Liberation

by Christopher Isherwood

  Last night we had supper with Gavin and Mark at a restaurant called the Fiasco in the crowded slummy-grand marina, with its logjam of small boats—what a depressing place. Mark talked for hours and hours but was really interesting about Merle Oberon, who quizzed him regarding his career plans, finances, relations with Gavin, other sexual activities, family background etc. etc., and gave him solid advice, as one who had succeeded in getting exactly what she wanted. Gavin told us that Jim Bridges had made nasty remarks about Natural Causes127 and had said that Mark is just being jollied along—Gavin doesn’t really intend to put him in it. Gavin is very hurt and resentful. He feels that he ought to have it out with Jim because otherwise they can never be friends again. He also told us, however, that most of Jim’s remarks had been passed on to him by Clyde Ventura, who is a pathological mischief-maker: so maybe they are twisted or exaggerated. Jim must be mad to talk to Clyde about any mutual friends, anyhow. What does he expect will happen?

  August 13 [Friday]. At the gym today I weighed almost exactly 147. And last night, when we went to have supper with Ed and Avilda Moses, she said I had visibly lost weight. That’s fine, but I still suffer from this bloated belly—so much so that I have had to loosen my belt one hole!

  I like both the Moseses, they are really very ready to be friendly. Billy Al and Penny were there too. Billy was at his most competitive. Whatever anyone talked about, from mescalin to surfing, Billy had to have done more of it and better, or had a worse bummer of a trip or injured himself more severely!

  Either Billy or Ed said I ought to be president. Whereupon Don said, “Well, I absolutely refuse to be First Lady!” He laughed when he said it and they all laughed too, but it was a curiously daring remark for Don to make in that circle, because he is always a little afraid of embarrassing them (or rather, just Billy) by bringing up the queerness thing.

  Hunt has raised no objections to the pages we sent him yesterday—I guess because he is too eager to get them typed and handed over to Sheinberg. So now I only have to do the alterations he proposed on the earlier pages. Sheinberg isn’t leaving till Friday anyhow.

  Yesterday I called [the boy who ran away from the monastery] and told him how happy I am that he is taking brahmacharya (today). I think this really pleased him.

  I forgot to mention Jerry Byrd (Bird?)128 who was also at the Moses’ house last night. A very husky broad-shouldered boy with spectacles, who looks rather like a homelier Mike Van Horn and is an art student who is working as an assistant to Ed. He appears to have a sweet disposition. We both thought him attractive.

  A card yesterday to say that David Hockney and Peter will soon be coming by here on their way to Japan. Also a note from Peter Schwed, saying that his son Greg and a friend are motoring across the country and that he, Peter, had suggested us among various “people I thought might be willing to give them a floor to sleep on if they need one.” It is not so much the gall of this suggestion that amazes me—it’s that Peter should suggest that his son should spend a night amidst us declared faggots!

  August 14. Gerald died today, about 2 p.m. Michael had been feeding him soup. He stopped breathing. There was no struggle at the end and no apparent change in consciousness. The body was sent away almost at once, to the UCLA medical school—Gerald had willed it to them years ago. Now Michael is tidying up the house. He said he didn’t feel like seeing anyone until tomorrow—except Dr. Cohen, who was there when Gerald died. He is very anxious to get in touch with Swami and tell him as soon as possible. But Swami is down at Trabuco and the phone is off the hook!

  I am only just beginning to realize that it has really happened, at last. My chief feeling is that I would like to get on the air and tell the great stodgy thick-skinned world that it has lost one of its most tremendous men, one of the great magic mythmakers and revealers of life’s wonder.

  Talked to Chris Wood, who feels that now he must perhaps go to England. For him it is a terrible dilemma. I think he is deeply shaken.

  Talked to Tom Van Sant, whose reaction was that all of us who knew Gerald should get together and exchange our experiences of him. Fine—but include me out!

  August 15. To see Michael this afternoon. He looks terribly withered but isn’t in the least sentimental or tearful. I think he wants to be allowed by Swami to live at Trabuco, or maybe somewhere around Vedanta Place. He is planning to go to Honolulu and stay with Mrs. Luce for a while. He doesn’t seem to want company particularly; indeed I felt he was suffering my visit out of politeness, after the first half hour. He has been tidying up the house. The back part, where Gerald didn’t live, is spotlessly clean. I wasn’t shown the front part. He said, “My life has been completely changed.”

  Coming away, I met Madge MacDonald, who told me Jack Jones had told her that Gerald had told him, on the 13th, that he was going to die next day! (How did Gerald speak?)

  August 16. I forgot to mention that, yesterday, Michael gave me the sloping board on which Gerald used to write. I tried writing on this today, a letter to Bob Craft about his description of Igor’s death, and I find that I prefer a sloping surface rather than a flat one to write on—so now I’m kind of physically in touch with Gerald. On the back of the board, in Gerald’s handwriting, are the names of stories and books which he wrote on it—The Creed of Christ, The Code of Christ, Training for the Life of Spirit, 1 and 2, Man the Master, Havelock Ellis: Desert, Sigmund Freud: Ecstasy, Taste for Honey, Reply Paid, Murder by Reflection, The Fog, The Cray Fish, Despair Deferred, A Tide in Time, The Cat I Am, Desert Dialogue, Eden on Ice, Aum, A Prologue to Prayer. (Michael says that some of these are the original titles of books published under different names.)

  Got up extra early this morning and finished revising the “Frankenstein” script, the earlier part as well as the later, and sent it off by messenger to Universal. So now we’ll have a day or two of holiday, maybe, before we start on the final section.

  Then we went on the beach; the water was cooler but refreshing. Then I went to the gym. Still just over 147.

  Nearly every day, Don makes some remark, half-jokingly referring to the fact that I don’t find him attractive in a beard. He thinks it is a kind of obstinacy and maybe it is. But at least I am consistent. I find beards, considered as sex adornments, repulsive— no matter who wears them. I find something peculiarly indecent about a beard on a nude. And I am increasingly getting a hate on shoulder-length hair and nearly all moustaches—the thicker the worse. I yearn for a new age of crew cuts.

  August 17. Have just finished reading a manuscript sent me by Paul Wheeler, the singer and composer whom I met at Cambridge with Mark Lancaster on April 29, 1970, the last time I saw Morgan. It is an almost disconnected narrative, like a lot of entries from a journal, dealing with Paul’s life during that year. It’s called Hold It. Wheeler sent a note with it, saying he had meant to write me and was sending this instead. There is a lot about girls, and bars, and pot, and music, with glimpses of John Lennon and David Hockney and many others. It is dull because he doesn’t show his own viewpoint clearly enough and fails to explain situations sufficiently. But he is very good at rendering people’s dialogue. After saying of me: “He is precise in a heart-rending way: he unties all the little knots of human tension surrounding him, so patiently and considerately. . . .” (which I don’t find particularly illuminating) he goes on: “At the same time there is a puzzled schizophrenia about his reaction to circumstances he is in; as though he knows how to speak the language of the situation but always does so in a very slight accent, in case there is anyone there from home. . . .” (that’s brilliantly observed).

  Tomorrow I’m to drive down with Michael to Trabuco. It was my idea and my heart sinks at the prospect, just a little. But it was a good idea—Michael is delighted and Swami seemed pleased that I’d thought of it.

  August 18. The trip to Trabuco was quite a success. Michael got what he wanted—Swami’s permission to come and spend at least several months out of the year at Trabuco, and I got a welcome glimpse of
the nostalgic old place—now landscaped and trimmed and pruned and cleaned up as never before—and the boys. Cuddly ruthless Peter [Schneider] was there on a short visit, playing basketball with Mark, Franklin, Doug [Rauch] and a red-haired new boy whose name I forget.129 Swami seemed rather low, he has asthma. It seems he had darkly hinted to Anandaprana that he had finished his last task—giving brahmacharya—and that he might now depart. (Whereat Anamananda had said brightly, “Nonsense, Swami, you may live for two or three years!”) Swami brightened at lunch, however. We left soon after.

  Michael has been asked by Claire Boothe Luce to come and live with her, in the event of Gerald’s death, and he has promised that he will. He made a great deal out of this promise and how promises must be kept—telling me, on the way home, that he had told Swami of this promise and that Swami had said, yes, indeed, he must keep it. This kind of ethical fussing is characteristic of an aspect of Michael which I still find tiresome and basically insincere. Because the thing which he didn’t mention is that Mrs. Luce has the power to reward him handsomely for his services.

  At the gym today, just a shade under 147!

  August 19. I didn’t have time, yesterday, to write all I wanted to about Michael. Getting back to Mrs. Luce, I asked him right out if she was going to provide for him in exchange for being looked after. This quite shocked him at first, but then he told me that he was certain he was in her will; she had always regarded him and Gerald as being “family.” Actually, I think Michael has quite a sound instinct for feathering his nest. He already has some property in the islands which he now wants to sell and then— if he is going to live with Mrs. Luce and/or with the Vedanta Society—he can also sell his Rustic Road house which is very valuable, he says, because it is zoned so that he is officially entitled to lease one half of it to someone else, if he wants to. On top of all his other plans, he has offered to go with Chris Wood to England, if Chris wishes to make a visit of exploration, to see if he wants to live there again—and this, I couldn’t help thinking, might very well make Chris decide to leave Michael some of his money. Well, good for Michael!

  Probing to find out what he thinks of Jack Jones, I asked about Jack’s relations with Gerald. But Michael was very careful what he told me. He said that Gerald had always regarded Jack as “part of his karma,” since Jack had been the one who was determined that they should know each other. (“But I was just the same,” Michael added; “I kept writing Gerald letters, and then I practically forced my way into Trabuco.”) Michael did however say, in a superior tone, that Gerald had been unable to get Jack interested in “the ultimate goals,” so he had decided, in Jack’s case, to concentrate on “building a character”—that is, trying to make Jack reliable, truthful and careful to keep his promises. Michael said he was now in a difficult situation because Jack had come to him and said that Gerald had told both of them that they were to practise automatic writing together, after his death, in order that he might communicate with them. Michael says he can’t remember that Gerald ever said any such thing and he doesn’t want to do it anyway. He has decided that Gerald’s personality has already dissolved and that he is now with Brahman and therefore could not communicate even if “he” wanted to. This was another question he asked Swami, and Swami obligingly answered that Michael should not make any attempt to get in touch with Gerald by psychic means. (I know, all too well, how easily Swami can be “worked” as an oracle. This is no criticism of Swami; it’s just that you can make him give answers to questions according to the way you phrase them, because despite his fluency, he doesn’t understand all the shades of the English language. Michael must surely know this too; so I find his questioning dishonest.) And now here was Michael saying demurely that he didn’t know if he could tell Jack Jones what Swami had said, because this would be speaking of the Guru’s instructions to someone else, which is strictly forbidden. Oh, Mary! (I’m not writing all this just to bitch Michael. It’s just that I am profoundly interested in his state of mind and indeed his whole predicament at this time—it is such a marvellous subject for a novel!)

  There are many other details which will perhaps occur to me later. The only one I can think of right now is that Gerald revealed, during his illness, that he had always disliked the way Michael’s side hair was kept cropped around the shiny bald patch; so Michael had let it grow. That detail I find touching and true. What touches me is Gerald’s unwilling aversion and Michael’s being able to speak of it.

  This morning, he called and thanked me sweetly and with obvious sincerity for having arranged the Trabuco visit.

  Hunt called this morning to say that he has reread the whole script and that he finds it marvellous and that the dialogue has the “distinction of Shaw or Wilde”! More impressive, businesswise, was a call I got this afternoon from Robin French, telling me he’d met Sheinberg this morning who’d said, “I’ve got the best script I’ve ever had!”, meaning ours. But he hadn’t read all of it yet.

  Meanwhile I am in a fearful flap because we can’t seem to find a satisfactory progression for the episodes between the ball and the sailing of the ship which is taking Victor and Elizabeth (and the Creature) to their doom.

  August 20. Another good opinion of “Frankenstein” (from Herb Schlosser, whoever he is130) quoted to me by Hunt. It is to be Universal’s definitely biggest production of the year, etc. Today Sheinberg has presumably left for London with our script. Worked quite a lot on the scenes which follow the ball. They are all wrong, so plotty. When a scene is really and truly wrong, you sometimes find it won’t stop, you go on writing and writing and there is always more to say and nothing you say is the end line.

  Am reading Leslie Marchand’s one-volume life of Byron, Byron: A Portrait, Chekhov’s The Schoolmistress [and Other Stories] and Montgomery Hyde’s Henry James at Home—the last of these bores me, rather. It isn’t frank enough—or maybe there’s not enough to be frank about.

  August 21. We had supper last night with Irving and Shirley Blum, at their house. Jack and Jim were there too. I’ve probably described the house before, somewhere in this diary. It’s exactly like living in an art gallery. The pictures are nearly all gallery pictures; large and needing to be looked at from a distance— Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, Kenneth Nolan, Lichtenstein, Warhol—and, because they are well spaced and strategically hung, the living room seems austerely bare. The pieces of furniture and the few other items lying around are all “objects of value”—just as much so as the German sculptures in shining metal which remind you of Lang’s Metropolis. [. . .] The most surprising of the Blums’ treasures is their adorable two-year-old son Jason. He doesn’t fit into the setting.

  Jack talked a lot and was very lively, but we still suspect they are mad at us. Don thinks it’s because we didn’t like Carnal Knowledge. Jack and Jim have become very thick with Mike Nichols.131

  Don has to buy another car. He was out today looking at jeeps but thinks them too clumsy and heavy and expensive. Foreign cars are supposed to become more expensive, because of the weakness of the dollar.

  Evelyn has been bothering us again, about getting in touch with the Spenders when she goes to Europe. They are holed up in that house near Les Baux and I don’t have the exact address and can think of no way of finding it. Evelyn, who is still hysterical underneath and apt to be weepy, professes to think that they have “forgotten” her! She can be quite tiresome. She also said that The Advocate wants to write an obituary of Gerald! I can’t imagine that Michael would ever agree to this.

  August 22. I was right. Michael doesn’t agree. He says that Gerald never declared his queerness in print, and when he wrote articles on the subject he used an assumed name.

  We had supper last night with Paul Dehn, who is staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel, writing another Ape film. He can’t drive, so he is quite cut off there, just commuting to the studio and sometimes walking into Beverly Hills. He is friendly and full of jokes and worked hard at entertaining us. But, as Don said, he treated him like a woman. H
e has a tiresome trick of lowering his voice until you simply can’t hear him unless he is speaking directly to you. As he sat between us, we shared his conversation, and Don got much less than half of it. So the evening was tense. Just the same, I feel I must see him sometimes while he’s here. It’s a curious bond, that we both come from Disley—a curiously strong one!

  August 23. Back to 148 at the gym. Don said it was only because of all the coffee I’d drunk. For the past two weeks (at least) I’ve given up alcohol altogether. And today I not only ran round two blocks but ran down to the beach as well. Everybody says how healthy I look.

  Last night we went with Gavin and Mark to see Ingmar Bergman’s The Touch. It’s really a very poor script, the most ordinary adultery story, just a feminine caprice in the usual Frog style; she wants to do it so she does it, and they both yell bloody murder because they find they are “in love” and “can’t live without each other,” and meanwhile the husband sulks. Yet Bibi Andersson made it all seem fascinating and subtle and even almost touching, as long as she was on the screen. She is one of the most marvellous actresses in the world and I have never seen her better. But why did she have to play opposite that loathsome slob-Jew, Elliott Gould? Because Bergman wanted it!

  As usual, Gavin insisted on going to a terribly expensive restaurant, Jack’s at the Beach—our half share of the bill was twenty-three dollars—and the food at these places is almost never good. Mark is looking almost beautiful, these days, or at any rate very striking—but there is nevertheless something comic about his appearance and we keep wondering how he will photograph. He told me I looked like a little boy when I was eating my sherbert— that’s his idea of a compliment. He asked Don if we touched each other much in bed!