Liberation (30 page)

Today's
Los Angeles Times
has more reports of the psychological damage done to people by the Sylmar quake. One lady showed extreme calm for four days after the quake (during which she had screamed). On the fifth day her hands “froze” to the steering wheel of her car; it took three men to pry them loose. Then she became sexually cold toward her husband. Eleven days after the quake she told her husband she wanted a divorce. They had been married for eighteen years. The husband reported, “She says when she was lying on that kitchen floor, she realized she'd ‘never really had a chance to live.'”

Have just reread Gerald's
The Gospel According to Gamaliel
. The idiom in which the dialogue is written is entirely unconvincing, the characters talk like no human beings on land or sea or in any historical period, except Gerald himself. And yet, partly because the whole performance is so utterly Gerald, it has its own power, and it does make its points very clearly, much more clearly than Gerald usually does. How amazing he is! (I make myself write “is,” though I am thinking “was.”) I read it very quickly, with ease and enjoyment.

Went to the vespers of Ramakrishna puja yesterday. The wait to get touched by the relics was again spoilt by whisperings of women. Asaktananda called me up into the shrine right after the monastics; he did the same thing at the Brahmananda puja. Rightly or wrongly I feel that this is part of a protocol of politeness which we are evolving in our relations with each other, in preparation for the day when he will become head of the center. (He may well not be aware that he is doing this, but I am that I am; I realize that, as a senior member, I must build his position in advance by showing him extreme respect. I always rise—although it's an effort because I am sitting on the floor—when he comes into Swami's room.)

But I did once again get a strong sense of contact by just sitting outside the shrine gate for a few minutes, the day before yesterday.

Not one word from Hunt about the “Frankenstein” material we sent him, to Texas. And meanwhile we seem stuck. I am rather worried about this, can't see any ending to the story yet. And I know we ought to have something ready for Hunt when he returns, otherwise he will bug us with more mad suggestions.

 

March 2.
Hunt hasn't called but he has sent us a message through Ann, his secretary at Universal. He likes what we have written very much but makes two suggestions: the butterfly Elizabeth sees should turn into a horrible bug of some kind and terrify her—the severed arm, when Henry finds that it is becoming monstrous, should attack him and beat him, damaging his brain, so that it is no longer a normal brain when it is put into the skull of the Creature. The first of these suggestions seems merely inartistic, the second misses the whole point of the story as we wish to develop it. Still, Hunt can't be expected to know how the story will develop because we don't yet really know that ourselves.

I see a little more light on this than I did two days ago, but we are still fumbling about with a lot of characters at cross-purposes. What is Pretorius (now provisionally called Dr. Thorndyke) up to? Does the Creature want a bride, or does Pretorius create one to please himself ? What part does Elizabeth play? Does the Creature rape and or murder her? Does the character of Henry emerge more and more within the Creature as the story comes to an end? And how is this demonstrated?

Yesterday morning I saw Evelyn Hooker and told her that I can't write her book with her. I think I explained why I can't quite lucidly and I think I convinced her. The analogy of
Kathleen and Frank
was very useful, in doing this, because Kathleen's diary can be likened to Evelyn's files of case histories. The diaries, like the case histories, can be commented on, they can be elucidated and conclusions can be drawn from them; but they can't be rewritten because nothing can be as good as the source material itself. What is embarrassing—and what I think sticks as a reproach against me in Evelyn's mind—is that I told her, in the Saltair Avenue days,
⁸⁵
I was prepared to write a “popular” book about homosexuality with her. Of course I was always saying things like this, quite irresponsibly, subconsciously relying on the probability that I wouldn't ever be taken up on them. To Evelyn yesterday I said, “Well, you know, in those days I was nearly always drunk”; which, the more I think of it, was a silly tactless altogether second-rate remark. (But why should Drub expect that his remarks should always be first-rate? Vain old Ninny-Nag.)

 

March 4.
John Lehman arrives this morning; more on that later.

Last night, at the end of the question period after the reading, Swami said, “Let me speak out, you have no one but the Lord, no other refuge, your own nearest and dearest, they will desert you, only the Lord will never desert you.” The “Venice Gang”—Jim Gates, Peter Schneider, Gib [Peters], Beth [High], Doug [Rauch] and all their friends—now form a majority almost of the group and indeed the older people seem only half there by comparison; these young people, with all their faults and phoniness, are nevertheless the involved ones, the ones to whom Swami literally means contact with the living truth, or so it seems to me. I am not being sentimental about them, indeed I probably view them with more realism than most older members of the group do. It makes me glad that Swami has them now at the end of his life; it is a little reward for his long years with those frumpish self-indulgent women; like Ramakrishna at last getting his young disciples.

Yesterday I went to the place recommended by Penny Little, Billy Al's girlfriend, to buy organic nonpollutant soap for the Laundromat and for dishwashing, Shaklee's Basic-H and Basic-L. The sales are made in a garden house behind a quite grand home on Devon, just off Wilshire in Westwood, and the ladies who run the place have the air of amateurs, they might equally well be engaged in local politics. Well, this
is
politics.

After leaving Vedanta Place I picked up Don at his parents'. Both Jess and Glade had made a point of having me invited in, to sit with them and watch T.V. for a few minutes; this was a symbol of reconciliation and no doubt one of these days we shall actually have a meal together. The funny thing is, I really like them and even feel quite at ease with them. Don had been down to San Pedro where they exhibited three of his drawings at the art museum, along with work by Billy Al, Joe Goode, Peter Alexander.

 

March 6.
Tonight the sun set just behind the headland for the first time this year. Shortly before it did so there was what seemed to me a quite sharp earthquake jolt. But Don, who was out in the studio, said he didn't feel it: “I must have been dancing.”

We have now put up a fence across the steps; it was finished yesterday. This morning Don had to yell at the first boys who were opening its gate. Since then, the gate has been padlocked. This is all part of our futile but passionate defence against the invading Others.

John Lehmann's visit wasn't so bad. He was away all evening on the 4th, after reading a lecture on the Woolfs and the Hogarth Press at which I had to introduce him, and he left yesterday afternoon. Our conversation, on his side, was mostly a leering inquisition. Grotesque questions like, when did you and Wystan last have sex? No, such questions aren't at all grotesque in themselves, only the way he asks them, with the air of a dirty old bishop. Still—“Friendship never ends.”

Still wrestling with the plot of “Frankenstein.” It's funny how the fact that one's dealing with monsters and murders (and early nineteenth-century ones at that) seems to make no difference to the laws of probability. One keeps dismissing ideas because they are “impossible,” “too farfetched,” “unconvincing.” But perhaps that's our mistake. Perhaps we ought to be wilder and sillier.

 

March 8.
Am worried about the hard, seemingly swollen area in my intestine. I shall go and see Allen again tomorrow and then probably have X-rays, unless I can talk him into telling me it's nothing.

David Sachs called yesterday to tell me that Richard Montague, the mathematical philosopher at UCLA, has been strangled, seemingly by a hustler. Have heard no further news about this.

Evelyn also called yesterday to say that she had been to the opening of the Reverend Troy Perry's new church. Perry introduced her to the congregation and she had a terrific reception. But when she stood up to speak she was so moved that all she could think of to say was, “I want to correct one misstatement which the Reverend Perry made—my research was not sponsored, as he said, by President Johnson but by the National Institute of Mental Health”! So she has to write a letter to Perry thanking him and them all, to be read out in church next Sunday. I told her this was the kind of thing you find yourself saying in a speech you make in a dream.

Last night Paul Wonner had a show at the Landau Gallery, the last show before it closes. Some of his paintings I didn't like at all, they seemed cluttered with gimmicks. But a few seemed better than anything he has ever done; they had a sort of prophetic authority, I felt they were genuine visions. I have a feeling that he will soon find himself able to paint simple landscapes without any gimmicks at all which have this same quality. (What I mean by gimmicks are, for example, a self-portrait face in a cloud, butterflies, flowers, a helicopter—all these superimposed upon landscapes. What he does convey is the
awe
of the wilderness; he makes you aware of his strong religious feeling when he is out in lonely places.)

Later we all went to a party at the home of a Mr. and Mrs. Lusk in the rich ghetto off Wilshire called Fremont Place. The Lusks, who have just split up, were both there as hosts and seemed on the best of terms.

Finished Romer Wilson's
The Death of Society
. Why on earth did I ever like it? It's one of the most bogus books I ever opened. The love scenes are so idiotic that I wouldn't like them even if they were about two boys. Maybe the book appealed to me because I thought the Norwegian background glamorous. Only it isn't. And it got the Hawthornden Prize! Here are a few lines, taken at random:

 

“To be mad, Rosa!—it's life itself. Rosa, I am mad—crazy. I am clean crazy,” he cried. “Aren't you afraid of a mad man? Hi, Rosa, what do you think!” and continued in a worse strain.

After an impudent peroration he went on gaily: “I am your lover, Rosa—as mad as a bee—my delight! my fairy! my shepherdess! my princess!”
⁸⁶

 

March 12.
Cassius Clay's defeat last Monday was sort of sadden-ing—the more he bragged, the more one wanted him to be un-beaten. Now, even if he wins the title back, it won't be the same.
⁸⁷

On the 9th I finally went to see Dr. Allen, determined to talk him out of giving me another barium enema X-ray examination. So he agreed to something else which is really a whole lot more trouble; I have to lay off eating meat for six days and, after the first three days (that's tomorrow), I have to collect three daily specimens of my shit. If there is no blood in it, then I won't have to be x-rayed. Dr. Allen says that all meat contains blood and that even the tiniest trace of blood can be detected in the shit; two statements which I find hard to believe.

Swami seemed tired, the day before yesterday; perhaps he will go away to the desert for a few days. We hear from India that Len, Mark and Paul have become Swamis Bhadrananda, Tadatmananda and Amohananda respectively. They have been kept inside the grounds of the Math, except for a boat trip to Dakshineswar, because of the outbreaks of violence in Calcutta. But now that Mrs. Gandhi has won the election things may get better, Swami thinks.
⁸⁸
(I forgot to mention Buddha; he's Swami Yogeshananda now.)

The experts have decided that the Sylmar earthquake was much bigger than was supposed. Although it was only 6.5 at the epicenter, it set up a sort of diagonal thrust under the hills which hit Sylmar with a force of nearly 8. It must be
some
consolation, when your house has been wrecked, to know at least that you have been in a major earthquake. Also, it makes the major earthquake we are promised seem slightly less alarming, since we evidently had a worse shaking than we thought we were having!

The British postal strike is over at last, but no mail from England yet and so I hesitate to send the illustrations and other material for my book to Methuen.

 

March 19.
The day before yesterday, I think it was, someone rang me up in the morning and said he had a friend who wanted to illustrate a porno poem by Auden
⁸⁹
and he understood that Auden (he pronounced it Ow-den) and I were intimate friends. I took it for granted that this was Gore (whom we'd met on the 15th at the [Paul] Newmans') and that he was giving one of his imitations, so I started playing the Dirty Old Man and asked this guy to meet me at the men's room of the Catholic Church on 7th Street, etc. etc. It was only right at the end of the conversation that I came back out of my playacting and (assuming still that it was Gore) asked him to have supper with us tonight. He accepted. Then I had doubts and called the hotel and got hold of Gore, who assured me it hadn't been him on the phone. (I'm still not sure he wasn't lying.) Anyhow, we are having dinner with Gore tonight and we may also expect this guy to show up!

I delivered the hemoccult slides (this process is called an “occult blood test”) to Dr. Allen, dully daubed with shit. The instructions tell you to “dispose of the applicator” after use—as though you'd be apt to treasure it in your hope chest! Yesterday Dr. Allen told me that the test was okay. So I'll leave my gut to produce some further symptoms before I bother with it again.

On the 17th, I started a sort of notebook on Kitty and Dobbin—I'll try to write it rather like a study in natural history; their behavior, methods of communication, feeding habits, etc. I had a very strong feeling that I ought not to record all this, that it was an invasion of privacy. But where else have I ever found anything of value? The privacy of the unconscious is the only treasure house. And as a matter of fact, Don is always urging me to write about us. I have no idea, yet, what I shall “do” with this material after I've collected it. I'll just keep jotting things down, day by day, and see what comes of it.