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Overview
Author, video artist, underground film actor, and superstar, the incomparable Viva is arguably the most famous of Andy Warhol’s protégés, a mainstay at the enigmatic artist’s Factory. In her riveting, revelatory, totally uncensored, and scandalously entertaining novel, the Factory doors are blown wide open, exposing a world of sex, drugs, and genius.
Based on Viva’s own life, Superstar is the story of Gloria, a repressed, convent-educated aspiring artist who escapes the strictures of her stifling existence and flees to New York City. Falling in with an iconic artist referred to as A. and his coterie of outrageous, beautiful avant-garde acolytes, transvestites, boy toys, and hangers-on, Gloria is reborn, undergoing a remarkable transformation from sheltered young innocent to sexual athlete, film star, and media darling. Over the course of her reawakening, she sheds her every inhibition as she experiences what ordinary people only dream about in their most secret fantasies . . . or worst nightmares.
Though the names have all been changed, the real stars of Warhol’s factory are scandalously recognizable. Viva injects her own unique style and personality into a story at once outrageous and brutally honest: the unforgettable making of a superstar.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781497645608 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 02/17/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 311 |
| Sales rank: | 1,004,559 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Viva is the author of two books: Superstar, an insider’s look at the Factory, and The Baby, a novel incorporating video art. She also wrote for and edited a variety of publications, including Vanity Fair and the Village Voice. She is the mother of two children and lives in Palm Springs, California, where she paints.
Read an Excerpt
Superstar
A Novel
By Viva
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1970 G. P. Putnam's SonsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4976-4560-8
CHAPTER 1
I
.....that's what we'll call you, Gloria, as in "GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO."
Thus spoke A, lion of the art world, King of the underground movie, and undisputed Peter Pan of the misfits; as he ruffled a pencil through his toupee one cloudy day in New York City, the city which was to become known at a later date as the last pit in Dante's Inferno.
Gloria was then standing in the middle of The Plant, a combination painter's studio and movie set, owned by A and inhabited by countless denizens of the underground.
Gloria's former name had been Janet Lee Schumann, with two n's.
"Always hang on to those two n's," her father had warned her, "one n is Jewish."
She was the first of eleven children born to Alfred E. Schumann, famous German doctor, and Alice O'Shaughnessy, simple Irish maiden, but descended from a mixture of English and Irish nobility.
"My greatuncle was knighted by Queen Victoria, for inventing chloroform, and giving the Queen a painless childbirth," grandma O'Shaughnessy was always saying, "and my greatgreat-uncle had his printing press smashed in Philadelphia by the British, during the Revolutionary War, for printing seditious literature."
Anyway, Janet Lee's mother, the simple Irish maiden, was discovered by the German doctor Schumann, and the first issue of the union was Janet Lee. As her sisters were fond of reminding her, "cute in the cradle, ugly at the table, and vice versa," Janet Lee WAS cute. She was born with platinum hair, preringleted. This was such a novelty in the hospital that the nurses allowed her beloved aunt and godmother, Marie, to put a pale blue satin ribbon around the top ringlet.
Then, the position in which Janet Lee slept ... well, it was just too angelic for words, with her little hands in a praying position, tucked under her chin, and her little body drawn up in an embryonic curl.
A's first movie of Janet Lee turned out to be such a success that he began laying plans toward making her a "superstar." A superstar, albeit of an as yet unknown constellation, for NO ONE took A and his superstars too seriously, that is not until the miraculous birth of GLORIA! who was in her own words..... to "make" A.
"Everyone knows that I invented myself," she was fond of saying. "But not everyone knows that I also invented A."
True, A was known to a certain select group of intellectuals before the advent of Gloria, but it was thanks to Gloria that he became a household word within one short year.
Also, within one short year, Gloria, dazzled by fame, actually FORGOT all about her past life as Janet Lee Schumann. However, thanks to her third acid trip, it all came back to her, one starry night, in a rush of morbid hallucinations.
II
It was a long table, loaded with food and little girls. The room was in a dark wood-paneled hotel, in the middle of a dark woods, on a dark lake. Everything was dark, even when the sun was out. The waiter came in and brought a silver platter with a covered dish and set it down in the middle of the table. Everybody waited for a long time. Finally he took off the cover and a live white rabbit jumped out. That was my second birthday party in the American Adirondacks, at Moose Lake, scene of An American Tragedy, starring Liz Taylor and Shelley Winters..... it was the perfect setting for a murder with all that darkness ... the rabbit was quite a relief ... of course I'm dramatizing at this point because I couldn't read at the age of two.
The second scene I remember was a park bench in the Adirondacks, a dark green bench, in the middle of dark green woods with my mother and two dark ladies dressed in black. I was standing behind the bench and they were all talking about how pretty my blond curls were. Of course my mother dressed me in a dark blue wool bathing suit which I was also wearing in my third memory—also in a lake in the Adirondacks. Aunt and godmother Marie was dipping me into the damn black water by holding my arms. It was freezing cold, as usual, and I was petrified of drowning and every time she pulled me up the bathing suit stretched further down my legs until it was practically wrapped around my ankles and I was embarrassed. I don't know why, at the age of two, but I was always tugging the suit back up around my skinny ribs.
The family vacations got a little bigger in the next few years, with a baby coming every year and the cousins, aunts and uncles all getting into the act..... and my very last memory of this sinister place was of my cousin Ted, whom I had a fantastic crush on because of his back muscles, practically dying of asthma, with my father massaging his beautiful back muscles.... now why did he do that? Was a back massage supposed to cure asthma in those days? All I can envision is the dark room, I was lying in bed, hating to get up even then, watching this glorious scene of my beautiful cousin Ted's tanned muscles.
Now to get down to more serious memories.
My father's big red hanging balls. Hanging out on each side of the crotch of his white jockey shorts, those athletic shorts, the kind with a bag where the cock goes in. He had a room that went between my room and his room, the dressing room, and he always kept the door ajar, leading into my room, with the light on when he changed his clothes ... and I'd look up, my eyes would be on the level of his balls when I was lying in bed, and they looked so big and ugly and terrible I thought it was the most disgusting sight I ever saw. I never saw his cock, just his balls.
..... Visions of Freud danced in her head as the next series of images descended upon her, her early..............
III Toilet Training
Enemas, enemas, grand lavage ... we'd lie on our side in the back bathroom which used to be a sunporch and was transformed into a bathroom ... a big Roman style bathroom and as we stepped out of the tub there was a raised platform with a radiator underneath and we'd have to lie on our side on this heated raised platform on a towel while mother shoved the enema nozzle up our asses with baby cream on it. (From that day on I've never been able to STAND the smell of baby cream.) And we'd have to hold our breath. We'd say "that's enough" and she'd say "take a deep breath a deep breath a deep breath take a deep breath OK NOW you can go", and we'd RUN across the bathroom into the toilet to shit.
My father, who was about six feet five inches tall with red hair and freckles, NEVER took a shit without forcing it out with these enormous loud groans. He was always going ughuuuuuu ughuuuuuuuuuu on the toilet, so I was always constipated because I thought that was the way you shit..... the only shits I knew were constipated shits. I didn't get unconstipated until I was twenty-two. I shat little black hard marbles of shit..... it didn't even stink ...... until I was twenty-two.
Because of my mother's obsession with enemas I even had hemorrhoids at the age of twelve. I'd sit on the toilet, late for school, because I couldn't shit, and I'd look down between the seat of the toilet and the porcelain and I'd see these big things hanging out of my ass. I'd go in and say to my mother, "I have these horrible red things hanging out of my ass," and she would say "Ugh, disgusting, I'm eating my breakfast, don't tell me about it."
One-a-day yellow vitamins we had to take, every morning with our cereal. Cereal, orange juice, and one-a-day vitamins ... when we could no longer stand it, the enema water, we had to hold our breath and count to ten. And then we were allowed to run to the toilet and shit. Count to ten SLOWLY ...
........ She pushed her mind even further to try to get to the root of her contempt for authority...........
IV
.... We had a nurse who made us wear the same socks and underwear for two days in a row whenever my mother went away with my father. We hated her because we hated putting dirty socks on the second day.
When I went to school, kindergarten, the patrol boys always chased me down the street and I tripped and fell ... every morning this went on. I was afraid to go to school. Finally I went up to the principal's office. He told me to pick out the boys who pushed me down. He had them all lined up in the hall and they all looked alike to me so I just picked out two or three at random and said "they did it," and they were punished. I don't even know whether they did it or not.
At the age of four I ran away from home with two boys, some water purifying pills, an army surplus thermos bottle, and a knapsack. We got as far as the creek in the neighbors' backyard where we decided to settle down for the night ... filled our thermos jugs, put our water purifying pills in, and were building a tent when the older sister of one of the boys found us, and spanked us with a tree branch all the way home. When I got home mother said "Santa Claus is going to put charcoal in your stocking."
They kept me fenced in the backyard after that, with a metal fence with spikes on it. I used to climb over the fence and run away into the woods and then I'd climb back over, and they never knew I was gone. One day, my little sister Janie tried to climb after me and as she was climbing over the fence she caught her chin on the spikes and got a big cut on her chin and fell back in the yard crying. I just left her there and kept running into the woods. Whenever she cried I'd say to her "What's the matter, honey, are you constipated?"
We used to go across the street to watch the chickens' heads being chopped off and to watch them run around the yard with their heads off, spurting blood. The woman next door to the chickens had a rabbit farm and we went there to let the rabbits out of the cages. She was a Russian Refugee. To my mother she was a saint, who had escaped religious persecution from the communists to come to the free country and raise rabbits. In Russia she had been a baroness.
There was a dairy farm down on the other side of the street and I'd go there and milk the cows. That's where I saw the two little boys licking each other's pricks when I was four, and they said to my sister and me, "have a lick" and I grabbed her by the hand and we ran home.
At five, I shared my nap with the same little boy; we shared a towel in kindergarten that we slept on together. When we moved away and they made me go to Catholic school I hated it.
........and the dawn of religious sentiment in her breast......
V
The first time I saw a nun I ran screaming into my father's arms but he made me stay in the school. If you were really good in this Catholic kindergarten and even the first grade, you could go into the convent and stir the pudding. You had to stand up on a stool, lean over this enormous big vat of boiling hot chocolate pudding with a big wooden spoon and stir it with the steam pouring into your face and hair. It was a reward for being good.
In first grade Sister Venardo would stand at the front of the first aisle and tell us about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and how the soldiers pulled the cape from Jesus' back when it was full of scabs from his last beating and they pulled it until all of the scabs pulled off with the cloth and the blood ran down his back and she wouldn't stop talking until we were all crying and then she'd shut up about it.
"Everyone should visit his or her doctor every six months, at least, for a check-up" the nuns told her and her class at school.........
VI Early Glimmerings
When Janie and Marylou and I were little girls, Mother took us to the doctor (a medical colleague of my father's) every few months for a checkup. His name was Dr. Cupola. We hated, just hated, going to him because whenever he examined us the same thing happened. Oh, it was awful. He brought us into his examining room and Mother sat on a hard-backed chair near the window at eye-level to the examining table. The room was dark, like the Adirondacks, and, in fact, was in the same colors. Brown and depression green. I don't remember one ray of sunlight ever coming in that window.
There was a painting on the wall of a naked little boy taking a piss in a pond. This was a great curiosity piece for us, not only because we had never seen a painting before, but because he was naked and was also taking a piss. The only painting we had in our house was a print of some English hunters dressed in red coats and white pants, sitting around a mahogany table in front of a fireplace with burning logs, with their dogs lying all over the floor. The colors were all dark, but kind of nice because of the firelight. We also had two old prints of some cathedrals in France. They were on the landing of the staircase. They were mahogany colored too.
Then, after we looked at the painting for a while, Dr. Cupola would say, "OK, who's first?" Nobody wanted to be first so Mother would say, "Janet Lee, you were last the last time, so you be first this time."
I would stand in front of mother while she pulled my dress over my head and then took down my panties. Then I would climb up on the table. Dr. Cupola would do the usual things with the stethoscope and everything and then he would come to the awful part.
He would put his hand on my pussy and slowly spread the lips apart, peering closely into it. Then, he would sort of stroke up and down inside with his finger and look at it some more. "She's OK," he would say and then close the lips. I was always very excited by the whole thing. Even today, when I remember the scene and think about it, my pussy gets all tingly and starts to throb. It was so exciting.
Then Janie would have to do the same thing, and Marylou and I would try to see the inside of her pussy without my mother knowing what was going on. We would crane our necks around Dr. Cupola's back and pretend not to be looking. Then Marylou would get up on the table.
Dr. Cupola usually made some remark about Marylou's bellybutton, which stuck out instead of in and formed a real button. She could do incredible things with her stomach that we couldn't do. When we took baths together to save hot water, Marylou used to stand up in the tub to be rinsed by Mother or the maid and stick out her stomach and actually move it around, from up-high to down-low and from right to left. Much better than a bellydancer.
Well, there was Marylou on the table and Dr. Cupola talking about her bellybutton while he fingered her pussy. When we got out of the office, we told Mother as we told her every time we left Dr. Cupola's office that we couldn't stand him and we wanted a new doctor. That same day, when we had been driving downtown to see him, the next-door neighbors were in the car next to us. We noticed them when we were stopped for a red light.
"Where are you going?" they shouted. They were a family of five kids.
"To Dr. Cupola's," we replied.
"OOOOOOOOHH, DIRTY Dr. Cupola!" they shrieked.
And my mother said, "Hush, children."
God we were embarrassed. Of course we had told our neighbor playmates about him, but only to find out if their doctor did the same thing. And they had never heard of anything like that.
So we were convinced that Dr. Cupola was really dirty.
During the Doctor Cupola period, I was subject to fantasies every night. I couldn't wait to finish my prayers and get into bed so I could picture the following scene:
I was naked, strapped in an army cot. It was just a few years after the Second World War. The cot was a piece of khaki green canvas supported on two sides by wooden poles. There were khaki green straps going around my shoulders, waist, and knees, tying me in. I was hung up in a standing position in this contraption, on the wall, very near the ceiling. There were a lot of other little girls hanging around me in the same cots, all on the same level and in the same suspended standing position. Then the room would fill up with men wearing grey pin-stripe suits. They all had grey hair and glasses and white shirts and ties. When the room was absolutely full of them, they would all look up at once.
When their eyes hit pussy level I would get a fantastic tingle through my whole body.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Superstar by Viva. Copyright © 1970 G. P. Putnam's Sons. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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