I have only one memory which may be related to this Trabuco visit—or did it happen later? John van Druten gave Michael Barrie money to buy an organ for the choir he had organized at Trabuco. But Michael then left Trabuco without having bought the organ and John asked for his money back. He got it, of course, but a slight coolness had been created. People at the Vedanta Center felt that John should have told them they could use the money for something else. Swami ruled that henceforth no gifts would be accepted which had conditions attached to them.
On July 25, the day-to-day diary notes that Christopher has finished his review of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. Sometime earlier that month, Christopher had run into Ray Bradbury, whom he knew only slightly, in a bookshop. Bradbury promptly bought a copy of the Chronicles and presented it to Christopher. According to Bradbury (in a letter written twenty-three years later to Digby Diehl, the book editor of The Los Angeles Times), “His face fell.” As well it might! How often in a whole lifetime does an author give you a book of his, unsolicited, which you can honestly say you love? This, however, was one of the times. Furthermore, by a blessed coincidence, Christopher was wondering what should be the first book he reviewed for Tomorrow—and here was an ideal choice, a discovery, a near masterpiece (well, why not say boldly a masterpiece) produced by an almost unknown author! In his 1973 letter, Bradbury says handsomely, “His review turned my career around, that year.” I would love to think this is true but I doubt it, because Tomorrow didn’t have that kind of authority or circulation.
On August 11 Christopher set out with Peggy Kiskadden and her baby son Bull on a drive to New Mexico, to visit Georgia O’Keeffe. Caskey, meanwhile, was planning to drive down south and join a party of friends—including Jay Laval, I believe, and Lennie Newman. They were going to Baja California.
The New Mexico trip is partly covered by entries in the journal—two big ones and a much shorter one, made on August 13, 15, and 19.
They spent the night of August 11 staying with Bob and Mary Kittredge at their house in Oak Creek Canyon. The Kittredges were from the East but they had lived out in Arizona for twenty years, on and off. Jim Charlton was living with them while he and Bob built a house Jim had designed. They were doing it all themselves, including the plumbing. For Jim, this was a secular-monastic “retreat” from his life in Los Angeles.18
Did Christopher and Jim make love that night? Apparently not, since Christopher writes in the journal: “I have no right to feel hurt or slighted, and I really don’t. I shall keep his friendship if I endorse this venture, wherever it may lead him.” Looking back on this episode, it seems to me that Jim was cockteasing Christopher outrageously. And the cockteasing was most effective, for Christopher found himself getting an absurdly violent crush on Jim, all over again. I think the romantic pioneer setting had a lot to do with it. In Oak Creek Canyon, Jim became The Whitman Nature Boy, almost as good as new.
Peggy, meanwhile, was disapproving of the Kittredges and of their way of life.19 Christopher caused a crisis in the middle of supper by remarking that he had always longed to visit Monument Valley. Bob Kittredge was ready to close the house and leave next morning on a three-day trip there and back. (He had taken a strong fancy to Peggy, partly sexual, partly sentimental, because he had discovered that they were distant cousins.) “But Peggy was greatly alarmed. She wanted to get on to Georgia’s, she disliked haphazard camping, she was somehow jealous of the Kittredges’ Arizona as against Georgia’s New Mexico.” So Christopher, of course, had to decline the invitation. Jim urged him to stop off on the way home and make the trip with them then.
Next morning, August 12, Peggy, Bull and Christopher set out on the second half of their drive via Gallup and Santa Fe to Abiquiu, the village where Georgia O’Keeffe lived.20
Abiquiu is northwest of Santa Fe, on a road which branches off the road to Taos, at Española. In those days, Abiquiu was an almost entirely Spanish-speaking community and it might as well have been in the heart of Old Mexico, except that its plumbing was probably superior. It would have been safer in Old Mexico, however. Here, it was less than thirty miles from Los Alamos and therefore presumably in danger of some atomic accident which could devastate the whole area. Los Alamos—referred to locally as “The Mountain”—employed thousands of people and had made Española a boomtown.
In the journal, Christopher describes Georgia O’Keeffe as “that sturdy old beautiful weather-beaten cedar root.” He admired her—even liked her at times—but they were natural enemies from the moment they met. Maybe Georgia would have been the natural enemy of any man who was escorting Peggy, and maybe the knowledge that Christopher was queer merely added contempt to her hostility. I’m not saying that Georgia was a dyke—I mean, yes, sure she was, but that wasn’t the point about her. She was first and foremost an archfeminist, a pioneer women’s libber. According to Peggy, Georgia had had a very handsome, much-spoilt elder brother and had thus begun telling herself, “Anything you can do, I can do better.”
Georgia had perhaps had a crush on Peggy once. Now she was certainly very fond of her still, but in a spirit of grown-up amusement. One evening, Georgia and her secretary, Doris Bry—just arrived back from New York—had an argument with Peggy about women’s rights. Peggy, needless to say, was antilegislation and in favor of women getting their way through men. Later, Georgia and Doris told Christopher that Peggy simply didn’t understand such problems, because she had always been so attractive and had never had to earn her living. Christopher describes Doris Bry as being “pale, tall, thin, exhausted; just a trifle murderee.”
Georgia, says Christopher, kept “apologizing, half humorously, for being ‘cruel.’” She was certainly masterful. Her house represented a way of life which you just had to adopt as long as you were living in it21. You ate what Georgia ordained—sternly simple vegetarian fare. You got up at dawn. You had supper before it was even dark and were then supposed to retire to your room.22 There were also various compulsory and somewhat sacramental amusements—quite aside from the outings which Georgia organized daily. For example, she would call her guests out in the middle of the afternoon to watch the almost invariable summer thunderstorm over the Sangre de Cristo mountains; she had already arranged the chairs on the patio as if for a theatrical performance. Or she would sit Christopher down in front of a portfolio containing a couple of hundred classical Japanese paintings of bamboo, every one different but all nearly identical. Acutely conscious of Georgia standing over him and sardonically watching his face, Christopher examined each painting with care and tried to find a comment for each, or at least a special appreciative grunt.
Visiting an art guru such as Georgia is like visiting a monastery. In both cases, you are being forced to slow down your normal life tempo, to concentrate your usually scattered attention and renounce your habitual distractions. This experience is painfully uncomfortable while it is going on. You merely long for it to be over. But later—years later—you find yourself recalling it vividly and with satisfaction.
(I should mention that Georgia wasn’t at all eager to show her own paintings; indeed she seemed touchingly modest about them.)
Another sacramental amusement—far easier to enjoy than the bamboo paintings—was looking at the photographs taken by Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia’s late husband. Stieglitz and his theory of photography23 were certainly impressive and Christopher could have been far more enthusiastic about both if only Georgia had presented them to him less sacredly. (As for Peggy, she had known Stieglitz too, and she used him to put Christopher down whenever Christopher ventured to praise Caskey’s talent as a photographer.) Chiefly to placate Georgia, Christopher bought three numbers of the magazine Camera Work which Stieglitz had published in the early 1900s. They were then already collectors’ items. As I remember, Georgia charged him quite a lot for them.
On August 13, Georgia took them up to a ranch she owned in the hills, The Ghost Ranch. All I remember about it is a collection of strangely colored and shaped stones on
a table outside the front door. And the emptiness of the uplands, the parklike clearings, the hills covered with piñon and weeping cedar (not that I even recall what a weeping cedar looks like, but Christopher liked the name for its own sake and wrote it down). My actual memory is of the feel of the emptiness—quite a different feel from that of a countryside which has been recently deserted; this was really, utterly empty. It made Christopher uneasy.
On the 14th, they visited the Indian cliff dwellings at Puye. Christopher had been rather dreading this and had tried to resign himself, since at least one cliff dwelling is a must for the tourist in New Mexico. As far as Christopher was concerned, cliff dwellings meant ladders; tall, vertical, vertiginous. The Puye ladders were probably not nearly as tall as some others, but they were quite tall enough for Christopher. Indeed he was surprised that the forest rangers let visitors of all ages scramble up and down them unaided. Georgia, though in the pink of condition, was nevertheless a woman in her sixties; little Bull was too young to be able to climb alone; Peggy, girlish as she looked, was no chicken. And here was Christopher, condemned to be the Man of the Party. Halfheartedly, he offered to carry Bull, but Peggy wouldn’t hear of it. . . . They got up to see the cliff dwellings without trouble. Christopher felt giddy at moments but he didn’t freeze on the rungs. His chief concern was that he knew it would be much worse for him going back down. Georgia, becoming unexpectedly feminine, declared that she had hated the climb. Wasn’t there some path which would bring them over the hill and around to their car by a safe ladderless route? There wasn’t, it seemed. So Georgia said she would climb down last, with Christopher immediately below her to catch her if she slipped. This put Peggy in the lead, with Bull riding on her shoulders. She too was nervous but tensely brave. A strong breeze started to shake the ladders and blow sand into their faces. Bull, clinging around Peggy’s neck, announced: “I’m frightened!” . . . When it was all over, Christopher felt fairly pleased with himself At least he hadn’t panicked.
On the 15th, Georgia drove them up into the hills behind Abiquiu. Here they saw, from a respectful distance, the shrines which were visited by the local Penitentes on their Holy Week processions. Each shrine represented one of the Stations of the Cross. Georgia, as a respected resident of Abiquiu, even though non-Spanish and non-Catholic, was always invited to join the procession, but only as far as the third or fourth station—I forget which. At that point, she was expected to turn back and go home, while the rest of the procession moved forward, station by station, until it reached a secluded place where the crucifixion ritual was performed. (Georgia said that this ritual wasn’t as bloody and dangerous as some of the rituals performed in Old Mexico. The Christ actor was whipped but he wasn’t beaten nearly to death; his hands weren’t nailed to the cross, he was tied by the wrists.) The only Spanish Catholic in Abiquiu who didn’t take part in the procession was the priest. He was ordered not to do so by his bishop, who regarded the Penitentes as heretics. So the priest tactfully left the village that week. Officially, he didn’t even know that the ritual was being performed.
On the 16th, Carl Van Vechten and a friend of his named Saul Mauriber came to lunch. The day-to-day diary, as so often, expresses itself ambiguously, but I deduce from it that Christopher then drove Carl and Saul back to Santa Fe in Peggy’s car. (But, if they hadn’t got a car of their own, how did they reach Abiquiu?) In Santa Fe, Christopher had drinks and/or supper with Witter Bynner and his friend Bob Hunt. Plenty of drinks, certainly, for he left Santa Fe drunk, late at night. As he swung off the Taos road and whizzed through Española, two cops stopped him. For a moment, things looked serious. The cops put on stem faces. Then one of them said, “Do you want to stand trial, or settle this right away?” When Christopher told them meekly that of course he wanted to settle it, they took him into a smallish wooden hut at the side of the road. Inside the hut was a desk. One of the cops produced a gavel from a drawer in this desk and struck the desk with it three times, saying, “The Court of the State of New Mexico is now in session.” He then told Christopher the amount of his fine—I think it was thirty dollars—and Christopher paid him, without even venturing to ask if he might have a receipt. No doubt the cops kept the “fine” for themselves. I suppose they had noticed that he had sufficient ready money on him when he took out his billfold to show them his driver’s license.
(I don’t remember anything about Christopher’s conversations with Van Vechten and Bynner, except that they were pleasant. Maybe he and Bynner talked about Bynner’s book on Lawrence. Journey with Genius. When it was published, the next year, Bynner inscribed a copy to Christopher as “its godfather”—which probably means that Christopher read it in manuscript sometime in 1950 and made some encouraging comments on it. It now seems to me an extremely interesting but rather bitchy, envious book.)
On the 17th, Georgia, Peggy and Christopher drove to Taos, where they saw Frieda Lawrence, her husband Angelo Ravagli and Dorothy Brett. With Brett they went up to the Del Monte Ranch and spent the night. Next morning, they came back down to Taos, met Mabel Dodge Luhan, then returned to Abiquiu. All this is described in the journal.24
On the 21st, Peggy, Bull and Christopher started on the drive home. I have a vividly unpleasant memory of a thunderstorm which was moving in the same direction and bombarded them for at least fifteen miles. The lightning kept striking quite close to the road, now on one side, now on the other, now behind them, now ahead. Peggy got really scared and finally screamed at Christopher not to drive so fast, when he wasn’t driving fast at all. Their route led them through Oak Creek Canyon, and of course Peggy had to start urging Christopher to stop off at the Kittredges’ and make the trip with them and Jim to Monument Valley while she and Bull drove on to Los Angeles alone. Christopher knew perfectly well that this was one of Peggy’s tests of his character. If he did stop, he would never hear the last of it and Bill Kiskadden would never be allowed to forgive him. A Real Man never under any circumstances deserts the women and children. Peggy’s bitchery annoyed him so hugely that he told her with shameless frankness how much he loved Jim and how bitterly he regretted—and would regret for the rest of his life—having missed this marvellous experience. At the same time, he kept repeating that nothing would induce him to leave her. This reduced Peggy to a temporary state of meek submission.
They stayed the night at the Hassayampa Hotel in Prescott. About this, I have an odd memory. Having washed himself in his room before supper, Christopher went into Peggy’s adjoining room still naked to the waist, with the towel in his hand. There was something he wanted to ask her, but it’s possible also that Christopher was in a macho show-off mood. Anyhow, he realized at once that Peggy was displeased and slightly shocked. She had seen Christopher seminaked dozens of times, in the days when he stayed at her house. But this was different. Here they were together in a hotel. Someone might come in and suppose that they were unduly intimate. Or was Peggy afraid that little Bull might talk about this later to his father? Who could tell? Peggy’s reactions on such matters were absolutely unpredictable.
She was in for a much greater shock next day, and so was Christopher. It must have been late in the afternoon of the 22nd that they reached Los Angeles. Peggy made a detour into Santa Monica Canyon to drop Christopher off at 333 East Rustic Road before going home. Together they entered the living room and stopped short in astonishment.
Evidently, Caskey had given a party after Christopher had left. There were glasses all over the room with the remains of drinks in them and plates with the remains of food. The place was in a wild mess. But what made this mess special and a bit spooky was its antique appearance. There were spider’s webs on some of the glasses and drowned insects in others. The food, in that damp atmosphere, was already furred with mold. And there was an odor of decay in the air.
After the first moment of surprise, Christopher considered the situation fairly calmly. It was clear that Caskey had given this party before leaving for Baja California, since the mess must be at le
ast several days old. It was very unlike him to go away without tidying things up, but Christopher could understand why he had done so; he had expected to return before Christopher. . . . Well, he must have changed his plans, that was all. No doubt he was enjoying himself and had decided to stay on.
But Peggy was horrified. Since she equated dirt and disorder with Evil, she shuddered at the sight before her. It must have appeared to her as a physical manifestation of what was spiritually rotten in the Caskey–Christopher relationship—like the transformation of Dorian Gray’s picture. “Let’s get away from here, darling,” she said urgently and in a hushed voice, “you can come and stay with us—for as long as you like.” Christopher thanked her, but said, no, he’d be all right. “But you can’t stay here!” she cried in dismay. It took him a long time to convince her that he was in earnest. After she had gone, he called Jo and Ben Masselink, telling them what had happened. They came over at once and the three of them soon got everything cleaned up, laughing and joking as they did so. Jo and Ben’s complete, affectionate acceptance of Caskey, along with all his exploits and outrages, made Peggy’s puritanism look sick and silly. Henceforth, Christopher began to regard Jo and Ben as intimate friends in whom he could confide and with whom he felt at home. As for Peggy, this trip to New Mexico had finally convinced him that he couldn’t afford to be intimate with her. At least, not as long as he was living in any kind of homosexual relationship. She would always try to undermine it and make Christopher feel guilty. She couldn’t help herself—she was a compulsive ball cutter.
Lost Years: A Memoir 1945 - 1951 Page 41