It’s much more probable that [the actor] retired to his own bed before [Christopher and his friend] started doing whatever they did to each other.)
On January 17, the day-to-day diary notes that Caskey and
Christopher “got air raid information.” I don’t know exactly what this was. Instructions for taking shelter, cutting off the gas at the main, laying in a supply of food suitable for sustaining life during a period of fallout? Anyhow, it is a reminder of those H-bomb-minded, Russian-menaced times.
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On January 21, Speed Lamkin and Gus Field came down for the
day. They and Christopher discussed their play Sally Bowles. The first draft of it was finished.
On January 28, Christopher finished his review of Spender’s World Within World for Tomorrow.
On February 1, Christopher drove to Los Angeles for the day and had another discussion with Speed Lamkin and Gus Field about the Sally Bowles play. During the next eight days, Christopher worked on his novel, lay on the beach, helped Caskey entertain various visitors, was painted by Paul Sorel (so was Caskey) and went to Camille’s, the chief local gay bar. On February 10, he drove to Los Angeles, had another play discussion with Speed and Gus and then spent the night at the Hartford Foundation. The day-to-day diary mentions that Mike Leopold, Chester Aarons, Dick LaPan and
Leonard Culbrow were there. No doubt Christopher took the
opportunity of going to bed with Mike. Next day, Christopher saw his boyhood friend Patrick Monkhouse, who was in Los Angeles on business, probably, for The Manchester Guardian. (See pages 90‒91.) I don’t remember anything about this encounter except the mood of it, which was polite embarrassed goodwill. . . . Oh yes, it comes back to me that Paddy made some remark which he evidently thought was tactless because it might seem to refer to Christopher’s homosexuality. He blushed and tried to excuse himself. Christopher, who hadn’t detected any such reference, didn’t know how to reassure him.
On February 18, while Christopher was in Los Angeles for the
weekend, he had lunch with Dodie and Alec Beesley and they
discussed the Lamkin–Field Sally Bowles play. Dodie wasn’t much impressed by it. She felt that the breaking down of the wall, which Christopher so much liked, would be unworkable in actual performance. It was perhaps at this time that Dodie and Alec began to feel that something must be done to set Christopher free from his commitment to Speed and Gus.
The large thin notebook has its first entry for the year on February 20. Christopher has now written a rough draft of the first four chapters. The opening of the novel is more or less what it will be in the finished version, but Christopher is still planning to include a big group of refugee characters and is still worrying about how he shall relate them to each other and to Stephen Monk.
On February 25, Christopher drove to Los Angeles and spent the night at the Hartford Foundation. Next day, he had tea at the Vedanta Center with Aldous Huxley and Alan Watts. The meeting between Watts and Swami Prabhavananda wasn’t a success––at least, 278
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not from Christopher’s point of view. My memory of it is vague however and Christopher’s disapproval of Watts at that time––later, Christopher got to like him––is expressed by a mental picture of Watts’s yellow teeth, flavored with bad nicotine breath.
Christopher’s first journal entry of the year, on March 6, consists of self-reproaches and complaints. “I’m dull and wretched, so weary of my stupid aging slothful self in its alienation from God. It comes to me, again and again, how I have deteriorated into a dull-witted selfish useless creature. . . . Swami stands ready to help me if I’ll even raise one finger. But I won’t. I won’t go to live at Trabuco.”
(However, despite this talk about sloth, Christopher had finished chapter four of his novel a few days earlier.) These moanings are followed by the old complaints about Caskey––how he comes home at all hours, brings people home with him and disturbs Christopher’s work.
In the middle of March it turned warm and they went swimming, which no doubt temporarily relieved the tension. (Talking of swimming and warm weather reminds me of an incident which I can’t date. It happened on a cold day––during a weekend, probably––
when Christopher, Caskey and a party of friends had a big drunken lunch and then went for a walk on the beach, fully dressed.
Christopher was in a characteristic, half clownish, half hostile mood.
He let the others go on ahead, sat down on the sand and stared at the ocean. Then an idea came to him––it might have been inspired by an illustration to some nineteenth-century noveclass="underline" a shore in winter, cold rough waves, deserted beach, a clothed, drowned body rolling in the surf. . . . When Caskey and their friends returned, Christopher was awash, face downward in the water, in his leather jacket and shirt and corduroys. The guests were suitably startled, but Caskey said with his comical grin, “Ignore him,” and led them up the path to the house, leaving Christopher to follow in his drenched clothes. He was warm with alcohol and didn’t catch a chill.)
On March 14, Christopher mentions that he is working on a
“story about Basil Fry”; this was maybe his first attempt to write what became “Mr. Lancaster” in Down There on a Visit. On the 17th
Christopher finished chapter two of the annotated translation of Patanjali’s yoga aphorisms. On the 18th and 19th, he was in town, staying the night at the Hartford Foundation, where he saw Speed Lamkin, who had just arrived. I think that one of Speed’s chief motives for coming to live at the foundation was that he wanted to get to know Christopher better and adopt him as his Elder Friend, which indeed he quickly did.
On the 24th, Christopher and Caskey went to a party at the
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Chaplins’. This was the first time they had visited the Chaplins in nearly ten months. It was to be their last meeting. (See pages 233‒234.) On the 25th (Easter Day) Christopher and Bill were back in
Laguna. Steve (see page 32) came down to see them with his
latest lover, Jack Garber.[*] Steve didn’t seem much changed and Christopher still felt affectionate toward him. Jack Garber was a good-looking blond boy, whom Christopher found attractive but a bit pretentious. There seemed to be tension between him and Steve; the relationship didn’t look as if it would last long.
After supper they left, to drive back to Los Angeles. Then, very much later, Lennie Newman arrived. By this time, Bill was snoring in bed, drunkenly asleep. But Christopher, also in bed (have I ever mentioned that he and Bill had separate beds in the same room?), heard the knocking and got up to let Lennie in. Christopher had been drinking all evening. Lennie, no doubt, was drunk as usual. As usual, they hugged and kissed. But then the unusual began to happen.
Kissing prolonged itself into tongue kissing. Their hands moved down each other’s bodies and started to grope buttocks and loins and cocks. Christopher, who slept in the raw, was naked already underneath the bathrobe he had put on to greet Lennie. He merely had to throw it off.
Meanwhile, when already well on his way to Los Angeles, Steve had found that he must have left his wallet behind at Monterey Street––I forget how or why. Back they had to drive. Getting no answer when they knocked, they came in––to find the lights on in the living room and bedroom, Caskey still asleep in one bed,
Christopher and Lennie lying naked on the other––Lennie on his belly, with Christopher on top, fucking him. Christopher and Lennie talked to them while they looked for and found the wallet, but Christopher didn’t withdraw his cock from Lennie’s asshole and continued the fuck in low gear, with deep slow thrusts which Lennie countered with movements of his buttocks. When Steve and Jack Garber had left again, the fuck gathered speed to its climax.