Jim’s parents had been living near Love Field at that time because his father was a pilot in the Army Air Corps. When air postal service began, he flew mail. He was killed in a crash while Jim was still very young.1 The example of Jim’s father may possibly have predisposed 1 Here are some additions and corrections, based on conversations I had with Jim in December 1972, since writing the paragraphs [above].
Jim’s father flew into a mountain during a storm. His dead body showed almost no external injuries, only a bruise on its chin. Jim is apt to talk as if his father’s accident had been a subconsciously willed suicide––because he was bored with his wife, Jim implies––and a peculiarly inconsiderate one, since it made Mrs. Charlton so afraid of losing her child as well as her husband that she kept Jim at home with her and tried to prevent him from making friends with other boys. Jim blames his mother for his early shyness and inhibitions.
“When I was at Wright’s, I was going crazy,” Jim says. “I used to wander around the desert behind Taliesin with a copy of Wolfe’s Of Time and the River. At night, the moonlight was pink.” The planes he saw, on the day he decided to join the air force, appeared out of a wash [i.e., a dry stream bed]. They weren’t in formation. They were flying very low, each following ¾ 1948 ¾
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Jim to join the air force, but that wasn’t the way Jim told it. He described how he had seen two planes appear suddenly out of a canyon, in Arizona, and soar up into the sky doing aerobatics, and how he had decided, then and there, that he must fly too. In other words, Jim’s enlistment had been for aesthetic reasons––it had nothing directly to do with admiration for his father, and nothing whatever with patriotism.
In his flying stories, Jim always made fun of himself. He told how, soon after he had started to solo, he had decided that it would be beautiful to fly over a neighboring lake and dip first one wing tip and then the other in the water, so as to leave ripple-rings right across its surface. He hadn’t managed to do this, however, and had come to his instructor for advice. The instructor had told him he was an idiot and very lucky––if he had succeeded in touching the water with his wing tip he would have wrecked his plane.
When Jim was finally sent to England, he flew several times over Germany, but the Luftwaffe was by then practically nonexistent and he was never in combat.[*] Once, however, while he was over
Berlin––he found he wanted to pee. You had to do this into a special container and it was awkward because of the lack of space. Jim somehow got himself entangled in his machine guns and unintentionally fired them––which brought several of his fellow pilots whizzing down out of the clouds, thinking he was being attacked.
If Jim had been just another good candidate for the role of
Whitman American Boy, Christopher would have fallen for him
anyway; but what made Christopher really love Jim, and go on doing so long after his feelings had ceased to be romantic, was his view of Jim as an essentially ridiculous character, even a bit of a fake.
its individual course, hopping over rocks and clumps of cactus.
At that time, Wright was feuding with the draft board, trying to stop it from taking away his pupils. He declared that their work with him was of far greater national importance than fighting. As a result, some of them ended up in prison. And Wright himself lost several clients, who thought him unpatriotic.
When Jim joined the air force, it was because he wanted to fly, not to fight.
He avoided being sent overseas for a long time. He moved from one base to another, flying all kinds of different planes and enjoying himself enormously.
Then Jim’s great friend became depressed, thinking he was losing his looks and getting old; so he grew careless and crashed. He was found lying dead in a relaxed attitude, without external injuries, like Jim’s father.
Jim’s father had an identical twin brother. They were both great athletes in school, but the brother was the smaller of the two. Jim’s father was nicknamed
“Horse” and Jim’s father’s brother was nicknamed “Colt.”
[* But see Glossary under Charlton.]
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Lost Years
For one thing, Jim was apt to talk like a male impersonator, in a voice which was too deep for his physique and too butch for his I.Q.
He must have worked on this voice a lot when he was younger and eager to adjust to the air force. Also he had a pseudomasculine mannerism which he often affected while telephoning; he would ring your number, say hello so that you knew who was calling and then remain silent until you said something in reply. Christopher (and many others) had the impression that this was a game; Jim’s silence was a challenge. When two tough guys confront each other, it is traditionally the weaker who starts talking first. Jim was playing the hero in a western movie.
Although Christopher made affectionate fun of Jim’s male
impersonations, he privately found them sexually attractive. But he couldn’t admit this even to Jim. He would have liked Jim to play the stud in bed, but Jim never playacted there; he dropped his affectations with his clothes. He would fuck Christopher as readily as he would let himself be fucked, but neither of the two positions was symbolic, as far as Jim was concerned––this was simply a matter of give and take. So Christopher was reduced to indulging his fantasy in secret, during the act. With Jim’s cock inside him, he told himself: “The big fighter pilot was naked on top of him, raping him, fucking the shit out of him . . .” etc. etc.
When Christopher met Jim, Jim had already been worried for a
long time by the shape of the tip of his nose. He had wanted to have it altered, but the plastic surgeon whom he had consulted had pooh-poohed the idea, telling him that he would do better to go to an analyst and find out why he disliked his nose. Jim had followed the surgeon’s advice and consulted a number of analysts, without getting any definite answers.
Jim’s current analyst––a Jewish family-father––kept urging him to take up family life, with all its responsibilities and joys. He represented homosexual life as being irresponsible, immature and wretched, by contrast. He drooled over the satisfaction he got from washing his baby’s diapers. Jim related this to Christopher, obviously wanting him to speak up for the opposition. Christopher did so, with enthusiasm.
He poured scorn on the analyst and refuted his statements, and Jim was delighted. What Christopher didn’t realize until much later was that Jim was far more disturbed by the analyst’s propaganda than he would admit. Jim secretly felt that he ought to get married and support a family. And he certainly wanted to have a son––who would grow up to become a Charlton Boy. Maybe Jim had fantasies of going to bed with him. (A few years after this, Jim begot a male baby and married its mother, thereby [also] acquiring stepsons. [. . .])
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But, for the time being, Jim accepted Christopher as his mentor.
He was much impressed by the number of people Christopher had been to bed with––Christopher could no longer state an exact figure but he guessed at one, I think it was somewhere in the four hundreds.
Jim immediately vowed to beat this, and, within two or three years, he reported that he had done so.
Throughout the rest of August, Christopher and Jim met when-
ever they could. Sometimes, Jim stayed the night at the El Kanan.
Christopher introduced him to Hayden and Rod, who were flat-
teringly envious. Hayden said, “Where on earth did you find him?”
Rod made a pass at Jim in the men’s room of the restaurant where they were celebrating Christopher’s birthday.
On the first weekend of that September, the 4th and 5th, Jim and Christopher went on a trip. They drove down to Laguna Beach,