Lost Years (14 page)

Steve had started going to dramatic classes at Ouspenskaya's school—this is first referred to on June 12. As far as I remember, the classes consisted largely of learning to sway like corn in the wind and to break like sea waves. I don't think Steve persevered in this for long.

At this time, Christopher was interested in consulting clairvoyants. His motive was partly a wish to know what was going to happen to him, but it was also, and to a much greater degree, scientific curiosity. He was, he said to himself, at a point in his life at which the future seemed altogether obscure—all he knew was that he would soon leave the Vedanta Center, and he had no idea what would happen next. Therefore his was an ideal test case for the powers of precognition which a clairvoyant is supposed to have.

I forget who the people were that Christopher consulted—the unfamiliar names which occur in the day-to-day diary at this time give no definite clue. All I remember is one curious episode: A clairvoyant (who otherwise told Christopher nothing memorable) said, “Quite soon, in a few hours, a close friend of yours will get into serious trouble, he will be arrested—but don't worry, everything will come out all right.” That same evening, Steve was walking along the street when he was stopped by the shore patrol and asked to identify himself This happened all the time, for there were a lot of servicemen going around AWOL in civilian clothes. Steve had been in the navy (in an office in Utah or Nebraska) and had received an honorable discharge. He was supposed to carry this discharge with him at all times, but he had left it at home that evening, which was an offense. So he was under arrest for a while, until the discharge had been produced. He was then cautioned and set free. Christopher knew nothing of this until Steve called and told him, next day.

The day-to-day diary records two more Swami—Maugham meetings; on June 29, Willie came to supper at the Vedanta Center and on July 6 Swami and Christopher went to supper at George Cukor's with Ethel Barrymore and Katharine Hepburn also present. I can recall nothing of these. But I do remember, with impressionistic vividness, another, daytime occasion when Christopher was summoned to Cukor's house because Maugham wanted to speak to him. I have a picture of Christopher making his way through a succession of rooms like Chinese boxes, each one smaller than the last and all crammed with paintings and souvenirs and treasures, into the innermost sanctuary, where Willie sits writing and looks up from his work to say, “I think, C-Christopher, you'd b-better warn your friend Denham that his apartment is b-being watched by the p-police.” (What I do not remember is, how Willie had heard this bit of information. It seems to me that Denny had been reported to the police because of his association with minors, including probably Jeff and Curly. But nothing serious came of it. Denny was very impressed and pleased that Willie had taken the trouble to warn him.)
⁴⁵

On July 26, Christopher had lunch with Miss Dicky Bonaparte, the immigration counsellor who had helped him get his quota visa and take out his first citizenship papers in 1939. This must mean that they were discussing the steps he must take to get his citizenship; he was now eligible for it. At that time, no conscientious objector could become a citizen because no exceptions or reservations were allowed in taking the loyalty oath; you had to swear to defend the country, no matter what your age and sex were. Christopher had been advised that he should apply for citizenship, however—because soon the regulations might be altered and because, if he didn't apply, his application might be refused later. So he applied, and went downtown to talk to someone in the immigration bureau. This official was not merely understanding but really friendly; it happened that he had liked some of Christopher's books. He even urged Christopher to take the oath anyway, “After all, it's just a form of words.” Christopher was charmed by such civilized cynicism, but he wasn't about to commit himself to a public lie which might be used against him sometime in the future by a less friendly bureaucrat. So, with an air of modest nobility, he refused.

All through July, Christopher had continued to see Steve. The day-to-day diary mentions only one meeting with Caskey—they had spent the night on the beach, July 21. But at the beginning of August, a change is evident. Christopher sees Steve on the 1st and has supper with him on the 3rd. On the 4th, Denny is away in Mexico and Christopher stays at his apartment with Caskey. After that, Christopher and Caskey begin seeing each other regularly and there are no more meetings with Steve—except for a supper with Steve and his mother, probably a duty date, on August 22.

My memories of this switchover are very dim; perhaps incidents and conversations have been censored by Christopher's feelings of guilt. Christopher's guilt, if any, is uninteresting. The only important question is, did Steve mind being dropped? I think he probably did, much more than he showed; but I don't believe he let it upset him for long. He was very self-reliant. It seems to me that Steve once said, “If I had a lot of money and could invite you out, everything would be different.” This (if he did indeed say it) was touching but quite untrue. Christopher never minded paying, as long as he was sure his guest wasn't a gold digger—and never for one moment did he suspect Steve of that. Caskey didn't have any money, either.

Caskey or no Caskey, Christopher would have left Steve before long—because Steve didn't fit into the rest of his life. Steve embarrassed him in every way, not only when they were in company but even when they were alone together. When Steve told Christopher that he thought him much better looking than Gary Cooper, Christopher was amused, of course, but he also felt depressed by the absurdity of the comparison. This was the wrong myth, the wrong kind of playacting; he couldn't go along with it. Even while they were screwing, Christopher often felt it was like a scene out of
True Confessions
.
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]
And, when other people were there, Christopher always was aware of being on the defensive. He was watching to see how they would react to Steve. Would they decide, like Denny, that Steve was “a department-store queen”? If Christopher had reached any real intimacy with Steve, he would have been ready to defy everybody. But he hadn't and therefore he wasn't. He wasn't prepared to quarrel with his friends if they looked down on Steve, so he avoided taking the risk; he didn't introduce Steve to the Beesleys or to Peggy Kiskadden or to Salka Viertel or to John van Druten.

All this sounds as if Steve swished, lisped, wriggled, wore makeup,
elaborate hairdos and flaming costumes. But he didn't. He was quiet, pleasant, unsulky, well behaved. It wasn't that he was, socially speaking,
too much,
he wasn't
enough.
Christopher was a sexual snob—like most other people—and he needed a lover who could impress his friends.

Bill Caskey, on the other hand,
was
socially presentable—indeed, to a remarkable degree, if you considered how wildly he could misbehave in public, when he chose. “Earthy,” outspoken, crude, vulgar, violent as he could sometimes be, he was also able to project a southern upper-class charm to go with his Kentucky accent. Red-eyed, drunk and unshaven, he looked every inch a Eugene O'Neill Irish lowlife character; washed and shaved and sober, dressed in a Brooks Brothers shirt and suit, he was fit for the nicest homes. Caskey really was a social amphibian, and Christopher was hugely impressed and attracted by this quality in him; he was—as he was later to prove—equally at home talking to the famous, or to little old ladies, or to fellow prisoners in jail, or to shipmates on an oil tanker; and, unless he was in the mood to pick a fight, nearly everybody liked him.

He was small—smaller than Christopher—very sturdily built, with square shoulders and the slightly bowed legs of a horseman. His brown hair was curly and he wore it very short to conceal this as much as possible. (“A crop-headed rascal” was Collier's description of him.) His grey-blue eyes looked sleepy and his voice had a lazy sound. His over large but well-shaped head and his thick lips both had that Negroid quality which is so often apparent in the white Southerner. His body was sexily covered with a close fuzz of curly hair; there was even quite a lot on his back. He had very bad teeth (which he had the knack of hiding even when he smiled), a biggish cock and only one testicle.

Although Caskey was still so young, he wasn't in the least boyish. He had an impressive air of having “been around”—as indeed he had. He was quite without shyness, even in the presence of the old and the wise; it was this freedom from shyness which made him able to treat them so unaffectedly, and to charm them. (Both Stravinsky and Forster were delighted with him; Stravinsky said of him, “He's my type.”) He had a domestic quality which made Christopher feel cozy and looked after, in the periods between their blazing home-wrecking rows. From this aspect, Christopher often reacted to him as if to a woman of his own age; he used to say that Caskey and he were like a sophisticated French married couple, the kind who address each other as “dear friend.” He also saw Caskey as a kind of nanny.

Caskey had been in the navy for a while, but not overseas. He had avoided military service as long as he could and had got into some fairly serious trouble with the draft by failing to register or report. His lover, Len Hanna, an elderly and very wealthy man, had used his expensive lawyer to straighten things out. But the navy—in Florida or New Orleans or both—had turned out to be a bore, with lots of office work, which could only be relieved by parties and sex. Caskey had slept around a great deal, and then came one of those big homosexual witch-hunts; a few boys were caught and they named names. Caskey was implicated and so was his friend Hayden Lewis. (Hayden was a civilian employed by the navy in some clerical job. He and Caskey shared an apartment during several months of Caskey's service—they were what used to be called “sisters,” not lovers.) As Hayden was a civilian, he was merely fired. Caskey got a “blue discharge,” neither honorable nor dishonorable. When he met Len Hanna again, he realized that he didn't want to live with Hanna anymore, so he and Hayden decided to come to California.

Many people found Hayden Lewis attractive, and indeed he could then have been described as handsome; he had a pale romantic melancholy face which suggested to Christopher a young nineteenth-century Catholic priest of the Oscar Wilde period. But Hayden wasn't really a romantic, his temperament was peevish, he sighed and whined and shrugged his shoulders and bitched people in a soft voice. He was one of nature's underlings, full of envy; his approach was demure until he had detected your weak points and was ready to play on them. . . . In a word, Christopher disliked him intensely from their first meeting and Hayden undoubtedly felt the same way about Christopher. But Christopher had to get along with Hayden for Caskey's sake, and Hayden had to get along with Christopher.

Christopher worked hard at this, to begin with, even though he knew that Hayden was trying to sabotage his relationship with Caskey by making fun of him. (It got back to him that Hayden called Caskey “Mrs. Reverend,” with the implication that Christopher was a sort of swami-curate.) Later on, there were at least two or three yelling scenes with Hayden—all started by Christopher, when drunk. But their association always had to be patched up because it was simply too tiresome for them to refuse to see each other, as long as Caskey and Christopher were living together. When Caskey and Christopher split up, they immediately stopped meeting.

Aside from Denny's apartment, Caskey and Christopher spent much of their time together at The Friendship or at Jay's apartment or in the kitchen of his restaurant.

The Friendship
⁴⁷
had been doing terrific business throughout the war years and it was still crammed every weekend with servicemen and their pursuers, female and male. It was also the chief neighborhood bar and one of the very few gay bars in West Los Angeles. In other words, if you went in there, you had to be prepared to mingle with all sorts and conditions. I imagine that the more respectable Canyon dwellers had long since decided to stay away.

The noise was stunning, the tobacco smoke was a fog; you always spilled part of your drink as you eased your way through the crowd. There were little tables you could sit at in pairs, your faces close together, yelling intimacies which no one else had a chance of hearing. This was the scene of Christopher's courtship of Caskey; they seem to have felt more at ease with each other in such a state of public isolation than when they were actually alone together.

It must have been at this time that Caskey was earning some extra money washing dishes at Jay's restaurant. Christopher used to come down in the evenings and help, for free. There was always plenty to drink and Christopher quite enjoyed dishwashing; he had done a lot of it while he was with the Quakers and at the Vedanta Center. Jay and his waiters (who were usually also his boyfriends) darted back and forth between the kitchen and the tiny dark dining room, from
which they would return with whispered gossip. The place had already become well known to columnists; there would be at least one movie celebrity among the customers nearly every evening. The chief attraction was Jay's rich gooey French food. And the dimness of the lighting and the depth of the alcoves appealed to well-known people who wanted privacy. I remember much gossip about Charles Laughton's visits there with young men. Jay was a perfect host. He knew how to recognize and flatter without making an indiscreet fuss.

On August 14, Japan accepted the Allied terms of surrender. I can't remember if this was the day on which gasoline rationing was officially stopped, but I do remember a great outburst of automobile driving—just driving for driving's sake—about this time. The result was that the Coast Highway was littered with black chunks of wartime recap rubber which flew off people's tires as soon as they started speeding.