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shame. The gesture of masking the eyes––as if afraid to look at her own body. The brutally aggressive forward-jerking G-string. The secret smile as the dress is loosened. The presentation of the breasts. The final sexual challenge.
The horrible toothless old male comics. A world of triumphant women––in which the men are impotent and hideous.
January 28: “Lunch with Beesleys. Katharine Hepburn came in.
Vigil 9–10 p.m.” Hepburn lived quite close to the Beesleys. She had walked over to see them. They didn’t know her well. A link between them was the Swedish married couple who had once worked for
Hepburn and now worked for the Beesleys. This man and his wife were nice looking, youngish, spotlessly clean, demure, lazy, expensive and devoted to vicious gossip. They told Dodie and Alec how
eccentric, ill-tempered and domineering Hepburn was as an employer.
They claimed that she walked about in the woods naked. I myself have no memory of Hepburn at this time, except that her freckles were very prominent and that she seemed friendly and pleasant.
January 29: “Drove with Bill to Robinsons, to leave Gitas. Spent the evening at his place.” This is a good specimen day to represent this period in Christopher’s life––with one foot in the Vedanta Center and one foot out of it. These were newly printed copies of the Gita, which Christopher was taking to Robinsons department store. (I think there was a devotee employed in their book
department who was going to push the Gita.)
The rest of the day was spent at Bill’s La Cienega apartment. It seems to me now that La Cienega was perhaps the most romantic street in Los Angeles, in those days. It had an un-American air of reticence, of unwillingness to display itself. Its shops were small and unshowy; its private houses were private. Also––and this was what really appealed to Christopher—it seemed to have a bohemian, self-contained life of its own. It was a “quarter,” which didn’t make any effort to welcome outside visitors. Many of its dwellers were hidden away in odd little garden houses and shacks, within courtyards or on alleys, behind the row of buildings which lined the street. It was in one of these that Bill lived.
I suppose Christopher was now very much aware of Bill’s
impending departure and wanted to perform an act of sexual magic which would, as it were, stake out a permanent claim in Bill even after he “belonged” to Pancho. Anyhow, Christopher told Bill that he wanted to fuck him in every room of the apartment. (This
probably consisted only of bedroom, living room, kitchen and
bathroom.) Bill was quite willing––the idea of “staged” sex excited 16
Lost Years
him. They had often talked of unusual places where one might
make love. On this occasion, their only daring move was to go outside the house––the apartment being on the ground floor––and fuck one more time in the courtyard, in the rain. The neighbors may well have seen them doing this. If they did, there were no complaints. When it was over, Bill and Christopher felt very
pleased with themselves and each other. Bill even went so far as to say, “You know, if you were three or four inches taller, you might quite easily be Heathcliff.” “Heathcliff ” was Bill’s name for the ideal sex partner. But “Heathcliff ” had to be at least a couple of inches taller than Bill.
(The word fuck in the above paragraph is perhaps misleading. I don’t mean that Bill and Christopher had five distinct orgasms on this occasion; only that there were five stickings-in and pullings-out. Bill later paid Christopher another compliment indirectly, by telling Denny all about it and saying how it had hurt. I think this was Bill’s kind of politeness. Bill was a veteran fuckee, and getting hurt is usually due to inexperience.)
January 31: “With Bill to the framer’s. He washed shirts, etc. The soldier came in.”
I have forgotten to mention that Bill painted, in those days. (Later, he retouched photographs and made various kinds of art objects.) He had done a self-portrait, I believe, that Christopher wanted as a keepsake––perhaps it was this that was being framed. But then again it seems to me that Bill was dissatisfied with the self-portrait and repainted it as a woman, whom Christopher decided to call Santa Monica. It is Santa Monica’s picture, anyhow, which we have here in the house today.
I forget what the soldier’s name was. He was one of Bill’s lovers and he showed up with the obvious intention of getting some sex.
Finding Christopher there, he sat down to wait until Christopher left. But Christopher wasn’t about to leave. He glared jealously at the soldier and the atmosphere became tense. Suddenly Bill jumped up and ran out of the apartment and into the street. Christopher followed him. The scene was dramatic, because Bill was barefoot and had nothing on him but a bathrobe––however, no one on the boule-vard appeared to pay much attention to this. When Christopher caught up with Bill, Bill was rather cross. “All this love—” he exclaimed, “I can’t stand it!” As far as I remember, Christopher and the soldier ended by leaving the house together and going up to the soldier’s place for a drink. By this time, Christopher was definitely interested in him, for he was sexy. But the soldier wasn’t interested in Christopher, and nothing happened.
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February 3: “Down to Denny’s. Tom Maddox,[*] Jeff [†] and
Curly[‡] were there. With Denny and Bill to see Othello. Bill and I slept at Bobo and Kelley’s.”
Tom Maddox was a very good-looking young actor, of the type
which is classified as “rugged.” His career looked promising at that time, but he never amounted to much. He was having a dangerous and exciting affair with Roddy McDowall, who was then in his
teens.1 According to Tom, Roddy was the one who had started it.
Tom said Roddy was insanely reckless and got a thrill out of having sex with Tom in the McDowall home, while Roddy’s parents were in the next room.
Jeff and Curly were two of Denny’s sexual playmates, a pair of highly untrustworthy teenagers who liked pot and blue movies and who would have been quite capable of turning nasty at any moment and resorting to blackmail. This, for Denny, was a large part of their charm. I think they were brothers.2
The performance of Othello (downtown at the Biltmore) starred Paul Robeson, José Ferrer and Uta Hagen. Robeson looked
marvellous in his costume, indeed he was perfectly typecast, but I don’t remember that he was more than adequate; he sweated
profusely. José Ferrer was a newcomer then, and he probably seemed better than he was. I remember him being tricky and showy in the
“Put money in thy purse” speech to Roderigo and getting a lot of applause. I think we were all grateful, out here in the sticks, for any halfway stylish Shakespeare productions. Such events were like signs that the cultural blackout of the war was coming to an end.
Wallace Bobo and Howard Kelley, always referred to as Bo and
Kelley, had another of the upstair front apartments at 137 Entrada Drive. So they were constantly in and out of Denny’s apartment and were at most of his parties. They were ideal neighbors, easygoing, helpful, ready to go along with any of Denny’s schemes; difficult as he could be, he never quarrelled with either of them. Bo was perhaps 1 The Information Please Almanac says that Roddy was born in September 1928––in which case he would have been only sixteen at this time. Since writing the above, I have been reliably informed that Roddy was eighteen when he had the affair with Tom––which means that it can’t have happened until the fall of the following year. I still trust my memory as far as Tom’s statement is concerned, but no doubt he was bragging a little to impress Denny, that tireless chicken hawk. Tom would want to make Roddy seem as young and as wild as possible, because that would make him more desirable in Denny’s eyes.