The Gay Experience - 3. Chapter Three: Christopher Isherwood "…you're not in love with me, are you…?"

Chapter Three: Christopher Isherwood "…you're not in love with me, are you…?"

The third selection from Mitchell-Leavitt's collection is unlike the first two; here scant mention of same-sex attraction or love is presented.

After initially reading Sally Bowles I wondered why it was included. Naturally the author is Gay, so there's that aspect, but without any queer content in the story, I pondered why exactly Sally had been chosen. And then it hit me.

Among my first contacts with the writings of David Leavitt were his series of short stories set in New York during the early 1980s. In them, the central character is supported and spurred on in his adventures by a young woman. Like Sally Bowles, Leavitt's character is a classic 'fag hag,' and like the way Grace is to Will in television's Will and Grace, such friendships are as much a part of the Gay Experience as any other aspect.

Is there a method though to quantify and explore the boundaries of such relationships? I suppose there are, as oftentimes – as least historically, that is pre-Obama years – the women in such relationships harbored illusions of 'conversion.' Some may have done this with malice, but I feel more were simply attracted via genuine feelings of love for their 'gays' and desired a development to the physical and exclusive, despite knowing the men would never be emotionally available to them in the way we all deserve. Gay writers are drawn to explore these tensions in their work.

I have to say I was unfamiliar with Christopher Isherwood's writing, and found Sally to be utterly delightful. The author's style is clear, easy to read, and he displays the most fluid and natural characterizations through the way his people speak to one another. He's a joy to read!

The story first appeared in print in 1937 as a standalone novella, although Sally as a character turned up in both earlier and later instances of the author's work. The narrative takes the form of a remembrance. For the brief period of about a year, the paths of Isherwood and Bowles cross, blossom, and fade. Seven years later, the voice of recollection is a bit prone to idealization, but that should be expected. Weimar Berlin is the backdrop, with ex-pat Isherwood living by teaching English to well-heeled Germans, and hobnobbing with them and other foreigners.

We open with a spot of coffee. One of Isherwood's more extravagant friends, Fritz, is proud of both his strong brew and the interesting grouping of people he gathers.

Fritz himself was dressed in his usual coffee-party costume – a very thick white yachting sweater and very light-blue flannel trousers. He greeted me with his full-lipped, luscious smile:

"'lo, Chris!"

"Hullo, Fritz. How are you?"

"Fine." He bent over the coffee-machine, his sleek black hair unplastering itself from his scalp and falling in richly scented locks over his eyes. "This darn thing doesn't go," he added.

"How's business?" I asked.

"Lousy and terrible." Fritz grinned richly. "Or I pull off a new deal in the next month or I go as a gigolo."

"Either . . . or . . . " I corrected, from force of professional habit.

"I'm speaking lousy English just now," drawled Fritz, with great self-satisfaction. "Sally says maybe she'll give me a few lessons."

"Who's Sally?"

"Why, I forgot. You don’t know Sally. Too bad of me. Eventually she's coming around here this afternoon."

"Is she nice?"

Fritz rolled his naughty black eyes, handing me a rum-moistened cigarette from his patent tin.

"Mar-vellous!" he drawled. "Eventually I believe I'm getting crazy about her."

We learn the young woman is British, like 'Chris,' and sings a solo cabaret act in a small club called the Lady Windermere. She's also partially French, which explains Fritz's 'hot stuff' reference to Isherwood.

The woman arrives a short time later looking a bit disheveled but exhibiting a good deal of self-possession. This feature seems to strike the narrator and reassure him in a subtle way that the exotic creature is 'English after all.'

Sally immediately asks to use the phone, but when Fritz tries to pull the men out of the room so she can have some privacy, she protests:

"For heaven's sake, don’t leave me alone with this man!" she exclaimed. "Or he'll seduce me down the telephone. He's most terribly passionate."

As she dialed the number, I noticed her fingernails were painted emerald green, a colour unfortunately chosen, for it called attention to her hands, which were much stained by cigarette-smoking and as dirty as a little girl's. She was dark enough to be Fritz's sister. Her face was long and thin, powdered dead white. She had very large brown eyes which should have been darker, to match her hair and the pencil she used for her eyebrows.

"Hilloo," she cooed, pursing her brilliant cherry lips as though she was going to kiss the mouthpiece. "Ist dass Du, mein Liebling?" Her mouth opened in a fatuously sweet smile. Fritz and I sat watching her, like a performance at the theatre. "Was wollen wir machen, Morgen Abend? Oh, wie wunderbar . . . . Nein, nein, ich werde bleiben Heute Abend zu Hause. Ja, ja, ich werde wirklich bleiben zu Hause . . . . Auf Weidersehen, mein Liebling . . . ."

She hung up the receiver and turned to us triumphantly.

"That's the man I slept with last night," she announced. "He makes love marvellously. He's an absolute genius at business and he's terribly rich—" She came and sat down on the sofa besides Fritz, sinking back into the cushions with a sigh. "Give me some coffee, will you, darling? I'm simply dying of thirst."

And soon we were on to Fritz's favourite topic: he pronounced it larve.

"On the average," he told us, "I'm having a big affair every two years."

"And how long is it since you had your last?" Sally asked.

"Exactly one year and eleven months!" Fritz gave his naughtiest glance.

"How marvellous!" Sally puckered up her nose in a silvery little stage-laugh.

After a bit of insider laughter at the expense of Fritz's love life, just in the same whirlwind manner of her arrival, she stands and says it's time for her to go.

"I'm supposed to meet a man at the [Hotel] Adlon at five," she explained. "And it's six already! Never mind, it'll do the old swine good to wait. He wants me to be his mistress, but I've told him I'm damned if I will till he's paid all my debts. Why are men always such beasts?" Opening her bag, she rapidly retouched her lips and eyebrows. "Oh, by the way, Fritz darling, could you be a perfect angel and lend me ten marks? I haven’t got a bean for a taxi."

"Why sure!" Fritz put his hand into his pocket and paid up without hesitation, like a hero.

Sally turned to me. "I say, will you come and have tea with me sometime? Give me your telephone number. I'll ring you up."

After she departs, the men speak about her briefly, Isherwood bemused by the assumption that Sally thinks he has any money or romantic interest in her. Perhaps he already knows she views him differently, because when he arrives home he tells us "I felt so giddy I had to lie down for half an hour" but he tries to deceive himself (and us…?) that it must be due to Fritz's coffee.

One of the interesting things to consider here is a comment Isherwood wrote to a friend concerning this piece. He stated it was his goal to make "an attempt to satirize the romance-of-prostitution racket,"[1] and this early scene speaks best to his initial plan for Sally. Later on, as we shall see, Chris comes to regard the woman much less judgmentally, even having a moment of desire to be a part of such a 'racket' with a rich man and Sally. But that is still coming….

Back to the story, a few days later Fritz takes Chris out to the club to see Sally in action. She sings badly, but enthusiastically moves about the venue calling everyone "Thou or Darling." The Englishman doubts her gold-digging credentials, noting she "wasted a lot of time making advances to an elderly gentleman who would obviously have preferred a chat with the barman."

He also observes the extraordinary nature of her language ability.

Sally's German was not merely incorrect; it was all her own. She pronounced every word in a mincing, specially "foreign" manner. You could tell she was speaking a foreign language from her expression alone.

Later on, sitting in the parlor of her boarding house, Chris and Sally have that tea she had offered. He begins to feel a special attraction for her; perhaps it's one of affinity for their mutually bohemian lives in Berlin.

"Would you like a Prairie Oyster?" She produced glasses, eggs, and a bottle of Worcester sauce[.] "I practically live on them." Dexterously, she broke the eggs into glasses, added the sauce, and stirred up the mixture with a fountain-pen: "They're about all I can afford." She was back on the sofa again, daintily curled up.

She was wearing the same black dress today, but without the cape. Instead, she had a little white collar and white cuffs. They produced a kind of theatrically chaste effect, like a nun in grand opera. "What are you laughing at, Chris?" she asked.

"I don’t know," I said. But still I couldn’t stop grinning. There was, at that moment, something so extraordinarily comic in Sally's appearance. She was really beautiful, with her little dark head, big eyes, and finely arched nose – and so absurdly conscious of all these features. There she lay, as complacently feminine as a turtle-dove, with her poised self-conscious head and daintily arranged hands.

"Chris, you swine, do tell me why you're laughing?"

"I really haven’t the faintest idea."

At this, she began to laugh too: "You're mad, you know!"

Was her turtledove pose meant to allure the Gay man…? If so, it only made him laugh in her face.

Soon the conversation turns to how long she's been in Germany: "two months." And we learn she's nineteen, the daughter of an heiress mater and Lancashire mill owner pater; she has one sister. When Isherwood asks whether or not her mother is French, Sally exclaims: "Fritz is an idiot. He's always inventing things." We learn later this was a lie – she had indeed told Fritz her mother was French to sound more exotic. In addition to aspiring for a German movie contract, she tells Chris she got herself expelled from school with a pregnancy scare.

"Oh, rot, Sally, you didn’t!"

"I did, honestly! There was the most terrible commotion. They got a doctor to examine me, and sent for my parents. When they found out there was nothing the matter, they were most frightfully disappointed. The headmistress said that a girl who could even think of anything so disgusting couldn’t possibly be allowed to stay on and corrupt the other girls. So I got my own way."

Eventually the topic of work and money comes up. She receives a small allowance from 'Mummy,' but her housing is rather expensive, and her engagement at the Lady Windermere is coming to an end next week.

"I say, Sally – if you ever get into a mess I wish you'd let me know."

Sally laughed. "That's terribly sweet of you, Chris. But I don’t sponge on my friends."

"Isn't Fritz your friend?" It had jumped out of my mouth. But Sally didn’t seem to mind a bit.

"Oh yes, I'm awfully fond of Fritz, of course. But he's got pots of cash. Somehow, when people have cash, you feel differently about them – I don’t know why."

"And how do you know I don’t have pots of cash too?"

"You?" Sally burst out laughing. "Why, I knew you were hard-up the first moment I set eyes on you!"

So why the change of heart on Isherwood's part? He has evolved from thinking of her as a cold-blooded millionaire hunter to sympathizing with her seemingly lonely life in a foreign capital. Although he does not say it – perhaps does not need to state it overtly – he feels a kinship with her. This sentiment, traveling both ways as it does, seems to be the glue of most best friend situations between Gay man and straight woman.

Chris invites her to come have tea at his boarding house, with an eye for a possible move, so Sally can save more money.

This encounter produces something like a quarrel; Sally insisting her love life shocks Isherwood, and the man pinging her with a comment that it actually bores him. He explains:

"You're naturally shy with strangers, I think: so you've got this trick of trying to bounce them into approving or disapproving of you, violently. I know, because I try it myself sometimes."

After some more awkward banter, Sally rather plainly asks:

"Then you do like me, Christopher darling?"

"Yes, of course I like you, Sally. What did you think?"

"But you're not in love with me, are you?"

"No. I'm not in love with you."

"I'm awfully glad[.]"

When I first read this exchange, it seemed to pass by with only mild amusement at how she'd ask such a thing on their third meeting, but now it seems the writer is showing us a tender disposition existed in the girl's heart towards the Gay man. It may pass by uncommented on in the story simply because it made little impression on Isherwood the afternoon she asked it.

Weeks go by and Sally moves into Chris' boarding house. She begins dating her former accompanist at the Lady Windermere, a handsome young blond man named Klaus Linke. This only lasts for about two weeks because Klaus gets a job offer in England synchronizing sound for the movies.

Sally consoles herself by not eating – taking only her raw egg cocktail – and writing love poetry.

Two weeks later, a letter comes from Klaus officially dumping her. The handsome German has met a real English 'Lady,' and wishes Miss Bowles all the best.

"Perhaps, after all, I can't have been in love with him . . . . What do you think?"

"It's rather difficult for me to say."

"I've often thought I was in love with a man, and then I found I wasn't. But this time"—Sally's voice was regretful—"I really did feel sure of it . . . . And now, somehow, everything seems to have got [sic] a bit confused . . . ."

"Perhaps you're suffering from shock," I suggested.

Sally was very pleased with this idea: "Do you know, I expect I am! . . . You know, Chris, you do understand women most marvellously: better than any man I've ever met . . . . I'm sure that some day you'll write the most marvellous novel, which will sell simply millions of copies."

"Thank you for believing in me, Sally."

"Do you believe in me too, Chris?"

"Of course I do."

"No, but honestly?"

"Well . . . I'm quite certain you'll make a terrific success at something – only I'm not sure what it'll be . . . . I mean, there's so many things you could do if you tried, aren’t there?"

"I suppose there are." Sally became thoughtful. "At least, sometimes I feel like that . . . . And sometimes I feel I'm no damn use at anything. . . . Why, I can't even keep a man faithful to me for the inside of a month."

"Oh, Sally, don’t let's start all that again."

"All right, Chris – we won't start all that. Let's go and have a drink."

Sally mopes around the house for weeks, even making Fritz bolt one afternoon when he comes to see. Later on, while she's in tears, Chris mixes a 'Prairie Oyster' for Sally and asks what's wrong.

"I wonder," she said suddenly, "if I'm going to have a baby."

"Good God!" I nearly dropped the glass. "Do you really think you are?"

"I don’t know. With me it's so difficult to tell: I'm so irregular . . . ."

"But haven’t you better see a doctor?"

"Oh, I suppose so." Sally yawned listlessly. "There's no hurry."

"Of course there's a hurry! You'll go and see a doctor tomorrow!"

"Look here, Chris, who the hell do you think you're ordering about? I wish now I hadn't said anything about it at all!" Sally was on the point of bursting into tears again.

"Oh, all right!" I hastily tried to calm her. "Do just what you like. It's no business of mine."

The following day she seems much brighter; she even returns to some of her more sociable ways, insisting they go out to a nightclub named the Troika. And that's where they meet Clive, the wayward son of an industrialist.

The three of them start a romance of sorts, as "we were with him almost continually."

Here's Chris' take on Clive:

He had about him that sad, American air of vagueness which is always attractive; doubly attractive in one who possesses so much money. He was vague, wistful, a bit lost: dimly anxious to have a good time and uncertain how to set about getting it. He seemed never to be quite sure whether he was really enjoying himself, whether what we were doing was really fun. He had constantly to be reassured. Was this the genuine article? Was this the real guaranteed height of a Good Time? It was? Yes, yes, of course — it was marvellous! It was great! Ha, ha, ha! His big school-boyish laugh rolled out, re-echoed, became rather forced, and died away abruptly on that puzzled note of enquiry. He couldn't venture a step without our support. Yet, even as he appealed to us, I thought I could sometimes detect odd shy flashes of sarcasm. What did he really think of us?

Clive’s one major foible is his alcohol dependence. Chris informs us that he’s never seen the man sober, and tells us Clive drinks half a bottle of whisky before breakfast.

How closely are Sally and Chris working as a team to ingratiate themselves with the man who could put them on easy street? How much could a presumably straight man accept a situation of a woman and her Gay best friend? And most importantly, how quick will it be before either Sally or Chris feels the other is trying to steal the catch for themselves…?

One morning when Isherwood had to teach a lesson, he arrives at the Hotel Adlon to find Clive and Sally flown to Dresden for the day. Sally comes back with a gift for Chris from Clive: six silk shirts. And she has the chutzpah to tell him:

“He wanted to get you a gold cigarette case, […] but I told him shirts would be better. Yours are in such a state…. Besides, we don’t want him to think we’re gold-diggers….”

So what if any are the genuine feelings the three experience for one another? It's unclear, but:

“I adore him,” Sally told me, repeatedly and very solemnly, whenever we were alone together. She was intensely earnest in believing this. It was like a dogma in a newly adopted religious creed: Sally adores Clive. It is a very solemn undertaking to adore a millionaire. Sally’s features began to assume, with increasing frequency, the rapt expression of the theatrical nun.”

And then one day, a funeral procession seems to spur Clive to think about the future. Isherwood makes no big deal of it, in his typically dry and beautifully understated style, but Hermann Müller's state obsequies in May 1931 mark the unofficial death of the Weimar Republic. Writing as he was from the position of seven years later, Isherwood knew very well the Nazis were about to sweep out civil liberties, and pins the anxiety of flight they all should have been feeling on Clive.[2]

As they observe the funeral procession from the balcony of Germany's finest hotel, the American begins to talk – "more nearly sober than usual" – about the three of them flying from the country. First a passage on the Orient Express, then plane rides to Egypt and France where they'd board a boat for South America and the Pacific.

Chris lets himself indulge in moment of wondering about what would become of them.

Sally, of course, he would marry. I should occupy an ill-defined position: a kind of private secretary without duties. With a flash of vision, I saw myself ten years hence, in flannels and black and white shoes, gone heavier round the jowl and a bit glassy, pouring out a drink in the lounge of a Californian hotel.

"Come and cast an eye at the funeral," Clive was saying.

"What funeral, darling?" Sally asked, patiently. This was a new kind of interruption.

"Why, say, haven't you noticed it?" Clive laughed. "It's a most elegant funeral. It's been going past for the last hour."

We all three went out onto the balcony of Clive's room. Sure enough, the street was full of people. […] Ranks of pale steadfast clerks, government officials, trade union secretaries […] trudged past, under their banners, towards the silhouetted arches of the Brandenburger Tor, from which long black streamers stirred slowly in the evening breeze.

"Say, who was this guy, anyway?" asked Clive, looking down. "I guess he must have been a big swell?"

"God knows," Sally answered, yawning. "But look, Clive darling, isn't it a marvellous sunset?"

Next morning, they come to the hotel as usual…but get the cold shoulder from the front deskman. "Whom did you wish to see, Madam?" "Who do you think," snarled Sally.

Yes, Clive has flown the coop, leaving them a note and three hundred marks – in case he's overlooked any expenses he owes the two.[3]

They're both depressed and spend a good part of the day debating whether or not the American had perpetrated a tongue-in-cheek trick on them. Chris thinks not, and views Clive as just another lost soul.

They try to cheer themselves up with an extravagant meal, but it does not help much.

"You know, Chris, I'm beginning to think that men are always going to leave me. […]"

"I'll never leave you, Sally."

"Won't you, darling? . . . "

The following morning, Sally is ill. Perhaps she can no longer hide it from herself and others – perhaps she has no reason to, now that Clive is gone. The doctor confirms she's pregnant.

With the support of Chris, their landlady, and Clive's money, they arrange for an abortion in a clean and safe medical setting.

She convalesces for several days in the clinic, and on the day of her discharge, Chris decides he's had enough.

He does not say that in so many words, and he also does not say he acknowledges how it must have broken Sally's heart, but the writer suddenly announces he's quitting Berlin to spend the summer on the Baltic sea coast to work on his long-neglected projects; he hasn't written anything since meeting her.

When he returns in mid-July, there is a financial crisis which further solidifies Nazi power through the issuing of 'emergency decrees.'

Chris is surprised to return home and learn that Sally has moved.

□□□□□

Things are never the same. Sally is angry, and Chris – a typical guy – is confused. Because of it, he plays a nasty trick on her, which briefly brings them together for an adventure involving the police, but it only winds up making both of them regret having a young Polish man arrested. I won't go into the details here, as for me the story really climaxes with the Clive and abortion scenes.

What we are left with at the end is Isherwood's palpable regrets. Seven years later, as he's penning this piece, he's wondering what's happened to Sally, and clings to the final two postcards he received from her.

So, does this more or less mirror the 'Gay best friend' experience familiar to so many of us? I believe it contains the major components of most of these relationships: the one-way longing from girl to guy; the tender protective-platonic feelings from guy to girl; the sometimes confusing arguments arising from not being able to read the other's emotions in the right way; and absolutely the thrilling sense of conspiratorial fun that flows naturally from an 'us against the world' attitude.

What are your thoughts on this story…? Specifically, do you think he abandoned his stated goals of "satiriz[ing] the romance-of-prostitution racket," or achieved them with Sally Bowles…?

Thanks to Tim M. for a lightning fast edit