Taken from the URL at the top, taken from "V for Vendetta"

[ssurgul]

http://www.shadowgalaxy.net/Vendetta/valerie.html

I don't know who you are. Please believe. There is no way I can convince you that this is not one of their tricks. But I don't care. I am me, and I don't know who you are, but I love you.

I have a pencil. A little one they did not find. I am a women. I hid it inside me. Perhaps I won't be able to write again, so this is a long letter about my life. It is the only autobiography I have ever written and oh God I'm writing it on toilet paper.

I was born in Nottingham in 1957, and it rained a lot. I passed my eleven plus and went to girl's Grammar. I wanted to be an actress.

I met my first girlfriend at school. Her name was Sara. She was fourteen and I was fifteen but we were both in Miss. Watson's class. Her wrists. Her wrists were beautiful. I sat in biology class, staring at the picket rabbit foetus in its jar, listening while Mr. Hird said it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew. Sara did. I didn't.

In 1976 I stopped pretending and took a girl called Christine home to meet my parents. A week later I enrolled at drama college. My mother said I broke her heart.

But it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us. But within that inch we are free.

London. I was happy in London. In 1981 I played Dandini in Cinderella. My first rep work. The world was strange and rustling and busy, with invisible crowds behind the hot lights and all that breathless glamour. It was exciting and it was lonely. At nights I'd go to the Crew-Ins or one of the other clubs. But I was stand-offish and didn't mix easily. I saw a lot of the scene, but I never felt comfortable there. So many of them just wanted to be gay. It was their life, their ambition. And I wanted more than that.

Work improved. I got small film roles, then bigger ones. In 1986 I starred in "The Salt Flats." It pulled in the awards but not the crowds. I met Ruth while working on that. We loved each other. We lived together and on Valentine's Day she sent me roses and oh God, we had so much. Those were the best three years of my life.

In 1988 there was the war, and after that there were no more roses. Not for anybody.

In 1992 they started rounding up the gays. They took Ruth while she was out looking for food. Why are they so frightened of us? They burned her with cigarette ends and made her give them my name. She signed a statement saying I'd seduced her. I didn't blame her. God, I loved her. I didn't blame her.

But she did. She killed herself in her cell. She couldn't live with betraying me, with giving up that last inch. Oh Ruth. . . .

They came for me. They told me that all of my films would be burned. They shaved off my hair and held my head down a toilet bowl and told jokes about lesbians. They brought me here and gave me drugs. I can't feel my tongue anymore. I can't speak.

The other gay women here, Rita, died two weeks ago. I imagine I'll die quite soon. It's strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and I apologized to nobody.

I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one.

An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

I don't know who you are. Or whether you're a man or a woman. I may never see you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you.

Valerie

Comments

[rikoshi.livejournal.com]

For some reason, the second time around seeing the movie, that scene hit me even more.

[ssurgul.livejournal.com]

Totally.

It hurt, and lifted me a LOT the first time. The second time, knowing what was coming, I was very much on the verge of tears from it.

And now, I just can't stop reading and rereading the scene in the graphic novel at work. It's just soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo powerful. I hate to admit that a comic book can do this to me, but you know, it's just a more visual medium for storytelling, ultimately. And DAMN did Moore do his job.

[rikoshi.livejournal.com]

It was a scene that could very easily have come across as overwrought or even trite, but they did a fantastic job of it. I think the moment where Evey actually kisses the letter itself is when I started to feel that 'pressure-behind-eyeballs' sensation.

[ssurgul.livejournal.com]

Oh, for me it was when Valerie said '...for three years I had roses, and I apologized to nobody.' Living out loud and proud, but not in your face, and expressing that life with someone you love sooooooooooooo deeply that she has a huge part of what is known to be the final words spoken on this planet.... Yeah, that's where she gets me every time.

[rikoshi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's actually probably one of my favorite lines from the film, actually. :)

[ssurgul.livejournal.com]

Yeah, mine too. But then, most of Valerie's story and Evey's little words during that entire sequence could easily be categorized under 'Awesome Shit Not to be Forgot'. I know of no reason, after all. :)

[chrissawyer.livejournal.com]

I didn't cry the first time I saw that scene. I did the second time.

[rikoshi.livejournal.com]

Okay, you're like, the fifth person to corroborate that for me. Now I feel vindicated. :)

[ssurgul.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the first time you're so overwhelmed that's it tough to really feel that despair and triumph in the face of death and let it take over. That second time, though....