Sticky Strokes

July 14, 1958

July 14.

All day I’ve been useless for work, because I got drunk last night. So I slept a lot and took Miltown and went in the ocean with Don—and it was pretty nice. All except for the beginning of this crisis in Iraq, which looks really ugly.

We were drunk because we had the Stravinskys to dinner; in a week they will be leaving on one of their long European tours, and of course the thought always occurs: shall we ever see Igor again? Actually he seemed in fine form last night. He and Vera both drink far too much though, and it seems as if Bob were getting shaky too; something with his liver.

A great sense of love and rapport between us and them. Vera and Igor talked about Diaghilev. He used to tell Vera all about his boyfriends. Vera thinks he killed himself by excessive dieting. Igor said that Diaghilev surrounded himself with people who were inventive. “And inventions,” Igor added, “are the only things worth stealing.”

Laura Huxley told me on the phone that during the thunderstorm in her production of The Giaconda Smile, she had the word passion in big letters across the window. The word couldn’t be consciously read because the flashes of lightning were so brief: but a subliminal mood is supposed to have been created.

Gerald Heard yesterday at Michael Barrie’s cocktail party wore grass-green slacks, so thin he says he can’t stand against the light.

There isn’t an Isherwood book I pass up whenever I come across them while thrifting, which is rare because people tend to hold on to them like heirlooms. This weekend, I came across this volume of his diaries, and this was the only July 14th entry I could find in it, dated 1958. Isherwood lived in LA from 1939 until he died in 1986. 47 years total. He was 34 years old when he arrived. From Berlin to London to New York, to LA. I’ve always loved that he wrote about his queer life with zero camouflage, even while McCarthyism was breathing down everyone’s neck. This volume covers much of his LA private experiences. He was one of the few openly gay men embedded in both Hollywood and the postwar artistic and literary elite of the city, which was so fascinating. This volume captures a life of palm trees, art, weird metaphysics, writing, beachside sex, loneliness, and creative ambition+crisis. Couldn’t be more LA. It maps out an erotic and intellectual geography that I can't find in any other piece of fiction or history of LA, perhaps traces of it at Erewhon sometimes. I'm sure he would love it there if he were alive. His partner, Don Bachardy, is still alive, and there's currently an exhibition of his drawings on view at The Huntington that I need to see.

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