A Single Man

by Christopher Isherwood

What it sees there isn’t so much a face as the expression of a predicament. Here’s what it has done to itself, here’s the mess it has somehow managed to get itself into during its fifty-eight years;

Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face—the face of the child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young man—all present still, preserved like fossils on superimposed layers, and, like fossils, dead. Their message to this live dying creature is: Look at us—we have died—what is there to be afraid of?

the pioneer escapists from dingy downtown Los Angeles and stuffy-snobbish Pasadena who came out here and founded this colony back in the early twenties.

Most of them were lucky enough to have died off before the Great Change.

the cottages which used to reek of bathtub gin and reverberate with the poetry of Hart Crane have fallen to the occupying army of Coke-drinking television watchers.

breeding and bohemianism do not mix.

those sinister black silhouettes on a yellow ground—said CHILDREN AT PLAY.

just the lair you’d choose for a mean old storybook monster.

his moment of weakness about a month ago, when he bought some candy and offered it to a bunch of them on the street. They took it without thanks, looking at him curiously and uneasily; learning from him maybe at that moment their first lesson in contempt.

the masculine hour of the ball-playing.

Among many other kinds of monster, George says, they are afraid of little me. Mr. Strunk, George supposes, tries to nail him down with a word. Queer,

Senior Citizens (“old,” in our country of the bland, has become nearly as dirty a word as “kike” or “nigger”) are eased into senility, retaught their childhood games but with a difference: it’s known as “passive recreation” now. Oh, by all means let them screw, if they can still cut the mustard; and, if they can’t, let them indulge without inhibitions in babylike erotic play. Let them get married, even—at eighty, at ninety, at a hundred—who cares? Anything to keep them busy and stop them wandering around blocking the traffic.

would be amusing, George thinks, to sneak into that apartment building at night, just before the tenants moved in, and spray all the walls of all the rooms with a specially prepared odorant

With the skill of a veteran he rapidly puts on the psychological make-up for this role he must play.

“Good morning!” to him. (There is something religious here, like responses in church—a reaffirmation of faith in the basic American dogma that it is, always, a good morning.

the male and female raw material which is fed daily into this factory,

Ought I to yell out to them, right now, here, that it’s hopeless? But George knows he can’t do that. Because, absurdly, inadequately, in spite of himself, almost, he is a representative of the hope. And the hope is not false.

tennis courts

George finds this frank confrontation extraordinarily exhilarating.

Kenny Potter sits in the front row because he’s what’s nowadays called crazy, meaning only that he tends to do the opposite of what most people do; not on principle, however, and certainly not out of aggressiveness. Probably he’s too vague to notice the manners and customs of the tribe, and too lazy to follow them, anyway. He is a tall skinny boy with very broad stooped shoulders, gold-red hair, a small head, small bright-blue eyes. He would be conventionally handsome if he didn’t have a beaky nose; but it is a nice one, a large, humorous organ.

“The title is, of course, a quotation from Tennyson’s poem ‘Tithonus.’ And, by the way, while we’re on the subject—who was Tithonus?”

a minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of a threat to the majority, real or imaginary.

George feels that his day has been brightened;

George feels that, even if all this doubletalk hasn’t brought them any closer to understanding each other, the not-understanding, the readiness to remain at cross-purposes, is in itself a kind of intimacy.

But isn’t it any consolation to be with students who are still three-quarters alive? Isn’t it some tiny satisfaction to be of use,

But this gallows humor sickens his heart. In all those old crises of the twenties, the thirties, the war—each one of them has left its traces upon George, like an illness—what was terrible was the fear of annihilation. Now we have with us a far more terrible fear, the fear of survival.

I am Doris. I am Woman. I am Bitch-Mother Nature. The Church and the Law and the State exist to support me. I claim my biological rights. I demand Jim.

As long as one tiny precious drop of hate remained, George could still find something left in her of Jim. For he hated Jim too, nearly as much as her, while they were away together in Mexico. That has been the bond between him and Doris. And now it is broken. And one more bit of Jim is lost to him forever.

he is proud, is glad, is almost indecently gleeful to be able to stand up and be counted in their ranks—the ranks of that marvelous minority, The Living.

George is different from them because, in some sense which can’t quite be defined but which is immediately apparent when you see him naked, he hasn’t given up.

Now he zips up his pants and gets into the car and drives on, thoroughly depressed.

But to say, I won’t eat alone tonight—isn’t that deadly dangerous? Isn’t it the start of a long landslide—from eating at counters and drinking at bars to drinking at home without eating, to despair and sleeping pills and the inevitable final overdose? But who says I have to be brave? George asks. Who depends on me now? Who cares?

“Look—is it too late to change my mind? About tonight?

“I would love to come. How about tomorrow?” Her face falls. “Oh well, tomorrow. Tomorrow wouldn’t be so good, I’m afraid. You see, tomorrow we have some friends coming over from the Valley, and…” And they might notice something queer about me, and you’d feel ashamed, George thinks, okay, okay.

his curt No, thank you, to the funeral invitation—

that consciousness which is no one in particular but which contains everyone and everything, past, present and future, and extends unbroken beyond the uttermost stars.

The safety record of this vehicle is outstanding. Just let us suppose, however.…