Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (98 page)

73

“ideal conditions”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Jan. 3, 1946, HRC.

73

“He had no idea”:

, “Desire and the Black Masseur,” pp. 205–6.

73

“His desires”: Ibid., p. 206.

73

“Miss Alma grew up”:

, p. 228.

74

“Please be sure that no single copy”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Sept. 24, 1941,

, p. 341.

74

“By the flesh is meant”: Papers of the Rev. Walter Dakin, Sewanee.

74

: Amory H. Bradford,

. Williams’s volume is in the Washington University Library in St. Louis. The inscription reads, “For T. Lanier Williams from his Grandfather Walter Edwin Dakin, Christmas 1933. May he ‘read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest’ the thoughts of this book.”

74

“Character is the man”: 4–5 Eastertide, Acts 24:14–16, Papers of the Rev. Walter Dakin, Sewanee.

74

“I had begun to associate”:

, “The Resemblance between a Violin Case and a Coffin,” p. 277.

75

“the proud proprietress of a virgin mind”: Tennessee Williams and Donald Windham,

(New York: Samuel French, 2010), p. 115.

75

“a youth of twenty-one”: Ibid., p. 4.

75

“the fears and reticences”: Ibid., p. 116.

75

“not predatory maternity”: Ibid., p. 5.

75

“like being under water”: Ibid., p. 18.

75

“The Victorian actually prevailed”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Sept. 4, 1942, HRC.

75

“Virginity is mostly the consequence”: Williams and Windham,

, p. 84.

75

“Without intervention”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Sept. 4, 1942, HRC.

75

“who found it too much”: Ibid.

76

“I doubt that anything”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Nov. 18, 1950, WUCA.

77

“catches her fingers”: Williams and Windham,

, p. 115.

77

“Where are you going?”: Ibid., pp. 113–14.

77

“the little puritan”:

, pp. 228–31.

77

“HADRIAN: . . . I grew up”: Williams and Windham,

, pp. 50–51.

77

“Don’t hang back with the beasts”: LOA1, p. 511.

77

“To me—well”: Ibid., p. 612.

78

“Don’t quote instinct to me!”: Ibid., p. 421.

78

“body electric”: Williams to Donald Windham, Jan. 3, 1944,

, p. 126.

78

Hazel Kramer: Williams met the redheaded, spirited Hazel Kramer (1912–1951) when he was eleven and she was nine. “Some young hoods were . . . throwing rocks at a plump little girl. I went to her defense . . . and thus began my closest childhood friendship which ripened into a romantic attachment,” Williams wrote in

(pp. 14–15). Around puberty, Williams recalled, “I had a sexual desire for Hazel and it was in The West End Lyric, a movie house on Demar Blvd. Sitting beside her before the movie began, I suddenly conscious of her bare shoulders and I wanted to touch them, and I felt a genital stirring.” (Leverich,

, p. 73.) CC, who didn’t think she was “good enough for Tom,” according to Edwina, opposed them attending the same university. She attended the University of Wisconsin.

78

“She was frigid”:

, p. 29.

78

“deeply in love with my roommate”:

, pp. 230–31.

78

“Faults—I am egocentric”:

, Oct. 9, 1937, p. 109.

79

“stunted”: Ibid., Sept. 14, 1941, p. 235.

79

“Why do women ignore me”: Ibid., May 30, 1938, p. 119.

79

“genuine nympho”:

, p. 43. Regarding his vomiting: “All of a sudden I felt nauseated from the liquor consumed and from nervous strain and embarrassment. I rushed into the bathroom and puked, came out with a towel around me, hangdog with shame over my failed test of virility.”

79

“I was . . . terribly impressed”: Ibid.

79

“ ‘I fucked a girl tonight’ ”: Ibid. The affair lasted a few months before Williams was “thrown over by the beloved bitch—but the experience was valuable.” (

, Apr. 29, 1938, p. 115.)

79

“finally fully persuaded”:

, p. 49.

79

“This part down here is the sex”: LOA1, p. 624.

79

“I must get my mind”:

, Nov. 23, 1937, p. 69.

79

“to the artistic and Bohemian life”: Ibid., Jan. 1, 1939, p. 133. The phrase “mad pilgrimage of the flesh” was first mentioned in ibid

, Jan. 14, 1939, p. 133: “Am I all animal, all willful, blind stupid

? Is there another part that is

an accomplice in this mad pilgrimage of the flesh?” In the short story “The Malediction” (1945), the phrase appears for the first time in print.

80

“discovered a certain flexibility”: Leverich,

, p. 278.

80

“Rather horrible night”:

, June 11, 1939, p. 153.

80

“I had the experience Sat. night”: Ibid., June 14, 1939, p. 153.

80

“I seem to be my

self again”: Ibid., June 25, 1939, p. 153.

80

“It is good for me to have somebody”: Ibid., May 25, 1939, p. 149.

80

“I felt like I was going to cry”: Ibid., Mar. 7, 1939, p. 141.

80

“appalling loneliness”: Ibid., Mar. 8, 1939, p. 143.

80

“If only tomorrow”: Ibid.

80

“a delightful personality”: Ibid., July 6, 1939, p. 155.

81

“I want something straight”: Ibid.

81

“I demand so much”:

, July 30, 1939, p. 161.

81

“enduring for the sake of endurance”: LOA1, p. 587.

81

“Now I must make a positive religion”:

, July 30, 1939, p. 161.

81

“an expert at graceful retreat”: Ibid., Aug. 11, 1936, p. 49.

81

complaints that signaled his quiet desperation: Ibid., Oct. 16, 1938, p. 125. “The fear is so much worse than the thing feared—the heart defect, however actual, would cause me little discomfort, no actual pain—if I were not afraid of it—it is the fear that makes all the concomitant distresses, the dreadful tension, the agora and claustro-phobia, the nervous indigestion, the hot gassy stomach.”

81

“a strange trance-like existence”: Ibid., July 30, 1939, p. 161.

81

“The dreadful heavy slipping”: Ibid.

82

“was caging in something”:

, p. 83.

82

“I need somebody to envelop me”:

, Oct. 3, 1939, p. 166.

82

“What taunts me most”: Ibid., Aug. 23, 1942, p. 325.

82

“I am so used to being”: Ibid., May 27, 1937, p. 87.

82

“I’ve never had any feeling”:

, pp. 229–30.

82

“It is so easy to ignore”:

, Oct. 6, 1943, p. 391.

82

“to know me is not to love me”:

, p. 131.

82

“I am a problem”:

, July 1, 1942, p. 297.

83

“I am as pure as I ever was”: Ibid., Jan. 28, 1940, p. 185.

83

“Thank god I’ve gotten bitch-proof”:

, Dec. 15, 1939, p. 179.

83

“My first real encounter”:

, p. 231.

83

“Ashes hauled”:

, Jan. 12, 1940, p. 183.

83

“Oh, Lord, I don’t know”: Ibid., Jan. 26, 1940, p. 183.

83

“the restless beast in the jungle”: Williams to Joseph Hazan, Sept. 1940,

, p. 276.

83

“I ache with desires”:

, Feb. 7, 1940, p. 187.

83

“The big emotional business”: Ibid., Mar. 11, 1940, p. 191.

83

“this awful searching-business”: Williams to Joseph Hazan, Aug. 18, 1940,

, p. 262.

83

“My emotional life has been a series”:

, May 26, 1940, p. 195.

84

“His practice in a room”: Donald Windham,

(Verona, N.Y.: Privately published, 1985), pp. 17–18.

84

“He would dispatch me”:

, p. 53.

85

“quotidian goal”: Windham,

, p. 17.

85

from prude to lewd: Anna Freud,

, vol. 2:

(Madison, Conn.: International Universities Press, 1936), pp. 153–54: “Young people who pass through the kind of ascetic phase which I have in mind seem to fear the quantity rather than the quality of their instincts. They mistrust enjoyment in general and so their safest policy appears to be simply to counter more urgent desires with more stringent prohibitions. Every time the instinct says ‘I will’, the ego retorts, ‘Thou shall not’ much after the manner of strict parents in the early training of little children. . . . But in the repudiation of instinct characteristic of adolescence no loophole is left such substitute gratification . . . turning against the self we find a swing-over from asceticism to instinctual excess, the adolescent suddenly indulging in everything which he had previously held to be prohibited and disregarding any sort of external restrictions.”

85

“I was just terribly over sexed”:

, p. 231.

85

“I’m getting horny as a jack-rabbit”: Williams to Donald Windham, Oct. 11, 1940,

, p. 17.

85

“the most uncompromising of southern Puritans”: Williams to Theresa Helburn, Oct. 11, 1940,

, p. 290.

85

“So line up some”: Williams to Donald Windham, Oct. 11, 1940,

, p. 17.

85

“deviant Satyriasis”:

, p. 53.

85

“Sexuality is an emanation”: Ibid.

85

“I went out cruising last night”: Williams to Paul Bigelow, Sept. 27, 1941,

, p. 333.

85

“I am always alarming bed partners”:

, Jan. 15, 1943, p. 409.

85

“As the world grows worse”: Williams to Donald Windham, May 1, 1941,

, p. 22.

86

“I’d like to live a simple life”:

, July 12, 1942, p. 303.

86

“I think for a good summer fuck”: Williams to Donald Windham, July 23, 1942,

, p. 37.

86

“I cruised with 3 flaming belles”:

, Oct. 4, 1941, p. 243.

86

“Tonight ran into some ‘dirt’”: Ibid., Oct. 29, 1941, p. 255.

86

“unspent tenderness”: Williams and Windham,

, p. 65.

86

“When I now appear in public”: Williams to Paul Bigelow, July 25, 1941,

, pp. 325–26.

87

“Sometimes I feel the island”:

, “The Siege,” p. 910.

87

“I always want my member”:

, p. 229.

87

“In his room, amid the disordered contents”: Windham,

, pp. 16–17. See also “Portrait of a Girl in Glass” (

, p. 119, originally published 1943): “In five years’ time I had nearly forgotten home. I had to forget it, I couldn’t carry it with me.”

87

“I think I have gone”:

, Oct. 28, 1946, p. 447.

87

feeling like a ghost: “I felt like a ghost.” Williams to Donald Windham, Nov. 23, 1943,

, p. 121.

88

“Evening is the normal adult’s time”:

, Feb. 25, 1942, p. 281.