JOHN
I believe I have defended myself against suffering
NEW YORK , JUNE 16, 1940
One night Caresse said, “You must meet two young poets who have come all the way from Des Moines to meet you and Miller.” I had dinner with Henry first. I thought this would be another bore—young, immature hero-worshipping. I felt lifeless and old. We first met Lafayette Young, who looked a little like Rank behind his big glasses, and who was stuttering with nervousness at meeting us. His worship for John Dudley, his friend, was amazing, a complete devotion like a woman’s. Then came John, a young man of about thirty, looking like a young English aristocrat, tall, blond, with a beautiful voice. I sensed vitality, a leaping quality, faith, fervor, craziness, and great humility. We looked at his drawings, which were interesting. I was not prepared to meet Dudley as an equal, and his age separated us at first. I was merely touched by his enthusiasm. Caresse had begged us to be nice to them, so I asked them to come see me. Impulsively, I suggested we all go to Harlem because he loves jazz and is a fine drummer. Instead of dancing we talked, John and I. He was full of vision and penetrations—uncannily so. We sat alone by a window and forgot about Harlem. At the end of our talk he said, “I love you” with great warmth and impulsiveness, but it was a love like Durrell’s. I felt his warmth and charm. The next day he telephoned while we were visiting with Eduardo. He was depressed by a day full of failures (he was struggling to get help for a magazine called Generation)—could he come? I said come. The four of us went out and sat in a café, and came back. By the time he left I felt moved by the force and fire of John. I could only talk to him, dance with him, but I was getting a little intoxicated. The next evening, when I went with Eduardo to see Henry, John and Lafayette were watching for me on the stoop (they live next door to Caresse and Henry). We again spent the evening together, listening to a beautiful talk between Henry and Eduardo, which lifted our minds beyond the present to its cosmic meaning again.
When we returned from the restaurant, Henry, Lafayette and Eduardo went to get a beer, so John and I went up to the room alone—this I felt like an explosion. I felt his excitement, the suspense. I talked to break the unbearable tension. Across the philosophic airiness of the conversation, our emotions flashed signals at each other. I loved his utter absence of passivity.
The next day, while Hugh was home, John called up and asked, “Can I come up and draw your picture?” I said no because we had to go to Kay de San Faustino’s housewarming, but asked if would he come with us. He said no. I felt his disappointment. Then Hugh decided to play tennis, which meant I could have seen John. I felt that he would call again and come to the de San Faustino cocktail with us just to see me. And he did. Then I said, “You can come at five and I can pose for an hour.” I knew he was going to come alone. And he did. We were tense. He tried to draw. The night before I had noticed he was wearing a ring too tight for his finger, and I said it constricted him and that I could not bear it. He took it off and, as a symbol of his expansion, never wore it again. We talked, but what we really wanted was to kiss each other. He did not have the courage until we stood by the elevator. By the time we got to de San Faustino’s house, after wandering around dazed, we were absolutely exalted. I forgot about age. I heard everyone saying: “We are mourning the past in Paris as the White Russians mourned the old Russia. We are mourning the death of France, of Europe.”
John does not feel this death. He is outside of it, as an artist, as a youth. As I write this, it is a half hour before I go to his room. I pray for a new passion, which comes with the sound of his slender fingers drumming on the table at Harlem, full of sensuality and savagery. He said I was a legend in Des Moines, known for my glamour. He was afraid of me.
Yesterday, after the kiss, I met Gonzalo, who talks only of what he reads in the newspapers, who complains of the heat, of fatigue, of pain…a Gonzalo without fire, dull and heavy, like a sad animal.
JUNE 17, 1940
John was looking for me from his window. He was tense, highly strung, overwhelmed. We talked a little, and then he came over and kissed me. He took all my clothes off. He was amazed by my body, the body of a girl, yet more than a girl…ageless. I felt his fear, but to tell the truth, I was afraid too, as if this were my first love affair. I was intimidated because I knew what his imagination had made of me—a mythical figure. I knew he was overwhelmed and that I could not live up to my reputation of an experienced European woman of the world. It felt unreal, and I told him so. I was quiet, timid, passive, feminine—my own humanness put him at ease. He became impulsive, dynamic, violent, and our caresses were entangled in strangeness.
He is truly Henry’s son, a young savage, with the same blue eyes, same white skin, a laughing face, but with great strength. He is only twenty-six. I pushed aside the literary aura, the past, so that we could breathe. I said this was something happening in space. I wanted life…and there is life in John, an abundance of it. At first I dreaded my age—thirty-seven—but when we talked I realized I have no age in his eyes. John said he could tell everybody’s age, but not mine. He knows, for instance, what his wife will look like ten, twenty years from now, but he cannot tell about me. He feels I will live forever and that I have had many lives, far into the past. He said many poetic things—he is full of faith and ardor. Henry and I have expanded the world for him. I know this is to be a creation, and for that I am sad. I wanted something else, but I am so grateful for John, for his worship and his youth—he is a young giant, a force to come, full of potentialities. He is explosive, alert, violent, active, a strong personality. I enjoy his electric youth. It is better than living in the past, clinging to Gonzalo’s heaviness and inertia, to the tragedy of France’s death. A few days ago I was dying with France, dying with Gonzalo. Today I went to John’s room and forgot all about death. I felt my own youth; there was music again. At least my body is not dead. I told Eduardo I was going to pose for John, and Eduardo said: “It’s dangerous. He has his Moon over your Sun.”
John says poetic things about my voice, is awake to my hair, my clothes, my skin. Is the current of life set in motion again, by John? He is tender, worshipful, too excited to sleep. Because he is romantic and idealistic, there is the danger of him mistaking this for love.
JUNE 23, 1940
I went to him every afternoon this week. At first it was like a game, an electric game, but we have transcended the phase of unreality. The second time he delighted me with his fervor, his newfound strength, and I responded to him sensually. His awakening, his gratitude, his chivalry, his romanticism, his excitement, are contagious. I came dancing, always with a pounding heart, left after a bath of love. That second afternoon, after I left him, I felt my gayety stronger than death. The dawns in his eyes, the wonder.
I met Gonzalo, who, of course, was amorous again because I was turning away from him. He began to pursue me again, was desirous, asking for a whole night with me, because I had broken away from him after suffering the torture of his lack of passion. One afternoon, after being with John, I went to Henry. We went out together for dinner. I had said many things to John about living on the peaks, how he only needs intensity, that his going away will not matter, that this is a violent dream in space. Then, as I was having dinner with Henry in the Chinese