where Christopher had reserved a room at a motel. The room had a double bed in it. “I’d thought it was to be for a man and wife,” the motel manager said, eyeing them suspiciously. They assured him it didn’t matter, and started undressing as soon as he had left. “Let’s go to Laguna and fuck,” Christopher had said, and fuck they did for the rest of the afternoon, until it was time to have supper with Chris Wood.
Next day, Sunday the 5th, they drove all day, visiting the Capis-trano Mission, Lake Elsinore, the Observatory on Mount Palomar and Warner Hot Springs before returning to Laguna Beach. In a note in the journal, when he is restarting it on November 6, 1948, Christopher describes September 5 as having been “one of the happiest days of my life.” Why?
Christopher used to be fond of saying, at that time, that happiness is simply the breaking of contact with pain, since it is in our nature to be happy whenever the reasons for being unhappy cease to exist.
A highly subjective statement which smells of Disneyism, it is perhaps true in this particular instance. If Christopher was especially happy that day, it was basically because he had no immediate woes or worries. He was in perfect health. He was earning plenty of money at the studio. He had the clear conscience of a wage earner on holiday who knows that his work is up to schedule and is giving satisfaction to his employers. He was released from all the anxieties which arose whenever he was with Caskey. At the same time, he had no reason to be anxious about Caskey in his absence, for Caskey wrote regularly and would soon be returning to California.
But all this was on the negative side merely; the negating of causes for unhappiness. On the positive side was Jim himself. On this day and for this kind of outing, he must have seemed to Christopher to 164
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be the absolutely ideal companion. Christopher was fascinated by Jim’s conversation and by his stories about his life. He found Jim romantic, ridiculous and delightful. He was hot for Jim and knew that Jim would have sex whenever he wanted it. Above all, he
realized instinctively, even then, that Jim wouldn’t present any problem in his relations with Caskey. Christopher felt he could let himself go and indulge his crush on Jim to the utmost, because there were no strings attached to him.
Jim probably felt very much the same way about Christopher.1
While they were together at Lake Elsinore that day, Jim muttered,
“No wonder people fall in love with you!” The way he said this made it sound like an accusation––but that was as near as Jim could get to sentiment. He certainly found Christopher exciting to be with.
And he enjoyed going to bed with him. As for the existence of Caskey, I’m sure that didn’t worry Jim. Being a Dog Person, he could attach himself to a couple just as readily as to an individual.
Which is what he later did.
The next weekend, Christopher got three whole days off from the studio, September 11–13. On the 11th, Jim and Christopher drove to Laguna Beach again; this time, they stayed with Chris Wood. On the 12th, they drove down to Mexico and stayed at the huge old Hotel Pacifico in Ensenada. They had some drinks and then decided to take a shower before supper. Under the shower, Jim grabbed Christopher and began kissing him. They must have kissed for at least half an hour without stopping. Then they dried themselves, fucked and fell asleep.
Several hours later, Christopher awoke and, as he did so, had a minor psychic experience. It is described in The World in the Evening (part two, chapter three):
There was a night . . . when I’d woken from heavy dreamless sleep after making love with Jane, and hadn’t known who or where I
was. I’d seemed to be looking down, from some impersonal no-
place, at our two bodies lying in each other’s arms on the bed. I could swear that I’d actually hesitated, then, like a guest at the end 1 What I wrote here may well be more or less true. But, years after writing it ( July 26, 1977), I came upon this entry in my 1960 diary (August 17); it puts our 1948 meeting in a slightly different light:
A rather wonderful evening with Jim Charlton last night. We got nearer to our old relation than in a long while––largely because he didn’t whine and complain so much of Hilde. . . . He says that when he first met me––when I assumed I was cutting rather a glamorous figure––I was forever complaining about my age and failing powers. Now he finds me much more active and less sorry for myself, and even better looking!
¾ 1948 ¾
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of a party who looks at two overcoats, not sure for a moment
which is which, before I’d decided, “That one’s mine.”
(There is, of course, one falsification here. Stephen, in the novel, is said to be looking down on a male and a female body––not on two male bodies, as Christopher was. Could one actually be in doubt as to one’s sex? I suppose it’s possible. But that wasn’t Christopher’s experience.)
Next morning, they went on the beach––huge and (in those days) deserted. Christopher admired Jim’s powerful swimming. (He was also a daring surfer.) As they drove back toward the border, Jim suggested stopping near the edge of a big cliff overlooking the sea.
Jim had explored this cliff on a previous visit and said that its slope was full of small hollows where you could lie hidden and sunbathe––in other words, fuck. Christopher vetoed this idea––I
forget why, but I am sorry he did, because this would have added another happy memory to his memories of their trip. Making love with Jim in the open air always seemed particularly suitable; he was not only a Whitman Nature Boy but also a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, who opened his houses––including their bedrooms––to the outdoors.
This was the period in which the Wright Revolution was making its influence visible at the grass roots level; all over the Los Angeles area, soda fountains and hot-dog stands began to appear which were crude but recognizable distortions of Wright’s style. Until Christopher met Jim he had known nothing about the Wright
philosophy and would probably have dismissed it as pretentious double-talk if it had been explained to him by an academic outsider.
But with Jim it was different. He was an authentic disciple. At the Taliesins he had seen a vision, and Christopher could respect visions.
Wright’s slogans and phrases didn’t repel Christopher when Jim repeated them; they seemed part of Jim’s lovable absurdity.
Christopher sometimes accused Jim of not wanting people to live in the houses he designed––because people were so messy, they choked the rooms with furniture, cluttered them with cooking pots and books and violated the purity of their wall spaces by hanging pictures.
Jim grinned, half admitting that this was how he felt.
At the same time, Christopher admired Jim enormously, just
because he was a truly dedicated architect. Jim made Christopher understand, for the first time, the interrelation of landscape and architecture and taught Christopher how to look at architecture in a new way, as an expression of various philosophies of life. (When they drove back from Mexico, that day, Jim showed Christopher the
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dining room of the old Coronado Hotel.) Jim even dreamed
architecture. Often, when he and Christopher had been sleeping together, he would wake up and describe in great detail some vast building and its adjoining gardens in which he had been dream-wandering, drawing pictures to show Christopher exactly how it had looked.
Part of the fun and excitement of being with Jim was that he felt free to inspect any building which was under construction. If people were at work on it, he would enter with such an air of authority that he was very seldom questioned. He would climb all over it, occasionally uttering scornful grunts or exclaiming, “Jesus!” or kick-ing disgustedly at its walls. Sometimes he would go so far as to knock over an insecure partition, saying indignantly, “What’s this goddam thing supposed to be for?” or, “Who do they think they’re kidding, for Christ’s sake!”