Liberation by Christopher Isherwood Page A

see Swami nowadays, I take the dust of his feet on arriving and leaving. I do this because I need to think of him definitely as The Guru, so I can meditate on him, according to my new instructions. When you think that I really do feel about him in this way and believe in him and know how privileged I am to keep having these meetings alone with him, it’s a sheer miracle how unspiritual I still am.
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    October 24. Yesterday at the gym, my weight was down to just a bit over 147. I have hardly drunk any wine and no hard liquor for several weeks, and it does seem to be steadily dropping, though with pauses. I manage to jog three or four days a week. Am fairly careful about what I eat, though not extremely. I think my weight loss is also due to not getting much sleep. Our alarm rings at 6:30 every morning and we’re usually out of bed by 7:35. None of this seems to affect Don, however. He is up high, for him: 145.
    Was over at Elsa’s today. Al[le]n Drury 43 was there. Elsa wanted me to come and encourage Al[le]n to take on the Charles Laughton biography; he’s interested. So I encouraged him—because after all why not? He’s big enough to look out for himself and cope with Elsa, or he should be. Elsa says he’s an extreme right-winger, but I still like him rather.
    Mark Andrews really seems to have moved in with Gavin, solid; he’s brought a wonderful wine-red couch which belongs to him and now it’s in the living room, with Mark draped all over it. I continue to like him, quite definitely, and to think what a good Frankenstein’s monster he’d make. But we won’t tell him about that until we know definitely whether or not we have the job.
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    October 27. Watching T.V. with Don tonight—an idiotic ghost story called “The House That Would Not Die,” with Barbara Stanwyck, after a supper of swordfish steaks cooked under the broiler, and salad. Felt a pang of such painful fear and dismay because I soon have to die and leave him and such perfect moments of happiness behind me.
    The day before yesterday, I finished revising chapters 16 and 17; there was very little to do to them. Am now well started on chapter 18.
    Beautiful warm weather. Last night, Jack Larson made our flesh creep with tales of the coming economic ruin of the country. Oughtn’t we to put money in Swiss banks while it’s still allowed? But we don’t know how to. And Robin French, whom I asked about it today, isn’t nearly so pessimistic.
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    November 1. 6:30 p.m. Have just finished my second draft of the two last chapters, 18 and 19. The next time around they should be pretty much as I want them—though you never know; I have a feeling that I might get some last-minute revolutionary notion.
    Have been talking to Hunt Stromberg, who still thinks they will want to start on “Frankenstein” very soon. Am glad at least that the book is as far along as this.
    The day before yesterday, we drove down to San Diego and saw John Lehmann who is teaching at the State College and his friend from Austin, Texas[,] Chick Fry. 44 Quite a nice homely little boy. But John is a menace. He wants to come and stay here at Thanksgiving. Don thinks he has no feelings at all and is only interested in symbolic events, like meetings with well-known “old friends.”
    Heard on the car radio yesterday: The “Zodiac Killer” in San Francisco has sent a Halloween card to a newspaperman there, saying, “Peekaboo, you are doomed!” The newspaperman (for whom I felt very sorry) came on the air and said, quite seriously and as though this were surprising, “The police interpret this as a threat against my life”!
    A notice from One Incorporated to say that they are appealing to all us queers to buy lots of Hamm’s beer during this Halloween weekend because Hamm’s have bought advertising in The Advocate and we ought to demonstrate Gay Purchasing Power. So we bought a