The Faculty of Dreams by Sara Stridsberg

Author:Sara Stridsberg [Stridsberg, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857054739
Publisher: Maclehose Press
Published: 2019-07-15T04:00:00+00:00

Bristol Hotel, April 18, 1988

NARRATOR: Do you have a few minutes?

VALERIE: Sorry, I’m working. Ten for a fuck. Five for a blow job. Two for a hand job. The whole repertoire. No kissing. No bullshit. No fingers. No licking. Sex is just a hang-up.

NARRATOR: I’d like to know what you think about prostitution.

VALERIE: Currently I have more practical experience than knowledge.

NARRATOR: Then tell me about it.

VALERIE: It’s like that boat accident in the Pacific where hundreds of people died. The ones who survived were utterly unable to speak when they were questioned by the police and later interviewed by the newspapers. One of them said long afterwards that what happened the night of the disaster was not something the living should know about. People stamping on other people’s hands when they tried to get into the overcrowded lifeboats. Men kicking young children out of the way to get to the front. A man spoke about a girl who was trapped, her head pinned under a cupboard. Their eyes met, and he went out to the lifeboats. It’s testimony that belongs with the dead.

NARRATOR: You’re not dead.

VALERIE: It’s like being dead. It’s testimony that belongs with the dead.

NARRATOR: You’re not dead.

VALERIE: Everything is interchangeable. Thought systems work like that, organization of flesh and mind. The logic of transportation hinges on a certain predetermined quota being filled. If someone is missing, someone else is taken out in her place. There’s no point in running away.

NARRATOR: Your way of thinking is distorted by so much senseless, destructive defeatism.

VALERIE: Not defeatism. Not submission. Not masochism. There are no good victims. I just find it unworthy to save my own ass when my people are being annihilated. When pussy-souls are sent to the slaughter. Otherwise another pussy-soul will have to do the work. I might just as well do it. There will always be men who like to fuck drowning people.

NARRATOR: Selling intimacy undermines the soul and self-esteem.

VALERIE: There’s more to intimacy than that. Sex organs. A whore never sells intimacy. She sells a black hole in space. She isn’t there. Cosmo and I dreamed of being America’s first intellectual whores. I always said to her she was the most brilliant whore in America. I sold my pussy all my life, but I never sold my soul. My pussy is not my soul. I never compromised on anything. I have never cared what happened to my cunt. I’ve always hated it. Everyone else has always hated it. I’m going to work now. I need cigarettes. You’ll have to take your questions somewhere else.

NARRATOR: I have two hundred and fifty thousand credits from university and all I dream of is a faculty like you.

VALERIE: And I dream of being able to sleep for a while instead of being subjected to these interrogation methods.

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