Liberation by Christopher Isherwood Read Free Book Online Page B

with Bill [Brown] and Paul [Wonner] and maybe stay the night. I am as happy with Don right now as I have ever been—sometimes when I can draw back for an instant and look at us both I am absolutely awed at the miracle of having him with me. We had a wonderful talk the other day and seemed to achieve a real advance in frankness with each other, but I don’t want to write about that, not yet. I want to let more time pass and see what develops[.]
    A letter from Charles Thorp, head of the National Students Gay Liberation Conference, asking me to go and talk to them in San Francisco on August 23. “Give a short talk and then just rap with us. What I’d like is to have you come ‘hold-our-souls,’ hold our hands.” Instead of “my best regards” or whatever, he writes “my gay-love.”
    I feel quite strongly tempted to accept this invitation (as indeed I’ve often wanted in the past to accept others like it). I highly enjoy the role of “the rebels’ only uncle” (not that I would be, this time—for there are scores of others—and Ginsberg their chief ) and, all vanity aside, I do feel unreservedly with them, which is more than I can say for ninety percent of the movements I support. But something prevents me from accepting. Oddly enough, it all boils down to not embarrassing Swami by making a spectacle of myself which would shock his congregation and the women of Vedanta Place! I can admit this because I am perfectly certain there’s no other motive. I am far too sly and worldly-wise to suppose that I’d be injuring my own “reputation” by doing this. Quite the reverse; this is probably the last opportunity I’ll ever have of becoming, with very little effort, a “national celebrity.” And I hope I’m not such a crawling hypocrite as to pretend I wouldn’t quite enjoy that, even at my age!
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    July 31. Suddenly there’s so much to record, or so it seems.
    Yesterday I had a classic day of failing to get started with the last chapter of Kathleen and Frank . I made every possible excuse: I couldn’t begin without consulting my diaries, until I’d got a letter from Richard answering my questions, until I’d read through the whole manuscript first. But this last alternative just depressed me so much that I ended by rereading the script of The Monsters 25 and “Afterwards” 26 and doing nothing. (The two chief characters of The Monsters seem utterly unconvincing but just the same I wouldn’t be surprised if the thing didn’t play well and even have a success with a West End matinée audience; the twists of the plot are still fairly surprising. “Afterwards” in its present form won’t do at all. Wystan was right, the chief character is so unpleasant. Anyhow, I’ve used much of it far more successfully in A Single Man .)
    In the evening I went down and had supper with poor old Jo. And by God she has two new subjects for moaning , and one of them is truly serious. First, less seriously, Ben’s father in Florida has had a stroke and won’t be able to live alone any longer, and Jo would so gladly have rushed to him (“he really cared for me far more than he did for Ben, and I just adored him ”) but no, she couldn’t, because Ben and Dee are on their way there. Jo says that of course they ought really to bring Dad back with them, but even if they did they’d be hopeless at looking after him. So now, the old wound is open again and Jo, who was beginning to get used to the situation, she says, hates Dee more than ever because, just because she exists, Dad won’t get properly taken care of. Ben had called Jo when he got the news—probably half hoping that somehow Jo could be conned into coming along with them to Florida and taking charge—and when he found she wasn’t about to, all he could say was, “I’m so sorry about everything” . . .