Liberation (47 page)

But I do find her sympathetic, in her desperate way. Don still thinks she is a bit crazy. [. . .] When I showed her the ridiculous snapshot of Mrs. Lanigan
¹⁹⁰
and told her that Mrs. Lanigan was my first heterosexual fuck, she hastened to say that she thought Mrs. Lanigan really quite attractive—as if to boost my morale by assuring me that I'd been to bed with at least
one
attractive woman! Heinz's pictures, before and after the operation on his nose, interested her enormously, for obvious reasons—we both agreed that Heinz looked far better with it broken. Michael broke his nose—perhaps the most beautiful broken nose of his generation—when he was around three.

Michael kept saying how sad he felt to be leaving California. Pat is going to the Vedanta Center in London, to seek guidance. I would love to see her interviewing Buddha (Yogeshananda)! We probably shan't see them again before they leave. Michael made a stiff little speech, thanking us for our friendship. Darling as he is, he embarrasses both of us. I feel I could only break the ice by covering him with kisses all over, until he screamed and giggled. The kind of kisses we do exchange are mere culture-bridging gestures—like a white man exchanging the correct ritual greetings with an African tribal chief.

 

July 26.
A very hot but beautiful day, enough to make anyone regret leaving California. We had supper with Swami at the Malibu house. He asked, “Do you think I've gained weight?” It seems he now weighs 105 pounds with his shoes and pants on. When they dehydrated him at the hospital some time ago, he weighed 93! Dub's weight this morning, just under 150; Kitty's just over 139.

Today we really did
almost
finish “The Mummy.” If we fix a couple of tiny things, we can send it in tomorrow. We've also been working on Don's magazine article. Now he's picking drawings to illustrate it; and he has to write comments on each one!

Suddenly Don is getting commissions. His goal is to earn enough to pay for all the paintings he's bought.

 

July 27.
Am writing this listening to an Elton John album (
Honky Château
) which Don brought back this morning inscribed to us from Elton John and Bernie Taupin, who writes the lyrics. At present I like the lyrics much better than the music, especially “Honky Cat”—“They said get back, honky cat, / Better get back to the woods . . .” Also “Rocket Man.” Don got the record because he was over at Malibu at the house where Bryan and his family are staying with Elton John, drawing Bryan's daughter.
¹⁹¹
One of the drawings is marvellous and Bryan is going to buy it, as well as Don's drawing of himself (of Bryan, I mean).

After I wrote my entry for yesterday we actually did finish “The Mummy” last night. This morning I had it xeroxed and a messenger from Universal is to pick it up. Talked to Hunt this morning in Texas. He says he has heard, in some backstairs way (the way he seems to hear everything) that Sheinberg has set the beginning of shooting on “Frankenstein” for October 15. And that they are “going in the direction of Boorman.”

Another glorious day. But the beach is really too crowded and the sand is too hot.

 

July 28.
Robin French talked to Sheinberg and was told there's no truth in Hunt's story that a date has been set for “Frankenstein.” It seems that what has been holding things up all this while is NBC, which can't decide if it wants “Frankenstein” for T.V. But now Robin thinks it will probably be made as a feature film, because even the head of NBC has advised them to do this.

This morning, right after breakfast, we went down to the beach—partly because it looked like being a very hot day later, partly because Don had to go to Santa Barbara and see Bill and Paul. Don has left now, but the hot day isn't so hot down here, after all; there's a wind. In town, it's been breaking records, going up into the hundreds.

On the way back from the beach, we met Gordon Davidson outside his house. He told us he hasn't read the revised version of our play yet but he's just about to—no doubt he decided that when he saw us. At the bottom of the steps leading up to the Casa, somebody had dumped a dead opossum, a few days ago. It began to stink horribly, but this morning it has been nearly devoured by maggots; the ground all around it was swarming with them.

Last night, with Gavin, we saw
Touch of Evil
and it was as wonderful as ever. It makes a special appeal to me because it's about a frontier.
¹⁹²
It almost makes me want to have another try at writing about my mystique of The Frontier, as I did in
The Forgotten
.
¹⁹³
But first I must see if I can't understand better what it is.

I had meant to write a great deal today in this journal—particularly about my day-to-day life with Don, and thoughts about his future and my death and attempts at meditation. But the day has flown by, and now I must fix my supper.

 

July 29.
Very hot again today, and humid. After going to the gym, I was too tired to do anything but lie on the couch in my workroom and read the rest of Bryan Forbes's novel,
The Distant Laughter
, and Gavin's book (in manuscript) about the making of
Gone with the Wind
. He's called it
GWTW
, but isn't sure if the publisher will like the title; they may object that the book will be mistaken for yet another exposure of one of the big corporations! Gavin's book is journalism of the very best kind; it could hardly be improved on. Bryan's novel could have been a quite entertaining story about moviemakers, if only he hadn't dragged in this embarrassing would-be macho love affair. But I shall have to say something nice about it, maybe even write a blurb, because he has done so much for Don. Don has earned a thousand dollars, just in the last few days!

 

July 30.
Hunt called this morning from Texas, having read “The Mummy.” His first reaction is that it is better than “Frankenstein” and “on a very high literary level”! His only request—before having it typed—that we should state that the coffin of the Princess Naketah is made of silver, not wood. Hunt also wanted us to delete our note that the roles of Laura and Naketah are to be played by the same actress. But I persuaded him to let it stand.

Another very hot day, but not so muggy. Thunderheads are piling up inland; we'll probably have a storm tonight. Don and I had a very nice swim but the beach was already terribly crowded by noon. They say as many as 325,000 may come on a Sunday like this one. I suppose that would be more people than I've met during my entire life! Don and I talked about his early days of drawing and going to art school. He said, “You were the only one who encouraged me, I'd never have gone on without you.” We were very close to each other.

Evelyn Hooker called me a couple of days ago. She said she had had all kinds of ailments and had finally gone to the UCLA hospital, and they had feared a tumor at first but had found nothing wrong except a microscopic ageing of the ventricles of the brain. So now Evelyn is somewhat hysterically determined to be well. I saw her this afternoon. She wants to go to Vedanta Place and get instruction in meditation. That means she'll have to see Asaktananda, I expect. But then her sister came in. She said she'd met me before; I didn't remember and was surprised how Jewish she looked, rather like Shirley Booth!
¹⁹⁴
Anyhow, Evelyn then said that she wanted to do exercises as well as meditation, and I told her that Swami is against breathing exercises. Whereupon the sister said that
she
had done breathing exercises for years and they hadn't harmed her. So I sensed hostility developing and shut up.

 

July 31.
Don got an infuriating traffic ticket last night, because he drove the wrong way down a deserted one-way alley in Santa Monica, late in the evening. We'd been seeing
The Lady from Shanghai
and
The Third Man
. I think Welles's scene with Cotten on the big wheel in Vienna is one of
the
classic demonstrations of hamming
with the eyes
; Welles doesn't seem to need his other features at all. Also, the square in which the final sequence begins, part baroque architecture and part bomb ruins, lit by flashlights, is a magnificent Piranesi theater set. Just now, for some reason, I'm finding the end-of-war period in Europe tremendously nostalgic. This morning I read Speer's description of Hitler just before his suicide—the best thing in the whole book.

We went to see the films with Gavin. When we're with him (always without Mark) we say very little about his move. It seems tactless to mention it—as though he were about to undergo surgery.

Some specimens of art jargon, from a brochure put out by The Underground, a gallery at Los Gatos: “Geoff McCormick . . . constructs small, container-like kinetic sculptures. . . . Some change shape or make sudden thrusts. . . . One is left of a silent impression of sped-up geologic forces. . . . Larry Rief . . . forces art happenings from the ordinary and sometimes dismal environment. . . . Ernest Mathews colors medium-sized canvasses employing an original method using capillary action.”

 

August 1.
This morning, at breakfast, just as I was telling Don he really should do some more drawings of Swami while he's at the Malibu house, a white cockatoo appeared and started flying around the Canyon. It reminded us of those mornings at Tony Richardson's house in Australia.

Don's earnings are now up to eighteen hundred dollars for this recent period! We went and deposited some of the money in a different savings bank, called American Savings. Somehow the place seemed totally unreliable and unserious, but that was probably because we were taken care of by a very campy black queen and because everybody in the office was in pseudo-Hawaiian drag—it's part of a publicity drive by Western Airlines. When the deposit had been made we were given an orchid each. We left them in the gym, to which we went right afterwards.

Harry Rigby, for whom Gielgud is directing
Irene
in New York,
¹⁹⁵
is one of the people Don has been drawing. He came around with Scott Schubach to pick up the drawing. (Don wasn't there because he was drawing Elton John and his collaborator Bernie Taupin; this morning he had to dash out to Malibu to deliver the drawings to them before they took off for England.) Rigby is a mixture of Van Vechten
¹⁹⁶
and Frankenstein's monster. He kind of drifts up to you and makes gestures all around you, like an octopus. Scott alarmed me by saying that Hunt was “a prisoner” of Dick Shasta and Dick's mother, and that Hunt is terrified that Dick will murder him for his money. He doesn't think Hunt will be allowed by them to return to Los Angeles or go to England for the film—unless, of course, he is heavily guarded. This is just the sort of hysterical half-truth which one can't dismiss altogether. Hunt certainly did believe his life was in danger from Dick; that was when he had that bodyguard.

Surveyors have been working a lot on the road below. Fear that means they are going to widen it at last.

Another beautiful morning on the beach. We went to the ocean twice.

 

August 2.
Talked to Jim Bridges on the phone this morning. He is now more or less committed to directing
The Paper Chase
and is off to look Harvard over and then go to Toronto, to decide if the buildings there will do as a double for the Harvard Law School. He has just found out, to his disgust, that the production of
Streetcar
which he's to direct at the Ahmanson next spring isn't the only production opening at that time; there will be another at the Lincoln Center. Jim feels this will take away a lot of his publicity and prestige. Also, he has begun to realize that Tennessee isn't really interested in the project; he's busy preparing to write his autobiography. Also, Jim has had a change of heart about the play itself; he now feels that it (hush, hush!) isn't all that good.

Robin French called to say that he has put us up as possible writers of the script of Galsworthy's
The Apple Tree
, with Bogdanovich directing. Also that Sheinberg is leaving for Europe, where he will talk to Boorman and/or Lindsay Anderson about directing “Dr. Frankenstein.” Also that he still believes he can sell
The Vacant Room
¹⁹⁷
to T.V.

From first indications,
Deliverance
is going to be a huge success.

 

August 3.
We had supper with Swami out at Malibu again last night. He had been discussing spiritual experiences with Pavitrananda. He told us that his vision of Vivekananda in the shrine of the Hollywood temple had come after Ashokananda had attacked him for allowing me to write (in the introduction to
Vedanta for the Western World
) that “if he (Vivekananda) had never visited Dakshineswar, he might well have become one of India's foremost national leaders.” Ashokananda found this insulting to Vivekananda's memory. Swami didn't agree but nevertheless was very upset. And then the vision came, apparently to reassure him. All this I've heard dozens of times already. But yesterday evening Swami remarked, almost casually, that, just before the vision, he had been going through a mood of self-blame in which he considered suicide. “How could I live, if I had insulted Swamiji?” This was what amazed me and Don. I asked him, “Surely, Swami, you couldn't have considered killing yourself and leaving your work unfinished—that isn't like you at all, you always have such a sense of responsibility?” Swami didn't seem to get my point. But we both remain astonished. Was this just a bit of Asian hyperbole? I find it hard to dismiss it like that, when I remember how matter-of-factly Swami went on to speak of his three great experiences, this vision of Swamiji, his vision of Holy Mother in his room at the center and his experience of God without form in the temple of Jagannath.
¹⁹⁸
It was so convincing that it gave me goose pimples. Then he added that the “I” that witnesses these experiences is not the ordinary egotistical “I”; it simply records and remembers.