Liberation (25 page)

We had supper with Chris Wood, still wondering if he shall stay here or go back to England when Gerald dies. For some reason he seems unwilling to accept the obvious common-sense suggestion that he should go over to England on a trial visit and see what he thinks of it. His nature demands an either-or.

An absurd predicament I got into, last night, after I'd parked my car to go to the theater where
Julius Caesar
is playing. I absent-mindedly locked both doors (as you can without a key by pressing down the buttons on the windows and then slamming them) and then found I'd left my key in the ignition and the engine still running! I knew I had an emergency set of keys hidden in a magnet box somewhere by the engine, but I couldn't remember where. I groped frantically around the running engine for what seemed an age, before I found them.

 

November 28.
It's raining and I'm unoccupied and therefore blue, but not very. Have just been reading through the entries in my diary between April 1948 and February 1953, the Caskey period. Such desperation! Surely in those days I was suffering in a way I can hardly even understand, now? And what got me through? Grace. And work.

Camilla Clay is ready to produce our play, she says. On the understanding that we begin with a rehearsed reading of it, to see how it goes in front of an audience. She doesn't really believe in it, yet. The reading is Jim's idea; he suddenly came up with it yesterday. Now the problem is to find our two leads.

Don leaves for San Francisco the day after tomorrow. If he gets any commissions after the show opens, he will stay on there; but this does seem awfully doubtful. I'm not going. I should have nothing to do and only be in the way.

Every morning when I wake, I dread the disturbance of the upcoming painting and floor sanding. It will be utter hell and probably last at least three weeks.

My next chore—however much I loathe the prospect: to produce a “definitive” version of
Black Girl
which can be shown to the Shaw Estate, passed, published and then, we hope, performed all over the world in all possible languages.

 

November 29.
We had a very heavy rainstorm all night and this morning. Now it looks as if it might lighten but you can't tell. Don's father came and they took up all the matting in the front and back bedrooms and hallway, a terrific job, five hours' worth, which would have cost sixty dollars if the floor finishers had done it. Now that we see the nice hardwood floor again we wonder why we ever had it covered!

During the rain, two leaks developed, one in my workroom, one in the living room. This was one of those providential disasters, because it warns us that the roof must be fixed before those ceilings are painted. Irving Blum just called Don to tell him he can't come up to San Francisco with him tomorrow because the storeroom at the gallery here has been flooded, damaging a large number of paintings and prints which aren't sufficiently insured. Don says nothing will go right for him until the middle of January because Saturn is fucking things up; Jack Fontan told him this. Negative astrological predictions make you philosophical. You expect no good, but at the same time if good does come you have the added satisfaction that the astrologer was wrong.

 

December 1.
Yesterday started by raining, then cleared, but it's still damp and more showers are expected. This weather is exactly what I fear for our house painting. Everything will be moved out onto the deck and then it'll pour.

That event still impends like major surgery. A very nice man named Norm Berg came by to arrange about fixing the roof. He said not to worry about the cracks in our pavement outside the house; he thought the land on this side of the Canyon is pretty firm, on the Palisades side it is unsafe. He says he has inside information that the building at the end of Adelaide will begin very soon, and that the two towers will be only seventeen stories high. Only! But that's a reduction of seventeen stories on the original estimate!

Meanwhile we are preparing to get rid of all kinds of junk. The St. Vincent de Paul people
⁵²
are seemingly ready to take away the carpets, and we're trying to wish all sorts of other items on to them, including the broken wicker chair from the kitchen, my globe of the world and the statuette I won in a Save State Beach lottery. Then there are artbooks from the bookcase in my room which Don has now moved into his back room. The grimmest deed (which I performed myself ) was twisting up Henry Guerriero's horrible mobile, ramming it into a carton from the market and leaving it out for the trash collectors. I still feel that it is a Crime Against Art to destroy any kind of artwork.

The removal of the second bookcase alongside my couch (Don was forever objecting to it) really has improved the room, making it much lighter and more spacious. I think I wanted to cut the room in half because of my memories of Emily's sitting room in Buckingham Street; I thought it would be snugger that way but actually I only made part of it unusable.

By yesterday's mail I got a letter from Richard Simon of Curtis Brown in London saying he likes the book very much but feels the first (pre-marriage) part is too long. Then Perry Knowlton
⁵³
phoned from New York to say Peter Schwed has read it and wants to publish it, but feels it will only do well as a hardcover and be difficult or impossible to sell as a paperback. So some cutting seems indicated. I have told both Simon and Knowlton that I'm ready to consider this but want to have the publishers make their own suggestions about cuts before I decide.

Don put off going to San Francisco yesterday and is flying up today with Irving Blum, just for the opening of the show, and coming back by the midnight plane tonight.

 

December 2.
Don had a horrible experience coming back; the plane took off in a rainstorm and lurched about and groaned and struggled until everybody was scared and Irving got terrified and kept saying he was going to be sick. This was all the more sinister because the cunty stewardess had just caused a drunk passenger to be removed from the plane right before takeoff, which made it seem like one of those Ancient Mariner stories (as Don said). He would have spent the rest of his life bragging about how his crime caused him to escape death and destroyed everybody else—by making them late and thus get caught in the storm!

Don doesn't think the show did him any good at all. Irving apologized to him for the failure of the Los Angeles show but said nothing about doing anything for him in New York.

Meanwhile I puttered around, took books to Needham
⁵⁴
to be sold, got our driver's licenses for 1971, etc. etc. My only worthwhile exploit was to jog from the gym all the way down to Olympic [Boulevard] and back, a record. But this was maybe unwise, because since then I've had several severe twinges in the upper buttock!

Gavin called to say he'd finished the book. He seems to like it but doesn't rave. Admits parts were too long. However he does like the end, which is important.

Poor old Jo has now definitely heard that Louis [Gold] is going to build on his parking lot very soon, thus driving her out of her apartment. She wept and told me she couldn't move into her own house because she was afraid to live on the ground floor and because she wouldn't get a view of the sea, which she
has
to have because she has always had one.

 

December 4.
St. Vincent de Paul's people, a young Negro and a rather terrifying old man with one eye, who looked like Jean Genet, refused to take away our carpets and then refused the rest of the stuff saying they had a rule that they either take everything or nothing! So today we are trying the Salvation Army.

John Bleasdale can't come and paint until December 18, because he has to redo some work for Lon McCallister;
⁵⁵
the rains ruined the first job. So the floorers, a Mr. Cvar is one of them, are coming in first, on the 14th. We are still waiting to hear when Mr. Berg can get our roof leaks fixed.

The weather is cold but absolutely classical in its beauty; that rose-golden desert light on the palms and white buildings and on the mountains. [Mount] Baldy is under a heavy snowfall.

(At this point Glenway [Wescott] called about
Maurice
. He is longing to write a huge piece on Forster to be published at the same time as the book. He said of himself that he has a terrible habit of jumping onto bandwagons. I am encouraging him to write a foreword to the book because I know that if I write one myself I shall offend the touchy and devious Furbank; yet Furbank's foreword, alone, simply isn't right for America, it is too inner-circle. We shall have to publish it with something else by an American writer.)

The day before yesterday I saw Swami, for the first time since his holiday in Arizona. He seemed tired and is still engaged in this tug-of-war with Belur Math about the demanded assistant. It will have to stop before so very long, however, because he doesn't want to be on bad terms with them when Len [Worton] and Mark
⁵⁶
and Paul [Hamilton] go over there in February to take
sannyas
. He gives me the impression that he is play acting his indignation, a bit; and he has written a very warm note to Gambhirananda, whom he regards as his arch-opponent, appealing to him to cooperate. I asked him if he had had any spiritual experiences while he was away. He said no. While I was sitting there I tried to meditate on the fact that I was in the presence of The Guru. I find that I can now meditate on the memory of having done this, just as I meditate on the memory of having sat in front of the shrine.

Peter Schneider has now applied for reclassification as a C.O. This last-minute move is really shameless and I can't believe it will work. But he is so cute. Jim Gates has strangely obliterated himself by shaving his head and wearing glasses. He told me after the reading that he wants to talk to me. I wish he would. I'm curious about him. I want to know what he's up to.

 

December 8.
Swami is sick, up at Santa Barbara, but Ananda doesn't think it's serious.

Have just finished the second folder of
Kathleen and Frank
(through chapter 13) which I'm rereading for possible places to cut. The most obviously cuttable part is chapter 9, which consists largely of wearisome details about Frederick's financial demands on the Isherwoods; these are undramatic because Frederick is really only bluffing anyway, as I finally have to admit. I think a lot can be taken out here, but even so it is very little in relation to the size of the book.

No news from either Methuen or Simon and Schuster.

On Saturday next, the 12th, Mr. Lemke the carpenter is scheduled to come and take the big bookcases and my desk apart, so they can be removed from the room before the floorers come on Monday. So that's the beginning of chaos—for
at least
three weeks (during which time, a heavy rainstorm could fuck us up, but good)! All we can do to prepare for it is to collect cardboard boxes, lots and lots and lots of them, from markets etc., to put the books in.

Seth Finkelstein gave me my dolphin clock back yesterday. He only wanted ten dollars for all that work; I insisted on his taking fifteen. It now runs beautifully again, but it's slow!
⁵⁷

Don has heard nothing whatever from San Francisco about his show. It might as well never have happened. He's disgusted, naturally, and says what's the use of going on with this noncareer as a portrait artist.

Yesterday I called Hunt Stromberg for news of “Frankenstein,” having heard nothing for weeks. To my surprise, Dick Shasta answered the phone, so apparently they've made it up. Hunt told me that now someone else is trying to finance the “Frankenstein” project and that he's to hear news this week.

 

December 11.
This may be my last entry for a while, because tomorrow this desk will probably be moved and the top taken away to be refinished and I shall lose touch with most of my other possessions.

Got a contract to sign from Simon and Schuster; am to be given an advance of seven thousand five hundred dollars, which is good. But no word so far from Peter Schwed, or Michael Korda.

Saw Evelyn Hooker yesterday. She wants me to work with her on a “popular” book on homosexuality. She seemed very emotional still; once she actually shed a few tears while describing the goodness of her sister to her during her breakdown. I am doubtful about the project. It seems that I shall have to read through sixty case histories and then write about them—which really means retell them, and what the hell is the use of that? Nonwriters never understand what writers can and cannot do. They think they can tell you exactly what to say and that you will then somehow magically resay it so it's marvellous. However, I didn't want to refuse straight away. I'll read some of the stuff first and try to find out more exactly what it is that Evelyn expects. She is a very good woman and her intentions are of the noblest and I would like to help her, if I can do so without becoming her secretary.

After threats of rainstorms, the weather is brilliant; you can see the whole arm of the bay in clearest detail. I feel we are “wasting” this weather; it ought to be saved until we really need it, during the repairs to the house. The roofers are supposed to come in and do the job tomorrow.

Gavin and Mark Andrews are going to Tahiti for Christmas. Gavin saw an ad for a round-trip on the French airline; you get a week on Tahiti and a week on Moorea with hotels and food, plus the fare, for six hundred dollars—cheaper than staying at home! We wonder if they won't be terribly bored, however. (This reminds me that Jim Bridges had an outburst, quite violent for him, about the relationship between Brian Bedford, Gavin and Mark; he said he found it disgusting that they call each other by women's names—Gavin's is “Dora.” “It offends my dignity as a homosexual,” Jim said.)