Liberation (112 page)

Is Dobbin going to collapse? Having these pains makes me remember what cruel pain I often had when I was young. Probably the rheumatic fever pains were the worst, when I was ten.

 

April 25.
A bad dip. I feel pretty sure that I'll end up having to have the hernia operation, in spite of everything. Don is terribly rattled, as he nearly always is when I'm sick. He wants us to drop the “Paul” project. I feel that, if I do, it'll be a serious psychological defeat. And what's the alternative? Beginning the new autobiographical book would be just as much of a sweat.

Also, we need money, and “Paul” is the only dependable way of earning any, right now.

 

April 26.
Last night, I dreamt that a gang was trying to steal the money out of my time deposits. I was at a party at an embassy— whose, where, I don't know—and I kept seeing people who looked exactly like
me
. Whenever I saw one of them I experienced a thrill of terror, I don't know why. But, each time, the likeness faded after a few moments. Don came in and I pointed some of these people out to him.

Yesterday I started wearing a truss—of a kind which Peter Gowland recommended when he came here to supper with Alice and Old Jo on the 23rd. Well, it's another “first,” like being gagged, on October 18. Maybe I have several more such experiences ahead of me!

 

April 28.
Am still waiting around for a decision on what's to be done with old Dub's carcass. I must say, I would like to avoid an operation—not so much for itself as for the misery of being in hospital several days, woken in the midst of sleep and stabbed with needles. For the moment, I'm letting things slide—trying to take adequate walks every day, as the Gowlands and Old Jo recommend. But walks are such a bore. I realize, now I'm old, that the greatest part of my physical exercise used to be fucking, which was largely wrestling and which kept me in very good shape.

I know instinctively that one way back to health would be to get another project going. I really do want to turn out a draft of the “Paul” film. At present, the difficulties seem to be all at the beginning—establishing who Chris is, why he is in Los Angeles, etc.

 

May 2.
Two days ago, I did indeed make a beginning on a new draft of the “Paul” film, which is not only psychologically reassuring but seems to make some sense—it follows suggestions just made by Don; and I see, once again, how valuable his suggestions nearly always are. What he says, in effect, is that we must instantly begin getting to know the Chris character—what his predicament is, as a newcomer from England to California. Thus we find what kind of a companion he needs, and thus we are prepared for the entrance of Paul—even though Chris won't be ready to recognize Paul as his companion until quite a good while later.

Don is absolutely right about this. The only problem is a technical one—that all these explanations have to be made by means of soliloquy, and a little soliloquy goes an awful long way.

Meanwhile, Elsie Giorgi has decided not to have the hernia operation right now, maybe to postpone it indefinitely.

What with this damp weather and Dobbin's generally infirm condition, last night was one of the most wearisomely uncomfortable I have spent in a long while. It was like a nightmare journey of painful slowness—I couldn't sleep, and every move triggered some muscle twinge. But Darling was there.

I keep trying and trying to get some contact with what is within the mantram—my only resource and safety. Consciously, I very seldom do get it, but I guess the effort is a form of contact anyway. And then, occasionally, these sudden tears of joy.

 

May 7.
Today we came to a decision—not to go on working on the “Paul” treatment for Alan Stern, because Don wants to get ready a batch of new paintings to show at the West Beach Café. Don has been looking at the paintings based on photographs of movie stars which he did around 1970–1975. At the time, I thought them extraordinary. Now they seem even more so. Darling feels inspired to begin working again along those lines—only this time he may base the paintings on existing portraits.

Meanwhile, I'm seriously considering starting my next autobiographical book right away—
California
would do for a working title. I think I'd begin with movie studio experiences—my first few jobs, anyhow.

 

May 10.
Dreary gut-pains from the hernia. Disinclination to do anything, and yet a desperate nagging of conscience toward
work
—any work.

May 9—the family death-day—brought us some good news, however: Robert Miller phoned from New York that the Swedish dealer has reappeared and that Don is to mail off a selection of thirty paintings at once.
⁴²

 

May 11.
Depressed. Pains in back and hernia discomfort as bad as ever. I begin to feel that they won't stop. Am also jittery because of threats from the Writers Guild Strike Committee—we're to be fined if we don't cooperate, etc. etc.
⁴³
(What makes me jittery isn't the threat but the prospect of having to get into a towering rage about it.) And then I'm still in a dither about starting my
California
book. Where to start? How? I suppose I'll snap out of this somehow.

 

May 16.
A new scare. My weight has been dropping steadily and now it's lower than it has been in years, to 146 and ¼. As usual, when I get scared, I'm embarrassed to tell Elsie.

On the other side of the ledger, a real important success—on May 12, I made a start on my new autobiographical book
California
; it's opening is nothing very inspired but quite okay, I think. And I can feel how powerfully it's a pro-life force, countering my body aches. Kitty is the
real
life force and he knows instinctively how much the effort to write this book will help me.

 

May 21.
Another very painful night. I felt so discouraged by the pain that I began to feel I'd have the hernia operation, to get some relief. Must talk to Elsie.

However, I am at least crawling on with my
California
book— have got to page 8.

 

May 23.
Two nights ago, Don, Jim White and I drove over to the art museum at Newport Beach,
⁴⁴
where there was a group show, with Don the featured artist—the reproduction on the poster was of his painting of me against the cushions. Also he appeared on a video tape, painting me in the studio. Typically, he objected to one shot and refused to be impressed by the next—he really looked magically beautiful, both in the box and in person, that evening—and his work was worthy of him. It looked magnificent.

Last night, he had to go back there and mingle at a meaningless party—all the artists were supposed to show up but most didn't, because they aren't professionals and have no style.

Poor Angel, he gets back to a dreadful old tiresome pain-ridden Dub. My back is better but I had cramps in the early hours, leg cramps that made me cry out. What must Kitty be thinking to himself? “How much longer do I have to endure this? And what will be left for me by the time that I don't have to?” Oh, he is such an angel of love.

The light side: I have done my page a day on the
California
book so far. Also, I am at last getting on with Chetanananda's huge typescript of edited Vivekananda lectures, to which I have to write a preface.
⁴⁵
Work gives courage for more work.

I keep praying to Swami to be with us both and help us.

 

June 7.
The day before yesterday, after we'd been out for the evening with Wayne
⁴⁶
and Juan
⁴⁷
and Jack Woody and Tom Long and a friend of Tom's from Pittsburgh whom we didn't like, Darling, who was a bit drunk, flew into a rage because he'd heard me talking to Jim Charlton (in Ho[n]olulu) on the phone and I sounded (Darling says) so thrilled—“Oh
Jim
!” I exclaimed. Darling mimicked my gushy-delighted tone. My tone with Jim— as Darling knows well enough by now—always tends to be gushy because I'm always a bit on the defensive with Jim, who is
such
a dog person, itching to be rejected so he can whimper and growl reproachfully. Well, anyhow, Darling worked himself up into a cat snit and threw things at my desk, with the result that he slightly damaged The Totem Horse, knocking off his sacred saddle.
⁴⁸
He did not damage, but did knock over, The Totem Kitty.
⁴⁹

So yesterday there was great sweetness and purring. But I was rather pissed off—I'd hurt my hernia tidying up the mess. So I said I wasn't going to Honolulu on the 29th, because Darling had created an impossible situation with regard to Jim.

Of course the truth is that now I've
got
to go—and I couldn't dread it more. This has nothing whatever to do with Jim. I simply dread spending all that time cooped up in a house with Billy Al and Penny.
⁵⁰
They're all right—I'm quite fond of them—but they're
aliens.
All the more so now I'm old and shaky and pain-shot. And how can I face their gang of heterosexual swimmers? What could be more utterly ungay? Oh, if only something would force us to cancel! But don't get me wrong—I'm not praying for an accident or illness or any other unpleasant crisis.

Oh God—and this evening I have to face dinner with Mrs. Misery and Mr. Know-All—Joan and John Dunne. And dreadful old Weidenfeld will be there.

Good news: I'm keeping up my stint of pages on the new book—to the first third of page 28.

And
the doses of Butazolidin really have helped my back.

 

June 26.
Well, ha ha, the prayer was answered—that's to say, I've got to go into hospital (St. John's) on the day after tomorrow and stay there at least six years days (note sinister slip!) and have my hernia operated on and also be thoroughly tested, because Elsie Giorgi is concerned about my liver and my steady loss of weight—I'm down now to 139 and ½. So now I'm being, as it were, self-punished for my tiresomeness. Darling has been angelic about this. We are so utterly each other's. It is poignant and makes me cry, sometimes. I have no way of knowing if he is seriously alarmed or not. I guess not—except that he's worried about my weight loss; he sees how scraggy I look.

Ah, hospitals—how I shudder at the breath of them! I don't believe I have ever spent one whole week in a hospital in my life—which just gives you an idea how healthy and lucky my life has been. I must try to make something out of this experience—a dress rehearsal of what must so soon come.

(Incidentally, we have already switched dates and arranged to go to Hawaii and visit Billy Al and Penny sometime around the end of July. And now that's okay. I'll even enjoy it, I think. Oh crazy bad Dobbin!)

 

June 27.
It's tantalizing, how clearly I seem to see my way ahead on the
California
book just when I have to stop work because of going into hospital. Yesterday, I had a really deep insight—it occurred to me that the letter I wrote to Gerald Hamilton in 1939, attacking the war propaganda made by Erika and Klaus Mann and others, was really a device, to get myself regarded as an enemy in England and therefore make it impossible for me to “repent” and return. That was why I chose Gerald Hamilton to send my letter to—I knew he would broadcast it.
⁵¹

Another “thread” in this weave is my continuing effort to turn myself officially into a pacifist—by associating with Aldous Huxley, Gerald Heard, Allan Hunter, and then joining the Quakers. It comes back to me now that, soon after Pearl Harbor, when I was already working at the Haverford Quaker hostel, I got some sort of offer from Washington—promoted, I'm nearly certain, by Lincoln Kirstein. I think it was an intelligence job—was in an office— not amidst cloaks and daggers, but dignified by a military rank (major?). This I refused, on pacifist grounds. When I remember Wystan's ill-advised appearance in London wearing a U.S. major's uniform, I get a glimpse, not altogether pleasing, of my own foxiness. I would never have made such a miscalculation. And Wystan seems to me, at such moments, fundamentally more innocent than I could ever be.

 

July 17.
Maybe this is a propitious date—what with my look-alike “Wrong Way” Corrigan's landing in Ireland (July 17, 1938)
⁵²
—and the eclipse of the moon last night—anyhow, I woke up this morning with a curiously strong feeling of assurance that I am at last about to get better—that's to say, stop feeling so miserable. My back doesn't hurt as much as usual and I'm not so limp and lazy, even though this heat hasn't let up and the air's still smoggy.

Anyhow, this nonsense has been going on quite long enough. (Reading back over this account, I see that I have been ailing since March.) Now I must really push ahead with my
California
book.

 

July 26.
Ah, this weary summer of hot weather! My old body aches and I feel sick to my stomach so much of the time, and nauseated by the sight and smell of food. Darling is being truly wonderful. He cooks for me, waits on me and grumbles just sufficiently to remain human, not intimidatingly angelic.

There is no way through this wretched period except by working at the
California
book and other projects. One welcome helper is Lyle Fox. I was somehow inspired to call him—he's managing the old folks' hotel in Santa Monica, The Georgian. He came at once—instantly announcing that he didn't want to be paid—and gave my back a deep massage. He married a French wife while living for two years at Cap Ferrat. He seemed quite unchanged, cheerful, silly, a truly kind and good man.