Valerie Solanas: The Defiant Life of the Woman Who Wrote SCUM (10 page)

He continued to read and then they started talking about politics, especially about the war in Vietnam and how Jeremiah feared the draft. Valerie said, “Well, if women ran the country, then there would be no war, ’cause no woman would send her child off to war.” Jeremiah asked if she planned to kill all the men in the world. “An ever so slight smile played across her thin lips and, looking at me dead in the eye, [she] said, ‘I don’t want to kill all men—but I think males should be neutered or castrated so they can’t fuck up any more women’s lives.
’
” They continued discussing all the bad things that happen to women, how women got the short shrift. She announced that men could be used as breeding machines and she would not kill her friends. When he asked if gay men would get hurt, she replied, “No. Take Candy Darling, for instance. Here you have a perfect victim of male suppression. You see gay men are OK but they’ve got to be taught to be more respectful of women’s rights. I have big plans for some gay men.
”
27

Taking a liking to Jeremiah, Valerie offered him a part in her play and he happily accepted. She reminded him that she was not yet sure which part he would play because the play was not yet finished. Jeremiah simply knew he wanted to hang around Valerie; she was unlike anyone he knew or had encountered. When speaking of her personality, he noted being particularly struck by her unique wit:

She had a sense of humor that was very dry, cerebral. She wasn’t a comedian by any stretch. Just the fact that she was so serious made her funny. She always wore that pea coat and that gray fisherman’s cap, and she never wore makeup really. She had a scowl on her face all the time. In an era which prided itself on beauty, she really wasn’t beautiful. She was very plain and she was aware of that. She always commented about beautiful women, how they were wasting themselves on men, and she wanted to fall in love like any young person.
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The two held regular rehearsals for
Up Your Ass
, sometimes rehearsing in the Chelsea’s basement and sometimes on the rooftop. Valerie likely auditioned several others and apparently had lined up a cast—including Harold Anderson, Donald Eggena, Bonnie Greer, Marcia Sam Ridge, Gary Tucker, and Barbara Wallace—by late 1967 according to an ad she placed in the
Village Voice
, though how she selected actors or whether anything came of the process remains unclear. Actress Phyllis Raphael said she, too, auditioned for Valerie: “I’m pretty sure it was at La MaMa. . . . I recall the audition being held in a large space somewhere in the East Village. . . . It wasn’t exactly a highlight of my acting career and my best sense of it was that the material wasn’t of very much dramatic value or importance nor did the audition appear to me to be on the up and up. I can tell you that she came on to me and called the next day to offer me a part but I wasn’t interested.
”
29

The Alan Burke Show

In mid-May 1967, Jeremiah asked Valerie if she would be willing to go on
The Alan Burke Show
, a television talk show broadcast on Saturday nights at 11:00 p.m. in New York City, to discuss her life as an out lesbian. A friend of Jeremiah’s named Kathy relayed that Burke had requested that some lesbians go on the show to talk about their lives but the producers of the show could not find women who would speak openly about the issue of lesbianism. Candy Darling had already refused to go on the show, so Jeremiah asked Valerie. Gleefully, Valerie agreed. Jeremiah then worried that he had made a terrible mistake. Alan Burke was a staunch conservative and an aggressive host, often treating guests poorly. Burke was seen as a monster, a far right “shock jock” who spewed hateful rhetoric to antagonize his guests. He enjoyed baiting his guests with the help of his studio audience and the sound effects of a fictitious lion that he supposedly kept backstage and that he threatened to unleash on uncooperative guests. Jeremiah said, “I wouldn’t want to have appeared on the show as a gay man. People didn’t talk about those things in those days. I mean, it was very dangerous.” Valerie’s casual response to Jeramiah’s anxiety was “I can handle him.” For Valerie, the show was a chance at recognition and sharing her ideas. To Burke, however, “she was a grotesque cartoon who would provide fodder for his audience.
”
30

When Valerie arrived at the television studio, she was immediately sent up to get makeup put on her. “Valerie never wore makeup and was enchanted by the makeup artist’s craft. She sat in one of those swivel barber chairs facing a brightly lit mirror while the woman makeup artist made her up. With makeup on, she looked strange.” Jeremiah remembered that the end result gave Valerie a buffoonish appearance, “a cross between a deranged Betty Boop and the infamous Koko the Klown.”

When Valerie walked into the studio for the taping—a studio filled with 350 straight, white midwesterners, among them ex–Korean War and World War II veterans and “middle-aged yahoos and their shackled wives”—she was the only lesbian in attendance. Burke behaved in a hostile and belligerent manner toward her during the taping. He immediately announced that even though he had nothing against lesbians, he found them repulsive. Valerie reacted with a bland expression. The audience was full of homophobes and right wingers, who began to boo her. She tried to talk intelligently, had tried to play along with what they had asked of her (makeup and all), and Burke only amplified his nastiness. “His questions were really a diatribe of his own worst fears and premonitions of the future.
”
31

Burke tried to provoke Valerie by asking if she had ever been with a man: “What’s the matter, Valerie, can’t get one? Didn’t anyone ever take you to the prom?” His pace was relentless and his cruelty deliberate. Jeremiah deeply regretted bringing her to the show. “I watched Valerie’s face get brighter and brighter. However, she kept her temper as she quietly tried to inform Burke about the history of women’s rights in America and around the world. He couldn’t have cared less.” (He didn’t even care to keep a copy of the tape.)
32

Valerie’s recollection of this event painted Burke as hypocritical and hypersensitive, with tensions rising quickly between them during the taping:

The producer, Burke’s producer, tells me to say anything I want during the taping and if I say anything real bad they can always bleep it out. So I get to this studio, and there’s an audience, just the way you see it on television, and Burke asks me, “What’s the reason for your organization?” And I say, “Men have fucked up this world.” There’s this little school girl gasp from the audience and Burke says, “You’ll have to watch your language, young lady.” And I say, “Bleep it out if you don’t like it.” So I talk some more and he keeps interrupting me telling me to be careful what I say. “You’re offending my studio audience,” he says. “Fuck your studio audience,” I tell him. He tells me if I don’t leave, he will, and he did. Just got up and walked right off the platform, leaving me sitting alone. They cut the mike off and everything. Not even the audience could hear what I was saying.
33

Valerie eventually became angry and called Burke a name, after which Burke called her a derogatory name, kicked her out of his studio, and booted her off the show. Jeremiah remembered watching the scene: “He called her a name and she chased him. He ran and grabbed the curtains and tried to climb up them, so she grabbed him by the ass. It was real pandemonium, people screaming and yelling in the audience.” Burke said, “I ask you ladies and gentleman, have you ever heard anything as sick and perverted as this woman?” In the background, a tape of a lion roared over the shrieking audience, who wanted Valerie’s blood. And Valerie, quick with a coup de gr
â
ce, picked up a chair and tried to hit Burke over the head with it but he danced off camera making faces. She sat back and waited, tears of rage in her eyes, arms around the chair. At that point, security guards and several “brave” men from the audience rushed up and removed her. There was a struggle as she was pried from the chair. Finally, a guard took her by the arm and threw her out into the street. “I never saw her so angry,” Jeremiah recalled, “She was pacing up and down.” She kept repeating, “That bastard! That prick!
”
34

Valerie believed she had been set up, not by Jeremiah but by someone who wanted to attack her beliefs and interests. “She got really paranoid,” Jeremiah recalled, “and I remember seeing her walk down the street, watching her disappear into the distance. What a nightmare it was. It was very embarrassing. I didn’t see her after that until 1968.
”
35

The Hustle

Following this event, Valerie immediately sprang back into action to mobilize SCUM. On a flier she posted, she declared: “Valerie Solanas, because she was kicked off the Alan Burke show (to be shown Sat. May 20) for ‘talking dirty’ after only fifteen minutes on and prevented from fully explaining to the public how and why SCUM will eliminate the male sex, will conduct a SCUM forum on Tues., May 23, 10:30 PM at 20 E. 14th St. (admission: men $2.50; women $1.00).” She continued, “If you would like to work to help end this hard, grim, static, boring male world and wipe the ugly, leering male face off the map, send your name and address to Valerie Solanas, 222 W23, N.Y.C. 10011.
”
36

For this SCUM meeting, she rented a hall and advertised by distributing fliers throughout New York City. Ultimately, about forty people showed up, with the audience composed mostly of men even though she ended up charging an admission of $2.50 for men and nothing for women. When she was asked what the people who attended the meeting were like, Valerie responded, “The men? They were creeps. Masochists. Probably would love for me to spit on them. I wouldn’t give them the pleasure. . . . The men may want to kiss my feet and all that crap. Who needs it.” She described the women more sympathetically: “Mostly young girls. Pretty too, most of them. Some from the [V]illage, some still living at home with their folks. Poor kids. No money. . . . They’re willing to help any way they can. Some of them are interested in nothing but sex though. Sex with me. I mean, I can’t be bothered. I’m no lesbian. I haven’t got time for sex of any kind. That’s a hang-up. I work 24 hours a day for SCUM.
”
37

Right after
The Alan Burke Show
incident, Valerie had mimeographed two thousand copies of
SCUM Manifesto
and advertised it in underground newspapers. For these copies, she charged two dollars for men and a dollar for women, saying to a reporter, “That’s the only use men are today, to support our organization. To help with their own destruction.” She also
took her newly finished edition of the text to circulate on the streets, on consignment in local bookstores (a dollar for men, twenty-five cents for women), in coffeehouses, and at Max’s Kansas City. She pitched the manifesto herself, particularly hoping women would buy it, but also sold small stacks of her mimeographed copies at the more leftist bookstores in the village. In a later interview, she described the process as “a real drag,” saying, “I try to sell to women, but they can’t afford it unless they’re with men, so I only approach couples. If they’re amused, okay, I’ve made a sale. But I don’t care, as long as they take it home and read it, and I get a buck out of it.” Valerie repeatedly attempted to sell the manifesto this way, approaching young, well-dressed couples, trying to get their attention and often failing. “They walked right past her,” an onlooker noted. “She gave no reaction, not even a shrug.” As this onlooker watched her try again, Valerie approached another couple and managed to get their attention: “They were standing there listening to her, both smiling and holding each other’s arms, while she spoke to them seriously, earnestly, pointing to the manifesto.
”
38

In early summer 1967, Valerie faced her final eviction from the Chelsea Hotel and, after two years living there, she was homeless again. “She wasn’t friendly with anyone here. She wanted to dispose of all men. Her activities didn’t go down well with the tenants here,” said the hotel manager. At the Chelsea, Valerie had had access to a somewhat normal writing and living environment, complete with a dresser, bed, table, and typewriter, whereas after her eviction she faced an increasingly unstable environment, ultimately losing a predictable place where she could work, write, and escape the stresses of New York City. Faced with imminent financial distress and homelessness, the urgency of securing a producer for
Up Your Ass
was intensified.
39

To try to get
Up Your Ass
produced, she began having meetings with various producers and publishers throughout New York City. Valerie first sought out Louise Thompson, from the East Village theater scene, to produce her play. Louise ran a theater group that was hosting the reading of a play by a woman. After Valerie found out about this, she attended the reading and then went to the party that followed, schmoozing with Louise and the other women. Louise took a liking to Valerie and to
Up Your Ass
, finding it sexual, funny, and full of witty dialogue. “I showed some friends the play and they were really shocked by it,” she said, “I was not. Valerie was just so frustrated with it. It was very blue material. I am sorry now that I did not do it!” Valerie and Louise spoke together in the kitchen during the party, bantering back and forth about Valerie’s hostility toward men and her passion for having
Up Your Ass
produced. Louise told Valerie plainly that she could not produce it because the police would shut her theater down if she did. “She and I had a long conversation and she understood my point,” Louise said.
40

Next, Valerie visited Gene Feist, founder of the theater the
Roundabout
.
A self-described coward, he remembered Valerie’s dynamism well: “When we started, I was often the only one there, manning the box office, cleaning up the theater, doing the chores.” One afternoon in mid-1967, Valerie entered his office, a move that put Gene off a bit, as people typically stopped at the front window. Valerie urgently introduced herself to Gene and he asked what he could do for her. “She throws this script on my desk.” Gene remembered the title as
Up Your Ass with a Meathook
and described Valerie as a lunatic. “People who are either severely ill or have been institutionalized get this kind of sexless, dumb look, an oxen look. That’s what she had. I was getting more and more alarmed—here I was, a natural-born coward, and it was obvious she was insane.” He explained to Valerie that they only produced the classics and she accepted that, took her script back, and left the building. “I locked the door and breathed a sigh of relief, and as soon as I calmed down, you know the first thing I thought? I should’ve told her to go see Andy [Warhol]. She had a threatening presence. But Andy felt crazy people were gifted.
”
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