When asked whether it is better to be young and healthy or old and wise, I would say it depends. You can be both in the course of a lifetime, but I wouldn’t put one higher than the other. More important, I think, is that that people act their age. I would like to think I always have. I’ve never sought to be young, to be more innocent than I am or to know more than I do. But as I said before, the memory is one of the first things to go.

  Though I would never describe myself as old and wise, the closest I came to that particular combination was when I turned seventy and came to America for the first time at the invitation of Mr. Bennett.188 I returned to America two years later to live and it was the best decision I ever made. At the age of seventy I was adventurous. Now I am ninety I am a stick in the mud.

  I celebrated my seventieth birthday in England, probably with a minimum of fuss. It just came and went. People made a great deal of fuss for my ninetieth birthday, however. I was performing at the Intar Theatre on 42nd Street on my actual birthday which like every other of my birthdays, occurred on Christmas Day. The trouble with being born on Christmas Day is you’re never quite sure whether the air of celebration that exists is for you or You-Know-Who. It makes no difference, really.

  Anyway, a letter of congratulations arrived for me and was pinned up on the wall of the theatre’s foyer. It was from Mr. Clinton.189 From the White House. Well, everybody looked at it very carefully and fingered it. They couldn’t decide whether it was a fake or if it was real. It turned out to be genuine and I think it’s wonderful that Mr. Clinton should care enough about me, an alien, an outsider, to write to me on my birthday.

  People say the letter demonstrates the importance of who I am and what I’ve meant to people throughout the world. I suppose it’s because of my fame, or rather my infamy since I am famous for no good reason. Whatever it is, I enjoy it because, as far as I know, the only reward of fame is that it extends your social horizon and it remains my ambition to meet everyone in the world before I die.

  Nothing about turning ninety has astonished me. Only the fact that it is of such interest to other people. I regard turning ninety as an affliction, but the American public regards it as an achievement. This I find very strange because you don’t achieve it, it just happens to you. I’ve gotten used to it now. If people say, “We hear you’re ninety,”

  I smile and say, “Yes, isn’t it terrible?”

  These days, of course, I ignore my birthday. When I was young, you have birthday presents, and cards, and things like that and you celebrate it as if you’re marching forward on some great quest and you have just reached another milestone. Had my ninetieth birthday not coincided with the opening night of my one-man show, I would not have taken any notice of it. It’s not that I’m not keen on reaching my destination, I have said as much to the contrary, it’s that these days I don’t have the energy. Plus, not making a big deal about my own birthday means I don’t have to feel guilty when I fail to remember other people’s.

  Birthday presents become less important as you get older, as well. When you’re young you can write lists of all the spoils and trinkets your heart desires. These days I can’t think of anything that I long to have. So, I accept whatever I am given. I don’t like joke presents. I don’t like to open envelopes which are full of confetti or glitter and which spill all over the room when you open them. Other than that though I receive gifts gladly and I try to remember to write to the people who give them and thank them.

  When my life is over, I would like to think people could say of me, “He kept his word.” I never put off or dismiss things and think, “Oh, well, they can lump it. I can’t be bothered with that.” It’s not that I have any particular morality, I just deal with people as cozily as I can. A woman once wrote to me and sent me a copy of The Naked Civil Servant and said, “Will you sign this for my son’s birthday? His name is William. He came out to me and I am trying to support him as much as possible.” Well, I ended up losing her address and it made me unconscionably sad.

  I can’t imagine what’s been the best gift I’ve ever received. I received a walking stick for my ninetieth birthday and various scarves. I also received a package of food, which was very nice. The overcoat I’m wearing now was a gift. It’s wonderfully light. I can’t wear heavy clothes these days because it makes it so hard for me to walk. A man once gave me a pair of shoes and I remember wearing them for years. I’d hoped I would die before they wore out. Sadly they wore out before I did.

  I suppose I’m just not good at celebrating things. I don’t want to wear a funny hat or jump about in streams. I don’t want to shout and sing. I probably don’t celebrate holidays because my life has been one big holiday. As I once said of Halloween, “Oh, I shan’t be bothered. I’ll not get dressed up in fancy clothes.”

  To which my friend replied, “You’re always in fancy clothes.”

  And that, of course, is true. I wear what I want all the time, so I don’t have any need to dress up for anything.

  The fact that I have turned ninety astonishes me. When I was young I never expected to live as long as this. Neither did anyone else. A spring never came without someone saying, “We never thought you’d live through another winter.” I never thought I appeared as frail as that to other people, but evidently I did. I was very frail when young, and I liked being frail. When I was born I had pneumonia. I was always sick. I suppose I got tougher as time went by.

  When I went out into the world, I was never ill. I don’t think I was ever absent from a job due to sickness my whole life. Except when my wisdom tooth impacted. I went to a dentist, swooned and said dramatically, “What will become of me?” And he simply took out the tooth next to it on which it was pressing and the pain passed.

  At ninety, I do feel less well than I used to feel. I feel inadequate to cope with things, unable to walk to places because they are too far. You don’t need advice on growing old, because it overtakes you. It’s irresistible. You have to accept your fate which is to be overlooked and, to some extent, to be ridiculed.

  You become a victim as you get older, a victim of young people. Mostly they overlook you, which can sometimes be nice because then you don’t have to bother. But if they say you are old fashioned, you have to accept it and say “Yes, I am old fashioned.” If Boy George says I’m old-fashioned, then I am. It doesn’t worry me. I don’t try to answer it or try to improve myself so that I become ‘new-fashioned’. It’s not necessary.

  Now I’m old, I’ve accepted my limitations. I don’t want to be president. I don’t want to rule anything in particular. I live in a house which belongs to somebody else, and I have no desire to own my own home. It would be a burden I would have to think about all day.

  In fact, I’ve never really owned anything. The furniture in my room isn’t mine. Almost nothing around me is. A few things are, like cups and saucers and things like that, but my general lack of possessions makes me happy since I don’t feel weighed down by them. I don’t mean to say I’m not materialistic, people who profess as much tend to suggest they are some kind of spiritual being above earthly things. That is certainly not a description that fits me. I like comfort, but I like perfectly ordinary things. I eat, I drink, I sleep and don’t really care how much I earn so long as it’s enough to live on.

  Now I’m ninety, I am constantly feeling tired. My body is a continuing nuisance. When I was young, if I wanted to reach for something I’d stretch out my arm and grab it. Now I’ll think it’s too far, I can’t be bothered and that I’ll simply do without instead. Walking across my small room has become such an effort that I am increasingly leaving things undone. It used to take me twenty minutes to walk to the post office on 11th Street. Now it would take me forever and I’d have to stand when I got there, so I try not to go.

  Today I feel better than I have in a long time, but that’s because I recently cancelled all my engagements. You wouldn’t think that lunching and talking with people could be so tiring. You don’t notice it at the time. You don’t come back feeling utterly exhausted, but somehow it catches up with you and in the end you long to just lie down and be silent.

  Being ninety means you have to plan your day to cause as little strain as possible. I try not to go up and down stairs more than twice a day. Yesterday I went to pay my income tax, came back and got my shirts from the cleaners and carried them back to my apartment all in one go. Ms. Davis190 said, “Old age is not for sissies.” and she was right.

  These days my memory is very bad, which is sad because it adds a note of condescension to my relations with people. People ring me up and say, “This is John, don’t you remember me?”

  And I say, “I’m working on it.”

  Then they’ll try and jog my memory. “I come from Pittsburgh, don’t you remember?”

  And they will keep that up and add bits of what they have said before, but, of course, I still can’t remember them. In the end I’ll say, “It doesn’t matter whether I remember you or not. I am pleased to hear whatever you have to say.”

  But that’s not enough for them, they want to be remembered.

  I’m beginning to think I was born with Alzheimer’s disease because nowadays I can’t remember anybody. Then, the other day someone told me that people with advanced Alzheimer’s disease can’t even remember who they are, which is terrifying. They say that Ronald Reagan191 doesn’t know who he is. It’s so difficult to imagine because all anyone’s really got is who they are.

  Although I’m relatively free of pain from the prostate cancer I’ve been diagnosed as having, the discomfort of my eczema is a living hell. My shoulder and the backs of my hands are particularly bad. I want to scratch myself until my skin is raw, but that would do more harm than good. It burns. I wish I could stop it, but I don’t know how.

  I am told never to wash because as I dry myself I will inadvertently remove the outer layer of my skin. So I only wash the bits that matter, under my arms and things like that. I never wash my ankles or my feet because it irritates them. I’ve tried every kind of cream and ointment imaginable, but nothing brings me relief.

  Some say I am the world’s oldest living homosexual, but of course no one can be sure. The fact that my turning ninety caused such a stir in New York society must mean there aren’t many people like me that have done such a thing. The past year has been a crazy one for me. I still do the same work; I still live in the same way, but turning ninety has sort of worked everyone up.

  Should I reach one hundred, I hope to be in bed propped up with pillows, preferably alone and waiting for death with open arms. I knew a woman in England who wrote to her mother and said, “Don’t resist death.”

  Her mother wrote back and said, “I’m not resisting it. When it comes I shall say, ‘What kept you?’”

  I have no plans to move, so I imagine I will die in my apartment. Until then I shall be here in this room waiting for death. Mr. Williams192 said he went home and waited for death, and someone was very annoyed about that, but I understood perfectly what he meant. That’s what you’re doing really. Unless you have some greater purpose, some goal to which you’re working your way. I’m not doing any of that. I’m just filling in time pleasantly.

  I would hate to live to be a hundred because I feel pretty inadequate now. If I can’t remember what happened yesterday or can’t walk at all then life will be a mess. With luck, I will die within the next two years and that will be a great relief, not only to me, but to many.

  I’ve been asked many times if I believe in God, which I take to mean, do I believe in a god. In one theater where I said, “I will answer this question, but would not like to cause anyone any offence,” a man in the audience interjected with, “Why stop now?” Of course, I like to tease, but it’s never my intention to offend.

  My feeling is we invented God, not that God invented us. I think that man invented God so as to have some reason to account for the idea of absolutes. We know what virtue is, we know what sin is, we know what bravery is and we know what cowardice is only if we invent God to sit in the middle and judge all of these notions. Otherwise, they don’t have any meaning.

  I can believe in a god if God is the thing that encloses the universe, the thing that causes things to happen, but I cannot believe in a god susceptible to prayer. These days I never pray and when I did as a child it was nothing more than drama practice.

  Mr. Tennyson193 said he couldn’t live if prayer went unregarded, which is an extraordinary thing to have said. He must have believed in God. I believe he was an educated man, but I suppose he must also have been superstitious. Why did he believe that if you prayed you altered your fate? It seemed to me so unlikely. It seems to me too humiliating to bargain with The Almighty. Why should he give you a bicycle with ten speeds simply because you didn’t eat sweets during Lent? It makes no sense.

  Religion has no place in my life. Blind faith is, I think, a belief in God in spite of everything. Every argument to the contrary is cast aside. People want to believe in God and they want to believe in him absolutely. Contradiction they wave aside. They don’t bother to investigate more rational explanations for why life is the way it is. I suppose people that want to believe in God so badly are insecure in themselves.

  There is a theory that if we didn’t believe in God we would all behave appallingly. I don’t find that to be so. I don’t find that atheists behave any worse than anybody else. I think you have to behave nicely for the sake of other people, not for the sake of some spirit who is watching you from above and judging you. It seems to me, you judge yourself and other people judge you and you have to live by their standards and by your own. Not by some absolute standard which no one can live up to.

  I’m always surprised that God is ‘so angry’. It seems to me that if you have absolute power, you can afford to behave nicely. But the god of the Muslims promises you a seat in paradise if you murder a Christian. Christianity is nearly as bad. The Christian god allegedly said, “I am a jealous god. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Now, why would he say that? If I were God, and I never can make out why I am not, I would say, “Well, shop around. If you find anything that fits you better, stick with it.” Then I would wink and say, “But I’ll be seeing you.” I wouldn’t prevent people from believing in other gods. I would just assume they’ll eventually realize they’ve made a mistake and come back to me and in the meantime I would busy myself with more important things.

  There’s a poem which says, “O Sons of Men, when all is flame, what of your fame and splendor then? When all is fire and flaming air, what of your rare and high desire to turn the clod to a thing divine, the earth a shrine, and man the God?” The meaning is, of course, that nobody’s reputation lives forever. Even the names of Alexander The Great194 and Genghis Khan195 will disappear when the world ends. I don’t think anything is immortal, certainly not a god.

  It doesn’t worry me. If God exists I don’t think he’s angry with me. I have recently learned that Mother Teresa said we should treat all people as though they were at least better than ourselves and that strikes me as a wonderful thing to have said. It alters your whole way of living. I wouldn’t act in such a way because God is watching me however, I would do it because it seems a satisfactory way of going on.

  Should there be a heaven inhabited by some god, I hope that if I arrived there he or she would say, “Welcome.” I would find it rather disconcerting to be greeted with, “Watch your step.” I wouldn’t want to be in a heaven in which you are in constant danger of being chucked out.

  Because I don’t believe in God, I therefore do not believe in the devil. To my mind evil simply resides in people who wish to harm other people. I think it’s as simple as that. If no one wished harm to anyone, if they wished always to spare them harm then the world would be an easier place to live in.

  In spite of my cancer, I only started thinking seriously about death last year when my heart became bad. I would gladly go now, but I’m a sissy and I can’t throw myself out of a window or in front of a train or something drastic like that. I had thought about throwing myself at a policeman, but even that’s been done now and were I to do likewise I would just be accused of plagiarism. The man in question bought a toy gun, according to the newspaper, pointed at the police and they shot him.196 They later found a letter in his pocket thanking them. I thought that was wonderful. His was what I would call a significant death.

  * * *

  185 Jonathan Swift, Anglo-Irish writer, 1667-1745

  186 First published in 1726

  187 Back To Methuselah by George Bernard Shaw, published 1921

  188 See footnote #145

  189 President William Jefferson Clinton, 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001, b. 1946

  190 Bette Davis, American actress, 1908-1989

  191 Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989, 1911-2004

  192 Kenneth Williams, English comedian and writer, 1926-1988

  193 See footnote #3

  194 Alexander III of Macedon, 356 BC-323 BC

  195 Genghis Khan, Great Khan and founder of the Mongol Empire, c. 1162- 1227

  196 Probably 19-year old Moshe Pergament of Manhasset Hills, shot November 14, 1997

  CHAPTER 17

  My Significant Death

  A significant death is a death which somehow gets into everybody’s mind so that nobody says, “Isn’t he dead? I thought he was dead.” You want to die in such a way that everyone knows and remembers your death. This means you have to die by yourself.

  You don’t want to die on the same day somebody of significance dies. Princess Diana197 died at the same moment that Mother Teresa198 died, and somehow it all got muddled up and they both became saints at the same moment. Had Diana died on a different day there might have been a more sensible assessment of her character.

  I don’t mind what season I die in or what place. People don’t seem to like it when people die alone. I remember once praising Ms. Crawford199 and someone in the audience said, “You praise her, but she died alone and an alcoholic.” What’s wrong with dying alone? If you die in the presence of other people you have to be polite and die. That seems to me to add insult to injury.