Lost Years (56 page)

Christopher met Bertrand Cambus through a Texan queen [. . .] who liked to be called by his initials D.J.
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After their first meeting, D.J. acted as go-between, telling Christopher that Bertrand found
him very attractive and had particularly admired his legs. Christopher was flattered and delighted—for Bertrand was a dark handsome charming boy, athletically built and quite unlike Christopher's image of a wispy French faggot. (He was on a business trip to the States, representing one of the French automobile firms.) Christopher told D.J. to assure Bertrand that his lust was reciprocated. With the result that Bertrand and Christopher had supper and spent the night of September 3 together. Bertrand then had to return to France, whence he wrote Christopher a politely affectionate note, saying, “Happy times won't let themselves be forgotten.” Speed Lamkin later told Christopher that he and Bertrand had been having an affair during Bertrand's stay in Los Angeles, and that it was he who had encouraged Bertrand to go to bed with Christopher.

Donald Pell was so pretty that Christopher was dazzled into thinking him sexy. Actually, he wasn't quite Christopher's type. They went to bed together without either of them really wanting to. Donald was busy pretending to himself that he wasn't queer, but only, as he put it, “trade.” This pretense (which he later gave up) forced him to do his best to ignore the sexual aspects of his relationships. So he was apt to say things which made you stare at him incredulously. For example—one day, Donald and Christopher were eating a meal in Christopher's kitchen and Donald, who hoped to become a professional actor, was telling Christopher about the director of a play he had been in. This director had kept dropping into Donald's dressing room and giving him advice about his part. “But,” said Donald, “I don't think it was my
acting
he was interested in—” and he gave Christopher a playful nudge in the ribs, “
if you get what I mean,
Chris.” Donald wasn't trying to be funny. He was perfectly, squarely serious. No one who heard him could have suspected that Donald and Christopher had been having sex with each other, only half an hour before.

On August 27, Don Coombs telephoned to ask if he might bring two friends down with him, when he came to supper with Christopher, that evening. Christopher agreed, ungraciously. He had been expecting to have Coombs to himself, in bed, and he didn't want to sit up talking to strangers. However, when the three of them arrived, Christopher was placated, because both of the friends were attractive. One was called Fred;
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I don't remember anything else about him. The other was a Jewish composer and teacher of music named Barry Taxman; very good-looking, slightly queeny, in his middle twenties.

As soon as they had arrived, Coombs took Christopher aside and asked if Fred and Barry might spend the night together in the back bedroom. Ordinarily, this would have annoyed Christopher, who hated being pressured into hospitality which he hadn't been prepared for. But, under the circumstances, he was amused, because he saw through Coombs's plan. Fred was obviously an ex-lover whom Coombs was planning to win back in one or both of two ways—(A) by making Fred jealous of Christopher, and/or (B) by making Barry take a fancy to Christopher and walk out on Fred.

Christopher would have liked the plan better if it had included getting him into bed with Fred, whom he fancied most, but that wasn't to be hoped for; Fred ignored him. So he concentrated on making Fred jealous. When Christopher woke with Coombs in the front bedroom next morning, they united in an energetic fuck—both of them grunting and moaning with pleasure but neither admitting to the other that this was mostly noisy playacting meant to be heard by the couple in the back bedroom.

Before long, Barry came out, without Fred. Coombs, now contentedly fucked, pretended to be asleep. Barry suggested to Christopher that they should go down and take a prebreakfast swim. Christopher agreed. On the way to the beach, Barry said, “Last night I kept wishing you were in bed with me, instead of Fred.” Christopher was surprised, and also pleased, for Barry looked unexpectedly masculine, as well as handsomer, in trunks. They agreed to meet again, alone, at the earliest opportunity.

So Coombs's Plan B had succeeded. And also, as it later turned out, his Plan A. When Christopher and Barry got back to the house, they found Fred and Coombs deep in intimate conversation—no doubt assuring each other that they didn't, respectively, give a damn about Barry and Christopher.

Barry and Christopher finally got together on September 4. (The delay was due to Christopher's wooing of Bertrand Cambus.) When Barry arrived, all dressed up in his somewhat faggy best,
³²
they were
both awkwardly conscious that this was a sex rendezvous. There seemed nothing else to talk about, and the atmosphere of embarrassment thickened, until Christopher said, “Look, why should we wait? Let's get into bed for a little while. Then we can have supper, knowing that everything's okay and there's going to be more sex later and so we needn't be tense about it.” Barry agreed.

As they undressed, Barry told Christopher that he could get a hard-on but that he was unable to come; he hadn't had an orgasm in a long while. Christopher answered that Barry was to relax and not worry. Privately, he felt confident that he could get Barry over his inhibition. Christopher knew from experience that boys who told you this were often subconsciously challenging you to arouse them. This challenge excited Christopher, and he did his best to bring Barry to a climax. But he couldn't. Aside from this, their lovemaking was a success. Barry wanted Christopher to fuck him and he was very exciting to fuck, he really loved it.

(A few months after this, Barry fell in love with someone. Immediately, he was able to have orgasms again, not only with his lover but with anyone he found physically attractive. He was so delighted that he went around having sex with all his former partners, to prove to himself and them that he had been completely released. It was at this time that he had his first orgasm with Christopher.)

That first evening in bed together, Barry said, “How extraordinary this is! Here am I, a Russian Jew, making love with Christopher Isherwood!” His remark jarred on Christopher; it seemed indecent, masochistic, sexually off-putting. But, as Christopher got to know Barry better, he found a different significance in it. When Barry thus called attention to his Jewishness, he wasn't really demeaning himself He wasn't at all a humble person. Indeed, he had that Jewish tactlessness, argumentativeness and aggressiveness which always aroused Christopher's anti-Semitic feelings. Only, in Barry's case, Christopher's anti-Semitism quickly became erotic. It made him hot to mate Barry's aggressiveness with his own, in wrestling duels which were both sexual and racial, Briton against Jew. Barry's aggressiveness became beautiful and lovable when it was expressed physically by his strong lithe body grappling naked with Christopher's. As they struggled, Christopher loved him
because
he was a pushy arrogant Jewboy. But he never talked to Barry about his feelings. They were too private.
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Barry soon desired these duels as much as Christopher did, though for a different reason—at least, that is my guess. Barry had never wrestled with any of his other lovers. And his approach to sex had been from the yin side only; he wanted to be possessed. But now Christopher had, without consciously meaning to, made him aware of his yang self. When he wrestled with Christopher, he was all boy and he seemed to delight in his own virility. Switching back to yin again, after the fight, was a new sensation for him; the contrast between the two selves may well have made him enjoy being fucked more than ever. He and Christopher were always hot for each other.

At this time, Christopher saw a good deal of Gerald Heard
³⁴
and Michael Barrie, also of Frank and Nan Taylor—of Frank rather than Nan, because Frank turned his queer friends into sexual conspirators against his own marriage, telling them all about his affairs with other men, and Nan hated them for it. It was at the Taylors' house that Christopher saw a showing of the semiprofessional film of
Julius Caesar
which had been shot on locations in and around Chicago, with Charlton Heston, then almost unknown, as a beautiful Mark Antony. As far as I remember, the scenes of Caesar's murder were played in a neoclassical bank building and the battle of Philippi took place among the sand dunes of Lake Michigan. On September 6,
Frank and Christopher had supper at the Hartford Foundation with its manager, Michael Gaszynski, a Polish nobleman who also had a cheesecake concession at the Farmer's Market. Michael was all smiles and politeness in those days—later on, when Christopher became a trustee and began staying at the foundation, they were forced into being enemies.

On September 5, Christopher drove with Sam From to spend the evening in Santa Barbara. I think this was the occasion on which Sam was so drunk that he made a swerve off the Pacific Coast Highway just after they had left the Canyon and very nearly turned his open convertible right over. Christopher was lucky—for Sam was a frequently drunk driver and this might well have been a fatal wreck. Sam finally got killed in a collision which was agreed to have been entirely his fault.

On September 14, the day-to-day diary records that Bob Craft, Eduard Steuermann (Salka Viertel's brother) and someone named Dahl “went through” the text of Schoenberg's
Pierrot lunaire
with Christopher. I do remember that Bob had proposed to Christopher that he should speak the “speech-song” at a performance somewhere, and Christopher had agreed. But the performance never took place. Maybe the musicians decided that Christopher's voice wasn't right for the part.
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On the night of either September 16 or 17, one of the sycamore trees near the house suddenly fell. I remember that Christopher woke abruptly, about half a minute before this happened. Later—maybe in order to intrigue Gerald Heard, who loved all things extrasensory—he ascribed his waking to precognition; but it is more likely that Christopher had been woken by a preliminary cracking sound; such a sound, in the dead of night, could be quite as loud as a gunshot. The tree narrowly missed the house. If it had hit, it would probably have staved in the roof.

Mentioning the fall of the tree reminds me that the sycamores quite often dropped their limbs and occasionally did serious damage. It must have been about this time that Christopher happened to be looking out of the window when a big branch fell from one of the trees on the other side of the road. Its fall was broken by some lower branches, otherwise it would have hit the house below it. Even so, it was a serious menace, because the next strong wind would almost
certainly shake it loose. Christopher therefore immediately crossed the road and rang the doorbell of the threatened house. The woman who lived there opened the door and he explained to her what had happened. This was the first time he had ever spoken to her. She didn't seem at all grateful to him. On the contrary, her manner was hostile and suspicious, as if she were thinking, “
Why
is he telling me this? What's he
really
want?”

Some weeks later, Christopher was visited by one of his neighbors, who told him that this woman was psychotic and a threat to the whole community. “I'm going to get something on each one of them,” she was alleged to have said, and she kept reporting her suspicions to the police. She had gone all the way down to Balboa in the hope of discovering that a man she knew was keeping a sailboat there without a license. She had accused Mrs. Macdonald of running an unauthorized insane asylum, because Mrs. Macdonald had a son who was mentally retarded. She had complained that an orgy was going on in a nearby house; when the police arrived, it turned out to be a child's birthday party. “As for you, Mr. Isherwood,” Christopher's informant added, giggling nervously, “she claims you are a
homosexual
! There was a police car watching your house for a couple of hours, the other night.” “They'll have to watch a lot longer than that,” Christopher said, grinning feebly but turning very pale. He willingly signed a petition which the neighbors had drawn up, appealing to the district attorney to ignore this woman's accusations.

Not long after this, she suddenly left the neighborhood.

On September 18, the day-to-day diary makes its first mention of a project undertaken by Speed Lamkin and Gus Field; an adaptation of Christopher's
Sally Bowles
for the stage. Gus Field was a screenwriter. I think Christopher had met him while they were both working at MGM. He was youngish, curly haired, and not bad looking; Jewishly self-assertive, full of stories about himself in the air force and himself in bed with girls, but anxious to be friendly and helpful. He was a fairly competent writer, but he cluttered his scripts with instructions about shots and camera angles which were nothing but show-off and must have irritated his director. He and Speed made an odd couple. Probably Gus, who must have been snubbed by many of his colleagues, liked associating with queers because he felt that they were lower than himself in the pecking order. He could treat them with indulgent amusement. But he was also smart enough to realize that Speed was smarter and that Speed could introduce him to some celebrities. As for Speed, he had accepted Gus as a professional who
could teach him the tricks of dramaturgy. Aside from this, he looked down on Gus as a kike.

The two of them now came to Christopher to discuss their ideas about the play. Speed, of course, did most of the talking and assumed credit, without actually claiming it, for all the ideas. Of these, I remember only two—one of them truly daring and symbolic in the best theatrical sense, the other minor but amusing. Christopher was amazed when he heard them. He hadn't been taking the Lamkin–Field collaboration seriously; now he was forced to respect it and encourage it.