My non-“work” related efforts this last month revolved around two foci: My ongoing fascination with the late writer Christopher Isherwood, and the final touches on my poly novel Homecome.
My company sent me to several weeks of software training in June: A week in San Jose, a week in Los Angeles (well, El Segundo), and three days in Belmont.
I took advantage of my trip to LA to make a kind of “Isherwood Pilgrimage”, starting at the Huntington Library in San Marino. That took some determination, since San Marino is on the other side of LA from El Segundo, and I had no car! The Huntington is hosting an exhibit in honor of Isherwood’s centennial this summer.
After visiting the library, I took the metro into Hollywood to visit the Vedanta Temple where Isherwood – “Chris” -- studied.
Next, I wanted to look for Chris’s house in Santa Monica – but I had forgotten to research the bus route. But when I return to LA for my next training class, in September, I hope to walk “on the street where he lived”. (Could this be love? Sigh!)
Isherwood’s mainstream fame arises from Goodbye to Berlin, the novel which is the basis for the musical Cabaret (and the character "Sally Bowles"). But he wrote many other books after that book appeared in 1939.
Why do I like him so much? In the early 1950s, he wrote a novel with openly gay, angry characters. He lived openly as a “queer”. He was a pacifist. He had embraced Oriental religion. And somehow, in spite of all this, he continued to find employment writing screenplays in the Hollywood of the McCarthy Era.
He had also, at age 48, fallen in love with an 18-year old man. This became the great “love” of his life. Chris and Don remained together up to Isherwood’s death 33 years later. Poster Children for Gay Fidelity, you might say.
And yet…all his life Isherwood defended “promiscuity”. He said that love should not be judged by its time-duration, but by its quality and depth. Chris and Don could simultaneously be “faithful” to one another and sexual with others (that says something remarkable about both of them). What would they say about polyamory? Hmm….
I admire Chris, even when he disturbs me. I read somewhere (but where??? Suddenly I can’t find the reference. Was I hallucinating????) that, in order to secure hospital visitation rights in the event of serious illness, Chris legally adopted Don as his son. That disturbs me on one level; but, on another: “Well, if the government won’t let gays marry…!
It is conceivable that, in September, as I walk up “the street when Chris lived”, I will encounter Don, now about 69. Probably not. And what would I say, anyway?
* * *
Chris, are you watching me write, from some higher Vedantic “plane”? Or have you found incarnation again here on earth? Are you cruising Santa Monica in some new 18-year-old’s body? Have you and Don found each other again?
Last week I made some adjustments to my own novel and suddenly thought: It’s finished. It isn’t, quite: I’m still fretting over typos and trying to tidy up my word processor’s formatting. But the concept is complete. The characters now live their own independent lives. Like Isherwood. Like Sally Bowles. Sic itur ad astra.
Namaste, Chris. Thank you!