The Journal of Claude Fredericks Volume Three Part One: Cambridge (1943)

By Claude Fredericks

This third volume of The Journal Of Claude Fredericks is his journal for the year 1943, a Wanderjahr that begins with a spring in Cambridge, where Volume Two ended, but with Fredericks, having left studies at Harvard, living now in a room at Maud Bemiss house on Nutting Road near the Cowley Fathers, seeing various friends from earlier, Brie Taylor, John Simon, Anthony Clark, Paul Doguereau, the George Sartons, and making new friends as well. The summer is spent in a cabin on the shore near Belfast Maine, writing and studying still and coming to know the family that lives on the hill. In September, after spending ten days with Paul Doguereau and Fanny Mason in Walpole New Hampshire on the beautiful Mason estate overlooking the Connecticut and a month in New York living in an apartment on University Place and seeing his friend May Sarton and coming to know Muriel Rukeyser and Julian Beck, he heads with his friend William Quinn to Iowa to live with several friends of theirs who also have left Harvard, in particular Michael Millen and Paul Rail, all of them proclaiming in different ways, as Quinn and Fredericks do in theirs, their objections to Americas part in the war that had begun in December 1941. After two weeks Fredericks leaves to stay with a friend in Chicago, Martha Johnson, and to settle in and write about the troubling events of the previous days and then go on to Missouri, to pay filial pieties to members of his family there and after that go south with his mother to Mexico City for a week and then with her to Acapulco for ten days at Christmas, a spot at that time still undiscovered and with only two small hotels. Finally at the years end he heads back east to New York, where he has plans to settle down and live forever, in the city he had always loved the most of any he knew.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465306173

Claude Fredericks

Claude Fredericks was born in Missouri in 1923. He attended Harvard College in the early Forties, where he studied with Langdon Warner, John Finley, and Walter Clark, and later, in New York in the late Forties, he founded The Banyan Press, where for many years, in New York and in the country in Vermont, he printed by hand in limited editions unpublished work by Gertrude Stein, John Berryman, James Merrill, and many other writers. Plays of his were performed in New York by Julian Beck and Judith Malina at The Living Theatre and by Herbert Machiz at The Artists Theatre as well as by other groups elsewhere. For many years he taught Greek, Italian and Japanese literature, at Bennington College. He is, at present, with the collaboration of Marc Harrington, engaged in editing for publication in its entirety the long journal he has been writing almost without intermission since he was eight years old. The manuscript of this journal, some fifty thousand pages in length, makes up part of the vast archive of the papers of Claude Fredericks at the Research Institute

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The Journal Of Claude Fredericks

Volume Three

Part One : Cambridge ( 1943 )

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Copyright © 2011 by Claude Fredericks

Library of Congress Number: 2011912838

ISBN: Hardcover: 978-1-4653-4009-2

Softcover: 978-1-4653-4008-5

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1943

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Friday New Year’s Day, still at the St Moritz.

I have so very much to set down, so much has happened & so many significant ideas have occurred since I have been in New York, if I can finish everything I want to say first, then it will be proper for me to spend the rest of my New Year’s Day pulling together the loose threads of my life. I was thinking in the shower one should spend New Year’s Day writing letters to all those dear friends whom one does not write to or see throughout the rest of the year but who often occur to one’s mind—Maud, Emma Kollmayer, Pearl Gamble, Ed, Henry, Anne O’Brien, Florence Fredericks, Feri Roth, and so on. Perhaps tonight I will, but now, though it seems childish to sit writing here rather than go look at Cézannes when I can always write, I think I shall—at least till four or five when I shall go to the Modern Museum. I think the whole day is significant; I picked up or got picked up by a handsome private & treated it as a proper whoredom, had fun, slept, then bade him goodby & never expect to see him again. I think that is significant—if I can accept whoredom at its face value, not feel guilty about eating at an Automat, then much of the messiness of my life is solved. Also today I realised I didn’t know what love is, & three days after I left Bill, whom I thought I loved more than anything in the world, I scarcely think of him, & on the toilet I calmly contemplated his being dead. Had he written, it perhaps would have been different. And I was relieved when Mother was gone though I loved her when she was here. I feel no particular desire to return to Cambridge immediately, & it is hard for me to conceive what our relationship, Bill’s & mine, will be; I was relieved when Norman my soldier left—what strange solitude I am always seeking out for myself. Surely it must have some deeper significance than merely escape from painful stimuli.

So that Tuesday afternoon I fell asleep having been drug by a painful ear through hell. What were the causes? I can think of five or six.

1. Dr Fleming’s announcement that I had no brain & a halfrealisation that I was a failure in every way and even as artist. 2. Bill’s announcement his affection for me was no longer homosexual, his coolness, his words about the importance of Iowa & Michael Millen.

(These are the 2 real causes probably, entirely suppressed & unthought about until after that night—I simply wouldn’t admit them to consciousness until now they were so painful; & they represented the failure of what I have for so long (so sadly) maintained as the motives for my life—love & creation; there is no motive to my life now.)

3. The strain of sitting with Bill through that cheap evening with H. Evans & wife & the endless music.

4. The strain of not digging at my fingers or smoking, both of which annoyed Bill & both of which are two major outlets for my maddening nervousness.

5. The strain of our conversation & the realisation (in conjunction with 1.) that I had not thought anything out logically & rationally.

6. THE EYE

As for the eye, I have no way of knowing whether it was only the final stimulus or whether it was an integral part of the hysteria—the essential feature of the incident (as always) was terror, terror of loneliness & lack of protection. Disregarding for a moment accompanying causes & effects I suppose one can say it was an identification, through the pain that Bill was causing me in threatening to not love me, with the unhappy life my parents caused, one having previously been understood through my homosexual love for Bill & through a thousand small details how he came then to be identified with my breaking away from Mother & my castrating father, symbolised in the hypnosis I had & my drawings afterwards by an eye, & the juxtaposition was too much for my weak mind, & neurosis appeared as the way sheep are when called upon to make too fine a distinction. Possibly the real cause was a dying of my own love, something which could not be admitted consciously or consciously comprehended, & the eye was the vehicle of action & pain. In reality I have overstressed the importance of this whole incident, & I am not losing my mind after all. I am sure that such hysteria is common to many people. But the shock of suddenly leaping up & screaming uncontrollably & shaking & running around the room was a tremendous experience in my weak inactive life. Forgive me if I give it undue emphasis.

About three in the afternoon that Tuesday then, December 22, I woke up in my room in Eliot & found Bill & his brother Paul walking in. I was immediately and terribly annoyed & angry that Paul should be there—it is such an effort on my part for me to be with most people (apart from Mother & Bill & Reymour & the bed that holds my whores) & I didn’t think I could possibly do it that afternoon. Bill kept whispering that nothing better could have happened for us—& I suppose in the long run he was right. But at that moment I could do nothing but long for both of them to get the hell out of my room. Then we went walking along the River & Paul walked across the ice & Bill & I walked along the edge & talked about purposely insignificant things; then we bought food, caviar & artichokes & all kinds of things strange to Paul & almost to Bill (at home they used to have a weekly routine of food—Wednesday, cod, Saturday, beans, etc.) & Bill was delighted & I tried to be also. We came back to my room & laughed & talked a little & Bill then went to sleep & Paul looked at art books I had & I wrote in here. It grew dark & I was very tired & grew lonely & I could hear Paul crawling in bed with Bill in the other room, something I tried not to notice but did. Then I didn’t think I could write another word & I got a horrible urge to get out. I don’t know how much of it was simply the desire to attract Bill’s attention & covet to myself some of that protection & affection any disturbance of mind on my part brings from him, for throughout the little scene I was thoroughly conscious, but the impulse & action was so irrational, violent, & uncontrollable I am inclined to place it in the same category as the experience early the same morning. Suddenly I decided I had to leave—Paul had gotten up from beside Bill & was blowing sharp noises on my recorder & I knew I would scream if I didn’t get out. So I dashed for my coat & put it awkwardly & messily on & said I was going to mail a few letters & refused Paul’s offer to come with me & dashed out the door & then, almost losing consciousness again & with absolute inability to control myself, dashed down the steps & almost fell & knocked my hand against the door outside & almost broke it & dashed into the yard & ran breathless as though the devil or God was after me. I dashed through the House corridor & up Dunster in the dark. Then I began thinking frantically of whether or not Bill would follow me & how it might have repercussions for him; & gaining control I grew angry at my own selfishness & kept muttering You gotta go back louder & louder & then grew afraid when people passed me on the street. I grew terrorstruck at the thought that Bill might not be there or be sick when I returned (the when is significant) & I stopped & couldn’t go forward & couldn’t go backward & then heartpoundingheavy walked slowly backward chanting my little refrain over & over. They were both still standing staring at the door just as I had left them as though startled by a breaking dish. Then Paul went to call his father & Bill took my hand & hugged me & we talked again about trivial things & then by the lavatory where he was washing an artichoke I said huskily, I didn’t go to mail any letters, Bill. I know you didn’t. Paul thought it was queer that you ran that way through the yard. Oh forgive me, Bill, I didn’t mean to hurt you—believe me, please—I just couldn’t help it. But you came back, Claude, that’s what is important, you came back—I thought you might not & I knew it was useless to run after you—I thought I’d wait about an hour, & then I don’t know what I would have done—it was lucky Paul was here. There—there, you came back . . . .

And I felt bitter & dirty & longing & he held me & we cooked the artichoke & I suddenly tried to appear healthy & normal for I was growing panicky within that I was murdering his love by creating a barrier between us & making a superior, that is a SANE, position for him. I detected it in his voice.

After Michael Millen’s only visit to Chilton Road, Michael said, You are still cruel to Paul, Bill… I think he is right. Papa Quinn insisted Paul come home & not stay all night as planned & that Bill & I come too. Paul was brokenhearted. Bill said, If we leave right now, we can see Frankie. But I insisted we spend the evening as planned & agreed to then go home to his house, suddenly happy at the prospect of sleeping with him. Se we ate & Bill became annoyed that Paul wouldn’t taste the artichoke. Paul then quiet & halfsensible became then halfnice & I felt sympathy for him & protected him a little from Bill’s 2 or 3 little jabs. Then laden with the mushrooms we bought & never ate we started for Roxbury. Somehow Bill was loving so obviously to me that I felt proud & almost happy. When I would shake or jump, he would grab my arm & smile to me & say, Steady, steady… . Writing now of him & remembering him, I realise how much I love him & I become wildly anxious to see him. Yet I am amazed how for me he is death. Bill, Bill, Bill—no one ever loved me so lovingly & unselfishly as you & I never loved anyone so thoroughly nor have I ever known (nor will I ever know) anyone so worthy of my love—oh hear me, Darling—I wonder where you are and why you never wrote? Don’t you remember or love me at all?

Mrs Quinn joined us on the trolley the last lap of the journey & Bill jumped up startled; she was annoyed that there was garlic (which we had eaten with our artichoke) on our breath & Bill looked (oh wonderfully) shocked & I could have kissed him. At home Frankie still up writing about dinosaurs although it was eleven. Everyone dead tired & very kind. Bill & Papa talked for a minute & I was needlessly troubled that it was something serious—Frankie was still an angel to me & I love him, I think. Mrs Quinn talked to me about I Am music & said that if it hadn’t been for the Group, she couldn’t have gone on living. Bill & I slept in one another’s arms & he seemed happy to be with me—I was, recklessly so. Everyone left silently (somewhat) in the morning & we two didn’t get up until noon. All morning we lay there quietly against each other & I was relieved & terribly happy—yet when we got up, he was silent & distracted, & then he got an Xmas card from someone he had not thought of for a long time, who evidently once was important to him, & he kept speaking of people’s remembering you whom you had forgotten & was troubled. We made the bed & ate mushrooms & then left for the Museum. We cheered up & he spoke of free will on the trolley & then things became delightful & we watched the ducks on the Fenway & entering the Museum he said he hadn’t dreamed we could be so happy & innocent of yesterday ever again after yesterday—& here we both were almost as though it had never happened. Fun in the Museum—Chinese & Cretan things. Then pie & Coca-Colas (!) while I phoned to see when I could get on the train. In Cambridge then and, feeling diarrhea, I left Bill to go to my room, found a telegram from Mother saying she really was coming to New York and a card to my very dear friend Claude from Miss Fanny. I returned to the record shop for Bill & we spent 30 minutes of agony where he was violently distressed at having to make decisions as to presents & finally left it up to me. We got our laundry & came back to D43. I decided not to go with him to Miss Harrington’s. I showered, & he shaved & got ready to leave. I spoke nervously but tried to control myself. Then he picked up all his parcels, clenched my hand as though to break it, held it a minute, said goodby, opened the door, said goodby again, went toward the steps. Goodnight I said. Goodnight he said. I went back in the empty room. It was a tense moment—I was terrified of my room alone & thought perhaps I would never see Bill again, a week seemed such a hell of a separation. But I kept very busy doing little things & packed meticulously & ate some cheese & sat thinking on one of the Coop boxes & looked at Moby Dick. A light burned out, & I had a horrifying moment of darkness, the room seemed sinister, for a second I looked out & saw all of Eliot House dark & was terrified (consoled later by noise above), opened the closet & almost screamed & for certain started shaking & panting when some books fell off the shelf. Once or twice his eye entered my head & I shuddered violently & fought to escape it & did. Then I grew anxious that it was very late & I was missing my train—so I carefully packed up the last things & nervously departed, relieved to be free of the room at last—I grow uneasy even now at the prospect of facing it again. It was only 10—so I had some ice cream with pecans & maple syrup, a childish delight of mine, at Fiske’s & went to South Station & almost went crazy with tiredness & nervousness waiting to get on the Pullman—which I finally did about 12. I didn’t think I would sleep all night & lay there going over the events of the last three days, & then suddenly fell (oh thankfully) asleep & even without the terror I so dreaded in being without Bill but with the memory of my madness, 5 years old again.

CAMBRIDGE again and ELIOT HOUSE briefly.

4 pm January 3, Sunday, and also 1943.

Hello. This is to you, Journal, blank paper and ink, and to no else, I am alone again. When I came in the dark room last night at one I found the narcissus in bloom and green. But the bulbs were dry and the roots cracking and there was little odor. Now there is only the odor of the medicine I used to kill the lice on me and Cambridge is hell and New York, empty, barren, sordid, is the only paradise I ever lost. And yet I feel strangely loving this afternoon and beautifully lonely. For three days I have had utter despair and continually day and night I have been drilling into my head the uselessness of my life and the stupidity of everyone else’s and I pity with a sad childish smile all the sad and stupid people I see in public places and at times long to write that hellishly hating novel I at times long to write that will show up everyone and everything in their cruel and yellow and nasty, their true colors, and proclaim me the misanthrope I am. And yet now, having burned books all day and had a wonderful letter from Mother, having admired the weather and warmness without and hated the sterile cold lines of the Charles, I suddenly at four o’clock in the afternoon feel terribly warm and loving and yet magnificently alone—if anyone knocks I shall not answer the door and I shudder that Bill or Paul or Berryman should come. And yet at this moment I am singing mad praises to Mother in my heart and loving her like an angel and halfthinking of running home to her side (forever) (what I fear madness might do to me), and loving Reymour, and writing Clark affectionate letters and thinking sweetly of Norman and Lewis and Mary and Tony and Ed and Annie and May, and forgiving everyone everything and loving Bill and understanding his cold letter that sent me crying to bed the first day of 1943, and oh how my forgiveness where no sin is betrays my real selfishness, as Shakespeare said in the sonnet about roses with thorns and silver fountains with mud. (As Shakespeare said, and I betray myself again in pedantry like Macaulay, like Gregory that is—for in my world Gregory is Macaulay and Tony, Dali, and Mother, an angel, and Norman, a blighted Ariel, and Reymour, Landowska, and Bill, Yahweh and Michael, X., and Mrs Lightfoot, Mme Verdurin—my timeless world and childish cosmogony.) And I am bursting with words and things to tell you and letters to write and books to burn and papers to sort—for this is the beginning of a new year and radically comes all change, perhaps not progress, but change toward something (oh God oh yes) less painful. For some peculiar reason, because perhaps this is my first day home and life is beginning differently, and free of life, I am free of my last barrier—that is, I meant to say free of college—and therefore am no longer bound, even with a kind letter from the Draft Board with an if in it and, a determination to at least be that peculiar spectator I am so rarely, I performed a little ritual this morning. Having suffered pain as great as I physically ever knew, burning from the medicine that was to receive M and Mme (mostly Mme from appearances and more little mesdames, evidently never for a minute mesdemoiselles) Nit, and having had breakfast and wired Mother and Tony and gotten my bag I came back and played the concert on the phonograph backwards that Roth played that March, first the Serioso, then the Hunt, and finally the 76 No. 5, and scarcely listening to them and betrayed by fatigue I burned books and other things and symbolically got rid of much that is wrong in my life or is past (the same) and found the same nervous delight in destruction I found this summer. It is strange that after a little while however I grow tired and destruction is painful and I long to sleep and forget the world I try to destroy symbolically.

First I burned that Deirdre I made a year ago in June, a macabre experience—I held her body on a stick and watched the flames rip up her hair and dress and feed on her hands and propellers. Then suddenly as I raked among the ashes her unburned head turned up and palepainted stared out of the flames with eyes horribly. I kindled her with that light green shirt I bought the same spring and so liked and wore till rags and also with the last of the Illustrations, all three Xmas issues (1936, 1937, 1938) I have now gleefully burned. Then with almost savage joy I ripped up the Scofield Bible Martie gave me and which I carefully read in comparison with the one Mother gave me a couple of years ago, a thing that even shocked atheistic Bill, and laughed once in destroying these fantasies and perverting prose and great anthropological records. Then I burned the concert guide from which I gleaned those little musical facts in my head that I now so hate, about Ippanov and Cornelius and Nicolai and the riot at the performance of Sacre, and in the same category the thesaurus I bought from Bennett Schneider’s by mail with a dollar from Dad, after that January experience with Dr Fenter’s sister in Kansas City, strange white sick woman leaving whom made me cry, the thesaurus I used to glean strange phrases from and read with peculiar delight, perversion from truth. Inside was a clipping I could not burn, symbol of all those clippings I spent so much of my life in working over and feeling an obligation to work on—at that age I felt that tenuous necessity to keep a record of all the world and childishly thought my Weltanschauung lay in making scrapbooks from newspapers just as lately I think my life lies in these journals, necessity that has so changed that now it is only to escape all cognisance of the world. And I burned my Arabian Nights with stories of Ali Baba and Sindbad and the merchant and the genie and the story of the fisherman and the young king of the Black Isles and the Magic Carpet and Aladdin and the enchanted horse and the merchant of Baghdad, all so real and important and making such images in my head still that when I reread Aladdin three weeks ago I cried. And I burned Pinocchio, the sound of which in Mother’s voice I still hear, and the incidents of which still betray themselves in my daily experience. Oh these early books, whether they are cheap or noble, dime novels or Shakespeare, make such reality we never forget them, and help to form that blindness to the world experience always is. The world to the newlyentranced child exiting from womb and darkness is the only truth, and we shall never know it again.

Then I found the letter from Mother and cried and loved her so terribly and then hating my own selfishness and failure burned with great joy that last symbol of Paul Main, the funny Japanese book I bought from him, he the symbol of all my whorefilled life and penised profanations. A little straw for the camel and top of the Xmas trip was burning the aeroplane Alex Nolfi gave me, I touched by his letter I found last night and loving him also—crude symbol of the way Bill and I kill love, the way love dies for both of us, (dead John Nolfi for him, dead world for me) and finally the way our love for each other dies. Thus passeth destruction through the unobserving world, and it got very hot in the room and I was tired and my face was red and I wasn’t even hearing the music. I have been writing since. I let follow these pieces from the books I couldn’t quite bear to burn and glue here (cheap confession and cheating, I am Swinburne this rhetorical day) and then I shall write what I remember of Bill in November, of New York, and then begin a new folio with some ideas for the New Year.

JANUARY 4.

It is 1:30 Monday afternoon. Awakened by sound of shovel on cement and then by much yelling in the next room and people going up and down the stairs. Snow came last night, is falling heavily now, and has covered the ground several inches. John Turner came last night after I came back from dinner at the Bella Vista and excess of everything made the experience miserable. I listened to too much music (during the day I heard on the old phonograph 3 quartets, 2 Handel concerti, all the songs I have of Frijsh and Dietrich and Sullivan, the Grosse Fuge), ate too much candy (those damned delightful little coffee beans), had too many cigarettes (nearly a pack), too much loose talk to John about everything. It was inevitable, as I was in a communicating and absorbing mood; but I felt ill when he left and was a nervous wreck and went shaking around the room with my hand on my head and so on; but I bathed and rubbed oil on me and at last, with my head reeling madly as though I were drunk, fell asleep.

Today I made appointments preparatory to leaving college and have, since noon, been reading the notebooks Bill left here for me to read, his journals for the last 3 or 4 years. He has not come yet, I am shocked and hurt and strangely unperturbed. I called at noon from South Station yesterday and he wasn’t there, and Mrs Quinn answered the phone and in a rude and cheap voice demanded who it was and then said Bill wasn’t in and that she had no idea when he would be back. I was shocked and offended and tried to get off the line, but she kept talking and saying over and over, well, she just didn’t know when he’d be back; so I wished a happy new year to her and told her I had a delightful time in New York and promised to call back. Then once off the phone, a little relieved that Bill wasn’t there, because I had suddenly become terrorstruck at the prospect of talking to him, I started laughing at the thought she had found my strange and vulgar and passionate letters to Bill and had intended to lay me out and then couldn’t think of what to say and stood there terrified knowing she must protect Billy somehow. It really isn’t very funny, and that is possibly what has happened. Either that is so and she didn’t tell him I called, or else he was mightily offended by my letters himself (unwise and childish but not regrettable really but rather charming) and thinks it will be corruption to see me. I am terrified at the prospect of seeing him again and halfwonder if I will; I was sure that, not coming last night, he would come early this morning and rouse me from sleep; then I was sure, in awakening at 9:30, that he had at least left a note on my door; I went out all morning and am terribly shocked that he has never come. I shall write here a while and then go seeking. Or perhaps I won’t. I constantly have the urge to write him a letter and tell him if he is leaving soon, as he is, that I think it would be more pain to have two wrenchings than it is worth and that I shall not see him any more at all. It is sensible and what I should do: but of course you know I won’t do it but will rather inure myself in indolence and pain again. I was going to say one of the great experiences of my life was Bill; it was great perhaps but harmful—he has brought inaction, indecision, an increased tendency toward queerness and madness and nervousness, a stupid sense of the importance of myself and my chances for greatness and beauty (a thing that never darkened my sinful brow before), doubts about my whoredom and the truth of emotion, stupid convictions of the sensibleness of reason, all things that are perhaps good for some people but not for little Claude, who simply wants to be happy, making art, sensual as a faun and as simple. I also thought I was more madly in love with him than anyone in the world and more than I could possibly ever be again—but God, God, departure is always irrevocable death to me, or else I don’t know what love is in my selfish little (damned selfish and too little) heart, and grieving for him terribly the first two days, the third saw him halfforgotten, and the last letter of love I wrote half a lie, and my eye was running excitedly along the street, and New Year’s Eve I was in bed with Norman Unger. It was the same with John in September, remember; it was the same with Ed. So with Tzu. Narcistic conceit, hell, what more? I didn’t think I could bear to stay in NYC a day after Mother left. And yet I, heartbroken in leaving on Saturday, hated Cambridge in getting in the little hellhole again (even overjoyed at escaping for a little while at noon on Sunday merely going to South Station to get my bag) and hardly thought of calling Bill and don’t think of going to him now. It isn’t quite as simple as I put it however. Right now I am afraid to go to him—afraid he may be angry or hating or indifferent to me, all of which terrorise me in my mind now, and I can’t conceive what we will do when we first see each other—fall in each other’s arms, speak coolly, be silent, ou quoi? I sit here frozen at the thought. The terror is real and too significant—whereas John was a fancy, I can’t believe that Bill was, and I think the terror of that Tuesday morning and the gleaming eye is intimately bound up with the rest. It is significant that I could not and cannot recall what he looks like to save my life—every night in New York, on the train coming back, the last two nights in bed here, I have for several minutes consciously tried to bring his face to mind with absolutely sterile results, as though it were utterly and completely repressed—I could recall Mrs Quinn and the boys, Henry, Mary, and any number of people I scarcely otherwise remembered or knew—but Bill was utterly repressed. The only possible reason is that perhaps the terror of Tuesday morning was not some alien nervous trouble that used the eye as its cue but actually a neurosis, manifested by screaming and symbolised by his eye, that occurred when Mind could no longer cope with the pain of his nonlove and departure, terror of loneliness and his absence, so great that it sought relief in screaming and the next night in running away and in New York in total repression. This is all hypothetical—but perhaps valid. Now writing and thinking of Bill I grow longing for him, however, and this journal perhaps won’t continue too much longer—for the previous hour and a half I was reading in his 1941 journal and grew to love and admire the sincerity and intelligence and also grew terrorstruck at my own sin in leading him back to where he had so hard (oh stupidly, stupidly) tried to escape. Every other entry is about stopping masturbation and the remorse masturbation causes and then one pathetic entry about what he ordinarily did not mention, visions of beautiful boys that made the masturbation more pleasurable—why in God’s name it was so bad I am not quite able to comprehend, and the intense repression will either ruin him as a great person or make him one. I am thankful for my own freedom. (I suppose it is Henry who kept me from remorse, I am thankful to him for many things and angry with him about none. God, what a career I could have had, had he not come. It terrifies me—and yet it also might have made me a great man.) Granted all this however, and still with so much pain, I am sure that I should never have gotten through that horrible night had I had more to weigh on these cheap and weak shoulders. I feel sad that I should have met him and loved him (the sexual part I felt for him was at first purely de convenance and I never thought of being attracted to him physically, but now they are so mixed up I can’t separate them) and brought this painful lack of equilibrium into his life and the renewal of what, he has told me since, was almost shelved. But, hell, how can he do anything that he wishes to do if he neglects one of the two or three most important experiences in life perpetually, he who would know everything and have a wide view of the world? Michael Millen’s idea was he should know some parts of the world (sexual phenomenon) by vicarious experience only, since abstinence made him properly nervous. Hell, hell, hell. Sad for him. But also sad, I add, for me, that I should have fallen so deeply in love with what is more painfully impossible than, say, an easy phenomenon like Tzu’s impossibility. I was selfish to not have been more understanding; but his standpoint seemed so unbearably stupid at the time and his statement that he felt it wasn’t for him to be happy but to make his life a great one for humanity so vain and selfish I couldn’t bear it. Now all this leaves me perturbed with millions of loose ideas in my head and none of them resolved, but since it is a new year and our love that promised everything has withered, spring that holds everything so inevitably turning to fall that kills everything in gathering the fruit and to winter that is the death of all, since it is that, the end, either by his will, absence and departure, or my own terror or selfishness, and because it is a new year and I feel like writing, and because the snow and many things make it seem like last January and all the strange love that in fact meant and my cornerwaiting for Tzu, weeping, weeping, and because New York always gives me that sense of finale and grandcurtainfallingtime, I here remember what I can of some of the important parts of November and let the rest be bygones—as they are, already. Well, that first week of November was extraordinary anyhow. I have written, I think, about Lewis coming Tuesday and Wednesday nights and halfbeing everyman and I everyboy and he seeming like Newberry and all my lovers and somehow halfwonderful and bed with him thoroughly delightful. Also how Bill and I kept plotting to stay up two whole nights because (oh sweet past) we didn’t like to be away from each other even at night and this was our way of saying so, and we didn’t know (oh that we never had known) any other means of staying with each other; that first month we lost much sleep because we hated parting at night and arrived at one another’s door early in the morning. All this will be in a rosy and halfway untrue light, but it seemed so wonderful at the time and I remember it so much as such and I am in such a romantic mood anyhow and since it has proved to be such a keen and unhappy letdown I will be forgiven my vague exclamations of joy. Day by day unfolded the revelation of each other and it was such pure delight and he was in every particular so much what all my life I dreamed of and had never dared even to hope to find, all the Paul Mains and Newberrys and Tzus in the world and Tony also, Tony Habana. I shall fall madly in love again while I am writing this account I know and shall rush from the room insanely and find him cold or gone or indifferent, reserved or hating, and shall tear my little heart to pieces. I think another severe shock, even a jolt like George this fall, would send me reeling and crazy down the cliffside. As well, as well, something within me says, oh pure and immediate and eternal escape, more sweet than death. But madmen dream and some do not find their desires fulfilled there but only intensified.

So early Thursday morning Lewis quickly rolled away from the couch into the other room and I sleepily let Bill in and we sat in my antechamber murmuring; then I heard Lewis getting up and going to help a man who tried the previous night to pick him up—only because he, drunk, had promised he would and also I think because he was hurt Bill had come so early and had taken so much of the little of me he had left. I remember with pain and a peculiar joy that amazing starry smile he had when I told him there was nothing between Bill and me (as there wasn’t that Wednesday night) and that it never entered my head, and he held me and laughed and kissed me and told me how much he loved me. It came with great uneasiness and pain, but he told me at last that he loved me more than anyone in the world and so longed for me to like him. He is so madly modest (the reason I never loved him I think) it hurts me terribly. He spoke of the sad sordidness of the Army life, all the men not daring to go out with whores, expelled by nice girls, resorting to occasional homosexuality; himself he merely went tiredly to bed every night and did not masturbate but only fell asleep to dreams; and then every week or so there would be a nocturnal emission and terribly wonderful dreams and he in someone’s arms. It is all he lives for; he thinks many men there live likewise. It made me so sad I think I cried, if I remember correctly, and do dramatise that Wednesday night, and lay more tightly in his lap. It was Wednesday or Friday night that he spoke of the two other attractions—a boy who was very beautiful who was very kind to him whom he was beginning to know but who was shipped off; and a terribly beautiful boy he saw in a poolroom one night and fell madly in love with immediately, I just went crazy, Claude, that’s all, and nothing would do but that I have him—he was so terribly beautiful and I was so lonely, he was so young and beautiful… and so a little money gave him a dark hotel room and the boy for an hour or so, little pleasure after all. The boy must have laughed, Lewis thought. But those were only infatuations, and Claude—oh, say you like me a little bit, I love you more that anyone I know… . His own sweetness and intelligence and sensitivity, his love, his loneliness, his resemblance to Newberry, my loneliness, all made me love him also. And I often think I am that woman who has many lovers but only one faithful one, and though he is the very one she does not love, yet, considering all things, she marries him in the end, knowing there is love and kindness and security, where the others are desertion & selfish love.

Anyhow, he got up and left early that Thursday, and Bill and I spent that day as we did every other together, talking, walking, analysing our feelings for each other, God knows what.

That night I cooked rice. Oh what a hellish unbelievable night, so necessary, so strange, so painful to us both, such a grand and stupid and inevitable mistake on my part. We of course were going to stay up all night as part of our agreement. So all evening by vague candlelight we sat talking about ourselves and he was speaking endlessly of every facet of himself. (Lewis had gone to Concord for the night.) We sat on the same couch occasionally and I would occasionally touch him as though by accident and he would do likewise; he would lie down and I would and our hands or legs would graze each other by. Repetition of that Saturday night with Sheff; I am convinced that Sheff would have been willing and happy to continue had I been more bold, had I been more bold with Tzu or Ed or anyone almost I could have had what I wanted. I never quite trust myself and always fear the consequences. This night however the consequences came automatically. I saw that he was interested and for some reason that night I became madly interested—that is, I thought he was interested and he later told me he was. Then about three we got hungry and did not want to go out (and interrupt our game of tit and tat) and the shadows were long and very conducive to touching, and so I put on some water for the rice and he went on talking above the running water of the bathroom. Then I poured the rice in and started to sit down by him on the couch and he said, And there is something else I haven’t told you, Claude… I sat down not very far from him and looked at him waiting. I have certain homosexual tendencies that— . . . . We both paused, startled, a minute. My immediate thought was that this was only a preliminary to confessing our mutual love and attraction. Later I realised that that wasn’t the case at all and in reality he was only making a thorough knowledge of each other possible, and, though he had been attracted to me that night, he wasn’t going to let it enter the situation because it had not occurred to him that I was likewise built. At least that is what he told me later; I am inclined to believe it, but perhaps unconscious actions were not quite so innocent. Then I said, blurting, that I was too, and— . . . I started to say I loved him. But we sat there startled again for a minute and then suddenly I reached over and took his hand and held it very tightly. He looked up and, with the most love and sweetness you can possibly conceive of, he said, as though saying quiet eulogy for ourselves, Oh Claude… . I think he was crying, and I was starting to, and I laid my head on his shoulder and he pressed his arm around me nervously for a minute and said, There, there, old man, it’s all right— . . . . (just as Norman had said to me on New Year’s Eve). Then I started to hug him vaguely and he started shaking and asked me to wait a minute. I couldn’t quite understand and I got up and stirred the rice and he got up, and I asked his advice on how long the rice should be cooked and then I sat down again and he stood by the mantel. It is all very confused in my mind and I was halfasleep anyhow and I shall not relate it correctly. But I looked at him puzzled and asked what the matter was. I understand it all so well now, my complete mystification that night (akin to the nights with Alan) that I cannot perhaps repeat it here. He started explaining that it had never occurred to him that he would actually meet anyone who was equally desirous and desirable. He said he had never thought of doing anything like this, and I interrupted him with asking whether he didn’t want to and perhaps didn’t like me, and he said no, that he was terribly fond of me, and that yes, oh yes, it had entered his head to touch me and love me, but it was as far from reality as anything conceivable. I made one of the little manifestoes I always make on such occasions, that I loved him very much (perhaps I didn’t say that) and that the natural way for me to express my love was to touch him, that I couldn’t see anything that was wrong in it. He said he knew there wasn’t but that he hadn’t done such things. I can’t describe it now. He questioned me as to what people did under such circumstances and I laughed at him when he went scientifically into it asking, You mean mutual masturbation? I was then a little angered that he should be so cold and reason out what seemed to me the most natural and wonderful and necessary thing in the world. He sat there sitting against the wall, shivering as he had when I first touched him, as though having nervous spasms and I sat there uncomprehending. He said he loved me, and I loved him—wasn’t it then natural for us to fall into each other’s arms? Love for me is so simple.

I am tired; I shall go look for him now, it is 4 in the afternoon. The rest later.

JANUARY 4, 5:45 pm

No Bill found. A quiet dinner in my room by myself, first a bowl of tomato juice, then watercress and onions, then watercress and cheese, then olives and bread, then water, a cigarette—by candlelight, and a good glow begun and I began to feel terribly happy and that I was terribly mean and stupid and ungrateful to be unhappy and that I was childish for wanting to be unhappy. But the beginning twilight, the gently falling snow, bitchy running boys, the absence of Bill, all tended to make me miserable again. To continue.

The rice was done, and we both tried to eat some, I with chopsticks; his he thought was awful, but I took a strange delight in eating mine and did. Then we sat down again and he touched me and said he thought it was all right and so we embraced. Then we lay down by each other on the couch, he clenching me nervously and tightly. I was perfectly happy and thought the heavens were opening about me. Then he said something about going to bed and I said I thought it unwise. This initial misunderstanding held our grief. He persisted and said he thought it would be all right if we went to bed together and that mutual masturbation might be fun. I got rather sick and embarrassed at his scientific analysis of all the steps and also couldn’t keep from laughing. I had always just done things and then perhaps thought about them later—but to go through each of the processes mentally and logically talk about what was wise when I was bursting with love seemed stupid and ludicrous. But I was very quiet and tried to do the right thing under the circumstances. Until he said it was all right, I carefully stayed away from touching him. He once more suggested we go to bed and I said I thought everything in one night was dangerous and unpleasant and unwise, more so in regarding his own attitude to such matters; but he said he thought it was all right. You want to, don’t you? he said. I said, Well, yes, I think so, but I think another night would be better and that we’ve gone quite far enough tonight. But then I began to be perturbed that he wanted it terribly and, since I by a long shot didn’t NOT want it, I said finally all right. It turned out that he had done all that only because he thought I wanted it and he wanted to play his role unselfishly and make me happy. And I did it only because he wanted it. He said later he didn’t want it, but, reading his journal and hearing about his intense urges toward masturbation, I am inclined now to think it was only a rationalization of his attitude and he was casting all the undue blame on me, particularly after the businesslike way he went after it. I got up then, and he went in the bathroom and urinated, I think, and I asked if he thought we should have sheets, and he said yes, and I made up the bed in front of the fireplace, and then we both got partially undressed and he blew out the candle and naked we then crawled in bed and hugged each other affectionately a minute, and then he motioned that I was to lie a certain way (oh it was the strangest intercourse I ever endured or ever expect to) and then he nervously said, Shall we masturbate each other? I nodded, and he immediately set to work and had me do so; he was annoyed when I touched him unnecessarily, and there was, I think, only the idea to go to work and get it over with immediately. I myself rather dreaded it all and found no pleasure in it after leaving his arms and lying on the other couch; most of my sexual joy comes in the preliminaries and in sleep afterwards, and masturbation is always a final little cap that must be put on only as a mechanical act after all the excitement is over for merely hygienic reasons. He indicated that I didn’t do it quite right for him, that his skin was terribly tender, and I think I perhaps hurt him. We came. We sopped up our semen with a towel. We lay there in bed still for a moment. Then from that time, about 3:30 am until dawn, we talked and thought and talked, all about nothing but this. I recall specifically nothing that we said; but we both got very despairing and it seemed a sordid and miserable circumstance to both of us; we were wretched over our mutual misunderstanding; we lay there with our arms about each other and discussed all phases of the matter; the conclusion that we halfway reached was that our relationship simply couldn’t continue. We grew terribly melancholy. The heavens closed and hell opened up. After a while dawn came and we lay there very tired, never sleeping, talking and going over and over the same little facts of what we had done and what it meant and what we could do in the future, all horrible circumstances. Then about 8 we got up and bathed and unshaved went to breakfast. I said I didn’t think I could bear a single disturbance and that, if Gregory should sit down by us, I would scream.

Gregory sat down by us. I did not scream but started laughing. Both of us had bloodshot eyes (I had slept hardly at all all week long) and I was shaking with strain; both of us had dirty clothes and messy hair and unshaved beards, and Gregory kept saying pertinent things, and in the light of our experience everything he said took on a peculiar meaning that he didn’t mean at all, and ever so often I would break out in this horrible unpleasant laughter that was hysterical; Bill would too. Gregory would say something and then we would look at each other and laugh and laugh and spill our eggs and drop our toast and then just stare helplessly at the table. I gurgled in my water, spit in my napkin, thought I would die. Then he left; meanwhile a quiet, pretty boy about 22, a friend of Greg’s, sat down and silently ate. Bill had to leave after a minute things seemed so funny, and the boy looked at me strangely. So I sat there at breakfast across from the boy staring out the window and periodically breaking into terrible laughter, then having spasms in trying to control it. He looked at me helplessly and talked to a friend about a Physics B exam. When I came out, Bill was waiting for me, and I swore gently at him at leaving me and we broke out into laughter again. We came to my door. We had agreed we shouldn’t see each other for three days and think the matter out, but when we got to my door, he said, I don’t want to leave you and I said, I don’t want to leave you either, everything seems all right. So we went walking along the River together, had an exciting time and a happy day. The day turned out to be one of the happiest of our existence, really joyous. Somehow that night had passed into mysterious inexistence, just the way the Tuesday morning two weeks later did.

As for the Wednesday notes, see pp 94-95 of the last n.b. journal. We spent Friday morning together; then I went to Sanskrit and somewhere else and came back here and found a note from Lewis. Lewis came and we went to the Bella Vista for dinner. He was very handsome in his uniform and very charming; he had shaved off his moustache and no longer looked like Newberry. I am always amazed when I love two people at once and I swear I never can (I so rarely have more than one lover at a time) and yet that night I loved both Bill and Lewis madly— . . . .

OH STOP. OH ALL THIS GOES IN CAPITALS. OH IT IS THIRTY MINUTES LATER THAN IT WAS AND I AM SCREAMING LIKE HELL AND HAD A FIT AND AM TERRIBLY WILDLY HORRIBLY STUPIDLY MAD. WHAT HAPPENS NOW? I AM HAVING CHILLS AND STUPOR AND WILL NOT BEAR ANOTHER MINUTE OF IT. TWO KNOCKS AFTER I WROTE MADLY AND I KNEW IT WAS BILL AND WENT TO THE DOOR. I OPENED IT. THERE STOOD THIS TALL LEAN WHITEFACED FIGURE. I DIDN’T KNOW WHO IT WAS FOR A MINUTE. HIS FACE LOOKED AS WHITE AS THAT TUESDAY MORNING. THEN I THOUGHT OVER AND OVER TO MYSELF, THIS IS BILL, THIS IS BILL. I DON’T REMEMBER WHAT I SAID. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I SAID. WHO WAS IT WHO CAME? I AM NOT SURE HE CAME. I AM POSITIVELY CRAZY. I AM SO JEALOUS AND STARTLED AND HURT AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING. WHAT IS HAPPENING? I AM HAVING CHILLS. I SAID, HELLO. PAUSE. I WAS TERRIFIED AT THE FACE AND THE FIGURE AND DIDN’T DARE LOOK AT IT. NO WONDER I COULDN’T REMEMBER HIS FACE OR WHAT HE LOOKED LIKE. I WAS SIMPLY CRAZY. I WAS TERRORSTRUCK AND I COULDN’T BEAR TO LOOK OUT THE DOOR AT HIM, AND IT WAS IDENTICALLY LIKE THAT TUESDAY MORNING AND I THOUGHT I WAS STILL TRAPPED IN ITS TERROR. OH HOW GOOD TO BE WRITING HERE. I AM MAKING MY MIND THINK ABOUT SOMETHING AND THOUGH I AM STILL SHAKING I AM FREE OF THAT TERRIBLE FIT. OH THANK GOD. OH THANK GOD. IT WAS BILL WHO CAME LIKE GOD. I COULDN’T RECALL HIS FACE BECAUSE I FEARED IT TERRIBLY. I OPENED THE DOOR THIRTY MINUTES AGO AND THERE HE STOOD LIKE A CORPSE. AFTER A MINUTE I SAID FOR HIM TO COME IN AND HE SAID THANK YOU AND DID SO. AND THE DOOR SHUT AND I WASN’T SURE WHO IT WAS AGAIN FOR A MINUTE AND I DIDN’T DARE LOOK AT HIM AND HE DIDN’T LOOK LIKE ANYONE I HAD EVER SEEN BEFORE AND THEN I KEPT SAYING TO MYSELF THIS IS BILL AND I ASKED HOW HE WAS AND HE SAID WELL AND THANKED ME AND DID THE SAME TO ME AND I HALFHYSTERICALLY LAUGHED AND SAID I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY AND WAS TERRIBLY EMBARRASSED AND HE SAID HE WAS VERY SORRY IT WAS SO. HE STARTED WALKING AROUND THE RUG AND I CLIMBED IN THE WINDOWSEAT AND I WAS COLD AND HE WAS AND WE WERE DURING THE WHOLE INTERVIEW. HE ASKED IF I HAD HAD DINNER AND I SAID YES AND EXPLAINED I COULDN’T EAT IN THE DINING HALL ANY LONGER AND THEN WE SPOKE OF MY LEAVING COLLEGE AND I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO GET WORDS OUT AND I TRIED TO SAY I HAD MADE AN APPOINTMENT WITH THE DEAN BUT I ONLY SPOKE IN QUEER FRAGMENTS. HE WAS VERY WHITE AND I MUST HAVE BEEN SO TOO. THIS WAS THE WAY BILL CAME BACK. HE EXPLAINED THAT HE HAD GOTTEN MY PHONE CALL AND I NARRATED HOW HIS MOTHER SCARED ME. HE SAID HE DIDN’T GET BACK UNTIL 12:30 LAST NIGHT AND HAD TO WRITE A LETTER FOR HARRIS THIS MORNING AND NOW CAME. HE THANKED ME FOR MY LETTERS; I APOLOGISED FOR THEM AND EXPLAINED I KNEW THEY WERE UNKIND AND HE SHOULDN’T THANK ME AND THEY MUST HAVE MADE HIM UNHAPPY. HE SAID YES THAT THEY DID BUT STILL HE THANKED ME AND HE SAID HIS LETTER WAS PURPOSELY THE WAY IT WAS AND THAT HE WAS SORRY BUT HE SIMPLY COULDN’T LET GO OF HIS FEELINGS AND DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO WRITE ANY OTHER WAY. AND I SAID I THOUGHT HE WAS ANGRY ABOUT THE WAY I HAD WRITTEN AND HE SAID OH NO NOT AT ALL. THEN WE SPOKE OF THE DRAFT BOARD AND HIS PLANS AND MY PLANS IF CRYSTALLISED AND WE LOOKED AT THE CRYSTALS AND WE KEPT LOOKING AT THE CLOCK SO HE WOULDN’T BE LATE TO DINNER AND HE SPOKE OF A MAN WHO WAS SHOT, THAT IS THE REGISTRAR SAID HE SHOULD BE SHOT IF HE WAS GOING TO REGISTER AS A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR. HE SAID HE THOUGHT IT UNWISE FOR ME TO LEAVE COLLEGE. I SPOKE OF THE FUNNY WOMAN IN THE DEAN’S OFFICE TODAY. HE ASKED ABOUT THE BOARDING HOUSE. WE SPOKE OF THE THAYER I’D LOANED HIM AND I OF BODKY’S CONCERT AND HE WENT INTO THE DETAILS OF THE DIABELLI VARIATIONS WHEN I ASKED IF HE KNEW HOW THEY WERE COMPOSED. I WAS COMPOSED AND CALMED AND LAUGHED PROPERLY AND DIDN’T SAY MUCH. THERE WERE LONG PAUSES. EVERY TIME I LOOKED AT HIM I THOUGHT I WOULD DIE WITH MISERY. HE SAID HE HAD SPENT MUCH OF HIS TIME WITH NICHOLAS TAWA. I REMEMBERED THE DIARY WHERE HE KEPT PRAISING NICHOLAS AND SAID HE WAS ONE OF THE FINEST CHARACTERS HE EVER KNEW. HE LOANED MY COPY OF THAYER’S BEETHOVEN TO NICHOLAS WHICH ANGERED ME AND I ASKED CALMLY IF HE ENJOYED IT. HE SAID HE MUST PHONE NICHOLAS AND ASK HIM TO THE DIABELLI TOMORROW BECAUSE HE WOULD BE PLEASED. AND I STARTED SCREAMING WITHIN AND SAYING OVER AND OVER, I WON’T GO, I WON’T GO. OUTWARDLY I SAID SOMETHING ABOUT HIS BEING LATE TO DINNER. HE SAID HE WANTED TO SEE STEVE VERY MUCH AS HE HADN’T SEEN HIM BEFORE HE WENT AWAY AND HE WANTED TO TALK OVER HIS PLANS WITH HIM. PREVIOUSLY HE HAD ASKED IF I WERE TO ROOM WITH GREGORY’S MRS BEMIS AND I SAID I COULDN’T BEAR HER ALWAYS COMING IN AND TALKING ABOUT HER DEAD HUSBAND AND HE SAID HE WAS INTERESTED IN ALL KINDS