Liberation: Diaries:1970-1983

by Christopher Isherwood

  September 2. Saw Swami last night. I complained about my difficulty with the meditation on Brahman and he said, then just say Om three times and feel that it resounds throughout the universe and that Brahman is Om. I complained about the “crowding” when I try to see Ramakrishna and the others all together. He said, I should try to see them one after the other in succession. (This certainly is easier.) He also said that, when mentally doing the ritual worship, I should sometimes do the offering up of the physical body, the subtle body etc. etc., until Brahman alone remains.

  Hunt Stromberg came by yesterday with a boy from Florida [. . .]. Hunt talked about the “Frankenstein” T.V. special (it isn’t a series) and made it sound as if it was a fairly firm offer. He has broken up with Dick Shasta,37 whom we liked; said Dick was impossible to live with and talked vaguely about a car being blown up—he didn’t actually say Dick did this. As a result, Hunt hired a bodyguard, a seemingly very square ex-marine. Now, he claims, the bodyguard is so fascinated by the “fag scene” that he is showing signs of “coming out” himself. Hunt described how [the boy from Florida] was sunbathing by the pool and the bodyguard came out and didn’t see Hunt and started lustfully looking [the boy] over. Then he saw Hunt and immediately began shooting all over the place with a BB gun to cover his embarrassment!

  This morning in the mail came the announcement of the group show at Billy Al’s studio: Moses, Bengston, Bachardy, Bell, Goode, Berlant, Davis, Ruscha, Price, Alexander.38 (In that order.) This is really a very distinguished gathering and Don is pleased. Irving Blum was very nice about it when Don phoned him in New York to ask if he objected to Don’s exhibiting at another gallery; and Irving thought it was good for Don’s prestige too.

  September 6. Such an effort to write anything in this book! Because whenever I’m at the desk I have this blind urge to get on and on and on with Kathleen and Frank. And rightly. There’s still a tremendous lot of work to be done on it. Am slowly coming to the end of chapter 11.

  On the 2nd, we had supper with Gavin, Mark Andrews and Rita Hayworth at Trader Vic’s (which I hate, it’s so depressing). Mark made rather an ass of himself; we had been expecting him to be marvellous with Rita and charm her. But he really is very much more naive than we’d supposed. He made corny advances and asked tactless questions, such as, “Where are you from?” This got under Rita’s skin—I hadn’t realized how sensitive she still is about being Mexican—and she told him loud and clear, “I’m from here, I’m North American!”

  Felt sort of protective towards her but not sorry for her; she can so obviously look after herself. Anyhow we are far too easily sentimental about the beautiful who have ceased to be beautiful—and Rita still looks very good, in a different way.

  On the 4th I went with Swami and Krishna to have supper with Len, Peter Schneider’s father. His girlfriend, a nice middle-aged woman, cooked, and Peter and his little brother Danny and Jim Gates (who is now working at the West Hollywood Goodwill and back living in the shack with Peter) were also there. Peter had just bought a chadar. He camped around in it, calling as much attention to himself as possible, and then Danny put it on. Swami took the whole thing in his stride as usual and I think made a good impression on Dr. Schneider, for whose benefit our get-together was really being staged; Peter is determined to “convert” him. Jim has just cut his hand severely, on the shower faucet. I can’t help seeing him more and more through Don’s eyes, that is, seeing his prim mischief-making side. Later, and this was the second objective of our meeting, the boys got Swami to come back for a moment to visit their shack, and thus bless it and the meditation shed behind.

  September 8. Today I finished chapter 11 and sent a copy of it off to Richard.

  The day before yesterday was the preview of the show at Billy Al’s. Was much disappointed; there seemed to be so little to see, in those two big rooms. Billy Al is really the only one of the group whose work I like. Don only had two of his drawings up on the wall. They looked fine, but why not three? Also I wish he’d had a couple of paintings. He has just done a marvellous one. Crowds of art squares and squaws, with kids, were lounging around and drinking wine or sitting stoned on the floor and not really looking at anything. Leslie Caron came, which was a gesture, but then she missed going to Don’s show in March.

  We had supper with her last night. She is a very remarkable woman; just the same type as Madame Chiang [Kai-shek], and maybe Lady Macbeth, but benevolent—well, fairly. But she’s capable of imposing her French way of life with overwhelming power. Her beauty and her trimness and her energy are so awe-inspiring. She is sticking burlap all round the dining room with her own hands. Michael seems such a slob beside her. He was shot at by a Texan gunman sent out to San Diego by the father of a girl he was going with. The gunman just barely grazed him with one shot after three misses. Since then, if a car comes up close behind them when they’re driving, Michael gets scared. Jack Larson says Michael sees the United States as a place of extreme danger—as of course it is. He’s now working on several films; one about juvenile dope takers.39

  Then tonight, I had supper with Swami. (Don has gone to Laguna for the day to see Jack Fontan and Ray Unger.) He says of Belur Math, “They are waiting for me to die”; in other words, they won’t send him an assistant because, after he is dead, they can send one who’ll do exactly what they want. And what do they want? Apparently to do away with nuns in the U.S. Swami takes all this quite calmly, seems to find it mildly amusing. But he now says he will seriously consider training some of the monks to give lectures. He remembers that Vivekananda said once that Vedanta societies should be run by Americans.

  A day of energy. I am really in pretty good shape now, though Leslie’s supper put a couple of pounds back on me. I went to the gym, ran round two blocks, shopped, polished the bumpers of my car with chrome polish. We keep getting different maids. Today was Josephina, for the second time; Leslie says she’s “sly” and always getting pregnant.

  September 11. Swami said of himself the other night that he could never have run this center without Maharaj: “I had no education.” This surprised me. I have often heard Swami express spiritual humility, and one expects no less of him; but I’ve never heard him say this about his education, before. I’ve always thought of him as having had rather a good one; those English-run Calcutta colleges had very high standards in his day. I suddenly saw that he must have felt his lack of education strongly in the presence of Aldous and Gerald—but then, anyone who didn’t would have been a fool. No, what I mean is, I’m surprised to find that Swami values education for itself; I suppose I expected him to find it slightly ridiculous, as Ramakrishna did.

  Talking about humility, he also rather stunned me by saying, “But Chris, you’re the most humble man I ever met—all that fame, and you’re so humble.” He also said (referring to his need for an assistant) that he wished so much I had stayed with them, so I’d now be able to give lectures! We were talking about this at breakfast this morning; Don asked me if I regretted having left the center. I said I find it impossible to say I regret anything I’ve done—that is, anything not definitely “bad.” Yes, I turned my back on the boot camp which would have probably drilled me into swami material, and perhaps I would have had a marvellous life and even been thrown out of the order for giving my blessing to homosexuals—either that or just died young of misery and gone straight to the loka or committed suicide by living in India. But, on the other hand, haven’t I, by doing what I did do, fulfilled at least a part of my dharma? How can I regret the books I’ve written since then? And as for the life I’ve led! And I’m not now speaking of mere “happiness.” My life with Don has been happiness– unhappiness raised to an intensity I’d never dreamed of before; much more and better than that, it’s been a discipline in which I’ve often failed but from which I’ve learnt a great deal of what I now know. Well anyhow—

  Tennessee Williams and Oliver Evans40 had supper with us the night before last; now they have left for Japan on a boat. Tennessee got
a bit drunk (which apparently is nowadays unusual for him) and talked about how his brother got him put away in a looney bin. He is obviously unreliable in his account of this, yet the horrors don’t seem like paranoia. There is a sanity and an intention behind them, they are a sort of sketch for a future artwork, a play or a story. I do brighten up and expand in his presence; I love him. He is so essentially joyful.

  September 13. Finished chapter 12 today. It only took me five days, which sounds good but actually there wasn’t that much to be done to it.

  Yesterday we got up extra early. By seven thirty I’d nearly finished my meditation when there was an earthquake, the second strongest one I’ve ever felt, I think; only the 1952 quake seemed stronger. The bookcases creaked and swayed. I sat there absolutely suspended, as it seemed, beyond feeling, thought or action. Didn’t even have the presence of mind to worship the earthquake as Shiva! Elsa, whom I talked to today, says she said to herself: how good that this is natural, not human—it might have been a man coming in with a knife!

  Supper with Sandy Gordon and his friend Bob Griffith. A good comedy situation, namely that Bob and to some extent Sandy are star worshippers but they expressed it by telling me everything they’d read in books about the habits and life of Garbo, Monroe, Garland etc.; they realized I’d met these women but that didn’t particularly interest them. They preferred to know their stars thirdhand, so to speak, rather than second. Sandy has just recovered from hepatitis; he had that rose-bloom look one only gets for a few days after an illness.

  September 18. On the 14th I got a traffic ticket for making a sharp right turn at the bottom of the off ramp from the freeway onto Santa Monica Boulevard, just as the light changed to red. It astonishes me how comparatively much I mind a thing like this; any contact with the police makes me feel slightly nauseated.

  Then on the 15th I went to a meeting of the Society of David. It turned out to be quite a production, with sophisticated sound recording equipment to pick up everything we said. (So sophisticated, it turns out, that a lot of offstage whispering of boys in the kitchen is also on the tape!) As far as I was concerned, this was a kind of trap; my being there was turned into a confrontation between an old liberal square celebrity and the young activists of the Gay Liberation Front. A big swarthy baldish guy named Don Kilhafter (I think)41 put me down, without absolutely directly attacking me personally. Old Kight aided him without seeming to. Most of the others were genuinely friendly and pleased that I’d come. And the boy who has organized this society, Gary Hundertmark, is only twenty and quite a jolie laide doll; I liked him. But all in all I regret having gone, rather. (Don warned me not to.) It will all be used in some indiscreet way, for one thing. And for another I feel I fell stupidly into their trap and began defending myself, as I so often do, with fake humility under which there is a cold determination to relieve my wounded vanity by hitting back hard at my trappers much later when they have forgotten all about it and are not on their guard. I really did dislike this Don [Kilhefner]; he had the more-engaged-than-thou, dogmatical rudeness of a thirties left-winger. No doubt he does a lot of good work, helping queers out of jams, but oh why can’t he be nicer about it!

  September 20. Yesterday evening we went with Billy Al Bengston, his girlfriend Penny Little, Joe Goode and his wife, to see motorcycle races at Ascot Park in Gardena. We did it, as Don said, for “business”—that is to say, Don feels he should respond to any overtures Billy makes to include him in his circle. It was bitterly cold, and it went on endlessly—not the racing but the waiting for the racing to start. But I enjoyed seeing it greatly; the only one drawback was that we two couldn’t leave when we’d had enough. The boys who take part are, many of them, curiously Early American types; gaunt thin faces, with a quiet determined look of preparedness, like young soldiers in the Civil War or boy outlaws like Billy the Kid. The race itself seems almost super human. The incredible daring and speed of it. The riders seem to be straining to hurl themselves to destruction. When you stand down by the wire fence you feel quite sick (though you soon get used to it) seeing them hurtle past you, crowding each other so tightly; and then, when they’ve passed, the shattering noise—that adds to the feeling of animal terror. And when they move ahead into the straight they accelerate until you feel no, it’s physically impossible!

  Billy Al and some of his other friends who were there played it very big as aficionados, they were really just like bullfight fans. And as always with aficionados you wondered, justly or unjustly, can they possibly care that much?

  A word about my meditation. It’s almost absurdly bad. Yet I am going through the motions and isn’t that something? It comes to me often how hard it is to meditate unless you are leading a disciplined life related to meditation, i.e. in a monastery. Still, I know that that’s neither here nor there. I am not in a monastery. I am not leading a hellishly wicked life, either, however, and I am living with someone who also practises meditation, which is a great blessing and help. So let me make up my mind to go on and on trying.

  Don arranged for Jo [Lathwood] and Alice Gowland to have their horoscopes done by Jack Fontan. This was a huge success. Jack told Jo she was a “crape-hanger” and that she had got to stop it, which impressed her and filled her with good resolutions. In order to get the horoscope drawn up, Jo had to give Jack her real age, of course. She wrote it in a sealed note which she gave to Don to pass on to Jack. While Don was down there the other day he read it. She’s sixty-eight. He had guessed she was older.

  October 2. This is just to announce that I bought a new typewriter this morning, another Smith-Corona Electric. For some reason, because the keys are enclosed perhaps, I don’t make nearly so many mistakes as on the old one, particularly those slips off a with my contractured little finger which kept landing me on z. But why can’t I underline properly, I wonder? No time to find out now, because Bill Inge, Paul Dehn and Leonard Stanley42 are coming to supper. . . .

  October 3. It’s so typical of me in my old age, this fussing about details. In this case, the underlining key on my new typewriter. I simply could not meditate this morning because I was worrying about it and impatient to call the typewriter shop and ask about it. Now I have done so and find that there will be no one in the repair department till Monday. So relax, buster.

  Our dinner was quite a success, because Paul Dehn talked a blue streak and Leonard Stanley knows how to be a pleasant guest when older queers are present. Poor old bulky Bill looked, at moments, as if he had just had a stroke—that staring expression. Don thinks he won’t last long. You feel his terrible melancholy.

  The smog was so bad yesterday that Bruce Connors at the gym said one really shouldn’t go out jogging in it; making yourself breathe heavily and inhale all that stuff does you much more harm than the exercise does you good.

  Don is doing such interesting work. I keep urging him to show it to Billy Al Bengston. He does so need some strong professional encouragement—but he hesitates; he’s afraid Billy won’t like it.

  October 23. This morning I finished chapter 15 of Kathleen and Frank, though of course Don may suggest some revisions when he reads it. Now there are the two big chapters of direct quotation to proofread; very little can be done to them.

  Still nothing definite about “Frankenstein,” but Hunt Stromberg did call and say the studio wants to go ahead. Am very glad I’ve had this break, as it’s enabled me to get ahead with the book.

  Swami has been ill again, or weak, anyhow. But this is partly a means of exerting pressure on Belur Math. Now his doctor has written them a letter and we have sent cables, begging and blackmailing them for an assistant.

  Had a dream about Swami a few nights ago. He was making a speech, in which he seemed to be attacking Ralph Hodgson (the poet). When he did this, people hissed. I knew he didn’t mean it, that this was a misunderstanding. I tried to clear things up. And woke. Well, if not spiritual, this was at least a “loyal” dream!

  Whenever I see Swami nowadays, I take the dust of his feet on ar
riving and leaving. I do this because I need to think of him definitely as The Guru, so I can meditate on him, according to my new instructions. When you think that I really do feel about him in this way and believe in him and know how privileged I am to keep having these meetings alone with him, it’s a sheer miracle how unspiritual I still am.

  October 24. Yesterday at the gym, my weight was down to just a bit over 147. I have hardly drunk any wine and no hard liquor for several weeks, and it does seem to be steadily dropping, though with pauses. I manage to jog three or four days a week. Am fairly careful about what I eat, though not extremely. I think my weight loss is also due to not getting much sleep. Our alarm rings at 6:30 every morning and we’re usually out of bed by 7:35. None of this seems to affect Don, however. He is up high, for him: 145.

  Was over at Elsa’s today. Al[le]n Drury43 was there. Elsa wanted me to come and encourage Al[le]n to take on the Charles Laughton biography; he’s interested. So I encouraged him—because after all why not? He’s big enough to look out for himself and cope with Elsa, or he should be. Elsa says he’s an extreme right-winger, but I still like him rather.

  Mark Andrews really seems to have moved in with Gavin, solid; he’s brought a wonderful wine-red couch which belongs to him and now it’s in the living room, with Mark draped all over it. I continue to like him, quite definitely, and to think what a good Frankenstein’s monster he’d make. But we won’t tell him about that until we know definitely whether or not we have the job.

  October 27. Watching T.V. with Don tonight—an idiotic ghost story called “The House That Would Not Die,” with Barbara Stanwyck, after a supper of swordfish steaks cooked under the broiler, and salad. Felt a pang of such painful fear and dismay because I soon have to die and leave him and such perfect moments of happiness behind me.