Liberation by Christopher Isherwood

But what’s ten million times worse, what is really ghastly, is that her old enemy Louis [Gold], the owner of the Tumble-Inn and the motel opposite, has decided to build a three-floor block of apartments on the parking lot right smack outside the windows of Jo’s apartment! She won’t be able to see anything, except the channel at one end and the street at the other, 27 her view of the sea and about one third of the daylight will be cut off completely and people will be staring in on her. Jo was in tears and no one could blame her. Of course she’s got her little house, she can turn the tenants out of that and move in, but she doesn’t want to, says it is too big for her alone and besides she’d be “away from everything.” Curiously enough, she really loves all the noise and traffic and hippie music on Channel Road! So poor old Jo, I’m glad I went down to see her.
    This morning I did finally manage to get the chapter started and then I went to the gym and then I took Forster’s short stories to Gavin, who’s been sick. He was being visited by a young man who dances at the Honey Bucket and the young man came on very strong in the Sincere Young Nature Boy style, asking me what I thought of him when I came out into the garden and saw him and why it was that I didn’t look at him while I talked to him, so I said, you mean why didn’t I flirt with you? So then the conversation got quite relaxed. The young man (wish I could remember his name) is actually far from being a simple little enormous stud nude dancing boy; he’s an actor with quite a lot of experience in the theater up in San Francisco and he’s been in films and whatnot, and I kind of think Gavin is considering him for the lead in that adaptation from Colette, The Cat , which he originally did for Clint [Kimbrough] (Christopher Wedow is out ! 28 )
    Yesterday Don went down to see Jack Fontan and Ray Unger, as I said. What happened down there is what I mostly want to write about—but that must wait until tomorrow, because it’s so late, tomorrow in fact. Today, I mean yesterday, Don and Mike drove up to Montecito together to draw with Bill and Paul and they’re spending the night and coming back after breakfast.
    Oh, one other piece of news, we did hear from Ellis Rabb, expressing great interest in our play; he excuses himself for his silence by saying he’s been trying to get it put on up there but he wants to see if he can do anything for it elsewhere, etc. We neither of us think, from reading his letter, that he likes it.
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    August 2. This morning I finished a first draft of what will most likely be the end of the whole book, an analysis of Frank and Kathleen as influences on Christopher and as symbolic figures in his myth. What remains to be done is an outline of Kathleen’s life from the end of 1915 to her death. This is either a small chapter all by itself or it fits into chapter 17 immediately after the diary entries of 1915.
    Don and Mike got back around noon yesterday; they had been to see John Ireland 29 in the morning to deliver a portrait Don drew of him several years ago, which he had paid for at the time but never collected! Don said he’d had a nice evening with Bill and Paul, but he didn’t come back happy and stimulated as he did after being with Jack and Ray. Talking to Jack Fontan about his horoscope was an important experience for him.
    Don has made four pages of notes of the things Jack told him— they talked for several hours. I’m not going to try to write down even as much as I remember of what Don told me, and it’s quite possible there are some very important things he didn’t tell me, for one reason or another. Jack said to Don, for example, “You don’t have to worry about losing him,” explaining that I would live to be very old and then die very suddenly. He also seems to have said that Don will die or be in danger of death