know Tim said this collector said that Oliver Haupt thinks he’s the hottest young sculptor in town.
VINCENT: Really?
MARSHA: I think he should try to get a show with Oliver Haupt.
VINCENT: My doctor told me I could get dandruff on my penis.
EMILY: From what?
VINCENT: I have dandruff in my hair, I can get it on my eyebrows, on my chest, under my arms.
MARSHA: Come on, what about Oliver Haupt? Do you think Tim should go to him and be honest and say he’s looking for a new gallery?
VINCENT: I think he definitely should. It might be good for Zinner to know he’s thinking of leaving. The thing is, there are just a handful of galleries that would pay him a monthly salary.