Pink Triangle: The Feuds and Private Lives of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Famous Members of Their Entourages (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) (16 page)

Unusual for Gore, he maintained a friendship with Isherwood until the older writer died.

In 1984, on the occasion of Isherwood’s eightieth birthday, Gore visited him in Malibu. He later wrote Paul Bowles in Tangier, claiming that Isherwood had decided to emulate Tithonus.

[In Greek mythology, Tithonus, of the royal house of Troy, was kidnapped by Eos to become her lover. She asked Zeus to make Tithonus immortal, but she forgot to ask for his eternal youth. He did live forever, “but when loathsome old age pressed full upon him, he could not move nor lift his limbs.”]

In his report to Bowles, Gore claimed that Isherwood “looks amazingly healthy, preserved in alcohol, so life-like.”

But when Gore visited later that year, he painted a different portrait. “Chris is dying. He is small, shrunken, all beak, like a newly hatched eagle.”

Fresh from a trip to London, Gore complained about the fecklessness of the English. “It’s just like the grasshopper and the ant, and
they
are hopeless grasshoppers.”

Isherwood’s last words to Gore were, “So, what is wrong with grasshoppers?” Then he dropped off into a deep sleep.

On January 4, 1986, Isherwood died, suffering from prostate cancer. His body was donated to the UCLA Medical School.

In 1966, Gore reported that he was shocked when the first volume of Isherwood’s diaries were published. “He was very censorious of me, even when writing about the days when I thought we were having such convivial times together. You never know what friends really think of you until they publish their god damn diaries, Anaïs Nin being the best example of that.”

It was a hot day in late May of 1947 at Random House in New York City. Christopher Isherwood had just called on its publisher, Bennett Cerf. As Isherwood was being shown out by an assistant editor, a mannish-looking woman with short cropped hair, Isherwood asked if Random House had discovered any exciting new writers. “It’s always good to be aware of tomorrow’s competition,” Isherwood told the editor.

“There is one novelist we’re very excited about,” the editor said. “Truman Capote of New Orleans, who used to dance on a showboat on the Mississippi and also painted roses on glass. His novel,
Other Voices, Other Rooms
, can only be compared to Proust.”

As if on cue, Truman himself suddenly appeared in the hallway. As Isherwood remembered him, “He was like a sort of cuddly little Koala bear. His hand was raised high. Was I to kiss it?”

That was the beginning of a beautiful, sometimes tumultuous friendship that would last until Truman’s death.

In later years, Gore Vidal would proclaim that Truman’s most famous character, Holly Golightly, in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, “
was merely a redrawing of the character of Sally Bowles in Isherwood’s
Berlin Stories.”

As Isherwood later noted, “Fuck a comparison to Marcel Proust. This was a living, breathing character that stepped right out of the pages of Ronald Fir-bank. He was like a rare orchid growing in a hothouse in New Orleans, perhaps a man-eating plant that would later appear in Katharine Hepburn’s garden in Tennessee’s
Suddenly Last Summer.”

“Truman seemed to throw a spell of enchantment over me, no doubt something he picked up at a Witch’s Sabbath.”

“Long after the editor left, we stood and talked and I did something I’d never done before. For myself and my lover, William Caskey, I accepted an invitation to visit Truman and his lover, Newton Arvin, at their cottage on Nantucket that July.”

Isherwood’s lover at the time, William Caskey, was a good-looking photographer in his mid-twenties who had been born in Kentucky. Isherwood had met him near the end of the war, and they had begun a serious affair. In Isherwood’s memoir (1943-1951), the writer claimed that Caskey “was the most un-inhibited homosexual; he seemed very tough yet very female. He loved getting into drag. He loved straight men. But he despised queens and didn’t think of himself as one. He wanted to fuck straight men, not be fucked by them. He proclaimed his homosexuality loudly and shamelessly and never cared whom he shocked.”

Truman’s lover, Professor Newton Arvin, also surprised Caskey and Isherwood when they arrived at Truman’s rented cottage in the village of Siasconset. “We were expecting some muscle-bound character rescued from some seedy gym in Brooklyn.”

Arvin was a middle-aged professor and critic, who had lost his job at Smith College when his homosexuality had been exposed. Newton was shy and retiring, preferring not to join in all the gay chatter and meals. He was spending most of his days and nights writing the biography of Herman Melville.

“You’re just as Virginia Woolf said you would be,” Truman once told Isherwood. “An appreciative, merry little bird.”

Actually, Truman was more intrigued by the pronouncement of another British writer, W. Somerset Maugham. The novelist had written “the future of the English novel lies in Isherwood’s pen.”

But Truman and Caskey were intrigued by each other. “Isherwood’s lover is completely uninhibited,” Truman said. “If such a thing were possible, he is even more shocking than I am.”

“You are so tiny,” Caskey said to Truman. “Do you also have a small dick?”

“A studly six inches,” Truman shot back. “Just ask Newton. He knows every inch intimately.”

Newton would later describe Truman’s penis in a letter: “One peppermint-stick, beautifully pink and white, wonderfully straight, deliciously sweet. About a hand’s length. Of great intrinsic and also sentimental value to owner.”

Isherwood was amazed that “Truman wasn’t the purple orchid I thought he’d be. He has strong arms and legs and is a good swimmer. He liked to bike around the island or go horseback riding. He has a sturdy body bronzed by the sun.”

That summer, Jared French, a photographer, snapped nude pictures of both Caskey and Isherwood, which they did not like.

“We looked like two hippos mating,” Isherwood later said. One of those photographs later appeared in Devid Leddick’s book,
Naked Men: Pioneering Nudes 1935-1955
.

Truman introduced Isherwood to the critic, Leo Lerman. He found Isherwood “quite delightful, with strange eyes and a delight in malice and in hurting himself.”

Truman entertained Lerman and other members of the Nantucket gay colony in the late afternoon. Mornings were reserved for writing
Other Voices, Other Rooms
. He complained to Isherwood that “the last pages are draining my blood. The final chapter is obdurate.”

“Finally, while we were still staying with him, Truman raced down the stairs one afternoon,” Isherwood said. “The last paragraph of that obdurate chapter had been completed.”

“It’s over,” he shouted in an almost hysterical voice. “With its publication, I’m going to become famous. Two hundred years from now, the world will be talking about
Other Voices, Other Rooms.”

“Right in front of us,” Isherwood said, “he danced a jig of joy, evoking Hitler’s high stepping at the fall of France.”

In talking to friends, Isherwood later said, “Truman is completely outrageous. You never know from night to night what the entertainment will be. Friends dropped in from cottages nearby to be entertained by Truman. One night he put on an exhibit for testicular aficionados.”

He announced that a hustler would be arriving “with the world’s largest set of balls.”

After dinner and too many Manhattans and martinis, Truman answered the doorbell. A very young, very muscular, and rather handsome young man walked into the room. Introduced as Tony, he wore tight-fitting blue jeans and a form-fitting T-shirt, standing about five feet ten and weighing some 150 pounds. He pulled off his T-shirt to reveal broad shoulders and a ripply stomach.

“He stared at us almost defiantly, with the kind of blue eyes possessed by the Nazi soldiers who sent Jews to the gas chamber,” Isherwood later said.

“Slowly, very slowly, Tony unzipped his fly, revealing that he wore no underwear,” Isherwood said. “Gradually, he began to strip, lowering his jeans until his pubic hair burst into bloom. First he exposed a ‘hose-like penis.’ He saved the biggest show for last. He peeled down his jeans to his knees, exposing testicles that were like baseballs. No, larger than baseballs. They were gigantic. Almost a deformity. The image of the supreme male. Hitler would have abducted him and would have used him in one of his breeding camps.”

For the finale of the evening, Truman announced that Tony could later be found nude and lying spread-eagled on a bed in the guest room at the top of the stairwell. “All visitors are welcome, and the door will remain open until three o’clock,” Truman said. “That’s when Tony has to return home to his Portuguese wife and three children, all of them boys, as could be predicted. Tony’s been a father since he was fifteen years old. Those testicles actually started producing sperm, or so I was told, when Tony was only nine years old.”

***

Years would come and go; lovers would change, sometimes with the season, but Truman and Isherwood remained steadfast in their friendship. Sometimes there would be disagreements, but they would smooth things over because they genuinely liked each other.

They were not always appreciative of each other’s work. With friends, they often delivered private critiques. But unlike Gore and Truman, they did not deliver these insults face to face, only behind each other’s back.

When Isherwood finally got a copy of
Other Voices, Other Rooms
, he had reservations. “Unlike what I’d been told, Proust can snooze peacefully in his grave—nothing to fear from Truman. The novel seems to be mere skillful embroidery, unrelated to Truman and therefore lacking in essential interest.”

Over the years, Isherwood recalled some bizarre encounters with Truman. One such occurrence took place in the airport lounge of the Los Angeles airport as all of them were awaiting a plane to fly them to New York. Isherwood was traveling with his lover, Don Bachardy, and Truman was with William Paley, president of CBS.

The airport was fogged, and all flights were delayed. “Just call us the fog queens,” Truman said.

As the hours wore on, he announced, “I have this premonition of a disaster in the air. I’ve had these premonitions before. All of them come true.”

Paley stood up and faced him with anger. “God damn it, you’re getting on that fucking plane with us tonight whether you like it or not. If it’s going down, you’ll go down with us for alarming us like this.”

Obeying Paley like a stern father, Truman boarded the flight. Paley and Truman were seated in adjacent first-class seats, with Isherwood and Bachardy riding together in coach. At midnight, during the flight, Truman came back to visit Isherwood and his young lover. He scooted into the seat with them, sitting on their laps and throwing his arm around their necks.

“Are you bunnies scared?” he asked.

***

[At the time of Truman’s death in August of 1984, he’d lost most of his friends. Isherwood still remained loyal, however, and even attended the funeral services at Westwood Mortuary in Los Angeles
.

It was later revealed that the aging Isherwood snoozed through most of the memorial service, finding the eulogies too long
.

Actor Robert Blake, who had played Perry in the movie version of
In Cold Blood,
gave a speech that Isherwood found “too egomaniacal, having little to do with Truman’s life.”

Also delivering a long, rambling eulogy was a surprise speaker, bandleader Artie Shaw, former husband of Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. His punch line was, “Truman died of everything. He died of life, from living a full one.”

When Shaw returned to his seat, Bachardy nudged Isherwood, who stumbled to the podium. He gave the shortest eulogy of all. “There was one wonderful thing about Truman,” he said. “He could always make me laugh.” Then, as if remembering some long ago joke of Truman’s, Isherwood laughed loudly before Bachardy gracefully ushered him back to his seat.]

Chapter Six