My Father and Myself (14 page)

It was in my Cambridge years that I began to meet and mix with other acknowledged homosexuals. The emotional feelings and desires we shared, which, at any rate in their satisfaction, made us outcasts and criminals in the sight of the impertinent English laws, naturally drove us into each other's company and the society of those who, though not homosexual themselves, or not exclusively homosexual, were our intelligent, enlightened friends. In such company one was able to enjoy perfect freedom of speech. To understand and explain oneself, which I am trying to do, is very difficult, so I don't know whether to attribute to mere bad luck or to the inscrutable perversities of my nature the fact that neither in Cambridge nor afterwards did I ever meet a homosexual with whom I wanted to set up house. The simplest answers to our dilemmas are not always the ones we desire. Many of my friends brought off enduring “marriages” with men of their own class and kind, others with men of their own kind though of a different class, and I myself have had some short episodes with homosexuals who came attractively in my way; but for some reason I never established myself with any of them. Certain, perhaps relevant, notes about my Cambridge character, as I try to discern it, may be put down. I saw myself, in affairs of the heart, in the masculine role, the active agent; the undergraduates who seemed to me attractive were always younger than I. I myself was attractive, but I did not like to be thought so and pursued by others to whom I was not attracted, as sometimes happened. I avoided or repelled undesirable intimacies. I remember that a middle-aged homosexual novelist, whom I had met only twice and whose name I have now forgotten, said to me, “May I call you Joe?” I said, “No.” I was not out to give pleasure but to get it. It was particularly embarrassing when my homosexual friends seemed to fall for me if they themselves had no physical appeal. I dodged and frustrated them and hurt their feelings. In later life, when I tried to improve a character which I saw to be ungenerous, I found that, try as I did, I could not produce the smallest physical response to the passions of those who loved me and of whom indeed I was fond, though not in a physical way. Thus did I hurt their feelings again. It is easier to mend one's manners than one's psychology, and it has sometimes seemed to me that, in my case, the feelings of the heart and the desires of the flesh have lain in separate compartments.

One more neurosis, shared with my mother: I was worried about bad breath. I disliked it in others and feared I might have it myself. My mother carried always with her in her bag a supply of cachous called Red Lavender lozenges. I doubt if they still exist. Chemists sold them and they had a distinctive taste and scent, pleasant and pervasive, which I associate with her, her person and her belongings. I too used to buy these lozenges to suck before kissing, and all through my sexual life I have carried something in my pocket, peppermints, chocolate, to sweeten my breath in case it was nasty.

With the homosexual undergraduate friend to whom I have already alluded I was especially thick and had for him indeed some emotional feeling, incipient at least, which he reciprocated. We kissed. He was a few years younger than myself and is my friend still. But he was sexually experienced where I was not and was already having affairs with two men much older than either of us. Perhaps unwisely he described to me their love-making, in which fellatio played the largest part. This seemed to my innocent or puritanical mind so disgusting that for a long time I thought of his friends with utter repulsion as monsters, lower than the beasts, and wondered that their faces, when at length I met them both, should look so ordinary. This boy and I, after discussing and hesitating on the verge of physical love, which was never strong on either side, decided that it would “spoil” our friendship.

Unable, it seemed, to reach sex through love, I started upon a long quest in pursuit of love through sex. Having put that neat sentence down I stare at it. Is it true? At some point in the journey I would certainly have so described it; how serious I was in the beginning, the early 'twenties, I no longer remember. I was to spend twenty-five years in this search, which began, it may not surprise readers to hear, in Piccadilly, at No. 11 Half Moon Street, a discreet establishment someone had told me about and where I rented a room for a weekend, twice I think, in my Cambridge history. Street prowlers and male prostitutes, not many, were my first prey; of them, strangely enough, I remember nothing at all, but I find in my notebooks the following brief entry: “No. 11 Half Moon Street, the kind of room in which one kills oneself.”

However, if I was cheerless then, life brightened for me after I came down. I met socially more and more homo-sexuals and their boy friends and had an affair with a goodnatured normal Richmond tradesboy who delivered groceries to my parents' house but, through some kind of physical apathy, delivered nothing material to me. By the time I reached, with my father, the dog's turd in the Bois de Boulogne I was well into my predatory stride. I had just come up from Ragusa, where I had been idling about with a lisping little artist whose girlishness had ended by sickening me; my homosexual Cambridge friend was now living in Paris and we were exploring the queer bars and Turkish baths where one was able to select one's masseur from photographs displayed by the proprietor; I was busy making assignations with a Corsican waiter in the Café de la Paix under my parents' noses. Later on, when my play was in production in London, actors were added to my social list; I do not like to boast, but Ivor Novello took me twice into his bed. Though I can't remember my state of mind at this period, I expect that much of all this seemed fun. It certainly afforded pleasure and amusement, it was physically exciting, and in England it had the additional thrill of risk. A single instance of this mixture of fun and risk may be described. Early in the decade I travelled up to Liverpool with my father to visit his sisters. In the restaurant car where we were having lunch a good-looking young waiter was instantly recognized by me as a “queer.” While my father studied the menu I exchanged smiles and winks with this youth. Towards the end of the meal, when the business of serving it was over, he passed me with a meaning look and backward glance and disappeared down the corridor. Excusing myself to my father for a natural need I followed him. He was waiting for me by the door of the toilet. We entered together, quickly unbuttoned and pleasured each other. Then I returned to finish my coffee. I had scribbled down my address for this amusing youth, but never heard from him again.

Yet in spite of such adventures, if anyone had asked me what I was doing I doubt if I should have replied that I was diverting myself. I think I should have said that I was looking for the Ideal Friend. If I had not said that in the beginning I would certainly have said it later. Though two or three hundred young men were to pass through my hands in the course of years, I did not consider myself promiscuous but monogamous, it was all a run of bad luck, and I became ever more serious over this as time went on. Perhaps as a reaction to my school, Army, and Cambridge difficulties, the anxiety, nervousness, guilt that had dogged me all along the line (though I did not think of it then as guilt, if indeed it was), I was developing theories of life to suit myself: sex was delightful and of prime importance, the distance between the mouth and the crotch must be bridged at once, clothes must come off as soon as possible, no courtship, no nonsense, no beating, so to speak, about the bush, the quickest, perhaps the only, way to get to know anyone thoroughly was to lie naked in bed with him, both were at once disarmed of all disguise and pretense, all cards were on the table and one could tell whether he was the Ideal Friend. What I meant by the Ideal Friend I doubt if I ever formulated, but now, looking back over the years, I think I can put him together in a partly negative way by listing some of his many disqualifications. He should not be effeminate, indeed preferably normal; I did not exclude education but did not want it, I could supply all that myself and in the loved one it had always seemed to get in the way; he should admit me but no one else; he should be physically attractive to me and younger than myself—the younger the better, as closer to innocence; finally he should be on the small side, lusty, circumcised, physically healthy and clean: no phimosis, halitosis, bromidrosis. It may be thought that I had set myself a task so difficult of accomplishment as almost to put success purposely beyond my reach; it may be thought too that the reason why this search was taking me out of my own class into the working class, yet still towards that innocence which in
my
class I had been unable to touch, was that guilt in sex obliged me to work it off on my social inferiors. This occurred to me only as a latter-day question and the answer may be true, I cannot tell; if asked then I would probably have said that working-class boys were more unreserved and understanding, and that friendship with them opened up interesting areas of life, hitherto unknown.

Difficult of discovery though my Ideal Friend might seem, I found him, as I thought, quite soon. He was a sailor, an able-bodied seaman, a simple, normal, inarticulate, working-class boy whom I met by introduction. I already knew some of his family. Small in stature and a lightweight boxer quite famous in the Navy, his silken-skinned, muscular, perfect body was a delight to behold, like the Ephebe of Kritios. His brown-eyed, slightly simian face, with its flattened nose and full thick lips, attracted me at once. If he smelt of anything it was the salt of the sea. He had had no sexual experience with anyone before, but wanted it and instantly welcomed it with me. In fact he satisfied all my undefined specifications and, if men could marry, I would have proposed to him. He might even, in the first delight, have accepted me, for he never manifested the slightest interest in girls (he did not marry until well into his forties), was proud of me and my friendship and excited by all it had to offer—my flat, which became his second home, my car, which I taught him to drive, and the admiration which provided him with such presents as a smart civilian suit.

This boy engrossed my heart and thought for four years, but in a way I had not foreseen he was not Ideal: being a sailor he was too seldom available. Had he been more available, perhaps the affair would not have lasted so long. He was stationed in Portsmouth, free only at weekends, if then. Sometimes he went off for a long cruise on his ship. Whenever he had leave he came to stay with me; but because of his sporadic appearances, his conventional background, his unsophistication, and the “manly respectability” of our relationship (the Greek view of life), all my anxieties found their fullest play. I was not faithful to him (not that he demanded faithfulness), he was too much away, but concealed from him my nature and the kind of life I led (not that he ever exhibited the least curiosity about it). I did not want him to think me “queer” and himself a part of homosexuality, a term I disliked since it included prostitutes, pansies, pouffs and queans. Though he met some of my homosexual friends, I was always on edge in case they talked in front of him the loose homosexual chatter we talked among ourselves. My sailor was a sacred cow and must be protected against all contamination.

The setting of the nuptial scene whenever he was due to arrive was fraught with anxieties. Idle callers of a “contaminating” kind, of whom I had too many, had to be warned off or turned away from the door; my boiling incontinence had somehow to be concealed; I would have liked instantly to undo his silks and ribbons, but the conventions by which he lived required, I supposed, the delays of conversation, drinks, supper: sex should be postponed to its proper respectable time, bedtime; the Red Lavender lozenges had to be handy, a towel also, though hidden from him, to obviate the embarrassment of turning out naked in search of one to dry us down, and to prevent, if possible, stains on the sheets as a speculation for my char. He liked dancing with me to the gramophone, readily accepting the female role, and often when I had ascertained that he too was in a state of erection we would strip and dance naked, so unbearably exciting that I could not for long endure the pressure of his body against mine. Our pleasures were, I suppose, fairly simple, kisses, caresses, manipulations, intercrural massage; he got his own satisfaction quite soon, though not as soon as I; whether we ever repeated these pleasures during the night (we slept in one bed) I don't recall; I doubt it; since he was an athlete, always boxing or training for it, I expect it was tacitly understood that he should conserve his strength. I am quite sure that if further turnings towards each other occurred, it was never he who turned. There seemed, indeed, always something to worry about—as there had been throughout my sexual life; and when a friend once asked me whether I ever “lost myself” in sex, the answer had to be no.

Careful though I seemed to myself to be with my sailor, my desire for him outran prudence, he began to feel an unwelcome emotional pressure, there were failed appointments when I waited for him in vain, and I started to lose my head. Advice came from a close friend of mine: