The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  It’s starting to get very warm and heavy. I’ll move inside.

  September 2 [Saturday]. It’s two o’clock already. The whole morning has passed talking to Richard Pietrowicz, who came by to give me the revised manuscript of his novel Patria. He says he has improved the writing but I doubt this; I doubt if he knows how. And yet the story is really moving and the setting is impressively lifelike and the characters are quite adequately described; it would make a good movie, but a very expensive one. Richard is married now; a situation which one feels he has well in hand. He doesn’t strike you as the sort of boy to let himself be pushed around by his wife. He is Polish by origin, which perhaps explains why he likes to drink and can drink a great deal and doesn’t have hangovers or feel guilty about it. (Of course, this is what he tells me.) He said he would be drunk this evening, to celebrate having finished the novel. “I never drink when I’m feeling depressed.” He is getting tired of his job with social security and is considering moving to Alaska. He can’t get promoted here because the social security people are making it a policy to favor Negroes until they have readjusted the racial balance! He looks young for his age, twenty-seven, with a trim figure, quite goodlooking, very clean and soft-spoken, in neat dark pants and a very white T-shirt. I talked a lot, as I am supposed to, jumping from subject to subject; but it was always fundamentally about myself, and at the end of it all I felt rather bored with myself and my act. Rather but not very, and not really apologetic—because, after all, if you want to catch my act and drive clear across town to do it, then at least it’s up to me not to disappoint you.

  I met another ex-student yesterday evening on the beach when I went down for a late swim; the evening was cloudy but warm. I think his name is Ken Gross. Anyhow, he was at Los Angeles State College and he more or less appears in A Single Man as “Wally Bryant.” He recognized me and came over to talk, in a matching beach outfit, blue shirt and trunks, grinning and sparkling with discreet indiscretion. He told me that he had a lot of stories about me which he wouldn’t dare to tell me unless he’d had three or four martinis. This may have been a hint, and I did consider inviting him to have dinner with me—but no. Instead I went to the gym, then to eat at Johnson’s Barbecue, then to see You Only Live Twice which consists almost entirely of explosions of various sizes, plus gunfire, karate and the pressing of buttons which open trapdoors to throw you into some compromising situation. One charmingly old-world touch, a villain who sits stroking a white cat. But even the cat got killed in the final explosion, I fear.

  It now looks like I am definitely going to San Francisco next Friday, the 8th, to stay with Ben Underhill and see Ken McDonnell.

  Swami, whom I talked to on the phone, says that Amiya was only here a few days. She returned to England because Swami’s doctor told her her liver was in a very bad state, and since she had been able to bring very little money with her owing to currency regulations it seemed better for her to be treated at home. However, when she got back to London, her own doctor told her there was nothing the matter with her. But he said this without making an X-ray examination, and now Swami has told her to insist on having one. Swami is still waiting to hear the results of this. He says Amiya was drunk all the time, and had already started to make trouble, at Vedanta Place—something to do with Sarada, which I didn’t follow. I am to see him on Wednesday.

  Mike Steen has been in New York and talked to Tennessee about the “One Arm” project and Tennessee seems favorable. He and I talked on the phone. But I still have my grave doubts. Tennessee says (according to Mike) that he is delighted I want to work on the picture and that I’m the only one he would trust not to falsify it because I’m the only one who has never lied about homosexuality in my writing or my life, etc. But he sounds as if he could easily be talked out of the whole idea, or made suspicious of me; and I suspect that he may be afraid (grotesque as this sounds) of being compromised. Anyhow, I have said definitely that I’ll do it, if it is clearly written into the contract that Jim Bridges is to be the director. Tennessee says (again according to Mike) that he would like to see the screenplay after I’ve done a rough draft and maybe make some suggestions. I know perfectly well that this means he will then get a half-credit—but why not?

  The evening of the day before yesterday, the Masselinks, Peter, Alice, Ann and Marylee Gowland, along with Ann’s daughter Tracy, and a girl friend and Bill Reid735 and his [. . .] son all got together for a picnic (as they called it) in the park at Inspiration Point (as the city still dares to call it, after failing to stop those swine from putting up The Penthouse apartments to block off the hills, the ocean, the inspiration and the whole point of the point). Most of us wanted to go down on the beach but Peter Gowland insisted on staying there and eating at one of the long wooden tables, surrounded by dozens of elderly people at the other tables, many of them German or Jewish or both, who were sitting down to quite elaborate continental meals heated up on the barbecues. “I like to be among people,” Peter said. Marylee said, “It’s like communism,” which I thought was a quite brilliant description of the atmosphere; it was that of a Workers’ Park of Rest and Culture somewhere in East Europe. Our atmosphere, which we brought with us, was actually far worse—Jo about to leave home alone for the first time, Ben sulky-guilty-drunk [. . .], Marylee also sulking (she has moved out of the house), Alice sweetly sad. I do like her though. I don’t like Bill Reid, never have. And he added to my depression by telling us that the projected skyscraper at the end of Adelaide isn’t actually scrapped; all the metal has been bought and processed and the plans are complete—all some investor has to do is buy them and go ahead.

  Books I’m reading: The Dharma Bums, A Mummer’s Wife,736 Sartre’s The Words, Turbott Wolfe,737 The North Country by Graham Turner, The Ring by Richard Chopping and Max Beerbohm’s Seven Men.

  September 7. Have just talked to Jo on the phone. Ben did leave home while she was away—she was the one who insisted on it—and has got a place of his own in Venice and is seeing Dee all the time. Jo has told very few people about it yet. I told her that she must; it will help if people know. But I quite understand how she hates to admit that Dee has taken Ben away from her—for that’s how she privately sees it; the alternative would be to admit to herself that their dear little cozy play-relationship, with Jo so bossy and helpless, was a mess which was steadily getting messier and messier.

  Swami goes into the hospital on Monday for his operation. I saw him last night. He is very cheerful and sweet and so marvellously sane. It seems odd and empty in the dining room without the boys; they are eating in the monastery now.

  Dorothy, who came yesterday, praised a paper towel roll which has an orange pattern of leaves and curlicues printed on it. (As a matter of fact, I’d bought this roll by mistake instead of the plain white one we usually get, seen the curlicues with dismay and hoped to use the roll up before Don returns.) Dorothy said, “It’s good you got a little bit of art in the house”; then, perhaps sensing that she hadn’t been entirely tactful, she added, “other than the pictures.” Now that Dorothy’s nephew [. . .] has definitely split up with his wife, the wife has gone back east with the children. Dorothy went down with them to the depot. Just as they were about to get on the train, a man appeared in the crowd who looked rather like [her nephew]. His wife, who is an affected bitch, pretended to faint. Dorothy hit her as hard as she could, and she stopped pretending. The redcap was shocked and asked Dorothy why she had done it. Dorothy said, “If she pulls any more stunts like that I’ll kill her.”

  Don Coombs, who has just got a job as a librarian at UCLA, had a friend who was dying of cancer. A woman faith healer claimed that she could cure him but only if he were her husband. So the friend married her and died anyhow, four months later.

  I’m to leave for San Francisco tomorrow afternoon.

  September 16. The visit to San Francisco was very enjoyable, largely because it was a holiday from every sort of a situation; I felt no emotional tension whatever between Ben Underhill
and me, or between Ken McDonnell and me either, for that matter. We just had a good time—Sausalito, the Frank Lloyd Wright Marin County Civic Center (which I instantly named The Palaz of Hoon, after Wallace Stevens’s poem738), the delicious margaritas at Señor Pico’s and Trader Vic’s, the Avalon Ballroom with its light effects like an old silent movie flickering, the topless boy dancers at 524 Union St., Sam’s [Anchor Café] at Tiburon where I had a late lunch with Ben and Kin Hoitsma and the Muir Woods [redwood forest] which I visited with Ken.

  Ken is powerfully built, plump, spotty, very intelligent and sweet. Despite the way he came on in his letters he is very reserved under his love-the-world manner. He kept repeating that this weekend was one of the most memorable of his whole life, because he had not only remet me but also a girl he’d taken acid with a year or two ago and “come closer to” than anyone he’d ever known, even Larry [Paxton]. He indicated that both these remeetings had been a huge success because they had both proved to him that he hadn’t been wrong or deceiving himself about the girl or me the first time. But saying all this somehow didn’t say very much.

  Dear Ben’s chief fault—and he is such an admirable person in so many ways—is that he cannot resist making social combinations. The first evening he stuck me with a dreary yakking drunk, a real estate agent [. . .]. Then, next morning, he had me come with him to the airport, to witness a strange kind of funeral scene; the boyfriend of a very rich man being extradited from the United States as an undesirable alien. Before boarding the plane (to England) he was taken into a room by a plain clothes detective and fingerprinted, so that his departure could be officially established. The boy had protruding teeth and a nose which was only half the normal length, but he was powerfully attractive. I didn’t feel that he was going to have much trouble putting down new roots in England. (I did my bit to help by giving him Bob Regester’s address.) The rich man was very drunk and the last moment of parting was too painful to watch—the two made an involuntary movement to kiss each other and then stopped short, exactly as if they had bumped their noses against glass, no doubt because they thought the detective might be somewhere around. But I couldn’t help thinking why didn’t they do it anyhow, just to show him and all his foul tribe; and why, for that matter, didn’t the rich man drop everything and fly with the boy to England?

  After these experiences I was very firm with Ben, telling him that I wanted to spend the time alone with him, or with him and Kin Hoitsma. We found Kin in a typically fixed-up apartment, decorated with sections of the American flag and large metal instruments and implements which looked as if they belonged in a torture chamber; actually they were harmless enough in their proper places—a rake, a scythe, a big hook, etc. With Kin I had a sense of distance and defensiveness; but this must have been due to Cecil [Beaton]. I tried, probably not successfully, to rebuild relations between them a little; each thinks the other has been cold, unreasonable, lacking in understanding.

  Yesterday evening I chaperoned Jo to a dinner party at Bill [Brown] and Paul [Wonner]’s—Jim Gill and Antoinette were there too. It was a flop. Antoinette has been playing in T.V. all week and she was exhausted and silly. Paul, who had just been told by me about Jo’s tragedy, was embarrassed and silent. Bill, who of course also knew, awkwardly tried to make things go. And, as always happens, there were these grotesque unintentional acts of tactlessness—Antoinette saying “everybody seems to be breaking up” and Bill loudly praising a group called The Doors and insisting we hear one of their numbers called “The End”! Jo got very weepy again as I was driving her home.

  September 25. Jack Larson is back from New York and Don may be coming back Wednesday or Friday; I’ll know when I talk to him tomorrow.

  At long last I have worked through 1900. I shouldn’t complain of the length, though (thirty-five pages compared with twenty, for 1899!) because there are these valuable drafts of Kathleen’s letters in reply to Frank’s, which reveal so much more than her cagey diary entries.

  Now it really looks as if Black Girl may start late this week or next. Lamont Johnson wants us to begin.

  An interesting evening with Byron Trott on the 23rd. His talk about the San Francisco scene. The Beats are an older generation. The Hippies are older than the Flower Children(?). The Diggers739 look after the Flower Children, who can’t look after themselves. David Roth made a social error when he came down here and met Byron and his UCLA friends, because David arrived dressed as a Hippie, long-haired, bearded, dirty. Byron and his friends were neat. I can see that Byron now rather looks down on David. Byron is very ambitious. He wants me to help him get a job in films. He is much impressed by McLuhan740 and the fascination of computer programming. His most admirable quality is an apparent utter lack of self-pity, although he seems as badly crippled as ever. (When I asked him about his health on the phone he said he felt great. At the same time he quite objectively admits that he loses jobs because no one wants to hire a boy on crutches.) His body, aside from being bent double, is slender and well made. His face is becoming rather beautiful, but with a hint of ruthlessness.741

  A capsule description of our epoch, which came to me as I lay in bed this morning: McNamara742 or marijuana, Maharishi or McLuhan, Black Power or Flower Power, Reagan Now or Pay Later.

  Jo and I went to hear the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the 21st. Jo had heard him a few days earlier and had been terrifically impressed—partly of course because this was practically her first contact with ideas of this kind, and now she needs them. I was quite favorably impressed—I mean, I don’t think he’s an out-andout fake. But his talk was most confusing. What he calls the Self can’t be the Atman, for you are supposed to realize it right away, as a first step, almost. And yet if it isn’t the Atman what is it? The suspect things are, his claim that “nowadays in the jet age” we can accomplish in five years what it took generations of holy men whole lifetimes to accomplish; his plugs for his schools of meditation, where all the teachers have been trained by himself—how is this possible? But he is fat and cheerful with a very attractive laugh or hiccup. He twiddles a flower, which must surely be artificial it seems so tough, all the time he is talking and he sits backed by a whole bank of flowers. Also he has an amusing mannerism of being seemingly unable to pronounce the word “relative” which he uses very frequently, with “absolute”; they come out as “relatew” and “absolew” approximately.

  Swami’s back home. I talked to him yesterday. I also talked to Gerald, though I couldn’t understand his voice on the phone, it was so weak. This was a bit of bitchery on the part of Jack Jones; he let Gerald speak into the phone while Michael was out of the room. As before I got a great impression of Gerald’s cheerfulness. When I told him how sick poor Igor is, he did manage to whisper fairly clearly, “Dying by inches,” with some of his old relish. Gerald wanted to have Jack and me have supper together at his expense. I sidestepped this by having breakfast at Jack’s house this morning; a very gracious meal.

  For the first time in ages a very slightly better “sit” than usual this morning. Why? Largely because I did what I have been told one should do when alone, chanted the mantram aloud. Also a simple but helpful thought came to me, and I prayed for those I love and for those I hate. That’s to say, instead of trying to think yourself into some sort of tepid benevolence, step outside yourself for an instant and pray, with no strings attached so to speak, for those whom Christopher hates. This made me feel good and, more important, truthful. I can pray for Peggy [Kiskadden] sincerely, but I can’t sincerely say I love her. If I tried to, the prayer would automatically grow a tail on it—and, Oh Lord, please make her less of a bitch and turn her into the sort of person Christopher could approve of. Or—help me to love Peggy by making her more lovable.

  October 17. Despite all my resolves I’ve neglected to write anything for nearly a month. So—

  Am now into March 1901, and have sent off the first 107 pages of the carbon copy to Richard. The period just before Frank sailed for South Africa for the second ti
me took a lot of time to cover because they corresponded such a lot, nearly every day.

  Have also finished a rough draft or rather cut of Shaw’s Black Girl in the form of a play. A girl named Kathy Delancey is taking it down from the tape I made.

  Also Ray Henderson is working on the musical of Dogskin and we have sessions together. I am beginning to feel that maybe this will really turn into something, if Burgess Meredith keeps his enthusi asm and Elsa doesn’t bitch it all up.

  Jim Bridges on the other hand doesn’t seem to be getting on with A Meeting by the River. If he really doesn’t want to do it after all, I think I’ll have a try at it myself, in consultation with Don. Because I do feel that something could be made of it.

  It is very hot and dry, after a week of miserable cold fog.

  Dorothy, who came yesterday to clean house, talked about [. . .] her nephew, and his wife [. . .]; they have split up. “My father he used to say, you can live without anything you wasn’t born with, and he was not born with [his wife].” “[My nephew] says to me, if I was in hell and she was in heaven and could get me out, I’d rather stay in hell—so that means he does not care for her.”

  October 19. A surprisingly interesting meeting with Larry Holt yester day. I only agreed to have tea with him because he had landed me this one thousand dollar lecture date at Long Beach State College, but now I realize that he is someone I would like to get to know better. I was simply being put off by externals, his bossiness and his beaky Jewish face, hollow-eyed air of tragedy and strutting pouter-pigeon walk. As a matter of fact he isn’t really bossy or tiresomely tragic or even oppressively Jewish. He talked fascinatingly about Maupiti in the Leeward Islands northwest of Tahiti. The love relationship between men is officially recognized. It is called tane-tane(?).743 You go to the karuna(?)744 who is a psychic or seer and you drink from the same gourd and he tells you the word for love which must never be spoken by anybody else. Larry did this with the son of the chief, when they were both in their late twenties. The karuna had told this young man that someone like Larry would come to the island and enter into this relationship with him, but that he would leave again. Larry left after being on the island for ten months, because the life there seemed “too easy” and “unreal,” and because he was engaged to a girl in Austria. (Later she was shot by the Gestapo.) The son of the chief had been educated at the University of Hawaii before he met Larry. During World War II he joined the French navy and was drowned in a submarine.