[Starcke,] page 81). Starkey had played Thad Greelis in John’s The Mermaids Singing––which ran for only fifty-three performances and was nicknamed by Dodie Smith The Mermaids Sinking––in 1945. John once told Christopher that Starkey had caused him to break a previously unbroken professional rule of his––never to have an affair with one of his actors.
Walter’s family name was actually spelled Starcke. When he became an actor he changed it to Starkey but switched back to Starcke as the co-producer of I Am a Camera, perhaps because he wanted his acting career forgotten. However, John and Christopher went on using the spelling “Starkey” in their letters to each other, as a sort of nickname which interrelated their boyfriends: Starkey–
Caskey. They never wrote or said “Walter” or “Bill” to each other when referring to them.
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to be much more party minded than Christopher’s. Most of them were included in one of two groups, the Tauch group or the
Jennings group. Ed Tauch was an architect and he had a big house divided up into apartments which he leased to other architects, all friends of his and all gay. [. . .] Ed Tauch looked after his tenants like an uncle; he was the only one of these architects who knew how to fix the plumbing, gas, electric light and leaks in the roof. He was quiet, friendly and still good-looking. Earlier on, in his navy uniform, he had been a dreamboat to many. I think Caskey himself had been violently in love with him, but only briefly.
Ollie Jennings was very rich, good-natured, fat. He lived in a fine house at Sneden’s Landing (during the summer, anyhow). He had a divorced but friendly wife named Isa who lived in an even finer house, not far away. So both of them could offer cool luxurious out-of-town weekends, with lots to drink. Ollie’s steady (to use the most unsuitable word possible) was Ben Baz [brother of Emilio, the painter]. Ben was small, red headed, not particularly Mexican looking, extremely lively [. . .]; a commercial artist by profession, quite a successful one. According to Caskey, Ben kept falling in love with people, coming to Ollie and telling him they must part, and then getting tired of that particular person and deciding to stay with Ollie.
Ollie took all this in his stride and continued to love Ben––
which moved Caskey to describe Ollie as “a kind of homosexual saint.” Ben’s latest love was a young man [. . .] about whom I remember only that he was good-humored, adequately attractive but beginning to get plump. Ben’s affair with [the young man] hadn’t split up the household, however. [The young man] came down there to stay, nearly every weekend. He must have been exceptionally tactful.
It was during a weekend at Ollie Jennings’s house that Christopher and Caskey went to have supper with the painter Matta and his wife.
The evening was made memorable by one of Caskey’s outbursts.
Matta, thinking no doubt that he was thus putting Christopher and Caskey at their ease, made some casual reference to the fact that he, too, had occasionally had sex with men. This enraged Caskey, who yelled, “I suppose you think there’s nothing more to homosexuality than just cocksucking?” The Mattas were scared and humiliated; they tried to placate him. This happened on May 17.
On May 27, Christopher got two paintings by Edward Burra on
approval from the British-American Art Center. They were in the same frame, back to back with glass on both sides, so that you could display them in turns. One was a still life of vegetables and/or fruit with (I think) some landscape in the background. The other I can ¾ 1947 ¾
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scarcely remember. I believe it included some of Burra’s mysterious figures with masked or hidden faces. Christopher and Caskey never made up their minds to buy this and it finally went back to the gallery. They did buy a small painting of carnival figures by Obin, the Haitian artist. Selden Rodman, who had brought back a lot of pictures from Haiti, sold it to them. I forget the price, but it was stiff.
On June 15, Christopher went to a Quaker meeting––perhaps the life he was leading gave him an appetite for it, as a contrast. He met Caroline Norment there. I wish I knew what Caroline’s impressions were of this 1947 Christopher. Did she find him as much changed as he felt himself to be from the Christopher of the Haverford hostel?
They had lunch together a few days later and worked hard at being friendly, no doubt. And that was the end of it.
On July 3, Christopher and Caskey went to stay with Horst, at his house in the country (I forget where). Horst’s friend, Jamie Caffery, was a longtime friend of Caskey’s; he had a queer uncle who then was or had recently been the U.S. Ambassador to France. Christopher liked Horst; he was handsome, well preserved, good-humored and good mannered. He had some thyroid pills which made you lose
several pounds overnight; no doubt they were terribly bad for you.
On July 11, Christopher and Caskey set out by car to visit Truman Capote. They drove to New London (which strongly reminded
Christopher of the industrial architecture of Stockport and
Manchester) and spent the night there. The next night they spent at New Bedford. Next day, they took the steamer across to Nantucket.
Truman was staying with his friend Newton Arvin in a small
house in the village of Siasconset. When Truman, in New York, had referred to “my friend,” Christopher and Caskey had pictured some mighty and potent brute as being the most likely kind of mate for him to have chosen. They were therefore surprised to find that Arvin was an intelligent and sensitive college professor, quite nice looking but definitely middle-aged. Arvin welcomed them hospitably and was no doubt pleased to see them, but he didn’t sparkle, didn’t get drunk, didn’t want to go to parties. When they went out visiting, he stayed home and read. Maybe this homebody character was part of what Truman, the gadabout, wanted in a friend; maybe he needed someone to come back to. ( Jack Dunphy, although quite unlike Arvin physically, also avoids party going.) As for the difference in Truman’s and Arvin’s ages, that apparently appealed to Truman.
When he flirted with Christopher, and he did so constantly, he would say, “You’re going to be awfully attractive when you’re a bit older––another five years, and you watch out!”
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As a host, Truman was like a masterful child leading a gang of children; he knew what he wanted, he was determined to enjoy
himself, and he took it for granted that the rest of them would follow him. He never stopped to worry about his guests and whether they were enjoying themselves. And indeed it wasn’t necessary. Nearly always, Truman’s enjoyment swept them along.
Truman leading the outdoor life of Nantucket seemed quite
different from the indoor exotic Truman whom Christopher had
met in New York. Without his elegant freaky town clothes he
looked much less odd and much more robust. He had a squat, sturdy body, golden brown and baby smooth, with surprisingly strong arms and legs.1 He was a powerful swimmer, and he liked cycling and horseback riding.
Several people Truman knew were staying at a house not far away
––it was called Hagedorn House, I think. The host of this house party was Leo Lerman, the magazine editor, an almost classically Jewish Jew, bald, bearded, sly eyed, somewhat rabbinical in his manner, full of hostile mocking flattery, aggressive humility, shrewd-ness, rudeness, taste, vulgarity, wit and fun. He courted Christopher and charmed him, at first; Christopher felt at ease with his shamelessness. (Later they were to quarrel many times and never quite make it up.)
The other people living in the house were (as far as I can deduce from the day-to-day diary) Andrew Lyndon, Harold Halma,