Many people found Hayden Lewis attractive, and indeed he could then have been described as handsome; he had a pale romantic melancholy face which suggested to Christopher a young nineteenth-century Catholic priest of the Oscar Wilde period. But Hayden wasn’t really a romantic, his temperament was peevish, he sighed and whined and shrugged his shoulders and bitched people in a soft voice. He was one of nature’s underlings, full of envy; his approach was demure until he had detected your weak points and was ready to play on them. . . . In a word, Christopher disliked him intensely from their first meeting and Hayden undoubtedly felt the same way about Christopher. But Christopher had to get along with Hayden for Caskey’s sake, and Hayden had to get along with Christopher.
Christopher worked hard at this, to begin with, even though he knew that Hayden was trying to sabotage his relationship with Caskey by making fun of him. (It got back to him that Hayden called Caskey “Mrs. Reverend,” with the implication that Christopher was a sort of swami-curate.) Later on, there were at least two or three yelling scenes with Hayden—all started by Christopher, when drunk. But their association always had to be patched up because it was simply too tiresome for them to refuse to see each other, as long as Caskey and Christopher were living together. When Caskey and Christopher split up, they immediately stopped meeting.
Aside from Denny’s apartment, Caskey and Christopher spent much of their time together at The Friendship or at Jay’s apartment or in the kitchen of his restaurant.
The Friendship47 had been doing terrific business throughout the war years and it was still crammed every weekend with servicemen and their pursuers, female and male. It was also the chief neighborhood bar and one of the very few gay bars in West Los Angeles. In other words, if you went in there, you had to be prepared to mingle with all sorts and conditions. I imagine that the more respectable Canyon dwellers had long since decided to stay away.
The noise was stunning, the tobacco smoke was a fog; you always spilled part of your drink as you eased your way through the crowd. There were little tables you could sit at in pairs, your faces close together, yelling intimacies which no one else had a chance of hearing. This was the scene of Christopher’s courtship of Caskey; they seem to have felt more at ease with each other in such a state of public isolation than when they were actually alone together.
It must have been at this time that Caskey was earning some extra money washing dishes at Jay’s restaurant. Christopher used to come down in the evenings and help, for free. There was always plenty to drink and Christopher quite enjoyed dishwashing; he had done a lot of it while he was with the Quakers and at the Vedanta Center. Jay and his waiters (who were usually also his boyfriends) darted back and forth between the kitchen and the tiny dark dining room, from which they would return with whispered gossip. The place had already become well known to columnists; there would be at least one movie celebrity among the customers nearly every evening. The chief attraction was Jay’s rich gooey French food. And the dimness of the lighting and the depth of the alcoves appealed to well-known people who wanted privacy. I remember much gossip about Charles Laughton’s visits there with young men. Jay was a perfect host. He knew how to recognize and flatter without making an indiscreet fuss.
On August 14, Japan accepted the Allied terms of surrender. I can’t remember if this was the day on which gasoline rationing was officially stopped, but I do remember a great outburst of automobile driving—just driving for driving’s sake—about this time. The result was that the Coast Highway was littered with black chunks of wartime recap rubber which flew off people’s tires as soon as they started speeding.
On August 23, Christopher finally moved his things out of the Vedanta Center and into the chauffeur’s apartment (so called) which adjoined the house the Beesleys were living in, on the Coast Highway. It was understood that this was to be only a short visit, for Christopher was already planning to set up housekeeping with Caskey in the near future. (I don’t remember any farewell scene with Swami, and I have no doubt that Christopher did everything he could to make their parting seem temporary and without any particular significance.)
“The chauffeur’s apartment” was simply a bedroom and a bathroom. It was right on the highway and the rumble and rattle of trucks at night would have been hard to get used to if it hadn’t been balanced and thus cancelled out by the roar of the waves on the shingle. Christopher found it very snug and he revelled in its complete privacy; it was altogether separate from the house and no noise he could have made would have been loud enough to reach the Beesleys’ ears or make their dogs bark. He could even go in swimming after dark without their seeing him. What a change, after two and a half years of semipublic community life!
Caskey and Christopher now saw each other nearly every day and often Caskey stayed the night at the chauffeur’s apartment. They spent a lot of time together with Denny, Johnny Goodwin, Hayden Lewis and the Beesleys. (The Beesleys liked Caskey and Denny; Johnny and Hayden they saw only very seldom.) Caskey also met Peggy Kiskadden, Iris Tree and Vernon. As far as I remember, Peggy behaved quite graciously, though she did momentarily enrage Christopher by bitchily pretending to think that Caskey was the reason why Christopher had left the Vedanta Center. (She knew perfectly well that this wasn’t true, for Christopher had told her repeatedly that he was going to leave, long before Caskey had even arrived in California.) Iris welcomed Caskey without reservations, as she welcomed all her friends’ lovers, and they remained on good terms thenceforward. Vernon, now a confirmed heterosexual, endorsed this new affair of Christopher’s with condescending amusement, saying, “He’s about your speed.”
On September 21, Christopher finished work at Warner’s (apparently) and celebrated this by buying a secondhand Lincoln Zephyr convertible, a flashy car which was much better suited than the Packard48 to his show-off role of Uncle to the Denny–Johnny–Caskey gang. One amusing quirk of the Lincoln was that its speedometer would get out of whack at high speeds; if you were doing 80, it would sometimes climb to no. When this happened with Denny on board, he would pretend that they were all a bunch of pleasure-mad teenagers of the 1920s, drunk on bathtub gin, and yell “Let ’er rip!” and “Flaming youth!”
On September 25, Christopher was called back to Warner’s, but only for a few days’ work; there was some polishing to be done on the Up at the Villa script. On September 29, it was finished.
This was also the day on which Denny left for New York—the day-to-day diary notes that he did so “by air,” this being still regarded as a chic and rather daring way to travel.49 Christopher and Caskey took over his apartment from him, moving in that same day. Christopher never returned to the apartment at the Beesleys’.
Also on the 29th, a visit to a Dr. Williams is mentioned. I think this was due to a recurrence of the penis trouble referred to on see here of this volume but I can’t remember what the symptoms were exactly, except that they were painful. The constriction, or whatever it was, continued, on and off, until the beginning of 1946, when Christopher had the operation which will be described in due course.
On October 1, Caskey and Christopher started on a long motor trip in the Lincoln, which lasted nearly three weeks. Their itinerary was as follows:
October 1. They drove to Santa Barbara, stayed with Denny’s sister, Ellen Bowman. October 2. They drove to Carmel. October 3. They visited Monterey. October 4–7. They drove to San Francisco and stayed there three days, at the Hotel Richelieu. October 7. They drove to Fresno. October 8. They drove into Yosemite and back. October 9. They drove through Sequoia Park to Bakersfield. October 10. They drove to Las Vegas, and visited Boulder Dam from there on the 11th. October 12. They drove to Phoenix, stayed at the Hotel Adams. October 13. They drove to El Centro and had supper in Calexico. (Caskey wanted to drive across the border to Mexicali but Christopher wouldn’t; as he was still a British subject, he was afraid there might be difficulties when he tried to reenter the States.) October 14. They drove to Johnny Goodwin’s ranch, near Escon
dido. (This was a house called Armageddon, which Johnny had had built for himself. From outside, it looked rather like an Egyptian temple, massive and secret, with a great pillared portal and very few windows. When you entered, you found that the rooms all opened onto an interior courtyard. Johnny had valuable furniture and pictures—including a very striking Miró, one of the few Mirós I have ever really liked.) October 15. They drove to Palm Springs, stayed at the Estrella Villa. October 16. They had dinner with Carter Lodge at La Quinta. October 17. They drove back to Johnny Goodwin’s ranch. October 18. They drove to Laguna Beach and had supper with Chris Wood and Gerald Heard. They drove back to Santa Monica and Denny’s apartment on October 19.
Oddly enough, I remember almost nothing about this trip; my memories of the places they went to are connected with earlier or later visits. I remember that their stay with Johnny Goodwin was passed largely in playing guessing games and charades. In one of these, Caskey gave himself the name “Miss Bijou Slyboots”—did he invent it? At Laguna, Gerald Heard was rather cool to Caskey and Christopher; he disapproved of their relationship on principle, regarding it as a betrayal of Swami’s trust in Christopher. (Maybe Peggy had been talking to him about this.) Chris Wood had no such scruples. He approved of Caskey. But, with his usual frankness, he asked Christopher, “Surely he hasn’t got the kind of legs you like, has he?”
On their return to Denny’s apartment, Hayden Lewis moved in with them. This must have been understood from the beginning to be a temporary arrangement—until, presumably, Hayden could find another place to live, or a job. But the fact that Christopher agreed to it at all shows that his relations with Caskey were still in the honeymoon stage. The apartment consisted of two rooms only, and he must have hated having Hayden around. The day-to-day diary doesn’t say when Hayden left, but he can’t have stayed long—maybe not more than two weeks.
On November 17, they had another visitor, the Willy Tompkins who had publicly fucked on Denny’s couch at the party in June. He was out of the navy, now, and determined to enjoy himself. Not that he had had such a bad time in the service. Willy belonged to that amazing breed of hero-queens who are able to see war itself as camp. According to him, the battles of the South Pacific were primarily erotic events; all members of the crew who weren’t actually firing guns would pair off in corners for high-speed sex. Between explosions, you would hear someone gasp out, “Kiss me, quick, I’m going to come!” Even if they were exaggerated, Willy’s stories were none the less beautiful; they were so magnificently death-denying.
One night while Willy was with them, Christopher lay awake (but pretending to be asleep) listening to a conversation about himself between Willy and Caskey. Willy was evidently a bit skeptical about Christopher as a lover, considering his age. But Caskey, more than somewhat drunk, assured Willy, “He’s the best lay on the Pacific Coast!” This testimonial must have impressed Willy, for next day, when the three of them were at the then bare-ass Riviera Beach and Caskey had gone off for a stroll, Willy made a pass at Christopher. Christopher would have responded with pleasure, but Caskey reappeared unexpectedly.
On November 22, Caskey, Hayden, Willy Tompkins and Christopher drove down to Johnny Goodwin’s ranch for a four-day visit. On November 28, Willy left.
Early in November, Prater Violet was reviewed by Time, which said it was “a fresh, firm peach in a dish of waxed fruits.” Also by Diana Trilling, who really and truly liked it; and by James T. Farrell, who discovered it to be so fraught with political irony and analysis of contemporary culture that it couldn’t have been better if it had been written by James T. Farrell himself—as indeed it almost was, by the time he was through describing it. Nearly all the reviews were favorable, and the book sold quite well.
The Time reviewer reported that he had been told Isherwood was “now at work on a novel about physically and spiritually ‘displaced persons.’” On January 13 of 1946, Philip K. Scheuer published an interview with Christopher in The Los Angeles Times in which Christopher tells him that Prater Violet was the first of three novelettes about refugees: “They will cover the whole period of immigration between Hitler and the war.” Christopher said that he was then at work on the second of these novelettes. One of them must have been about Haverford, I suppose. Maybe the other was about the Greek island, or about the adventures of the girl who is called Dorothy in Down There on a Visit—I can’t remember. I’m inclined to suspect that Christopher was bluffing when he made these reports. I doubt if he wrote anything much, as long as he was living in the Entrada Drive apartment. One memory of any living place (no matter how temporary) which I nearly always retain is the memory of the spot where I worked. At Entrada Drive I simply cannot picture it. And besides it seems to me that Caskey and Christopher spent most of their time entertaining, and drinking, and having hangovers in the mornings.
Christopher did do one small writing job at home, however. Apparently, it took him only one day—December 28. This was a short film outline. It was based on a ghost story which had been told him by a young man named Lynn Perkins. Christopher had met Lynn Perkins on March 7 of that year; the day-to-day diary doesn’t say where. I think Perkins had wanted Christopher to write this story for him right from the start of their acquaintanceship; he was not only very persistent but quite pretty (though unqueer), which was no doubt why Christopher agreed to do so. Later, Christopher went with Perkins to at least one studio (maybe two or three) and made a sales pitch for the story. I have the impression that someone very nearly bought it.
The Beesleys had left their house on the Coast Highway on November 11; Christopher and Caskey helped them move into another one, on the old Malibu Road, just beyond the Colony.[50] The Malibu Road had few houses along it in those days and Alec was able to take the dalmatians out unleashed and let them run on the long empty beach. The house itself was comfortable though rather small, built of wood with shingles, Californian-British cottage style. Christopher and Caskey saw the Beesleys several times during the month of December and ate Christmas dinner with them. They must have also had Dodie and Alec up to the apartment, though the day-to-day diary doesn’t mention this; their visits would anyhow have been brief because they would have had to leave the dalmatians in the car and take turns at visiting and dog-sitting—the dogs were seldom allowed in anyone else’s home. (Even when they were politely urged to bring the dogs in with them, Dodie and Alec would usually decline, saying that, if they did so, the whole place would be wrecked. They said this with a certain pride—indeed, they liked to think of the dalmatians as being even more violent than they actually were.)
During December, Christopher and Caskey did a lot of entertaining.51 The day-to-day diary mentions the following guests: Johnny Goodwin, Don Forbes, Dave Eberhardt (see here), Bo and Kelley (see here), Helen Kennedy (Sudhira), John van Druten, Carter Lodge, Chris Wood, Aldous and Maria Huxley, Peggy and Bill Kiskadden, Salka, Peter and Tommy Viertel, Dick LaPan, the actress Ludmilla Pitoeff and her daughter Anita, Vernon Old (who was [going out] with Anita), Natalia Pascal (who was interested in the Lynn Perkins story), Lynn Perkins, John Cowan and Rob Cartwright,[52] Jay.
John Cowan had been Jay’s boyfriend for a short while; then he left Jay because he had fallen in love with Rob Cartwright, and the two of them started living together. But John had been a familiar figure in the Canyon for some time already—a year at least. He was a big blond boy with an extraordinarily beautiful body. Even Bill Harris acknowledged his beauty and jokingly accepted him as a rival, calling him “The Imposter.” This nickname had been shortened to “Poster.” Christopher called him “the last of The Great Boys.”
John Cowan was admirably narcissistic. On the beach, he would sunbathe with his trunks off, squeezing them into a ball and placing them so that they just covered his cock, but not his bush. He then would fall asleep or pretend to, make some movement and thus dislodge the trunks, leaving himself stark naked. There was usually a circle of Cowan watchers lying around him on the sand. John got himself watched af
ter dark, as well, for he strolled around all evening in his trunks. If the weather was cold and he was wearing a sweater he would always take it off as soon as he got inside his friends’ homes and sprawl in an armchair with his gorgeous legs wide apart. You couldn’t take your eyes off them.
John had a sister named Rita; she was pretty but loud [. . .]. John and she had terrific fights, they were both as strong as apes and John was often the only person able to remove her when she misbehaved at a party.
Rob Cartwright was dark and fairly nice looking but no one could quite understand what John Cowan saw in him. As a pair, they were known as “Poster and Rattles,” because Rob Cartwright talked a lot. So, as a matter of fact, did John.
I think I remember that Peggy, when she visited the Entrada Drive apartment, was slightly shocked—for two of the pictures Denny had put up were conversation pieces, to say the least. Both were army posters, warning against the dangers of venereal disease. One of them showed a whore, with a beret over one eye and a cigarette drooping out of a corner of her mouth, standing under a lamppost. This was captioned: “She may be a bag of trouble.” The other was simply a diagram of a penis, with dotted red lines to show the spreading of gonorrheal infection up the urethra and into the bladder.
Lost Years: A Memoir 1945 - 1951 Page 11
