2 Sometime before this, Denny must have had the Picasso (see April 13, 1944
[in D 1]) crated and removed from his apartment to be shipped east. While he was away in the East––in New York, I think––he sold the Picasso to a private buyer, someone he met at a cocktail party, I believe. Denny was very pleased with himself for having arranged this, and said that the sum of money he got for it was far more than the dealers had offered him. Fact and fiction mingle at this point––I can’t now be sure if $9,500, the figure I give in Down There on a Visit, is correct or not. Anyhow, the picture was eventually resold for something like $40,000. I think it’s now in Chicago, in one of the museums.
[It is in New York, in the Museum of Modern Art; see Glossary under Fouts.]
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this was due to a recurrence of the penis trouble referred to on page 23 of this volume but I can’t remember what the symptoms were exactly, except that they were painful. The constriction, or whatever it was, continued, on and off, until the beginning of 1946, when Christopher had the operation which will be described in due course.
On October 1, Caskey and Christopher started on a long motor
trip in the Lincoln, which lasted nearly three weeks. Their itinerary was as follows:
October 1. They drove to Santa Barbara, stayed with Denny’s
sister, Ellen Bowman. October 2. They drove to Carmel. October 3.
They visited Monterey. October 4–7. They drove to San Francisco and stayed there three days, at the Hotel Richelieu. October 7. They drove to Fresno. October 8. They drove into Yosemite and back.
October 9. They drove through Sequoia Park to Bakersfield.
October 10. They drove to Las Vegas, and visited Boulder Dam from there on the 11th. October 12. They drove to Phoenix, stayed at the Hotel Adams. October 13. They drove to El Centro and had supper in Calexico. (Caskey wanted to drive across the border to Mexicali but Christopher wouldn’t; as he was still a British subject, he was afraid there might be difficulties when he tried to reenter the States.) October 14. They drove to Johnny Goodwin’s ranch, near Escondido. (This was a house called Armageddon, which Johnny had had built for himself. From outside, it looked rather like an Egyptian temple, massive and secret, with a great pillared portal and very few windows. When you entered, you found that the rooms all opened onto an interior courtyard. Johnny had valuable furniture and pictures––including a very striking Miró, one of the few Mirós I have ever really liked.) October 15. They drove to Palm Springs, stayed at the Estrella Villa. October 16. They had dinner with Carter Lodge at La Quinta. October 17. They drove back to Johnny Goodwin’s ranch. October 18. They drove to Laguna Beach and had supper with Chris Wood and Gerald Heard. They drove back to Santa
Monica and Denny’s apartment on October 19.
Oddly enough, I remember almost nothing about this trip; my
memories of the places they went to are connected with earlier or later visits. I remember that their stay with Johnny Goodwin was passed largely in playing guessing games and charades. In one of these, Caskey gave himself the name “Miss Bijou Slyboots”––did he invent it? At Laguna, Gerald Heard was rather cool to Caskey and Christopher; he disapproved of their relationship on principle, regarding it as a betrayal of Swami’s trust in Christopher. (Maybe Peggy had been talking to him about this.) Chris Wood had no such scruples. He approved of Caskey. But, with his usual frankness, he 48
Lost Years
asked Christopher, “Surely he hasn’t got the kind of legs you like, has he?”
On their return to Denny’s apartment, Hayden Lewis moved in
with them. This must have been understood from the beginning to be a temporary arrangement––until, presumably, Hayden could find another place to live, or a job. But the fact that Christopher agreed to it at all shows that his relations with Caskey were still in the honeymoon stage. The apartment consisted of two rooms only, and he must have hated having Hayden around. The day-to-day diary doesn’t say when Hayden left, but he can’t have stayed long––maybe not more than two weeks.
On November 17, they had another visitor, the Willy Tompkins
who had publicly fucked on Denny’s couch at the party in June. He was out of the navy, now, and determined to enjoy himself. Not that he had had such a bad time in the service. Willy belonged to that amazing breed of hero-queens who are able to see war itself as camp.
According to him, the battles of the South Pacific were primarily erotic events; all members of the crew who weren’t actually firing guns would pair off in corners for high-speed sex. Between explosions, you would hear someone gasp out, “Kiss me, quick, I’m going to come!” Even if they were exaggerated, Willy’s stories were none the less beautiful; they were so magnificently death-denying.
One night while Willy was with them, Christopher lay awake (but pretending to be asleep) listening to a conversation about himself between Willy and Caskey. Willy was evidently a bit skeptical about Christopher as a lover, considering his age. But Caskey, more than somewhat drunk, assured Willy, “He’s the best lay on the Pacific Coast!” This testimonial must have impressed Willy, for next day, when the three of them were at the then bare-ass Riviera Beach and Caskey had gone off for a stroll, Willy made a pass at Christopher.
Christopher would have responded with pleasure, but Caskey
reappeared unexpectedly.
On November 22, Caskey, Hayden, Willy Tompkins and
Christopher drove down to Johnny Goodwin’s ranch for a four-day visit. On November 28, Willy left.
Early in November, Prater Violet was reviewed by Time, which said it was “a fresh, firm peach in a dish of waxed fruits.” Also by Diana Trilling, who really and truly liked it; and by James T. Farrell, who discovered it to be so fraught with political irony and analysis of contemporary culture that it couldn’t have been better if it had been written by James T. Farrell himself––as indeed it almost was, by the time he was through describing it. Nearly all the reviews were favorable, and the book sold quite well.
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The Time reviewer reported that he had been told Isherwood was
“now at work on a novel about physically and spiritually ‘displaced persons.’ ” On January 13 of 1946, Philip K. Scheuer published an interview with Christopher in The Los Angeles Times in which
Christopher tells him that Prater Violet was the first of three novelettes about refugees: “They will cover the whole period of immigration between Hitler and the war.” Christopher said that he was then at work on the second of these novelettes. One of them must have been about Haverford, I suppose. Maybe the other was about the Greek island, or about the adventures of the girl who is called Dorothy in Down There on a Visit––I can’t remember. I’m inclined to suspect that Christopher was bluffing when he made these reports. I doubt if he wrote anything much, as long as he was living in the Entrada Drive apartment. One memory of any living place (no matter how
temporary) which I nearly always retain is the memory of the spot where I worked. At Entrada Drive I simply cannot picture it. And besides it seems to me that Caskey and Christopher spent most of their time entertaining, and drinking, and having hangovers in the mornings.