“Sexmaking”

[phantomtomato]

I’ve finished Christopher and His Kind and I am bereft. Much of the book was inaccessible to me—it’s my first time reading Isherwood, which is a strange place to start, an autobiography reflecting on a particularly fertile period of earlier-life writing. It came into my life through a used bookstore, which aren’t always conducive to order, but I’m not put-off by a little bit of confusion.

Isherwood’s prose is beautiful, not particularly poetic but with just lovely turns of phrase that kept me going through the duller parts where he reflects on books I haven’t read. I was in this for his recollections of history and his relationships, particularly his relationship with W. H. Auden. This was gorgeously rewarded:

This was a solemn parting, despite all their jokes. It made them aware how absolutely each relied on the
other's continuing to exist.

Their friendship was rooted in schoolboy memories and the mood of its sexuality was adolescent. They had been going to bed together, unromantically but with much pleasure, for the past ten years, whenever an opportunity offered itself, as it did now. They couldn't think of themselves as lovers, yet sex had given friendship an extra dimension. They were conscious of this and it embarrassed them slightly—that is to say, the sophisticated adult friends were embarrassed by the schoolboy sex partners. This may be the reason why they made fun, in private and in print, of each other's physical appearance: Wystan's “stumpy immature fingers” and “small pale yellow eyes screwed painfully together”; Christopher's “squat” body and “enormous”
nose and head. The adults were trying to dismiss the schoolboys' sexmaking as unimportant. It was of profound importance. It made the relationship unique for both of them.

Onto the next.