Liberation (53 page)

What about New York? I really cannot go into all that right now. Maybe I'll keep slipping in memories of it, day by day, if I keep this journal going continuously till the end of the year. Just for openers: It was icy, windy, wet, snowy, warmish by turns but always so miserably dark—coming back here was like a return to paradise; yesterday was so warm that Don went in the ocean. I tore a ligament in my right ankle. More of that another time. The play was very well received by the audience—much more about that, another time. Of the two notices we have seen so far, one was goodish, one poorish. The goodish one is in the
New York Post
, December 19. It is by Jerry Tallmer, titled “One Saint in Two Acts.” He starts with a little bit of bitchery, noting that the play is by Christopher Isherwood (born 1904) and Don Bachardy (born 1934) and continues: “It is a witty, intelligent, provocative drama, and though not long in minutes it's still perhaps a trace too long near the end. . . . this sketched version of a full production was as invigorating as the material, with its overtones of E.M. Forster. . . . I think the drama if mounted in full, though modestly, could find an audience here.” Richard F. Shepard in
The New York Times
, December 20, says: “. . . .the new work deals with Hinduism and homosexuality, and each, although not related, comes out a moral winner. . . . These constantly shifting triangles and relationships make an over-all interesting but wordy evening, one that slumps into troughs of tedium. . . . But it is a play worth more work and refinement.” (Arnold Weissberger, whom I talked to yesterday on the phone, doesn't think
The New York Times
notice is really bad from a business point of view. It dashed our spirits a good deal when we read it, because we had begun to feel that we had had a success.)

 

December 23.
This morning I weighed 153, the all-time high since I started recording my weight. This is probably due to supper with Jack Larson and Jim Bridges last night; we drank a lot of wine and ate handfuls of sugar-coated peanuts. Jim was sulking because (as Don discovered today from Jack) they had had a quarrel about Jim's cameraman on this film. [. . .] Jim wants to make him his partner in a film company. (The cameraman's name is Gordon Willis.
²²
) Early this morning, Jim left to spend Christmas with his family in Paris, Arkansas.

Don had lunch today with Gary Abrahams and they finally discussed my quarrel with Philip Chamberlain (see November 7) and the friction with Gary and his friend Gary [Essert] which has followed it. Don gave them to understand that I hadn't really meant what I'd said and would probably have agreed to speak if I'd been asked nicely. So it is all smoothed over. That's okay, as long I don't have to apologize to Chamberlain. That I will never do, because I did mean exactly what I said.

I had lunch with Jim Charlton on the pier. I always enjoy listening to him talk—he describes things so well. Today he talked about the weird derelict island which belongs to the millionaire (Paley?)
²³
whose life Bill van Petten is writing. Then about Japan, to which he would like to return, and Mutsuo(?) the boy he deserted there. Jim said, with a significantly affectionate look at me, “He was the only other really good person I ever went with.” Pretending not to recognize this compliment, I said, “Oh, you mean Mark Cooper?” ( Jim had just told me that he thinks Mark killed several people, while running around with the Hell's Angels!)

Gerald Clarke came around in the afternoon. I have decided to let him go ahead with the
Esquire
interview. Not because I'm sure he's not a bitch; I think he probably is. But what do I care? The interview won't be for several months, anyhow.

About our New York visit: this was the first time that Don and I have ever meditated together. We decided to do it as long as we were staying at the hotel, because the alternative was for one of us to go into the bathroom while the other meditated, which created a pressure situation. I think it worked very well and even made another bond between us. But we haven't kept it up since our return.

On the 12th, the day after our arrival, we met Michael Montel and went with him to a rehearsal of our play. It was at the Edison Theater, where
Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope
was playing in the evenings. (Our single performance there was set for Monday the 18th because the show was dark on Mondays.) We had seen
Don't Bother Me
in Los Angeles—it was produced by Ed Padula, who is interested in making
The Adventures of the Black Girl
into a musical—and had hated it. To us it seemed a very usual sort of “sincere,” “challenging” freedom play, in which the white audience is insulted by the black performers and just loves it.

Michael Montel is nothing much of a director and his only virtue was that he let Larry Luckinbill and Sam Waterston follow the moves worked out by Jim Bridges. Larry was as good as ever and seemingly quite unchanged. Sam was as good as ever, but his success (in
Much Ado About Nothing
) did seem to have changed him for the better. He had more confidence and he actually looked a lot better, almost handsome. Dear Gordon Hoban was as good as ever, but
he
seemed definitely less attractive, beginning to fade. Jacqueline Brookes as the mother was utterly wrong; a squashy-faced mushy-mouthed woman, incapable of irony or bitterness. They all say she is a great actress, but she wasn't in this part. Robin Strasser, Larry's wife, was wrong too. She didn't even seem professional. She looked ugly and mean. Don said she was just a spoilt rich girl. She made a tremendous fuss over Larry, holding hands, stroking his sleeve, kissing him; it was embarrassing. I think he was embarrassed, too. Stephen Macht, who played Rafferty, was quite a young man, and sexy. He had a slightly demonic air and a big-toothed, rather devilish smile. You could think of him as a sort of familiar who had fastened onto Patrick, a symptom of Patrick's deplorable spiritual condition. Maybe, before long, Patrick would start going to bed with him and be controlled by him entirely— unless he could be rescued by his good angel, Tom. . . . The three swamis all learned the Sanskrit chant from us marvellously quickly. The brightest was a black actor, Charles Turner, Anthony Manionis was good too. Barton Heyman, who was a fairly important actor, showed that he thought the part was beneath his dignity. We decided that he might be a troublemaker.

The set (which belonged to
Don't Bother Me
) looked like a miniature golf course. Down the middle of it was a short slippery ramp, which outraged Sam; he kept losing his foothold and skidding, in protest. Later he had some kind of stickers put on the soles of his sandals. But the set remained tricky. The actors kept having to cross the ramp on their way to one or the other of the little putting-green platforms on which they had to play their scenes. And the ritual had to be performed right on the ramp itself. It looked like an uneasy picnic.

 

December 24.
A brilliant day with a strong wind. Don, trying to catch the low-angled sun, lies in a hollow on our pie slice of land, his head lower than his feet, in trunks. I lie beside him with my clothes on. I can now walk, even trot, but my ankle warns me that it would just love to twist over and throw me, preferably down some steep steps. My left thumb still has that little lump on it—growing(?)[.] And there is the hard little inflamed thing on the side of the calf of my right leg which Dr. Maxwell Wolff says he will have to remove, after the holidays. My weight is down half a pound from yesterday.

Stathis Orphanos found out from catalogues that they are selling postcards I write to fans. So I got mean and sent the following to some applicant, a short while before leaving for New York:

 

Because dealers solicit autographs and then sell them, I have decided that I will only send autographed photographs to strangers if they will first send me:

Ten dollars, which will be given to a charity of my choice, and a stamped and addressed envelope.

 

I got my note returned by a Mr. B. Berger, with the following rebuke:

 

Mr. Isherwood, my son Jeffrey is fourteen years old and he has been collecting autographs for going on seven years now. Among his most famous are Harry Truman, President Nixon, Allen Drury, Leon Uris, William Manchester, plus many Nobel prize winners. When he received this, he brought it down and gave it to me to read—we both smiled at each other—you may keep your autograph sir—he will surely not miss it! Have a joyful holiday season—so sorry you've been so taken advantage of.

 

I was just about to send some money to the Gay Community Services Center—the outfit run by Kight and Kilhefner—when something made me call Bill Legg at One Incorporated. (Actually, I had a reason for calling him, I wanted to know how to make the check out to One so that it is tax deductible.) In the course of our conversation, he told me that he and Troy Perry have lately been seeing Yorty
²⁴
and also the District Attorney, and have arranged to consult with them on gay problems. “Some people tell me, ‘They'll use you politically,' and I answer, ‘Why not, we're going to use
them
,'” Legg said. So then I asked him about the Gay Services Center, and he said that, whenever anybody applies to them for help, they try to make him into a revolutionary activist; they are radical about this and declare that anyone who isn't with them is against them. Of course Legg is prejudiced. He sees all other gay groups as johnnys-come-lately, trying to grab the credit away from Veteran Warrior One. But what he said was just what I suspect about Kilhefner—Kight I'm not so sure about, but he's certainly slippery. So the result of talking to Legg was that, rightly or wrongly, I didn't send the Gay Services any money, after all. I must go down there, though, and see for myself.

To return to December 12 in New York: That evening we went to a party, given by some rich guys for a mural which had been painted for them by a friend of Mary Louise Aswell
²⁵
—I can't be bothered to go into all this more explicitly. Our reason for going was entirely that Vera Stravinsky, Bill Brown and Paul Wonner were coming also. Vera had to leave soon—she was as wonderful and stylish and gaily worried as usual—but we stayed with Bill and Paul and had supper with them later. From them we gathered that their retreat to New Hampshire is already a disaster, at least in Paul's eyes. They are cut off from their friends, the snow is a bore and the neighbors are hostile and dishonest. While I was out of the room, they asked Don if we would come up there for Christmas. Don replied tactfully that I simply couldn't stand the cold. Paul later told Don that he hates Vera. Don says this is quite natural, because he feels that he isn't welcome when they entertain Bill Brown. Probably Paul's resentment is really directed against Bill, but he finds it easier to vent it on Vera, whom he doesn't live with.

The next day was the day I hurt my ankle. We had a lively wordy lunch with Glenway [Wescott], full of compliments to both of us and Proustian digressions which would have been pages long in print. Really, he seems unable to stop talking and perhaps hardly aware of what he is saying. In the afternoon, there was another rehearsal, at which we learned that Barton Heyman, the potential troublemaker, had been obliged to give up his part and fly to the Coast to see his sick mother. The substitute was an unimpressive-looking balding actor named Tom Tarpey,
²⁶
who turned out to be excellent and a true professional; he had mastered the whole of his part including the chant by the next morning.

From the rehearsal we went to the Oak Room at the Plaza, where Truman Capote was waiting for us, planted in a corner with his stomach in his lap. He didn't look well but he was very cheerful. He told us about his great problem, should he give a reading of part of his new novel in Carnegie Hall? If he did, all his enemies and all the people he had put into the novel would be sure to be there, and perhaps he'd be involved in libel actions. . . . But we felt that he had already decided to give the reading, for he already knew exactly what he would wear, a dark grey sweater with a black bow tie, tuxedo trousers and black pumps. The real object of the reading, as he presently admitted, was to prove to the world that this novel does indeed exist, or at any rate large bits of it.

We came out of the Oak Room and left the building by the side door which opens onto Central Park South. I don't think I was the least bit drunk; I had had two dry vermouths, nothing more. But I slipped on the bottom step. (People told me later that it is well known to be dangerous because too narrow.) I fell quite tidily, without dirtying my suit or cutting my hands or scraping my knees. But there was this horrible feeling—more than just pain—as if I had twisted my foot off. I felt I was going to faint. I nearly did. Then I was all right. Don held me, and Truman came out of the Plaza and made a tremendous demonstration, “Oh, poor Baby!” etc. He wanted to take me to a hospital but I wouldn't go. We went back to the hotel and the house doctor was phoned to. He advised us to get a bag for ice cubes to put on the swelling, and I lay there and felt the pain drain away, and the adrenalin start to give me a big positive lift. That night, I slept perfectly, without having to use any pills.

(It occurs to me that I left out two very important things, when writing about our lunch with Glenway. First, that he told us he believed he had had a stroke, a few days previously—this
might
account for his slightly incoherent ramblings. Second, that he said he had had to face the fact that his journals weren't nearly as comprehensive as he had imagined they were. One of his prospective publishers had announced quite brutally that they weren't interesting enough to print. So poor old Glenway, heroically, is sitting down to go all through them and fill in the gaps.)

 

December 25.
A very dry hot Santana
²⁷
is blowing. We went down on the beach and the sun was nearly too hot to lie in. Don went in the ocean. I paddled. It was absolutely beautiful, except for the little gusts which blew handfuls of sand over us every few minutes.