Darling seems much better. He has given up drinking and says this makes him feel good.
In the play audition, Rick read poorly. The other boy was much better but he isn’t quite right physically.
Terrific windstorm and rain this morning. Paul Savant had offered to paint the deck table and chairs for us in exchange for our two armchairs which we don’t want. But he propped the glass top of the table against the rail of the deck and it got blown over and shattered.
December 22. We have now heard that the draft of our play isn’t satisfactory to Marre—Rigby told us this. So I said well then Marre must write out exactly what he does want and send it to us, because we obviously don’t understand. So that’s what we’re waiting for. Probably it’s not so serious as it sounds.
Poor old George Cukor—we saw him on the 20th at Leslie Wallwork’s and he practically collapsed. Leslie says he suffers from insomnia and takes far too many sleeping pills for it and has outbursts of temper. It was so sad. Alan Searle was with him, just as usual; he has made himself a personality which includes being gaga, so he isn’t at all embarrassing.
A victory, also on the 20th: feeling energetic, I got to the end of the Gita recording, thus frustrating Anandaprana’s nagging. Of course there will be a lot of picking up loose ends, slips, slurps, etc.; but the brute task is done.
I dream of getting to the end of chapter 17 (the visit to India with Swami) before we leave for New York. But this would be a huge feat and I mustn’t force it through or the quality will suffer.
Paul Bailey was here today, with an Italian friend. Paul is writing a life of Henry Green.91 He wants to use one of Don’s portraits of Henry.
December 25. Happy Christmas. I have spent nearly all its daylight hours making a draft of what appears to be going to be one of the last really difficult passages in the book, a discussion of Ramakrishna and sex. Meanwhile, Don is in the studio with The Downer. Peace on Earth. Later we are to go to two parties—one at Billy Bengston’s, the other at Tony Richardson’s which is apparently going to be a replay of a party at Neil Hartley’s last night, where I got very drunk and nearly fell down the outside stairs again. Last night, we also saw Mark and John and Carlos, all of them looking their best, which was absolutely adorable in Mark’s case and very sexy in Carlos’s.
Darling hastily did a portrait of Cici Huston yesterday. She asked for it and paid him for it (not enough) and her lover, Maurice Jarre, to whom she gave it for Christmas, loved it.
The last two weeks I have been missing out on my isometric exercises. Started them again today. The one thing I have kept up, almost without a single break (am not quite sure about this), is my midday japam.
1979
January 7. The year began with a nasty bump, an earthquake at 3:15 in the afternoon, with a few small aftershocks. It nearly made Paul Savant, who was painting Don’s studio, fall off his ladder. When we got to Billy Al’s a bit later for a party, we found that there had been a near panic among the guests.
Today Don is in the studio with The Downer, who is really, I think, looking less attractive than he ever has; poor creature, I suppose I must learn to live with him, or worse may befall. I do hate it when he comes in the house and they talk in low voices in the kitchen. Kitty was very tense and aggressive for a few days but sweet last night and today. Am terribly feeling the strain of getting some rewrites on the play finished for Judith Anderson. Meanwhile, Harry Rigby sent the play to Elsa, which has caused a tiresome crisis; I, of course, had to be the one to lower the boom on him, telling him that he has just got to refuse to have her—if she wants to do it—pray God she doesn’t. Oh yes, and then the ass who was organizing Don’s Redlands show has printed the announcement so faint that it’s a disaster, and this is probably too late to get redone. And we have had some very heavy rain, causing a new leak in the studio and revealing that Paul’s paint job on the deck can be washed off.
That’s all the bad news, which, I admit, I superstitiously interpret as a working off of bad karma—to be welcomed. At least I will try to get chapter 17 finished before we leave.
April 1. I did get chapter 17 finished, but that was NOT the end of the bad karma. Am not sure if I care to relate all the bumpy and grindy times between then and now.92 Suffice it to say today that I am simply writing this to mark our return to California and the beginning, I hope, of a new period of more constructive work, finishing the rest of My Guru and His Disciple, which is about fifty more pages with the deadline of mid-May.
May 26. Am starting diary keeping again (I hope) now that the drive to finish My Guru and His Disciple is over. That is to say, I have sent off the corrected pages of the manuscript to Michael di Capua, along with the ending. That was on the 22nd. There are, however, two possible difficulties ahead. Anandaprana has been given a copy to read and she may well raise all kinds of picky points to be corrected. And Vernon has a copy too. I had supper with him last night. He may object that certain passages about our relationship are too intimate, but he did tell me, last night, that he had read Christopher and His Kind and had liked it, which at least means he doesn’t object, in principle, to being mentioned as my lover.93
Don is in Texas—or maybe, by now, in Louisiana. Having had a show at the Texas Gallery in Houston, he is going on to spend a night at Speed Lamkin’s house in Monroe. Speed found him a commission, which sounds doomed to failure, because he has to draw some woman quick like a bunny before a wedding. Then he is going on to New Orleans, with Bill Franklin, planning to return on Monday night, the 28th.
Bill, I beg to announce, is no longer The Downer. I decided in the middle of April to see if I couldn’t throw myself into another gear and take a different attitude toward him. It was a psychological experiment, really. The problem was how to do this effectively without kidding myself that I loved him, that he is one of God’s creatures and therefore my dear little brother, etc. etc. That kind of goo gets you nowhere. So, instead, I concentrated on him as a sex object. After all, he does have a sexy ass and a good skin and there is a kind of overall sleek sexiness about him, and his thighs are thick and sexy, though nearly cancelled by his disproportionately slender lower legs. So I got my fantasy working and imagined having sex with him until I was sufficiently aroused and jerked off and had an orgasm. Having thus, so to speak, “had” him, I started treating him with the intimacy of a bed partner. That was on April 17, when Don and he and I had a couple of parties to go to and also the opening of a big show of portraits at the Municipal Art Gallery, where Don was showing some paintings. I drank a good deal and came on very strong—that is to say, the way I normally come on with Mark Lipscomb, pinching his ass, kissing him, putting my arm around his shoulder, whispering intimately into his ear, etc. He was pretty surprised but he responded, and since then we have kept it up in a modified way, which pleases Darling of course. I haven’t explained my technique to him yet, however. I want it to become second nature, if possible, through constant practice.
Richard died on the 15th, in Dan Bradley’s arms. It was a heart attack, without warning. Since then there have been calls, about money. I talked to Mrs. Bradley and to her daughter Susan and to her son Ronald, who is businesslike. I can’t be bothered to write down at length what the problem is, but it is already plain that Tom Isherwood is determined to refuse to help out, and that I shall have to, one way or another. Tom’s letter arrived today, simply announcing that Richard left him Wybersle[gh], and that he doesn’t think he can afford to restore it.
May 27. A grey-skied holiday. Darling still away. I have been numbering the pages of the last two xerox copies of my book because I have to give one copy to Peter Grose to take back with him to England. He and his wife are coming here tonight, if they ever find the way.
I keep wondering how people will receive the book. I have almost no idea. Sometimes I think, after all, the material itself is so remarkable that some people must find it fascinating. But I think many others will be repelled by the weepy devotional tone of certain passage
s. Also by a very private kind of camp, which sometimes expresses itself in stock religious phrases which aren’t meant to be taken literally—though how is the reader to know that? Oh, I am glad that it is written, though!
May 28. Darling is supposed to arrive home in the middle of the night from New Orleans, where he has been with Bill Franklin.
The Peter Groses were nice and we had a pleasant evening; Grose a bit loud and possessive about “his” authors, but that somehow suited his Australian persona, which he seemed to wish me to be aware of—perhaps he is used to being made to feel inferior about it by the British.
Saw Bill Roerick this afternoon. He is staying at the house of Martin Manulis94 in Bel Air and playing in Shaw’s Pygmalion at the Ahmanson. Don has never liked him and, this time, I saw why very clearly; he is such an operator and so possessive about relationships and so pushy—he actually tried to get me to say I’d undertake to edit, with comments, a book of John Swope’s photographs—John has recently died and I saw so clearly how Bill would have collected the credit as Mr. Fixit from Dorothy,95 if I had agreed to it.
Am now in the recuperation stage from my book. (Not that I’m not vividly aware that I may have to make a whole lot of alterations as the result of having shown it to Anandaprana and the others.) My eyes see bad[ly]—even my good one seems dimmer. I hope my psoriasis may slowly clear up; it does seem a little better. Meanwhile, I’m trying to restore various disciplines—to keep this diary every day, to make midday japam, to do my isometric exercises and at least a little daily jogging. (Have jogged for five days in a row, now, and at least there’s no reaction from my right knee.) And then, of course, there’s the piled mail, which I shall probably never entirely answer, only keep weeding out and throwing away, letter after letter.
May 30. First slip-up; missed a diary day. But japam, isometrics and jogging maintained so far.
Don Amador96 called this morning to tell me that a city ordinance has been passed 11–2 (but by whom? I neglected to ask him exactly what body, council, board, committee passes these things and of course he took it for granted that I’d know) abolishing all restrictions of race, sex orientation, creed, etc., in employment, renting, etc., for the city of Los Angeles. This is much the biggest city in the nation to pass such an ordinance. New York hasn’t passed one, to its utter but usual disgrace. Don was in touch with me a couple of days ago to ask if I’d ride with him in the next gay parade here. Don’t know if I will or not. Darling seems to be against it.
Darling has been such an angel since he returned. When he is like this, I feel such terrific communication with him that even the prospect of dying seems hardly a separation. I write seems advisedly. Talk of this kind must always be fair-weather talk.
A very touching letter from Evelyn Bradley arrived today. I might copy bits of it into this book, but not yet because the spelling is bad in places and it’s hard to know exactly what she means. Also, I haven’t much time. A New York critic-columnist, Herbert Mitgang, is coming to interview me shortly.97
July 4. Am resuming chiefly because it’s a landmark day. Well, at least the revised pages of My Guru and His Disciple are finally xeroxed and have gone off to Farrar Straus. They are now busy getting it ready but it won’t be published till February 1980. Anandaprana raised no shattering objections. I think she rather hated the whole tone of the book and was embarrassed to death at the prospect of having to excuse it to the congregation and the Belur Math. Told her she didn’t have to. Adjemian wasn’t shocked and as for Vernon Old he thought it was beautiful and wrote me a sweet but embarrassing letter saying that I am one of the few people one meets in a lifetime that one can really trust and signing himself my disciple.
Have heard nothing yet from Methuen. Publishers always take longer than one can believe possible, I remind myself.
My health seems better. Elsie Giorgi sent me to another skin doctor, a young woman named Olsen. She pulled out my keratosis and the lab tested it and said it was nonmalignant. She also gave me some other ointment for my skin condition, which she assured me wasn’t psoriasis but due to poor circulation, which Elsie poohpoohs. Anyhow, the skin condition began to clear up instantly and is now nearly invisible. Dr. Olsen says it will return.
I won’t write about Bill Franklin now, because my attitude toward him is complicated again. Shall wait till it simplifies itself.
Will try to keep this record going for a while, now that the book is out of my hands.
July 6. Saw Vernon last night. He was gracious but condescending to Don about his drawing and painting. Really, he is quite without humor. He also says that he doesn’t quite understand what love is. He takes himself nearly as seriously as poor John van Druten. Don went out to see a mouse and Vernon sat up with me, on and on. Still, I did feel his affection, such as it was. I gather that Vernon has some fairly young girl devoted to him.
Much nicer than this encounter was a lunch given to George Cukor to celebrate his eightieth birthday, which is tomorrow, by Leslie Wallwork. We were the only other guests. The lunch was at La Ruche and it dragged on for hours, but I have to admit, in all fairness to the Frogs, that the food was hot and even good. Old George was making an effort, no doubt; on the whole he bore up well. We laughed quite a lot, over old show-biz gossip.
The press is beginning to seethe with worldwide nervousness about the impending fall of bits of the skylab.98
July 7. I’m slowly beginning to think first thoughts about my next book. Chiefly, how it will be constructed. Should I have chapters dealing with specific subjects, rather than a continuous narrative advancing through time? A whole chapter (or two, or three) dealing with the periods of work at the movie studios; a chapter on the Quakers; a chapter on Gerald, including the La Verne seminar; a chapter on the Huxleys. . . . This sounds sensible but somehow it doesn’t charm me. I’d rather wander all over the place, from topic to topic, like George Moore or Yeats. But this requires great artfulness.
July 8. Have been studying van Druten’s The Widening Circle, to get hints for the structure of my next book. Johnnie is like a rather weepy head of the Supreme Court, delivering verdicts which pain him deeply. He’s so sorry to have to decide that Arnold Bennett’s reputation isn’t what it was. . . . I don’t say this out of bitchiness, it’s just that I must know how to avoid other people’s mistakes. Will try Moore next.
The radio (5 p.m.) says that Michael Wilding is dead but doesn’t utter a word about Skylab. Are they trying to hush up an impending disaster?
July 17. This is in great haste because we have to go out to a new very successful Frog restaurant called Michael’s, which is so grand that it demands you shall arrive there at 12:15 for lunch.
This morning, just after I’d gotten out of bed, having had a long sweet sleep with my darling, and was entering the bathroom, the Firebird swooped down and whispered into my ear that the key to the construction of my new book is this house. Just as John van Druten, in The Widening Circle, used the ranch as the setting for all his thoughts and memories, so I shall use this house. The house will be the image of me, the old man, in constant danger of collapse. This won’t be played up—unless of course, the house does actually collapse while I’m working on the book, as the result of a fire or an earthquake or a flood—in which case it might provide an amusing symbolic climax (but let’s not even think such a thought!). That’s really all I have to say, right now, but I do see that the fact that I lived in this Canyon, in various houses, right from the beginning of my Californian life, will help me to relate this book to almost any of the memories of people I may want to put into it. Also—as Don pointed out when I told him about this at breakfast—there are objects in the house, pictures, etc., which will serve as promptings to memories which aren’t directly connected with the Canyon.
July 22. Today, I’ve made up my mind to break the ice by putting down some thoughts about the outline of my new book. At present, it seems to me that its narrative span, pulled out thin like elastic, could extend right from the begin
ning to the present moment of my American life, just as My Guru and His Disciple does. But this is really a question of how much usable material I find I actually have. I must remember that I originally supposed that Christopher and His Kind would include my first years in the States!
Well, anyhow. . . . Let’s suppose that I begin in the narrative present—the now of writing this book—with myself standing on the deck of this house and looking out over the Canyon at the various buildings I have lived in, here, which are actually (more or less) visible—Amalfi Drive, Denny’s apartment on Entrada, the Viertels’ former house on Mabery, 333 East Rustic Road (and 322 opposite, which was Michael Barrie’s, but we stayed there too, and Gerald Heard lived and died there), and then the two houses Don and I had before this one, the rented house on Mesa and the house we bought on Sycamore.
The Amalfi Drive section would include a description of how I left with Vernon for California—after, maybe, some impressions of our life in New York, including some memories of Lincoln Kirstein, unless it seems advisable not to offend him by mentioning him. Also, our first home in Hollywood, the apartment on Franklin, where we were visited by Chris Wood and Gerald. Then, getting to Amalfi, there would be a natural place to describe the Huxleys’ house, higher up that same street. And all the people who came there, Bertrand Russell, Anita Loos, Cukor, etc.
And that would lead to Mabery and a description of the household there, the Viertels and all their film friends—which would lead to my first film jobs and life in the studios.
Awkward gaps after this, because of my increasing involvement with the Vedanta Center, and my work with the Quakers in the East. Here is where big problems of narrative technique must be solved, so I somehow avoid constant references to My Guru and His Disciple. I have to bridge over to meeting Caskey and occupying Denny’s apartment and then the Viertels’ garage and then 333 East Rustic, with its hauntings, and drunken hospitality. (I suppose our stay in Laguna must be touched on too.)
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