Trapeze. Anais Nin
Monday night (I had shut off the phone during a dinner for Richard Wright and Albert Mangones). He called me Tuesday; I was out (as I hadn’t heard from him during the day, I tried not to think of him). Then last night he said, “I have been reading the stories from Under a Glass Bell. Oh, my darling, what beautiful writing. I felt I was living everything. I could smell the houseboat. And the language—I have never read writing like this. I used to read with my intellect. Those words about the crystal chandelier like blue icicles, I read them slowly.”
I felt such happiness.
I had been so careful not to overwhelm him, not to reveal the stature of my work, to let him discover me slowly, by himself.
MIDNIGHT
We cook dinner together. He assumes leadership. He is planning our trip. He speaks humanly, and not callously (as Bill Pinckard did), of our “relationship.” It may be the only trip we will have together. It must be wonderful. He likes the heat and the South, so we’re going to New Orleans, which he has never seen. Slowly the trip becomes more wonderful.
Afterwards, during a stormy, nervous, wiry, electric lovemaking—so harmonious, virile, violent, without sadism (he does not need to bite or to hurt to feel lusty and strong), he said, “If it’s like this in this cold city, my God, what will it be in the heat, in the sun, on the beach? What will happen to us?”
“Our bodies understand each other.”
He talks of how his father will like me.
It all harmonizes—our primitive life—orchestrates into pleasure.
My only fear is my endurance! (Bad food, strain, all the hardships of casual traveling.)
But I must remember—Anaïs, remember—this relationship is not forever. Do not seek it forever. His choice of vocation, forestry, will take him to Colorado: “I want to do something simple, work with my hands, take root.” Or will his love of acting take him to Hollywood? (He has already had a screen test.)
But I am happy. I do not have anxiety or the need for reassurance. I live in the present at last.
I feel great tenderness for Hugo, a grateful tenderness.
I feel altogether grateful; Rupert complains that on screen he looked too young, that his appeal was too boyish, not manly. He is a strange mixture. It is true that he looks younger than twenty-eight (alas!), yet in many ways he behaves more maturely than most men I have known.
It is his extreme slenderness and lankiness that give him the appearance of a boy at times. He is so tall, as tall as Hugo or Gonzalo, but weighs half, certainly. Then his neck is so slender, long.
It is in his hands that lies the great difference.
All the hands I have loved (except Gonzalo’s) were aesthetic hands, especially Pinckard’s, slender, white, fragile, soft-skinned.
Rupert’s hands are sensitive but ruddy, roughened by activity—firm, not childish.
After lovemaking he said, “We are like two electrically charged magnets; when we touch it sets off a terrific light and fire; when we separate we die.”
I will not say, “Come with me to Mexico.” But that is what I want. He has just enough money for the trip to Hollywood, where his mother is, where he will look for a job.
I feel impelled not to clutch, not to seek words of permanence, as I did before. Perhaps if I could have behaved like this with Bill Pinckard my relationship with him might have been better.
At the first sign of jealousy I think: Anaïs, have faith. Have faith in the way he takes you.
It is wonderful, the erotic excitement into which he pours the elements of his nature: swiftness, lightning, mercury, a string instrumentalist’s fingers.
More electricity than with Albert.
He does not like slacks! I had bought my first slacks as a concession to his Americanism, thinking them inevitable on a trip. But he likes femininity.
When we kiss with our eyes closed I like to open mine and see his long-lashed ones closed in the utter druggedness of desire.
When I lie on the couch, and he swoops down on me, then his eyes are open.
A penis has all the characteristics of its owner. There are lazy penises, like Gonzalo’s; there are leaping, frigid ones; there are piercing and stabbing ones. When inside the womb they act so differently!
Rupert’s is slender, active, leaping, wiry. He teases me into a frenzy before, by kisses, by caresses, by his hands, by friction, by undulations of the body.
I feel that Rupert and I connect electrically on a subterranean level; he is not aware of it as I am.
He was born February 18, 1919 at three in the morning in Los Angeles, and I feel superstitious about this. He has the love of the sea.
He comes to activate me.
Two trends conflict in him: he wants security, roots, wife, children, but he wants adventure and freedom. His desire for children is very strong.
Home is important. “I want music, and you can’t have music without stability.”
Oh, mon journal, Anaïs, the love-starved child, is fulfilled in a plenitude of love.
I open my eyes to reach for a letter from Bill Pinckard, a love-letter, dreaming of photographing me naked, of our going to Paris alone together: “You are so wonderful in every way.”
Then I weep desperately once more over the death of my love for Gonzalo, and though we both know the passion is dead, he can’t weep; he can only deceive himself as he has always done.
“It will all heal up . . . it will heal.”
“No, no, we are separated,” I shout. “It is over, I am going away. I don’t want to see the death, the utter death of the love! I won’t ever return to the hell you made with your violence and doubts.”
He feels old, worn; he has no desire at all for anyone. He embraces me fraternally; it is unbearably sad. He seeks to destroy me with criticism. I am weakened by the past and have pity for Gonzalo left in Helba’s prison.
And the other night Gore repeated: “Marry me, marry me, marry me. I will lock you up in Guatemala and allow you only clay pigeons” (casual lovers). He looked at me adoringly, and when he is there I feel only his presence. I want to enfold him inside my womb, warm him, nourish him.
Today at four, Carter Harman came to work on making House of Incest into an opera. For the first time I see him alone. We work so well, understanding each other and creating together, recreating House of Incest. It fills him with music.
Towards the end, in the twilight, I start to tell him about my marriage because I know he will hear about my life sooner or later. “I want you to know the truth because you are fond of Hugo. I am not betraying Hugo. I am not in love with him; I tried to preserve the marriage, but it’s not a marriage. I don’t seek justification; perhaps I would have had other loves anyway. I don’t know.”
I did not want to lie about my trip. I told him the truth. As I did this I thought I was preventing or dissolving the emotion we have, which I have always sensed in him. I thought I was destroying the feeling that should not be allowed since his marriage is good.
But then I saw he was disturbed and saddened. I said, “You seem sad. Are you worried about Hugo?”
“Oh, no, Anaïs.”
We faced each other. He was leaving. We moved closer: “I’m so fond of you,” he said. “I don’t want you unhappy.” We looked at each other: “I’m so . . . attracted to you.”
“I, too . . . I feel so close.”
Faces drawing nearer.
“Kiss me once, Carter.”
He kissed me with passion.