Christopher and His Kind by Christopher Isherwood

first name was Paul.)
    Studying early photographs of Jean—that long thin handsome white face, that aristocratic nose, that glossy dark hair, those large brown eyes—I can see that she was full of fun and quite conscious of herself as a comic character. Once, a few years later in London, she told Christopher that she was going over to Ostende for the weekend. He asked: “Why on earth—?” She answered, with her brilliant grin: “So I can come back here and be the Woman from Ostende.” I wouldn’t care to risk letting Sally say that line. If a fiction character is allowed to play-act so self-consciously, there is a danger that the mask may stick to its face. It may lose its identity altogether.
    Jean was more essentially British than Sally; she grumbled like a true Englishwoman, with her grin-and-bear-it grin. And she was tougher. She never struck Christopher as being sentimental or the least bit sorry for herself. Like Sally, she boasted continually about her lovers. In those days, Christopher felt certain that she was exaggerating. Now I am not so certain. But when Julie Harris was rehearsing for the part of Sally in the American production of I Am a Camera, John van Druten and Christopher discussed with her the possibility that nearly all of Sally’s sex life is imaginary; and they agreed that the part should be played so that the audience wouldn’t be able to make up its mind, either way. Julie achieved an exquisite ambiguity in her delivery of such lines as:
    I had a wonderful, voluptuous little room—with no chairs. That’s how I used to seduce men.
    One never knew exactly what she meant by “seduce.”
    John van Druten’s Sally wasn’t quite Christopher’s Sally; John made her humor cuter and naughtier. And Julie contributed much of herself to the character. She seemed vulnerable but untouchable (beyond a certain point), quickly moved to childlike delight or dismay, stubbornly obedient to the voices of her fantasies; a bohemian Joan of Arc, battling to defend her way of life from the bourgeoisie. In the last scene but one, the battle appeared to be lost; Julie was about to go back to England in the custody of her domineering mother, defiant but defeated. In token of her humiliation, she wore a frumpy expensive British coat which her mother had made her put on. She looked as miserable as Joan of Arc must have looked when she was forced to stop dressing as a man. Then, in the last scene, Julie entered in the costume she had worn throughout most of the play—a black silk sheath with a black tam-o’-shanter and a flame-colored scarf, the uniform of her revolt. Seeing it, one knew, before she spoke, that her mother had retired routed from the battlefield. The effect was heroic. Bohemia had triumphed. The first-night audience cheered with joy. Julie became a star. And the play became a hit, because of her.
    The leading male character in the play is called Christopher Isherwood. In dealing with his sex life or, rather, the lack of it, John used a scene from the novel. Sally asks Christopher if he is in love with her. He answers, “No.” Sally replies that she is glad he isn’t, “I wanted you to like me from the first minute we met. But I’m glad you’re not in love with me. Somehow or other, I couldn’t possibly be in love with you.” The “somehow or other” may be taken to suggest that Sally knows instinctively that Christopher is homosexual—or it may not. As for Christopher, he once says vaguely that he has wasted a lot of time “hunting for sex,” but he doesn’t say which kind.
    In the film of I Am a Camera, Christopher gets drunk and tries to rape Sally. She resists him. After this, they are just good friends. In the musical play Cabaret, the male lead is called Clifford Bradshaw. He is an altogether heterosexual American; he has an affair with Sally and fathers her child. In the film of