Lost Years (9 page)

In the 1944 journal, Christopher writes, “I know quite well that I shouldn't feel guilty if I were not living at Ivar Avenue. That being true, my guilt is worthless.” Nevertheless, Christopher certainly did feel guilty—or at least embarrassed—throughout the rest of his stay at the Vedanta Center. His position was false, and several people
knew this—Denny, Bill Harris, the Beesleys, John van Druten, Carter Lodge, etc. The Beesleys probably found the inconsistency of his life as a demi-monk merely amusing and cute—it seemed “human”—it excused them from feeling awed and awkward in the presence of his faith. But for Christopher, their tolerance was humiliating.

Should he have left the center much sooner than he did? Looking back, I find that I can't say yes. It now seems to me that Christopher's embarrassment and guilt feelings were of little importance and his “spiritual struggles” trivial. What mattered was that he was getting exposure to Swami, that his relations with Swami continued to be (fairly) frank, and that he never ceased to be aware of Swami's love. Every day that he spent at the center was a day gained. That he kept slipping away to see Bill Harris wasn't really so dreadful. That he had lost face in the eyes of various outside observers was a good thing—or anyhow it was a hundred times better than if he had fooled everyone into thinking him a saint.

(Remembering Christopher's position at that time makes me feel great sympathy and admiration for Franklin [Knight] at Trabuco nowadays and for Jimmie Barnett at the Hollywood monastery.
Their
position is, or has been, far more embarrassing and humiliating than Christopher's ever was. And they haven't run away from it.)

[
¹
Elsewhere, Isherwood also calls these journals “diaries,” and they are published under that title. Readers may find Isherwood's references to them by date in his
Diaries Volume One 1939–1960
, ed. Katherine Bucknell (London: Methuen, 1996; New York: HarperCollins, 1997), cited hereafter as
D1
.]

²
In the 1944 journal, it says “the final polishing”
of Prater Violet
was finished on November 24.

³
Bill was the younger of two brothers—the sons of an engineer. Their father had worked in the USSR and had had to leave with his family at a few hours' notice—the Russians accused the American and British engineers of trying to sabotage a dam which they had been hired to construct. Later, they moved to Australia, where Bill and his brother became expert swimmers. Bill's brother was very attractive, an all-round athlete and a war hero in the U.S. Air Force. Bill was the ugly brother (so he said); homely and fat up to the age of fifteen. Then he made a “decision” to be beautiful. After the war, his brother married and became fat and prematurely middle-aged.

    Bill was well aware of being feminine—his resemblance to Marlene Dietrich was often remarked on—but he refused to get himself exempted from military service by declaring that he was homosexual. He wanted to be a model soldier. He worked very hard to keep his equipment clean. Then, after he'd been in the service for a week or two, he was bawled out at an inspection, and this discouraged him so much, after all his good intentions, that he burst into tears. The inspecting officer, amazed at such sensitivity, sent him to the psychiatrist, which resulted in his getting an honorable discharge!

[
⁴
Repeating a sacred Hindu word; Isherwood used a rosary. For this and all Hindu terms, see Glossary.]

[
⁵
Isherwood's religious teacher under whose guidance he had been living at the Vedanta Center and training as a monk. See glossary under Prabhavananda.]

[
⁶
A close friend since 1940; for Fouts and for others not fully introduced by Isherwood see Glossary.]

⁷
Christopher even accused Denny of deliberately trying to seduce him from his vocation by introducing him to Harris. According to Christopher, Denny didn't want Christopher to become a monk because it made him, Denny, feel guilty.

⁸
[Not his real name.] Flint tried to do a blowjob under water and was quite indignant when he began to drown. He seemed to blame the Pacific Ocean, assuring Christopher with apparent seriousness that you could blow someone beneath the surface of the Atlantic while drawing air into your mouth through his cock!

[
⁹
Not his real name.]

DAY-TO-DAY
diary, January 1, 1945: “Started work on my story.” What story? Perhaps an early attempt to do something with the material from the journal about Christopher's stay at the Friends Service Committee hostel at Haverford, 1941–1942. Or perhaps another attempt to write about the character called “Paul”
¹
(in those days, he wasn't yet altogether Denny Fouts) and his adventures on the Greek island, which later appeared in “Ambrose.”
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]

On January 2, Christopher took the manuscript of
Vedanta and the Western World
to be published by Marcel Rodd. Evidently they were still on good terms with Rodd at the Vedanta Center. Marcel is first referred to on June 20 in the 1944 journal, when he took over the distribution of the Gita,
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]
which had already been set up by the printer who printed the magazine. Christopher knew him in a sort of backstairs way, as one of Vernon's many former admirers, and Christopher flattered himself that he could do satisfactory business with Rodd and not get cheated, despite Rodd's character. I can't remember that Rodd ever actually cheated the Vedanta Society, but he caused a lot of annoyance and inconvenience in later years—failing to republish but refusing to give up his rights and ignoring the letters written to him by the society's lawyers. And for all this Christopher was responsible because he had introduced Rodd to Swami. (Though I think it was Denny who had suggested that he should do so. Denny's advice was so often sensible but mischievous.)

In the 1944 journal, it is said that Rodd “is terribly anxious to become a respectable publisher.” This suggests that Rodd had already been in trouble as the result of his dealings in pornography—maybe while he had the bookshop and was selling it under the counter. But I remember that he was prosecuted, some time after this, for publishing or distributing sex books—one of them was called
We Are Fires Unquenchable
. The judge said, “I understand, Mr. Rodd, that you also publish religious literature? I strongly advise you to stick to that line in future.”

On January 3, Swami's nephew Asit [Ghosh] was finally released from the army. (The circumstances of his induction and the legal proceedings which were taken to release him are described in the 1944 journal.) Asit came back to the center and stayed there for a while. Then he left for India.
⁴

The Vivekananda Puja was celebrated on January 4, this year. (In 1944, it was on January 17.) The 1944 day-to-day diary mentions it, but I can find no reference to it in the journal. This puja—or rather, the breakfast puja which is the first part of it—became the only ritual worship which Christopher really enjoyed. This was chiefly because he had an important role in it—Swami had decided that he should be the one to read the Katha Upanishad aloud while Swamiji's
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breakfast was served. He loved doing this; indeed it was (and has remained) for him the highest imaginable act of sacred camp—a little genuine devotion, a feeling of the absurdity of himself in this role, a sense that the performance is a joke shared with Swamiji, and of course his enjoyment of the sound of his own voice—all these elements are combined in the experience. But, quite aside from this, the breakfast puja had a beautiful domestic significance as long as Sister
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]
was alive and could personally pour Swamiji's coffee during the ritual. Because Sister was (almost certainly) the only surviving person who had actually served breakfast to Swamiji while he was in the U.S. He had been a guest in her home, at the beginning of the century.

On January 8, the day-to-day diary records that Sudhira
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enlisted in the navy. She may actually have done this, or it may have been one of the tall stories she told Christopher. If she did really enlist, I'm pretty sure she was never called up.

Also on the 8th, a journalist named Felton visited the center; he was doing a story for
Time
magazine in connection with a forthcoming review of the Prabhavananda—Isherwood translation of the Gita. On the 11th, he came again and sat in on Swami's evening class; and on the 15th he sent a photographer to take pictures of Swami, Christopher, the temple, etc.
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Day-to-day diary, January 19: “To Santa Monica. Saw Bill and Denny. The kite accident.”

When Christopher arrived at Santa Monica that morning, he found Denny Fouts making a tail for a kite out of his Christmas decorations. (This sort of play project, undertaken on the spur of the moment, was characteristic of Denny.) When the kite was ready, Bill Harris and Christopher took it out on the beach to fly it. (I don't remember that Denny was with them—perhaps there were two kites and Denny was flying the other one.) The wind was strong but not
steady. Bill and Christopher got the kite aloft, quite high over the Canyon. Then Christopher said, “We ought to tie a banner to the tail, with ‘Vernon is a big queen' written on it!” (The point of this remark was that Vernon happened to be staying somewhere in the Canyon at that time so he would perhaps have seen the banner and been embarrassed. Christopher was being bitchy about Vernon because he still harbored a grudge against him for the failure of their life together up at Santa Barbara. In any case, jokes against Vernon were frequent in Denny's circle.)

Christopher had barely finished making this joke when the kite, as if to punish him for it, took a sudden dive—so sudden that he and Bill Harris had no time to save it by running toward the ocean, pulling the string. In less time than it takes to tell, the kite fell limply onto the power lines along the side of the highway. Then, as Christopher watched incredulously, the tail of the kite began to smoke, there was a flash, a dull puff of sound, like air being expelled, and two of the cables parted and fell across the road. (No doubt they were spitting sparks, but Christopher couldn't see this from where he stood.) Cars which happened to be passing swerved wildly. Brakes squealed. Luckily, there were no collisions. The accident, though minor, was awe inspiring. It belonged in the category of disasters and was as disconcerting to watch, on its own tiny scale, as the air raids Christopher had seen in China. You felt that the order of things was being upset. (And indeed, as Christopher heard later, the electric power was cut off throughout the neighborhood.)

Bill Harris was so horrified that he simply ran away, fearing arrest, Christopher didn't resent this; it rather flattered his own vanity that he was left to play the man while Bill panicked like a girl. And he knew Bill would admire him for his behavior, later. Christopher was a bit scared, of course; he fully expected to be arrested. But he was also shrewd enough to know that nothing very bad would happen to him, provided that he admitted his responsibility without delay.

Meanwhile, a crowd had gathered and the police had arrived. But the police merely took charge of the traffic; they didn't attempt to find out who the culprit was. Christopher joined the crowd. Several people in it had undoubtedly seen him flying the kite. Christopher made up his mind to keep quiet for the time being and wait until questions were asked. But nobody asked any questions.

Then the repair truck arrived. The repair men asked no questions, either. But one of them said: “Whoever was flying that kite, he sure as hell was lucky”—and went on to explain that, if the kite string had been wet, the person holding it would have been electrocuted. The short circuit had been caused by the tinsel ornaments in the kite tail.

Christopher later used this incident in
The World in the Evening
.
⁹

Day-to-day diary, January 20: “Supper with Carter (Lodge), Don Forbes, Dave Eberhardt
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and Chip.
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” I think Chip was a boyfriend of Carter Lodge. He may well be the boy about whom I dimly remember the following story: When the boy was young, his parents were alarmed because he was so effeminate and they felt sure he would turn out to be homosexual when he grew up; he also had a wretched physique. They consulted a doctor, who advised some sort of hormone treatment. The treatment produced dramatic results; the boy became a virile youth without a trace of effeminacy, with a powerful well-made body and masculine good looks—a well-adjusted, one hundred percent homosexual.

Don Forbes was a newscaster on radio; I think his program was sponsored by Richfield Oil. He was quite a star in the news world—maybe he had done some reporting from the battlefronts. I remember being amused by a photograph of him, enshrined like an oracle amidst flags, bursting shells, whizzing planes and bombarding warships. He was handsome, temperamental and very much of an actor.

Dave Eberhardt was [. . .] just discharged from the navy—a pale husky joli
laid
with a crew cut. Soon after Dave and Christopher met, Dave told Christopher that he found him “powerfully attractive.” Christopher reciprocated more than sufficiently, and they would neck whenever they were alone together, sometimes for long spells. Since they always had to do this at the apartment which Don and Dave shared—because Christopher was still living at the Vedanta Center—they never went to bed together, however; Dave thought it was too risky. When they did finally make love, years later, at the AJC Ranch, I seem to remember that it wasn't a success.

Dave Eberhardt was a photographer. He later took some exceedingly flattering photographs of Christopher.