The life I’ve lived has not been one of missed alternatives. I had only the friends who could put up with the disgrace. I had the jobs from which I was not given the sack. I lived in the digs from which I was not evicted. Looking back I didn’t have any alternatives and so therefore I have no regrets.

  Perhaps that’s not entirely true. I regret having been born, of course, and not having been born a woman. I suppose I have other regrets as well. My biggest regret is that I didn’t come to America when I was young enough to accept all the invitations extended to me when I finally did arrive. I could have gone somewhere different every night.

  Every day I receive an invitation to the opening of an art show or a gathering of literary people or a poetry reading. These days my body simply won’t allow me to attend them all, but had I come here when I was forty then perhaps I might have been able to. I cannot stress enough how much I like New York City.

  The only thing I am self-indulgent with is time. I lull about all day doing more or less nothing. I don’t pull myself together and do something useful. I don’t see any need to. I’ve never thought, “Oh, I wish I’d learned hang gliding,” or something weird like that, and I have no desire to travel to foreign places because I can’t speak the local language.

  I’m content with the life I have. I live by myself in one room. I never work, I never branch out. I live the life I know will not land me in danger or end in embarrassment or disgrace. That’s really my only standard. It probably seems very sinful to other people since I am not doing any good in the world, but neglect can hardly be called sinning. At least I don’t do any harm to other people.

  As I reach the end of my life, I live very differently than the way I did twenty years ago. The difference is that I now know more people. In England it was very hard for people to know me. They felt they had to conceal the fact. Here in America people want to know me and to be photographed with me. So that’s made my life much more pleasant than it was before.

  I don’t judge myself by that. I don’t think, “I must be more wonderful now than I was then.” All it means is I know more people who are superficially inclined towards me. My notoriety is what attracts people. They don’t bother to think, “Do I really like him?” Nevertheless they’re there, they’re pleased that they’re there and I’m pleased that they’re there. People who want to meet me want to know me. In response, I try to know them as well, though I can’t ever really know them. There are too many of them. The best I can do is to make myself available to them. I try never to say no to anything.

  These days, I’m frequently too ill to attend anything. This makes illness an even sadder event because people don’t really believe I’m not well. They still want to meet me and think I’ve just tired of them and that I’m making excuses. That’s a pity because I never tire of anybody.

  Without claiming to have achieved anything, I can also say that there remains very little, if not actually nothing, that I want to achieve with the little time I have left. I accept my limitations. I’m in dim cellar movies, which typically take place in this neighborhood, but I have no ambition to be a movie star or anything like that. The image of me that exists in the world is not one that I have deliberately projected.

  Ms. Dietrich was the first person I heard use ‘image’ in its American meaning. She said, “I dress for the image,” by which she meant she dressed to please people and probably did since she was a very beautiful and exotic woman.

  Nowadays, my appearance is very much part of the way I am. My hair is not long enough or thick enough to cover my head, no matter how I brush or comb it. As such I sort of pile it up on my head. Were the wind to blow, it would point in all directions and become a frightful mess, so I always wear a hat. Now that has become part of my image, but it hasn’t been brought about by some grand design.

  Of course, I used to dye my hair and wear makeup and nail varnish so I suppose at that time I could have been considered vain. I did care about my appearance when I was younger. I think the difference between being vain and being conceited is that if you are conceited you think you’re better than other people, whereas if you’re vain you know you are.

  Previously, vanity described a concern with empty, superficial things. Now it’s used to describe a preoccupation with one’s appearance. I am concerned with my appearance, but chiefly now for the sake of the world. I think the world wishes to see me looking the way I do because they like you to be the same, to be recognizable. If people feel they can predict you, they feel they own you and if they feel they own you, then they like you.

  I’ve never bothered about my weight. I don’t know whether other people have looked at me and thought, “Oh, he’s getting fat.” or, “He’s getting a bit thin.” In England, weight is not a problem. It’s only a problem in America. Someone said to Mr. Mastroianni11 when he arrived here from Italy, “You’ve lost weight.”

  And he replied, “You Americans are obsessed with the loss of weight.”

  In fact, the greatest compliment you can pay an American is to say, “You look marvelous. Surely you’ve lost weight?”

  But no, I have never bothered about my weight. I have never been concerned with what I eat and I’ve never taken any exercise. In short, I have never tried to improve my appearance from within. Which, I think means I’m comfortable with myself. Any alterations I make are applied from and to the outside.

  I believe you’re called a solipsist if you believe that you are the center of the world and everything else radiates out from that. That’s what I do, certainly professionally. I know I am of no importance, but I lapse into thinking that I am. When people tell me how important I am to their lives, I try to relieve the burden and explain that I am entirely superficial. I am something added on, for decoration if you will.

  I am important to myself, of course. When you work as a naked civil servant, one of the first things you notice is that art classes are principally made up of housewives. Not long afterwards you realize that all housewives do is talk about their children. They are totally preoccupied with them. I do not have children, so there is no one I am preoccupied with. It’s just me.

  There are white-collar men who, I think, secretly love the fact that pandemonium ensues when they’re not in the office. They like knowing that the cogs and wheels stop turning when they are absent. I’m not part of any organization thank goodness. If I were part of an organization, I would feel bound to take it seriously, which I’m certain would only end in disappointment.

  Heartache and heartbreak are what comes from investing your emotional well-being in other people. I have never been heartbroken because I’ve never cared what other people think of me. Actually, let me rephrase that. I care what people think of me, not what a person thinks about me. I would only ever be heartbroken if I discovered that the entire public had forgotten about me, which is partly why I left England. Here in America people are nice to me and encourage me to be myself. That’s why I live here.

  Even in my sixties, during the 1970s, people in England were unkind to me. People would lean out of windows and shout out things like, “You disgusting man!” Now I was old and shabby, yes, but nevertheless that still seems to me to be an exaggerated reaction to someone who was just walking past. But that’s what the English are like. If they don’t like you, they say so. If they do like you, they keep quiet. Americans are the exact opposite. If they like you, they’ll say so and if they don’t they’ll keep quiet.

  During my life I have tried my utmost to deliberately offend no one. I have, in fact, tried my utmost to do nothing of any consequence. I never get bored, however. My sister, towards the end of her life, remembered that when she and our mother would sit either side of our fireplace, busying themselves knitting, reading and writing letters, I, being eight years younger than her, would simply lay on a rug at their feet. Every now and again they would say, “Why don’t you do something?”

  And I would reply, “Why should I?”

  The truth is I like doing nothing. That’s why I became a model. It’s no good being a model if all the time you’re posing, you’re thinking, “I could be peeling the carrots if only I were at home. Why haven’t they finished? I wonder what time it is?” If you’re a model you just stand there and think about nothing except what you’re doing.

  Of course, the most significant thing I’ve done in my life was coming to New York. My life changed as a result. Had I lived all of my life in London, I would never have known there was any happiness in the world. When I got here and found that in America everybody is your friend and that living in New York is one big street party, I was so pleased I could have wept for joy.

  If I were younger, I would keep in touch with all the people who write to me. I would attend all the first nights, all the gallery openings and all the discotheques to which I am invited. My age has meant I’ve had to let a great deal of New York life go by, but I still participate in as much of it as I can.

  My spies tell me that people have described dining with me as one of the best shows in New York. That is nice, but of course one should never trust reviews. I enjoy meeting people in restaurants because, with luck, they will pay for my meals. Saying this invites the accusation that I am a penny-pincher or mean when it comes to money, but the truth is I have no money because I never work.

  I came to America when I was seventy-two, much too old to apply for a job. So, I have never worked nor had any wages. Instead, rather like Ms. Dubois,12 I have come to rely on the kindness of strangers. They call me up and invite me to dinner. I like to meet them chiefly in neighborhood bars. I don’t want to go all the way across New York to meet them in some peculiar place which they happen to like. Everyone I know says of every place in which I have met them, “Yes, I remember that, but it’s gone off terribly.” Actually, it’s just the same. It’s just that they’ve been there before and now they want to try somewhere new in case it’s better. It’s as if they’re worried they might be missing out on something if they go to the same place more than once.

  Recently I was declared ‘The Queen of all Queens’13 which I found amusing. I’ve slowly got used to that sort of thing. I’ve always been the object not of admiration, but of attention. It supports you. It gives your life a kind of meaning and it also changes you. If you are being watched, you behave differently. If you are being listened to, you speak differently. I have no talent at all. I’m simply someone who is accustomed to being observed.

  The attention I’m given has never made me feel uncomfortable because I go out and meet it. I always look as if I’m being photographed. I always speak as though I am being recorded. That’s the least I can do in return for the attention that is given to me.

  I’m often asked whether I consider myself an eccentric, to which I answer, “Not really.” The reason I don’t consider myself to be an eccentric is because I don’t do anything on impulse. I think what makes you eccentric is if people cannot calculate what you will do. I simply consider myself to be a logical man. I can explain exactly why I do what I do. Other people may not agree with my logic or may reach a different conclusion, but that does not make me an eccentric. I very seldom find myself saying, “And I can’t think what came over me, but then I did this or that or the other.”

  My life is calculated. People accuse me of being unnatural and affected, but I don’t hold that being natural is in any way an advantage. And if people wish to describe my preparedness to speak as being affected then I suppose I am. I can never understand why American politicians seem to lack oratory skills because I would have thought that that was the first thing you need in such a profession. These days though, they simply read the speeches other people write for them. I’ve never had a speech written for me, though of course the difference is I rarely say anything that matters.

  Having become known as a raconteur, commentator or wit (and the truth is I will accept any title or label people choose to give me) I’m asked about such a variety of subjects that I can’t possibly have opinions on all of them. So from time to time, I have to manufacture an opinion, which sometimes makes an answer less spectacular than it might otherwise have been. Or sometimes more controversial and more spectacular, in which case it is my duty to stand by what I have said, else I lose my reputation as a source for comment. These days I often feel I am just repeating myself. I hope I die soon before I become too boring.

  * * *

  11 Marcello Mastroianni, Italian film actor, 1924-1996

  12 Blanche DuBois, fictional character in Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire.

  13 By which person, organization or media outlet is not clear, though Sally Potter remarked that being the “Queen of Queens” is one of the reasons she chose Quentin Crisp to play the role of Elizabeth I in Orlando, 1992.

  CHAPTER 3

  London and Hooliganism

  I’ve only ever made two decisions for myself. One was to leave home when I was seventeen. The other was to leave England when I was seventy-two. Both were like falling off a cliff in the dark.

  I lived in London from the age of twenty-two to the age of seventy-two. All told, a period of some fifty years. Forty-one of them were lived in a room in Beaufort Street in Chelsea.14 I must have moved there in 1940 just after World War II had begun. Of course, many Londoners fled the capital for fear of being bombed by the Luftwaffe. I couldn’t see the point in evacuating. Faced with the threat of Nazi Germany or the housewives of rural England, I chose to face the Hun and would gladly do so again.

  Whether by Hitler’s orders or otherwise, my house was never bombed. The rest of Chelsea wasn’t so lucky however. The house opposite the one in which I stayed caught fire. A firebomb landed on the roof, burned through and fell onto the floor below. It burned through that too until the whole building was engulfed in flames.

  Now that I think about it, I was very lucky that my house survived unscathed. I would have hated to have to move and start all over again. It must be terribly upsetting when all your possessions and your clothes get burned. I would be a madman if I lost everything, which is why I always feel sorry when I see news reports of Americans who have lost their homes in hurricanes and tornadoes and things like that.

  I was young when I first came to London and I moved incessantly. Part of this was me finding my feet but it was also a search for people who would put up with me. Back then, everything I possessed could be put into two small suitcases. I think this probably made it too easy for me. As I collected more possessions, I moved less and less.

  I’ve never been a collector of valuables. I don’t think I’ve ever owned anything more valuable than a jeweled ring. I like to live knowing that everything I touch is expendable. I think life is less troublesome that way. In addition, I’ve never cared what the places I’ve lived in have looked like.

  I remember when I first moved to Pimlico15 in west London. I knew a man called Gerald who was a puppeteer, and I remember him asking me, “Where do you live?”

  And I said, “I live on Denbigh Street.”

  He then asked me, “What’s your room like?”

  To which I replied, “It’s just a room.”

  And he said, “Have you done anything with it?”

  I was surprised by this and said, “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” he began, “isn’t it full of lace curtains and tablecloths with bobble fringes?”

  And I said, “Yes.”

  Having confirmed his worst fears he looked at me sympathetically and asked, “Can you bear it?”

  And I said, “Yes. I adore it.”

  Despite having since been labeled an ‘expert’ on style and taste,16 I have certainly not had a problem living in places with distasteful décor. Besides, I find such places to be considerably cheaper than the alternative.

  If I have any wisdom on taste and style, it is because I am personally indifferent to both of them. I remember living in London, for a short time, above a woman who had her own dancing studio. She was a taste addict and it got very tiresome. She would come back from a visit to a friend’s house and complain to me that, “The furniture was simply glittering with varnish. Terrible taste.” Almost everything that happened to her offended her because her taste was ‘so exquisite’. “The crockery was in such bad taste. You could hardly drink out of it.” I found both of these observations to be quite absurd.

  As for my taste, I suppose I care what I wear, but I think what I wear would be called bad taste by other people. It’s showy. You see, good taste is a question of being restrained, I think. At least in England it is. You have to wear dark clothes and never wear a diamond tiepin or other things like that. If it’s ostentatious, it’s in bad taste.

  I hope never to go to England again. The very idea exhausts me. I did go last autumn to promote a book called Resident Alien which was a bad title because there is a film called Resident Alien and there is no connection between the book and the film. The book was originally going to be called Among Friends which I considered a good title, but I suppose someone somewhere must have thought they knew better.

  While I was there, I wandered through Soho. I took a walk along Old Compton Street, through Soho Square, down Rathbone Place and then Charlotte Street. Everything had changed except the pubs which were decorated in the same way, populated by the same people standing in the same positions drinking the same drinks. I found this to be both comforting and disturbing in equal amounts.

  Soho was, of course, my old stomping ground. I may have slept in Chelsea for more than forty years, but during all that time I lived in Soho. I would wake up and go to work as a model in whichever art school it was that day. Then, when I had spare time, I would go to Soho to visit my friends.

  Soho appealed to me because it was more or less a Mediterranean district run by Italians and Greeks. The Italians, as you well know, invented murder, so someone was always being stabbed or shot, which made it an exciting place to hang around in. It was a bohemian place and you did what you liked, wore what you liked and could generally be yourself.