(Christopher’s exhibitionism, in making love to Lennie in the presence of Steve and Jack Garber, is strangely paralleled––now I come to think of it––by the party at Denny Fouts’s apartment on June 3, 1945 (see page 35) at which Willy Tompkins and the lieutenant had sex in public and [one of the guests] urged
Christopher to do likewise with him. I don’t know how Steve was affected, if at all, by seeing Christopher fuck Lennie. Jack Garber was rather turned on. He later wrote to Christopher, telling him that he
[* Not his real name.]
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was “a Triton amongst the minnows”––which was certainly in-
tended as a compliment and not as a reference to the line in
Coriolanus III: i.[*])
Lennie was so agreeably surprised by Christopher’s performance as a sex partner that he told Caskey and other friends about it.
Christopher was equally pleased, but not particularly surprised, to find that Lennie was a marvellous lay. All his natural sweetness, his wholesomeness, even the positive aspect of his Mormon upbringing was expressed in his sex play. As a fuckee, he couldn’t have been less passive; he was yin with the maximum of energy and cooperation.
He had developed such control of his sphincter muscle that he could massage and milk his partner’s cock most excitingly.1
Christopher had had a motive for going to bed with Lennie, but he only became aware of this after he had done it. He had always been a bit jealous of Lennie, much as he liked him, because Caskey’s friendship with Lennie seemed so exclusive. Lennie was the companion whom Caskey usually chose when he wanted to get away
from Christopher and go off on a binge. By going to bed with
Lennie, Christopher cured himself of his jealousy in the best possible way. Now Lennie and he had a relationship of their own. This didn’t mean that they had to keep having sex together––they only did it once again––or even that they saw much more of each other than before. But now there was a real lasting warmth between them.
Caskey didn’t in the least resent this.
On March 31, Bill Caskey started a gardening job, according to the day-to-day diary. I don’t remember anything about this.
April was a seemingly uneventful month which nevertheless
brought Christopher much nearer to the climax with Caskey. He struggled on with the novel––“this horrible bitch of a book,” as he 1 In connection with this, I have a memory which is very vivid but which I suspect slightly, simply because I can’t find any reference to it in the day-to-day diary. Jim Charlton came to spend the night at Monterey Street, not long after Christopher’s fuck with Lennie. In the morning Jim walked into Christopher’s and Caskey’s bedroom, naked, with a hard-on. Caskey was asleep. Jim grinned at Christopher, lifted him naked out of bed and carried him out of the room and into the guest bedroom. This was a typical specimen of Jim’s he-man camp; Christopher found it funny but also sexually exciting. He wanted Jim to fuck him, and, when Jim started to, Christopher began flexing and unflexing his sphincter muscle in imitation of Lennie Newman. It was an amateur performance but it impressed Jim. “Where did you learn that whore trick, for Christ’s sake?” he growled. The fuck was a huge success.
[* “Hear you this Triton of the minnows?” with which Coriolanus scoffs at the people’s tribune, Sicinius.]
¾ 1951 ¾
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calls it in the large thin notebook on March 28. He drove to Los Angeles on April 21 and stayed two nights at the Huntington
Hartford Foundation. He saw the people he usually saw––Jo and Ben Masselink, Peggy Kiskadden (with whom he still maintained a surface friendship although, underneath, they thoroughly disapproved of each other), Dodie and Alec Beesley, Frank Taylor, Speed
Lamkin. Caskey, meanwhile, went off on his own. I seem to re-
member he had a particular buddy amongst the marines and was
actually able to spend nights at Camp Pendleton. Maybe they had guest rooms for relatives and friends.
As usual, various acquaintances and sex mates (of Caskey chiefly) came by for drinks or meals or to stay the night. The nicest of the sex mates was a herculean boy [. . .], a navy frogman, stationed at San Diego, who had been over to Korea several times, where he had taken part in dangerous underwater missions, attaching mines to enemy ships in harbor, etc. He had an unusually sweet, gentle nature.
His way of introducing himself to you was to get you into bed with him. When he came to the house he went to bed with Bill,
Christopher and any of their guests who were available; and he made them all love him a little.
Talking of love––it was probably during this month that Caskey made a declaration to Christopher. I can only recall that it was made in their bedroom. As so often, the memory of Christopher’s emotional reaction is related to an object or objects. In this case, Christopher is looking at the bureau and the mirror above it while he hears Caskey say, “I’m not in love with you anymore. I’ve been in love with you for a long time, but now it’s over.”
I suppose Caskey meant by this that he no longer felt romantically toward Christopher. He probably said so in order to counteract Christopher’s tendency to express insincere sentiments. Christopher, at that time, really rather hated Caskey but he wouldn’t admit to it.
Whereas Caskey, I think, never wavered––never has wavered––in his love for Christopher. He wanted Christopher to admit, now, that he wasn’t any longer in love with Caskey. I don’t believe he made his declaration in order to cause a permanent break between them, or even to stop Christopher wanting to have sex with him now and then. Caskey, as he later proved, continued to want to have sex with Christopher when he was in the mood. Quite possibly, however, Caskey was beginning to feel that he would like to get right away from Christopher for a longish spell. (Not long after they split up, he decided to go to sea.) After that, he was ready to resume a loving friendship, unromantic but occasionally sexual, for the rest of their natural lives.
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I don’t remember if Christopher made any reply to this. Most
likely he just looked hurt and sulked.
And now a new chapter in Christopher’s life opened. That is to say, during May 1951, two of Christopher’s immediate problems began to solve themselves. Also, something happened––quite unplanned, unforeseen by him––which was to make a big difference to his
literary career and economic future.
The Caskey problem began to solve itself when Christopher
left Monterey Street and moved, for the time being, into the
Huntington Hartford Foundation. The problem of Christopher’s
novel began to solve itself, thanks to Speed Lamkin. The unforeseen happening was John van Druten’s decision to make a play out of Christopher’s character Sally Bowles and some other parts of his Goodbye to Berlin.
The domestic break with Caskey was inevitable, I suppose. Yet Christopher will hardly admit this to himself, even in the last of the journal entries (May 6) preceding it. The furthest he will go is to write: “There is absolutely no doubt, I really ought to leave Bill. I am only plaguing him. And yet, somehow, to leave––just like that––as the result of a ‘sensible’ decision––or in a towering rage; both seem wrong.”
Writing in the journal, on May 28, about his move to the
foundation on May 21, Christopher merely states that, “I moved because life with Billy had become unbearable. It doesn’t matter just how, or why; and it is certainly no use passing ‘moral’ judgements.”
In other words, Christopher refuses to discuss what happened, even with himself. Later, in another journal entry (August 22), he alludes to “that dreadful party on May 20 when I decided to go to the foundation.” But what was so dreadful about the party?1 From the day-to-day diary I see that [the herculean navy frogman] was there, not to mention Peter Darms, of whom Christopher had always