(The word fuck in the above paragraph is perhaps misleading. I don’t mean that Bill and Christopher had five distinct orgasms on this occasion; only that there were five stickings-in and pullings-out. Bill later paid Christopher another compliment indirectly, by telling Denny all about it and saying how it had hurt. I think this was Bill’s kind of politeness. Bill was a veteran fuckee, and getting hurt is usually due to inexperience.)
January 31: “With Bill to the framer’s. He washed shirts, etc. The soldier came in.”
I have forgotten to mention that Bill painted, in those days. (Later, he retouched photographs and made various kinds of art objects.) He had done a self-portrait, I believe, that Christopher wanted as a keepsake—perhaps it was this that was being framed. But then again it seems to me that Bill was dissatisfied with the self-portrait and repainted it as a woman, whom Christopher decided to call Santa Monica. It is Santa Monica’s picture, anyhow, which we have here in the house today.
I forget what the soldier’s name was. He was one of Bill’s lovers and he showed up with the obvious intention of getting some sex. Finding Christopher there, he sat down to wait until Christopher left. But Christopher wasn’t about to leave. He glared jealously at the soldier and the atmosphere became tense. Suddenly Bill jumped up and ran out of the apartment and into the street. Christopher followed him. The scene was dramatic, because Bill was barefoot and had nothing on him but a bathrobe—however, no one on the boulevard appeared to pay much attention to this. When Christopher caught up with Bill, Bill was rather cross. “All this love—” he exclaimed, “I can’t stand it!” As far as I remember, Christopher and the soldier ended by leaving the house together and going up to the soldier’s place for a drink. By this time, Christopher was definitely interested in him, for he was sexy. But the soldier wasn’t interested in Christopher, and nothing happened.
February 3: “Down to Denny’s. Tom Maddox,[15] Jeff[16] and Curly[17] were there. With Denny and Bill to see Othello. Bill and I slept at Bobo and Kelley’s.”
Tom Maddox was a very good-looking young actor, of the type which is classified as “rugged.” His career looked promising at that time, but he never amounted to much. He was having a dangerous and exciting affair with Roddy McDowall, who was then in his teens.18 According to Tom, Roddy was the one who had started it. Tom said Roddy was insanely reckless and got a thrill out of having sex with Tom in the McDowall home, while Roddy’s parents were in the next room.
Jeff and Curly were two of Denny’s sexual playmates, a pair of highly untrustworthy teenagers who liked pot and blue movies and who would have been quite capable of turning nasty at any moment and resorting to blackmail. This, for Denny, was a large part of their charm. I think they were brothers.19
The performance of Othello (downtown at the Biltmore) starred Paul Robeson, José Ferrer and Uta Hagen. Robeson looked marvellous in his costume, indeed he was perfectly typecast, but I don’t remember that he was more than adequate; he sweated profusely. José Ferrer was a newcomer then, and he probably seemed better than he was. I remember him being tricky and showy in the “Put money in thy purse” speech to Roderigo and getting a lot of applause. I think we were all grateful, out here in the sticks, for any halfway stylish Shakespeare productions. Such events were like signs that the cultural blackout of the war was coming to an end.
Wallace Bobo and Howard Kelley, always referred to as Bo and Kelley, had another of the upstair front apartments at 137 Entrada Drive. So they were constantly in and out of Denny’s apartment and were at most of his parties. They were ideal neighbors, easygoing, helpful, ready to go along with any of Denny’s schemes; difficult as he could be, he never quarrelled with either of them. Bo was perhaps more “the man of the family”; he was the good-looking one, he worked at an outdoor job (it was either landscape gardening or a nursery garden), he was butch (though not excessively). Kelley (I have forgotten what his job was) made most of the decisions and was altogether more practical; later, when Bo became somewhat [unwell], Kelley looked after him. I don’t know how long they had already been together—I think they had both been in the service; but you felt that they would never part. They were both full of fun and gossip and took great interest in everything to do with show business. They both loved to get into drag.
February 4: “Swami had lumbago, van Druten lectured. With Bill to Beesleys’. They went to see house. Van Druten to supper. Said goodbye to Bill.”
John van Druten’s lecture at the Vedanta temple that Sunday morning was probably a version of the article by him called “One Element” which later appeared in our magazine Vedanta and the West and was then reprinted in our anthology Vedanta for Modern Man. I remember that John wanted to quote directly from Androcles and the Lion and wrote to the Shaw estate for permission to do so. This permission was refused; so, in the article, he has been obliged to paraphrase Shaw’s dialogue.
Since this was Christopher’s last day with Bill Harris, the Beesleys found an excuse to leave them alone together after lunch. This is the significance of, “They went to see house.” (The Beesleys really were about to move, however; their house hunting wasn’t fictitious.) It was one of those warm California winter days, and Bill and Christopher were able to have sex out on the lawn, near the swimming pool.
Thus their affair ended. When they met again, it was as friends—by which I mean chiefly that their relationship had ceased to be tense, reproachful, embarrassing. Had they ever been lovers? Not really. I much doubt that Bill was ever anything but friendly in his feelings toward Christopher; also a bit flattered, perhaps, by all the fuss Christopher made over him. He found Christopher sufficiently attractive, sexually—but then, he found all manner of people sufficiently attractive. I don’t think he was really turned on by anyone who wasn’t taller than himself.
As for Christopher, I don’t think he was in love with Bill. I think what Christopher felt was a sort of compulsive craze. While Christopher was still intending to become a monk, Bill represented The Forbidden. Also, he was The Blond, an important myth figure in Christopher’s life—Christopher had a strong belief that he was, or ought to be, automatically attracted to spectacular blonds. (No reason for this occurs to me at the moment; if I think of one, later, I’ll insert it as a footnote [below].)20 Also—and this is very important—Bill was introduced to Christopher by Denny. For Denny was another myth figure at that period; he was Satan, the tempter, the easy-as-an-old shoe friend who is so comfortable to be with because he knows the worst there is to know about you; the captive audience which holds its entertainers captive, demanding relentlessly to be surprised and amused. Christopher’s Satan held Christopher in his power by provoking Christopher to indiscretion. Having dared Christopher to start an affair with someone—“I bet you can’t get him,” Satan says—he wheedles and flatters Christopher into talking about the new lover. So Christopher finds himself giving a blow-by-blow and word-for-word description of their affair; and thus the affair turns into a theatrical performance. (When the other person involved knows that this is going on, he will object violently—if he really cares for Christopher. Bill did know and didn’t object.)
But why did Christopher need a Satan in his life? The answer can only be that the affair in itself didn’t satisfy him; he could neither enjoy it nor even believe in it until his Satan had helped him turn it into a theatrical performance. On the rare occasions when Christopher did become seriously involved, he lost the desire to talk about it, even to a Satan. So the expected performance was cancelled, and Satan’s feelings were hurt. (This happened to Denny, when Christopher met Bill Caskey.)
I even suspect that Christopher wasn’t greatly attracted to Bill Harris sexually. From Christopher’s point of view, The Blond had to be possessed “because he was there.” His possession was a status symbol, like owning a Cadillac. And the mere fact that a lot of people envied you—or so you liked to believe—was in itself sexually exciting, up to a point. Nevertheless, The Blond, if he was a perfect example, was too b
eautiful to excite Christopher for long. Christopher was like a Cadillac owner who really wanted a quite different make of car but wouldn’t admit it to himself. (Vernon Old continued to excite Christopher partly because his figure wasn’t perfect.)
Furthermore, Bill Harris was too feminine for Christopher’s taste. I write the word and reject it immediately. “Too smooth” suggests itself as an alternative, but that doesn’t explain what I mean. Let me put it that Christopher was certainly able to feel violent lust for a feminine type of boy, provided that he had also a certain grossness, coarseness about him—thick curly hair on his chest and belly, for instance; even a roll of fat could be exciting. . . . Enough about this for the present; the subject will keep coming up.
Auden says that it’s important, in considering a sex relationship, to say exactly what the partners did in bed. Christopher used to fuck Bill, belly downwards. Bill never fucked him. (In general Bill only liked to be fucked—but on one occasion at least he made an exception; a teenage boy fell for him and Bill used to fuck the boy, telling Denny and Christopher that it made him (Bill) “feel like a man.”) Bill set great store by having what he called “a perfect orgasm”—both partners coming simultaneously. This happened the first time he and Christopher went to bed together, which Bill took to be a very good sign of compatibility.
No memory remains of their sex acts, other than fucking. I suppose they sucked cock and rimmed[21] each other. What I do clearly remember is a remark Bill once made: “Really, it’s ridiculous how some people think it’s unhygienic to share a toothbrush, and yet they’ve been licking each other’s shitty assholes!”—meaning that he was in favor of doing both. (But I’m sure that Bill’s asshole, and everything else about him, was always kept thoroughly clean.)
February 5: “Bill left for New York. Drove down with John van Druten and Tamara to AJC Ranch.” Tamara was a Russian lady who worked for a while as John’s housekeeper; I think she was, or claimed to be, a duchess or princess in the old Russian aristocracy. John was fascinated by her at first—he would have had the same reaction if she had been a well-known ex-actress, and indeed her behavior could not have been more theatrical; she was full of archness and corny temperament. Later, the relationship soured, I seem to recall, and Tamara left them, feeling rejected and deeply offended.
Christopher stayed at the ranch until February 12, when he drove back to the Vedanta Center with John van Druten and immediately went to bed with one of his inflamed throats. The throat infection had started two days before this, but the visit was probably very enjoyable otherwise. Carter had a birthday on the 7th, and on the 8th they all drove up to the cabin near Idyllwild.
Christopher always enjoyed the climate of the ranch, its dry relaxing heat. He and John would chatter away together, exchanging their British jokes, making up bits of verses, looking up half-remembered quotations in books, lying by the pool or floating in it, under the palm trees, with the flat cultivated fields all around, dotted with Mexicans at work. They entertained each other charmingly, affectionately, like two no longer young ladies, and complimented each other on their writing. Meanwhile, Carter Lodge came stamping in and out, in boots covered with dust, very much the man of the house, and full of ranch problems and local gossip.
Evidently trying to recapture some magical moment of this visit, Christopher wrote in a notebook—the same one in which he made the notes about the burlesque show: “The sun went down behind the mountain in a reek of chicken fertilizer.” Also in this notebook, there is a quotation from Proust which must have been written down about this time: “I was not unhappy—save only from day to day.” This, Christopher chose to interpret as: I was not unhappy underneath, only disturbed on the surface by temporary unpleasantnesses—which he felt was a good description of his own mental condition, I suppose. He later made a resolve to read right through Remembrance of Things Past before 1945 was over. John Collier was probably responsible for this.22
The February 12 issue of Time magazine contained a review of the Prabhavananda—Isherwood Gita translation, combined with an article about Swami, Christopher and the Vedanta Center.23 As was to be expected, Time got several of its facts wrong—the statement that the Vedanta Society had an “alabaster temple” became a household joke for months, as did the ten-minute meditation and the “dispassionate ceremony.” But Christopher found the article more embarrassing than funny—and especially the photograph of Swami and himself which illustrated it; the two of them standing on the steps of the temple, captioned, “In their world, tranquillity.”
As for the story that Christopher was the model for Larry, Time may not have invented it, but it was certainly responsible for the letters Christopher now began to get, asking was this true. He wrote a letter to Time, denying it, and Maugham himself denied it later, but the story lived a long while.
If Christopher had indeed been solidly settled down at the Vedanta Center, resolved to become a monk, he could have taken all this publicity in his stride, as part of the process of dying to the world. But here he was, just about to leave! Time made his position false—before, it had been merely insecure. Now he seemed to be posing as a monk and a saint.
On February 13, Christopher notes that he has started to read Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, which Warner Brothers wanted to make into a film. My impression is that they had had various producers and writers working on it already—indeed, it seems to me that John Collier had been on the script for a time, gotten tired of it and suggested Christopher as a replacement.
On the 13th, Christopher was still in bed with his inflamed throat. The 14th was Ramakrishna’s birthday celebration, that year. Christopher, who hated pujas, remained in bed and only got up for vespers, after a visit from Dr. Kolisch. Kolisch’s attitude toward Christopher was friendly and hardboiled, which Christopher found ideal. (On one occasion, while Christopher was still living at the center, his penis developed a painful constriction around the middle. Although Kolisch had every reason to suppose that Christopher was observing chastity, he said the constriction was due to excessive sex intercourse. He always made such diagnoses with a perfectly straight face and matter-of-fact manner.) After seeing Kolisch, Christopher usually got better at once. Next day, the 15th, he went off to Warner’s, to interview James Geller, who was then the story editor, and Mr. [Louis] Edelman, who was to be his producer.
February 17: “Lunch with the Beesleys at their new house.” The Beesleys had moved into a house on the Pacific Coast Highway, belonging to Anatole Litvak; it was number 19130, between Santa Monica and Malibu. Like nearly all the houses in this area, it was built to look only one way—straight out to sea. The beach was rocky and narrow and the tide came right up to the house—and under it, if I remember rightly. But the house was fairly attractive inside, somewhat nautical in design, with a circular staircase(?)
February 21: “Went to work at Warner’s.24 Lunch with Matthew Huxley. Supper with Sam.” Matthew Huxley had a job in the readers’ department at Warner Brothers; he had to read novels and make reports on them, so producers could decide if they were suitable for filming. Matthew scorned this work and made apologetic jokes about it. He was full of fun and very popular with his colleagues—his pinkness and freshness and his British accent appealed to a lot of the girls. Christopher went to visit him sometimes in the office and they played what Christopher refers to as “the category game.” I don’t remember what this was.
Sam was Sam From.25
February 22: “Cycled to and from Warner’s. Talk with Edelman.”
I think Christopher usually hitchhiked to work at that time; cycling took longer and car drivers were mostly very cooperative—picking up riders was regarded as part of the war effort. Christopher soon found himself taking these rides for granted, as a form of public transportation; once, he heard himself saying curtly to a driver, “Be as quick as you can, I’m late!”
He must have been working alone on The Woman in White—if he had had a collaborator, I should remember. Edelman w
as a pleasant, easily pleased producer, but I don’t think he was much help.
Christopher greatly enjoyed working at Warner’s. The writers welcomed him warmly. The Writers’ Building was very much a club; very conscious of its importance and very ready to defend its rights. It was said that Jack Warner and the other front office executives were afraid to venture into the building. When James Geller got into a fight with the front office, because he was supporting the writers’ point of view, and resigned from his job, the writers signed a strongly worded letter approving his action and pinned a copy of it on their bulletin board.
When a writer left Warner’s at the end of his assignment, he would give a party to his fellow writers and their secretaries, during office hours, complete with liquor (which was officially forbidden) and dancing. There would be a party almost every week.
Christopher’s particular friend at Warner’s was John Collier. (I think maybe they had met sometime before this—perhaps at Salka Viertel’s.) Everyone who tried to describe John ended by using the same image: a toby jug. He was small and square, with close-cropped hair, a bright red face and round bulging blue eyes. His expression was humorous and yet oddly ferocious; in his youth he had been a boxer. He was British, through and through.26
Here are some items from the before-mentioned notebook:
At Warner’s Studio: Gordon Kahn (one of the writers) very erect and dapper, with his air of an implacable little district attorney. His stories of the executions he witnessed as a newspaper man.
Lost Years: A Memoir 1945 - 1951 Page 8
