Valerie Solanas: The Defiant Life of the Woman Who Wrote SCUM (30 page)

As
Playboy
magazine’s Mark Zussman recalled, “Valerie had somehow gotten it into her head that I was the contact man for an entity she called the Mob—and to which she had various urgent messages to impart. Some of her correspondence was addressed to me directly but more of it was addressed to the Mob in my care.
”
97

Valerie told Barney that if he did not print her book in the
Daily News
, she would kill him. Barney had called the police on September 11, 1971, convinced that Valerie would actually harm him and his family. After her subsequent arrest that day, she was released on her own recognizance pending a hearing for the charge. When Valerie did not appear in court at the assigned time, the judge produced a bench warrant for her arrest. After another threat to Barney, police arrested Valerie a second time, setting a court date of October 7, 1971. For targeting Howard Hughes, she also faced two counts for threatening and potentially assaulting him as well.

Released once more, Valerie called the Grove Press offices again on November 2, 1971, saying, “I’m going to do
it
today unless the Mob does the right thing. I am not…speaking to anybody. I know there is no such book as The Art of Cutting Up Men, and if there was, I wouldn’t care.” She called again on November 3 demanding fifty thousand dollars from the Mob and saying that she would do “
it
” but not elaborating on what that was. She informed Fred that she would wander around and that the Mob could reach her if they wanted to (under the belief that the Mob could communicate with her through the implant in her uterus).
98

On November 5, after Valerie once again threatened Barney, showing up at his office with an ice pick and threatening to use it, she was again arrested and was charged with aggravated harassment. At her hearing, the DA concluded that there was not sufficient evidence of specific intent to charge her with possession of a dangerous weapon. Barney pleaded with the judge, Judge Bayer, that, though he had never had any personal contact with Valerie to date, he feared for his life. Consequently, Valerie was held for psychiatric observation but eventually released after a finding of insufficient grounds to continue holding her.

Following Valerie’s release, Barney became increasingly afraid that she would harm him; he hired a lawyer, Shad Polier, to manage communications between the courts and his office. Valerie had written Barney a three-page letter detailing her intentions to harm him and Maurice and telling Barney that he should worry about his safety. Shad wrote the court that “it would seem that for some time now Miss Salanis [
sic
] has had no visible means of support and on the very day of her most recent arrest, her belongings were removed from her room at the hotel where she had been staying for the reason that she had not paid her rent. . . . Mr. Rosset has no hostility toward her. On the contrary, he believes that she is a very sick person psychiatrically and in need of treatment.
”
99
Barney himself also admitted to liking Valerie and said that
SCUM Manifesto
was a brilliant piece of feminist literature; he concurred with Valerie’s assessment that Maurice intended to make money from her work even as he tried to befriend her.

In December 1971, Valerie was again arrested for harassment; her quest to seek retribution from those she felt had wronged her had not subsided. She was sent back to Elmhurst Hospital for psychological testing. On January 5, 1972, the findings of psychiatric evaluations conducted at Elmhurst certified Valerie as mentally ill and a final order was made dismissing the charges against her. The psychiatrists at Elmhurst disagreed on whether Valerie posed a danger to others but their recommendation to the state commissioner of hygiene was that Valerie be sent to a secure state hospital until she recovered.

When notified of this recommendation, Barney and Fred asked Shad Polier to argue for Valerie’s transfer to Matteawan (confirming for Valerie her suspicion that people had paid off the judge to have her incarcerated). The leading psychiatrist at Elmhurst, Dr. Andrew Tershakovec, argued that such a transfer would require a very strong showing of present dangerousness and he “indicated quite definitely that he did not feel that Valerie fell into that category.
”
100
In response, Barney initiated criminal proceedings that resulted in Valerie’s rearrest, conviction for aggravated harassment, and sentencing to confinement at Dunlop Manhattan Psychiatric Hospital on Wards Island.

Dunlop Manhattan Psychiatric Hospital, Wards Island, New York

After the 1971 closing of the Women’s House of Detention (primarily for documented human rights abuses), most women who would have entered that hospital were sent to the Dunlop Manhattan Psychiatric Hospital on Wards Island, New York. Valerie entered Dunlop on January 21, 1972, the final result of her calls to Maurice demanding fifty thousand dollars in payments and threats to Barney and Fred concerning Grove Press. On January 15, 1973, Valerie sent Barney a letter directly threatening to kill him: “I’m in the hospital now, but I’ll be out soon, + when I get out I’ll fix you good. I have a license to kill, you know, + you’re one of my candidates. Valerie Solanas.
”
101

In response, Barney and Fred asked Valerie’s supervising psychiatrist, Dr. Allen, to notify them if Valerie left the hospital for any reason. Once he felt safe and Valerie no longer posed a direct threat, Fred admitted that he liked and admired Valerie and her work: “I thought that [
SCUM Manifesto
] was the first manifestation of women’s rage against men, and I thought that it was authentic. I thought it also had a literary quality. This book made me aware, for the first time, of women’s anger in a patriarchal society.
”
102

In early February, Valerie escaped from Dunlop Hospital. On hearing this news, Barney hired a private detective through the Pinkertons Detective Agency to attempt to learn her whereabouts. Valerie had apparently vanished. After her escape, private detectives hired by Grove Press found evidence that she had been living at 302 West Twenty-Second Street. After interviewing a hotel manager, three residents, and workers at a dry cleaner’s, the Pinkertons detective found nothing to go on. Valerie had not been seen for several months and the interviewees did not know where she was.

Two weeks later, Valerie began concretely testing her theories about the Mob. She phoned Fred and, believing he knew her location, asked him if he had notified the police of her whereabouts. Fred indicated that he had not told anyone. Valerie “rambled on to something about ‘the Mob’ and ‘Smitty,’ all of which meant nothing to Mr. Jordan, and the call was then quickly concluded.
”
103
She again demanded to be put on the cover of the
Daily News
. An hour later, she called back and asked if Fred knew she had escaped from a mental institution. She set up an appointment with Fred to discuss her potential employment with Grove Press, but she admitted to him that she feared the police and knew they would be waiting for her if she kept their appointment. Strategizing about how to avoid rearrest, she asked Fred to send a letter to Dr. Allen at Wards Island stating that Grove Press would employ her as an editor. Dr. Allen should also send a certificate of her release to her mother, Dorothy. Only under these conditions would she keep the appointment. Playing along, Fred agreed to these things, hung up the phone, called Dr. Allen, and then called the police.

As Valerie approached the Grove Press offices, she was promptly arrested. A court date was set for March 22, 1973. While she was being held, Valerie’s paranoia about the Mob worsened. Absolutely convinced that Barney and Fred wanted to manipulate and control her, she sent them a series of letters and postcards. In one card to Barney she attempted to assure him that she meant him no harm but had to prove to the Mob that she was aware of their intentions: “I wrote that letter to prove to the Mob (I knew you’d show it to the rest of the gang) I’m convinced they and not the doctors are responsible for my being held in the hospital.
”
104
(To a degree, she was right, as Barney and Fred had petitioned to have her held even when the psychiatric evaluators suggested this was unnecessary.) Two days later, she wrote to Barney and Fred saying she was onto their antics: “The detective (Fallon?) knew where I was, because you told him. You knew because of the transmitter in my uterus. . . . It was also because of the uterine transmitter you knew where I was when I was in front with the icepick.” She denied wanting to kidnap anyone and said she could not accomplish that even if she did want to, but that they wanted her in jail so they could photograph her papers without her consent.
105

She sent another letter, on March 27, from Dunlop, rambling about discrepancies in her trials, conversations with the lawyers, and other occurrences: “To that same end in Sept. ’71 Girodias made a point of telling me on the phone my mother had power of attorney.” She outlined a list of twenty-five demands for the Mob, including a good edition of the manifesto and assistance with “getting other people’s papers.
”
106
In a letter to the Mob, she reiterated her series of twenty-five demands (on that same day, she was released from Dunlop, an event that likely intensified her paranoia that the Mob had control of her confinement). Prior to listing her demands, she outlined various concerns with the inconsistency of her trial, what Barney knew, his motives for trying to get her locked up, inconsistencies in the arresting officers’ testimony, and the problems of “Bernstein” knowing too much (the identity of this person is unknown). She also mentioned that her mother, Dorothy, had obtained power of attorney over her and had received “a few hundred dollars” from Maurice as payment for
SCUM Manifesto
. With regard to Barney’s case, she asked, “How can I be prosecuted for a letter I wrote while a mental patient?” Her demands—what she wanted “before I’ll do any acting or writing or making appearances or composing or inventing” were:

1. All mail sent to me c/o Olympia Press or c/o the papers.

2. An official discharge from the hospital.

3. All criminal charges dropped.

4. Copies of all notes and papers stolen from me.

5. Photos of the note cards you photographed in Cal.

6. The return of my trunks and all their contents.

7. Copies of all reports done on me since Jun. ’68.

8. Certain back issues of newspapers and magazines.

9. A copy of every WLM [women’s liberation movement] book published since ’68.

10. Opportunity to see or hear privately certain t.v. and radio casts.

11. Copies of all the bugging tapes.

12. The correct edition of the
SCUM Manifesto
printed on the front page of the 10 largest Sun. papers in the English-speaking world.

13. Your assistance in rounding up certain people I want to interview.

14. Your assistance in acquiring certain people’s papers and notes.

15. A good edition of the Manifesto, that is, the correct edition proof-read by me and not accompanied by any preface or introduction unless approved by me printed up and distributed.

16. A public confession, written jointly by me and one of you. The confession’s to be published as a book and
possibly
in the newspaper. I’m very doubtful of the latter. The book’s to contain the correct manifesto with a detailed description written by me of the botch job done in the incorrect editions.

17. My royalties from past editions of the manifesto and I want 10% of the gross.

18. Several million in damages (exactly how much I haven’t decided yet).

19. Certain things, which I’ll tell you when the time comes, put in the paper.

20. Public (on T.V.) cancellation of contract.

21. Public elimination of Segal’s power of attorney.

22. Public statement that you have no claim on any of my works, past or future.

23. Public (on T.V.) reading and signing of new contact for future works.

24. Advance on future works.

25. New contracts to include full artistic control by me of all my works.
107

Valerie’s obsession with artistic integrity and ownership of her works, along with her perfectionism toward how it was presented, appeared consistently in these letters. The letters also suggest greater evidence of schizophrenia, particularly in an April 17, 1973, letter in which Valerie detailed, perhaps satirically, her demand to receive money for sex: “Mob: You can fuck me for $5 million per mob member per fuck. That’s only for the first fuck of each mob member. The 2nd time a given member fucks me I’ll only charge him $4 million, and only $3 million for the 3rd and only $2 million for the 4th, and $1 million for each fuck thereafter. In other words, if mob member A is fucking me for the first time, but he’s the 2nd member to do so, he pays $5 million. The 2nd time he fucks me he pays $4 million. Valerie.”

Valerie’s psychotic tendencies reached a new peak during this time, especially as her fears about the Mob linked up with her anxieties about losing control of
SCUM Manifesto.
Related to her perception that Barney and Fred had not afforded her proper publicity, she became convinced in the summer of 1973 that the uterine implant she received at Matteawan would give her cancer. (Whether she ever had signs of cancer remains unclear.) She wrote to Barney and Fred describing the unresolved contradictions of their contacts with her and said they must “confess to
all
the shit they’ve pulled on me since 5½–6 years ago” (March 3, 1973). She accused them of framing her as “crazy” and hiring a therapist named Smitty to misdiagnose her as insane based on “an inappropriate smile,” just like the last time she was examined by a court doctor (March 6, 1973). She made bizarre overtures of marriage to Fred, leading him to plea with her that he was not interested, which he later regretted: “It was such a mistake, because psychiatrists always say that one should not make oneself a focus of someone’s insanity. I had done so by trying to reason with her.”