Valerie Solanas: The Defiant Life of the Woman Who Wrote SCUM (15 page)

Believing that Andy had promised to produce
Up Your Ass
and start filming immediately for
SCUM Manifesto
(starring Valerie), she hated that he had stalled on both these promises. She later revealed to Howard Smith the nuances of her conviction that Andy and Maurice had manipulated her:

[Andy and I] were to start shooting immediately + sign the contract + acting after the shooting, which is customary. Then I signed the contract with Girodias, + Warhol said we don’t do the movie until I sign the acting contract
1st
. Then I finished “SCUM Manifesto” + Girodias gave me a contract for it, which I didn’t sign, as it was a sell-out. But since he had a claim on it by virtue of the novel contract I couldn’t sell the Manifesto to anyone else. By this time I was hip to what the 1st contract meant, so I decided not to do the novel, but if I didn’t, he could take “Up Your Ass” in place of it, so I sent him a letter saying he could publish ‘SCUM Manifesto’ in place of the novel, thereby saving the play at least. The “SCUM Manifesto” was lost either way. But he refused. He insisted I sign the contract for the Manifesto. Warhol meanwhile told me that until I signed the “SCUM Manifesto” contract, did the novel, or signed over the play, + turned in a 3rd work (Girodias had a claim on 3 works), + signed the acting contract for the movie “SCUM Manifesto,” we wouldn’t do the movie nor would anything of mine get published. In other words they had me in a position where I had to give them my heart + soul in return for crumbs.
122

Valerie began to unravel. She never delivered the promised novel to Maurice, and consequently, her relationship with him suffered. As Maurice wrote:

Then she got worse and worse characterwise. She didn’t want to work on the novel she was supposed to write for me. The novel was supposed to be an autobiography, a personal confession. And she began getting extremely angry with Warhol. She felt he owed her a lot of money. But there was no contract, no written papers of any sort. I kept trying to pacify her vis-à-vis Warhol. And I am sure Warhol was doing the same when she went to complain about me. She got angry at me because I would not publish her SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto, and because she could not write that novel. She transferred the anger. Just to insult me publicly, she would write letters to me here at the Chelsea after she was kicked out, to “Girodias, The Toad.
”
123

In all likelihood, Andy lost any potential interest in producing
Up Your Ass
or making a movie from
SCUM Manifesto
around the time Valerie signed the contract with Maurice. Whether Andy lost interest in
Up Your Ass
because
of Valerie’s contract with Maurice remains unclear. Andy became disinterested in and aloof toward Valerie’s projects and Valerie saw this as the consequence of her signing with Maurice. Not a fighter by nature, Andy took his distance from Valerie in a subtle manner, as the potential of producing her off-off-Broadway play did not hold his attention.

Experiencing a growing distaste for both Andy and Maurice, Valerie now also found herself in the fall of 1967 with nowhere to live and believing she was in breach of contract. She had few friends, and nowhere to go. In typical Valerie style, her hostility toward Maurice did not prevent her from asking him, in a 4:00 a.m. phone call, if she could move into his place at the Chelsea with him, assuring him rather sweetly that she would stay out of his way and be a good roommate. During such conversations, she would ask him what he thought of her and her work, convinced that he would abuse her contract and take advantage of her. “A connection had been made in Valerie’s mind between her two mentors, Warhol and Girodias, who she came to believe were united in conspiracy against her. Warhol had stolen her play; Girodias had tried to tie her up with his ‘greasy contract.
’
”
124

Valerie believed that Andy wanted to make a film of the play and not pay her rights for it, and she would launch into diatribes about how he was a “vulture and a thief.” Her anxieties were both based in fact and somewhat bizarre; Andy
had
lost the play, in part because of Valerie’s entanglements with Maurice, in part because of frank disinterest, in part because of Andy’s sloppiness, and in part because he generally neglected everyone in his sphere who felt passionately about anything. He also did use many of Valerie’s lines and sentiments in
Women in Revolt
later on (without compensating her). As usual, Valerie exhibited a unique blend of schizophrenic paranoia and outright accuracy. As a passionless person, Andy felt proud of his detached and observant way of taking in the world. That he tossed Valerie’s play aside was consistent with his general demeanor about nearly everything at the Factory. The wild disjuncture between Valerie and Andy likely led him to forget about
Up Your Ass
and
SCUM Manifesto
altogether. As Alisa Solomon wrote
in the
Village Voice
, “Warhol must have flung it aside in uncomprehending horror. How could the cool, asexual, pallid pop artist, enthralled by consumer culture, find his way into this overheated, sex-drenched, knee-slapping diatribe that calls for doing away with men and money? Could there be two more contrary sensibilities?
”
125
(In a 1980 interview, Andy admitted that he had looked through
Up Your Ass
briefly but felt the play would entrap him. No one knows whether he ever read, or liked,
SCUM Manifesto
.)
126

Finding herself again living on the street, Valerie pestered Maurice to publish
SCUM Manifesto
and, “after some wrangling and aggressive letters on her part, he agreed, but she balked at the new contract he had prepared,” as Harron described it.
127
Always a writer, Valerie began sending heaps of hate mail to Maurice’s office, referring to him almost exclusively as the “Lowly Toad.” Valerie made several vitriolic and threatening phone calls to his office at Olympia Press, though he did not think much of them.

By early January 1968, Valerie’s intensity, short-tempered impatience, and rage had reached a peak. Her mental health skidded on the edge, and she had begun to worry family members. Though she had never regularly communicated with either her sister or her mother during this period (at most she sent a postcard to notify them when she moved), she began inundating them with letters and long-distance phone calls. All she could do was talk about Andy Warhol and Maurice Girodias, insisting that they had stolen from her, that lines from
I, a Man
had been dubbed over, and that Andy had used her material in lectures he was giving in New York. She started writing long, rambling letters to her sister and mother about Andy and Maurice and how people were out to get her. When Judith asked her mother, “Have you heard from Valerie?” she learned that her mother, like Judith, had become extremely concerned by the quality of the letters.
128

Valerie now believed the only way to save
Up Your Ass
from the slimy hands of Maurice was to sign over
SCUM Manifesto
.
In January 1968, she mailed Maurice a letter:

M. G.—

I don’t intend to write the novel. You can publish “SCUM Manifesto” in it’s [
sic
] place. The “SCUM Manifesto” is now yours, to have & to hold—forever.

Valerie Solanas
129

Valerie Visits California

Resigned to the “greasy” contract with Maurice, Valerie left New York in early 1968 with her five-hundred-dollar advance and traveled to California to visit Judith and a dear friend, Geoffrey LeGear. Valerie called this time in California, from late January to mid-February, her “little vacation.
”
130

At the time of Valerie’s visit to California, Judith had separated from her husband. When Valerie showed up at Judith’s San Mateo home at six o’clock in the morning carrying several boxes of manuscripts and mimeographed copies of
SCUM Manifesto
, Judith felt worried. As Warhol biographer Steven Watson wrote, Valerie was in the worst state Judith had ever seen her in: “She was so filthy, her waist-length hair so knotted that Judith put her in a bathtub and cut off all her hair. ‘She had a carton full of
SCUM
manifestoes she was selling on the street, but only had the filthy clothes she had on her back.
’
”
131
Judith scoured her from head to toe three times and put all her clothes in the Dumpster nearby. She bought her new clothes, tennis shoes, and flannel pajamas.

Valerie complained bitterly about Andy and Maurice, continuing her rants about the mistreatment she faced from them. Judith remembered their conversation vividly: “She told me that a publisher in New York—Maurice Girodias—wouldn’t publish
SCUM
but gave her money to write a novel. Then Warhol and Girodias were conspiring to steal her play and her manifesto. . . . I didn’t know what to make of it. She was the one who knew about writing and the publishing world.
”
132

She sent many letters to Andy during her time with her sister, the first of which said, “Dear Andy, You asked me twice where the unsigned ‘SCUM Manifesto’ contract is, would you like to have it? I’ll sell it to you for $20,000. I’m dead serious.
”
133
Her next letter to Andy stated, “I really do believe that if you didn’t have your lies + deception + notarized affidavits, you’d shrivel up + die. Valerie” (February 1, 1968). Next she chided Andy: “Toad—If I had a million dollars, I’d have total control of the world within 2 wks; you + your fellow toad, Girodias, (2 multi-millionaires) working together control only bums in the gutter, + then only with relentless, desperate, compulsive effort” (February 7, 1968).

In an ominous letter of February 10, Valerie intimated she intended to buy a gun: “You can shove your planefare up your ass; I now have a little sum saved—enough for, not only planefare, but a few other things as well. Besides, I’ve decided to stay out here for a while. My little vacation has done me a world of good, + in the course of having it I got a few gassy scenes going. (‘other things’ may refer to guns). Valerie.”

The next day, she wrote a sarcastic letter calling Andy “Daddy”: “Daddy, If I’m good, will you let Jonas Mekas write about me? Will you let me do a scene in one of your shit movies? Oh, thank you, thank you.”

Valerie was working herself into a panic, and the visit with her sister was short-lived. Valerie left her sister’s house after only a few weeks and then fled twenty miles north to San Francisco, where she went to peddle the manifesto on the street and consign it to bookstores. She continued to mail letters to Andy and Maurice, this time giving an address at Seventh and Mission Streets in San Francisco.

She then went across the bay to Berkeley, where she spent a few months living with a psychology student who attended the University of California. When she first arrived in Berkeley, she approached a student and asked if he wanted a female roommate. He already had two roommates so he referred her to a neighbor whom he disliked. The student remembered that Valerie “looked like a dike [
sic
] . . . She was always wearing this sort of motorcycle cap.
”
134

Valerie showed up at the neighbor’s apartment a month after the student had given her the address. Convinced that she would be an acceptable roommate, this male student allowed her to move in with him. Then, “the misery began.” Consistent with Judith’s account, Valerie worried constantly about
Up Your Ass
,
SCUM Manifesto
, and the copyright infringement she suspected of Andy and Maurice. Her paranoia became so intense that she ruminated on whether her dental fillings were bugged. Her roommate and others who came to the apartment became alarmed. The psychology student, who lived upstairs, said, “Once I saw [my neighbor] leaning out the window, nailing it shut,” apparently fearful of Valerie’s ranting. “They would talk until all hours and she would spend a lot of time at the typewriter.” Valerie had asked her roommate to put a special lock on his door. “Eventually her host moved out and she finished out the month alone in the apartment.
”
135

Leaving the Berkeley apartment and again finding herself homeless, she spent two weeks with her friend Geoffrey LeGear in Berkeley and San Francisco.
136
(Geoffrey LeGear still lives in California. He is seventy-seven years old, born the same year as Valerie. He lived with Valerie in Berkeley, San Francisco, and New York in 1967 and 1968, and last spoke with her in 1971. He described Valerie as “unforgettable . . . a combination of Hamlet and Cleopatra, the antic disposition, the infinite variety.”)
137
Valerie related to Geoffrey the issues she had with Maurice and Andy and strategized about how she could address her problems. She trusted Geoffrey’s advice and admitted that her paranoia had grown worse, hoping he could provide some clarity about the stranglehold Maurice had on her writings. Geoffrey lent a sympathetic ear but could not quell the storm emerging from Valerie.

Following her time with Geoffrey, she returned to her sister’s home, still spinning with psychological imbalance. She showed up at Judith’s office, in a high-rise, wearing every piece of clothing she owned (including the flannel pajamas and all the clothes Judith had bought her), in bulky layers. She insisted that she had to return to New York immediately and demanded money so that she could do so. Judith knew something was wrong. “This was bizarre even for Valerie. I argued with her, pleaded for her to move in with me, and she yelled back until I gave in.
”
138
Then, because the plane ride to California had frightened her so intensely, she refused to fly back, telling Judith that she vowed never to ride in an airplane again. Judith bid her goodbye as “she boarded a Greyhound bus for a long trip across America, returning to her twin nemeses.
”
139
A week later, Valerie arrived back in New York, angry as ever and reenergized in her efforts to seek revenge on the “Toads,” Andy and Maurice.