What more could anyone want?
Well, for one, Mark Chastain would be nice, Vic thought. Right here, with his clothing off, holding Vic’s hand, talking to him about the intricacies of Ravel’s L’Enfant et le Sortileges, and looking right into Vic’s eyes with his own dark brown eyes, eyes Vic had decided resembled nothing less than Teuscher’s Champagne-truffle chocolates. He sighed.
“See? You should have undressed and joined me at the orgy.” Andy admonished. “But would you listen? New Yorkers!” he scoffed at the wind.
Not a clue, Vic thought.
He mooned on a bit, then they went for a dip in the freezing cold water, frolicking as though they were Tony and Jack being girl-band members in Some Like It Hot. They lay on the beach, then Andy got antsy and went blanket-hopping while Vic reattacked the John Fowles novel in which he’d advanced an entire three pages since his plane left LaGuardia airport over a week before.
Still believing that Vic was groaning over his wasted opportunity, Andy dragged him over to be introduced to 1) Jason, strawberry blond, muscles for weeks, fabulous face; 2) Scott, slender and abdomen-pretty, with auburn locks; 3) Darryl, cocoa au lait, bass-baritone sweet, golden-green eyes, and . . .
“Wait!” Vic all but flattened Darryl of the creamy thighs while he rudely stared: “Isn’t that Christopher Isherwood?”
They also rudely stared and replied in one voice, “That old guy?”
Andy added, “Why? Do you know him?”
Darryl fled such perversity. Andy groaned. But Vic steeled himself, saying It’s not for me, it’s for him, it’s not for me, it’s for him, and went over to where this rectangular looking man with a square-looking head, long, striking, carefully combed silver-gold hair and milky blue eyes was busily annoying innocent shells on the strand with some kind of ferrule.
Out of the corner of his eye Vic could see Andy abandoning their set up so as not to be contaminated by Victor’s all too apparently bizarre taste in men.
“Mr. Isherwood,” he began in a rush, and the tan, abstracted face looked up at him. “I’m very sorry, but I once promised a very dear friend that if I ever came to the West Coast I’d look you up, and I never would have had to nerve to do so, but since you’re right in front of me, I have to do it or I’ll never forgive myself.”
Well, that got the famous writer’s attention.
“Now be very careful young man how you answer next,” was the reply, “or I shall turn ’round and leave you alone, holding your pud. What was the name of the friend that you made this rash promise to?”
“Wystan.”
“Oh, my God! And who are you?”
Vic told him his name.
“You’re that successful young novelist, no?”
“Now I am, but Wystan never even knew I planned to be a writer.”
“That’s why I recognized your name. Wystan must have talked about you. Justify My Sins, yes? What are doing out here? Business or pleasure?”
“It’s supposed to be the first but is turning into the second, and since the first appears totally doomed I’m just totally going for the second.”
The author laughed.
“He seldom would come, Wystan,” the famous man added. “Told me any place s that could so utterly seduce an old Roundhead like myself would snag him instantly, as he was so very vulnerable to impressions. We went there of course, Don and I, to Brooklyn and then to St. Mark’s Place. Not that anyone besides Wystan could actually reside in that flat. You must recall it. I see from your look of remembered appall that you do recall it. But still, I was always a little bit offended that Wystan seldom visited.”
“And then, just before the end he went back to England,” Vic said. “I got almost a letter a week once he was in England. He hated Oxford!”
“Ah, but he loved the attention.”
“His flat was robbed after a few weeks there. He said no one would speak to him. Why did he go back? I think going back is what killed him,” Vic said. “I never could understand it. None of his New York friends ever did.”
“But he died in Austria. He loved Austria,” Isherwood said. “You’re still angry with him. But that’s why we have funerals and memorial services. To shake off that lingering anger.”
“I wasn’t even invited to the shindig up at Riverside Cathedral,” Vic confessed. “I was only a book clerk. Why bother inviting me? In fact, not Orlan Fox, no one, even bothered to call and tell me Wystan had died. I heard about it in a supermarket aisle. Over frozen minute steaks. I was talking with a friend, and as he wheeled his cart in the other direction, he tossed over his shoulder, ‘You’ve heard that Auden’s gone, right?’ It was so cold, hearing it like that.”
“How very sad. You were very fond of him, weren’t you? I believe he was fond of you.”
Vic felt suddenly bereft all over again, as though reliving that awful moment in D’Agostinos. He thought he might burst into tears.
Isherwood pointed at the blankets. “Is that where you are? Why don’t we go sit a minute?”
That was kind, and so they did and Vic gave him some iced tea and immediately wondered if Andy had laced it with anything, then said, “I’m sorry to drop all this on you, first meeting and all.”
“No matter. No matter. This is what friends do: talk about their departed. Ask the hard questions. Can’t do it with strangers, can we?
“He was so happy in New York with the new editions of the poems and the essays coming out and with The New Yorker stipend and The New York Review stipend, all of which he richly deserved. I’m sorry. I’m being a big baby. And rude.”
“I believe Wystan was seduced. I suppose we all have our price. And they were so angry at us back in Britain,” Isher-wood said. “Never forgave me for leaving, and for then coming here to live, of all places, like a beach bum. That’s what they wrote, each foolish one of them. As though I subsisted on meadow clover and sea-bracken. You mustn’t forget: they’d won the big war but in reality had lost everything. The first half of the century, their chief poet was an American. He stayed. He changed citizenship. Still. He was American-born. Then they simply dismissed the lot of us coming after Eliot as second-raters, politicos, anarchists. Poor Stephen and Wystan! No wonder we fled. But then there Wystan was, at the end of the century, the star poet in the language, despite everything, and he’d been living in America since thirty-nine. They couldn’t accept that, losing out their official poet to the United States on both ends of the Twentieth Century. Dreadful concept! So they offered him the sky. He cut some sort of bargain that would keep him near his house in Bergesetten, which he loved so much, and close enough to Greece, to be able to step in, in case ‘Blondie’ got into trouble again. And Wystan took them up on it.”
The great man then asked Vic how he liked Los Angeles and Santa Monica. He pointed to where his own house stood, just visible, window glass winking in the sun through the canyon cleft. He went on to name and describe the various areas and points of interest within their view, making it all seem even more interesting. “That edifice Aly Khan built for Rita Haworth. And see there, at the junction of Sunset Boulevard and the Pacific Coast Road, it only became a highway later, is Castelmare. You can see the spot from here. That’s where Marion Davies had her house, built into the cliff. Three stories high. Several guest bedrooms for those who drove in from Hollywood or Hancock Park to stay the night. It was considered such a distance then, to come here to the ocean, and cars drove so much more slowly too. She threw parties there, away from William Randolph Hearst who was such a prude. Of course, these were all just villages back then! It was all very small potatoes indeed out here on the strand in those days. All over Pacific Palisades there were orchards and nurseries and flower farms, only a score or so actual homes.”
Vic asked about the big holes in the cliffs he’d noticed all about them, upon what appeared to be concrete abutments. “They look just like bunkers for cannon emplacements,” Vic opined.
“That’s precisely what they were. From Eurkea
down past San Diego, they were built all along the coast. We were very fearful of Hirohito, you know. There were always rumors of Rising Sun submarines coming into the bay here and showing up at Huntington Beach and Palos Verdes, although what they expected to see beyond the naval installations I can’t for the life of me think. It was all fairly primitive otherwise. But it was a fearful time that you’re happy to have missed, the Pacific War, even if the preponderance of young sailors nearly compensated.”
Explaining the history of the area, he lifted Vic’s spirits so much that when Andy returned to the blanket and offered Isherwood grass, the writer smelled the smoke in the air and said, “Hemp? No thank you. I’ve had it before, of course.”
He might have remained for more than that hour if they hadn’t suddenly heard shouting from behind them. It turned out to come from a slender man on a bicycle with a moustache, beard, and jagged shock of dark hair.
“That’s Don. He’s a marvel of an artist. Come meet him.”
Don wouldn’t step onto the sand, so they walked all the way to where he waited, all but beating one toe in annoyance, wearing run-down plimsolls and never-ironed slacks. It turned out that there was some kind of urgent phone call, so Isherwood had to leave.
“Despite his youth, Vic was a good friend of our Wystan, from his palmier, later years,” Isherwood explained to Bachardy.
Don said he’d like to draw Vic sometime.
They parted with clasped shoulders all round, and promises to stay in touch. This sounded sincere. And Victor promised himself he would definitely do so.
In the Assassination Vehicle driving back to the hotel, Andy looked Vic over, up and down.
“What?” Vic said. “Spit it out!”
“Little Victor is all grown up. Everything about your life is so . . . complicated. Just like a real grown up.”
Meaning that Andy’s was anything but.
“Andy, you have no idea how complicated.”
“But we’re still going to Studio One tonight. Do not dare say no.
“Sure, let’s go. I’m up for it.”
“See! That’s what I mean! You’re completely impossible to predict.”
Because the Studio One crowd at Robertson Boulevard was so thick, and the front door staff was so disorganized or deliberately holding folks back, Andy suggested they go in through the VIP lounge to which he, of course, had a pass. There was even a small queue on Lapeer at that special entry and stairway up. But everyone knew Andy, so they were soon upstairs at the long bar, then they were overlooking the airplane hangar length and height of Studio One’s dance floor.
Andy had drink coupons naturelement, and he had to greet or exchange information or introduce Victor to a score of guys. Meanwhile it had been far too long since Vic had heard such good dance music so well played. He was eager to get down onto the dance floor.
He’d just managed to pull Andy away from Contestant Number Seven to go downstairs when Perfect Paul showed up in the VIP doorway, so they had to hug and kiss and talk. They were just about to catch up, and Paul was apologizing for having to leave a message at the hotel canceling their date tonight, when a man who looked like he might be Paul’s grandad emerged from the upstairs restroom, spotted them and came over.
His name was Otto something or other, Vic didn’t catch it over the music, which was getting louder by degrees even way up here in the lounge. He worked in neoprene and other plastics back in Racine, Wisconsin, Paul said. When Otto began talking to some other folks, Paul took Vic aside and said, “Otto’s only here for a few days. Would you mind it a lot if I didn’t see you for a few nights? He’s a great old guy. but he doesn’t know anyone here in El Lay, so whenever he shows up, I kind of take him around.”
This came as both a surprise and a relief to Vic. Since the afternoon with Mark Chastain, he had been trying to figure out a way to tell Paul that he wanted to cool it off between them without hurting Paul’s feelings. Now Paul was doing it for him.
“That’s great. I’ve gotten really busy myself and this is sort of my last party night out before I have to buckle down this week.”
Otto rejoined them and they dropped downstairs to the dance floor where after a while Jason from earlier on the beach (strawberry blond, muscles for weeks, fabulous face) joined them, and then when Otto and Paul seemed to wander off, Jason and Vic were joined by Scott (slender and abdomen-pretty, with auburn locks) who brought in his train Andy Grant, but not, alas, Darryl of the cocoa au lait complexion.
Paul and Otto said goodbye after an hour or so, Paul kissing Vic’s ear and shouting over the din of “Ring My Bell” that Victor was a “dear man and so very understanding.”
Some two hours later when he was pretty well danced out, Victor went looking for Andy. He only located him after half an hour, two blocks away, parked in the WeHo library parking lot in the backseat of the Assassination Vehicle, top up and window fogged, furiously sixty-nining someone Vic had never met.
“We’ll be done in a second!” Andy looked up to call out. After assorted climactic noises, they both were.
As he was driving Vic and the other guy (Mick? Mike?) home, Andy suggested that Perfect Paul’s elderly companion was undoubtedly the person who had undoubtedly gifted him with the gull-wing Mercedes, so of course Paul had to be with him while he visited.
No, Mike butted in (it was Mike after all). He’d met Otto last summer. He came to El Lay every year. He was Paul’s gay grandfather. No one else in the family knew about his sexual orientation. Paul took him around and made sure he enjoyed himself and met guys. Wasn’t that cute?
Cute and typical of Perfect Paul, Vic thought, who was a d.o.l.l.
As he dropped Vic off at the hotel, Andy said, “You understand now why I drive this old heap? If we’re both under six feet tall, the backseat is perfect for ‘The Act.’”
“I’ll remember that next time I’m in the market for a convertible.”
“Now that you’re free again nights,” Andy opened the glove compartment at a traffic light and handed Vic two double-sized postcards.
One was a V.I.P. pass to the Club 8709. The other a duplicate of the invitation to the new leather bar that Gilbert had been urging him to go to in Silver Lake. There seemed to be no escape from that place, did there?
“It’s supposed to be aitch-oh-tee,” Andy said of the new club. “The Detour, as it is named, is being opened by people I know and it is guaranteed to be de trop. While this,” letting the pass flutter in his fingers, “is your entrée to what is simply the pickiest bathhouse in the universe. Avez vous fun, mon ami!”
“What are you talking about?” Marcie demanded. “I never ask you to do anything for me. So just this once, and because it is so very easy for you, I can’t understand why you would want to refuse me. I mean this is all about your book, Victor!”
“What do you mean you never ask me to do anything for you? What about the boring awful Random House party?” he asked.
“That was for your career,” she retorted quickly. “Remember? We were thinking of leaving Laetitia. Random House would have been a good place to hop to.”
“What I remember was that you were pissed off at Laetitia over something having nothing whatsoever to with me or my books, and you decided to go suck up to some Random House editors you didn’t know, and since I’d just gotten that Pee-Double-U starred review, you were using me as bait.”
“Lord, how you distort everything. No wonder you’re a novelist.”
Vic continued, unfazed. “Item number two: What about that dinner with Brian DePalma where you knew in advance he wanted to turn my—and I’m quoting from the Hartford Courant—subtly chilling, utterly engrossing, first novel into some kind of psycho slasher flick?”
“Victor? How could you possibly turn down a meeting with a film director, even a newish one like Brian de Palma? A first time novelist like yourself.”
“Who, I repeat, said he wanted to turn my first novel into some kind of psycho slasher flick, which it was merely
the complete fucking opposite of.”
“Well, anyway you found that lady friend of yours and went off with her, what was her name, Pat Louse?”
“Loud! Pat Loud. Yes, she and I did reconnect outside the restrooms, where by the way I went to barf repeatedly as a result not of dinner, which was over priced but not inedible, but of your so-called ‘negotiating’ with Mr. De Palma, which resembled as closely as I could make out a rim-job, and I don’t mean on your aging Toronado coupe’s tires. But thanks to Pat I was able to escape and let you and Brian discuss having apres-dinner sex, which I believe was the main reason we were having that dinner in the first place, Marcie, since you very well knew I would never in a zillion years agree to him, or Hitchcock for that matter, mutilating my novel like—”
“We did not have sex,” she interrupted to declare primly.
“You did not have sex because his wife checked into the hotel a half day early and unexpectedly. At, I believe, about the same time that you had his wienie well in hand under the table.”
“You couldn’t you have seen that!”
“X-ray eyes,” Victor said. “Item number three: What about the time you and whatever that guy’s name was—Bryce or Bryck or somesuch—came by my Pines summer rental house from Davis Park via the Botel Sunday Tea Dance, not only not invited, but specifically not invited, and in full knowledge of that, because I’d told you beforehand that I had a house guest of mucho importancia that weekend. And, let me add, you not only invited yourselves to dinner, but crashed there overnight?”
Justify My Sins Page 8
