An Irishwoman once said to me, “The thing about New York is you can buy anything you want at any time of day. If you knew where to go, you could buy a secondhand bidet at four in the morning.” I’m not sure why you would want to, but I wouldn’t doubt that it’s possible.

  Here in New York, people are always inviting me out for lunch or dinner. When they do, I feel it is my duty to entertain them. I believe that’s the only way to get a free meal, so that’s what I do. It’s become my job, more or less. I’m a professional luncher.

  Back in England, I could never have lunch with anybody. People never invited me out to eat. They would worry what other people would think if they were seen out in public with me. The English are too snobbish and self-conscious. In America, people love to be stared at. And just in case they are not stared at sufficiently, they photograph you, which seems to always attract other people’s attention.

  These days I could never live anywhere else but here in America. Specifically New York City. In my opinion, you are freer in America than you are ever going to be anywhere else. You do as you please. You say what you like. You behave as you like. No one stops you until you actually shoot somebody. Then they stop you. Sometimes by shooting you as well. By contrast, in England you are not free to do anything.

  The problem is that Americans don’t want to live, they want to have lived. So, they are always being photographed with me to show the world that they have met me. It’s very strange. In fact, one of the strangest compliments that I have received, I suppose you might even call it a gift, is that I was recently made an Admiral of the Texas Navy. I received a letter to that effect and it read: “To all whom these presents shall some, greetings know ye that Quentin Crisp is hereby commissioned Admiral with the Texas Navy.” I don’t know who is to blame for that. I think it might be a joke. I mean Texas is protected by a navy, but it’s the U.S. Navy rather than the state equivalent.

  When I lived in England, I lived in London. To that end, I have always been a city rather than a country person. New Yorkers are much nicer than Londoners however because, as I have said before, New Yorkers are your friends. Londoners are nobody’s friends. When the snow fell and then froze last winter, I couldn’t walk a yard without fearing that I would fall down. Nevertheless I would venture out and a stranger, sometimes a young girl of about twelve, would come forward and take my arm and lead me across the difficult bits of the pavement. That would never happen in England. They would watch you through near-closed eyes waiting for you to fall so that they could laugh quietly at you.

  I left England because I knew I could never be happy there. People are my only pastime, and in England people never, ever talk to you. So, I came to America and it is the single event that has most changed my life.

  Ever since my mother took me to the movies as a boy, I feel I have always been American in my heart. Of course my mother wasn’t happy about taking me to the movies. “The cinema,” she would say, “is for servant girls! People with any taste go to the theatre.” But eventually she would relent and take me. And when I began to gibber and twitch at the sight of New York on the screen, my mother would explain that what went on in real life was vastly different from what was portrayed in the films we saw. But she was wrong! Because every Londoner who goes to New York returns to say, “It's more like the movies than you’d ever dream!” And it is. They really do bring the dining room chairs out onto the pavement and sit there mopping their necks with Kleenex saying, “It isn’t the heat. It’s the humidity.”

  So, I knew that I wanted to see New York when I was young, but I never knew that I wanted to live here. It was only after I arrived, for the first time, and received such a warm welcome, that I knew I wanted to stay.

  Los Angeles is quite different from New York City. There, everyone is either shooting a movie or stuck in their car in gridlock. There are no pedestrians. You can’t walk up and down Wilshire Boulevard talking to people. By contrast in New York you can’t wander up and down Second Avenue without speaking to any number of people.

  Typically, people engage me rather than vice versa. I don’t dare to speak to them, but they speak to me. And they typically tell me the story of their life while we’re waiting for the traffic lights to change. No Englishman would ever do that.

  I will never go back and live in London unless I am deported. I’m hopeful that will never happen, but it might because I do not yet have an American passport. I am not a naturalized citizen, you see, because I can’t learn all of the things they test you on when you go for your citizenship test. My friends have more faith and tell me, “Well don’t bother with any of that. Half of the people who come here even can’t speak English.”

  That might be true, but a friend of mine once applied for U.S. citizenship and was asked three questions. I can’t remember the first one, but he couldn’t answer it. The second one was “What president succeeded Lincoln?” He didn't know that either. Then the third question was “How many Supreme Court judges are there?” And he also didn’t know. So his inquisitor leaned forward and said to him, “You don't seem to be taking your situation seriously.”

  They clearly want you to know unto what you are swearing allegiance, which is natural enough. But it’s hard for someone of my age. All the knowledge that I have, if indeed I have any, has been accumulated over the years. I’m not sure I’m even capable of learning new things. I am trying however.

  Now, England has become a distant memory and I don’t miss it at all. I don’t think it misses me either. I only know a few people over there now: an Italian actress and a girl who was once the strongest girl in the world. They both write to me from time to time, but no one else that I can remember ever writes to me nor I to them. And that’s natural enough.

  There are no places in England I miss. I can’t think of anything I did in England that I couldn’t do here. You see, I lived a very simple life over there. I lived in Chelsea in a room much like my current room, except that it was larger and warmer and cheaper. But I accept my smaller accommodation here. All of this happiness has to be paid for, after all.

  An Englishman once met me here and said, “You’re the one who lives here permanently, aren’t you?” And I said, “Yes.” And he said, “Well, why?” And I said, “Because everywhere I go everybody talks to me.” And he said, “I can’t think of anything worse.”

  I just don’t understand that point of view. I don’t know why the English don’t want strangers to talk to them. Of course, I am not likely thinking of something else at the time they approach me, so the conversation of a stranger never interrupts my train of thought. I also have no place to be, so I am never being delayed. I am therefore there to be spoken to, so it’s a different existence from other people and one that I thoroughly enjoy.

  Not everyone speaks to me. It’s just a turn of phrase. I once said to a man that I went to meet faraway, “In Manhattan everybody speaks to you.” And he said, “I told my mother you said everyone talks to you, and she said ‘rubbish.’” And I said, “Well, of course, your mother is right. On the way here four people spoke to me. What about the four million that went by?” Yet, wherever I go in America, I have the feeling that I am welcome. In London, I never felt welcome.

  To be fair, I generalize England too much. It is only southern England where nobody is your friend. In Yorkshire, people are at least matey. They’re not really your friend, but at least they’re matey. They say, “Good morning,” to you when you meet them in the street and that’s nice. It does give you the feeling that you’re part of the world. But in London nobody ever speaks to you and I don’t know why that is. They have a fear of their privacy being invaded, which is nonsense. What’s the good of privacy unless it’s invaded from time to time?

  When I lived in London, I always felt different. I wanted to be spoken to. I wanted to be acknowledged. I wanted to be one with the world. Perhaps that was because I’m gay and I always felt separated? That’s been my trouble. Had I been heterosexual, maybe I would have looked for someone to unite me with the world and then have children to further connect me with it. But, absent of a partner and children, I felt very detached from the world. I wanted to be acknowledged, but wasn’t.

  Wanting to be at one with the world set me apart from everyone else in London. Most British don’t want to be at one with the world. They despise the world. I can’t afford to despise anybody, so I am always glad to be at one with someone. The odd thing to me is that Americans say they like Britain and I wonder why?

  These days, London is different from when I lived there. When I first appeared, swanning about London, I was not a beautiful young man, but I went on as though I were beautiful, which of course is half the battle. You assume that you are the center of attention and this creates the idea that you are the center of attention. It’s self-fulfilling.

  I returned to London last August[22] to promote a book called Resident Alien. I walked through Soho and there were chairs and tables on the pavement, which was very narrow, so you had to walk in the road in order to make your way past. That was never so in a time gone by. No one would have sat at a table outside, because of the weather, which was usually bad. But there they were, talking, eating, laughing, and waving to one another. Quite un-English! So, perhaps the people have changed since I lived there, even though the place looks much the same.

  Now there is a snobbery in Soho, which I was surprised, even shocked, to see. When I went into certain pubs, where previously they wouldn’t have even let me in, they welcomed me. Of course, what they were really welcoming was my fame, not me. Not the man, but the disguise. The persona.

  Aesthetically, the pubs have all remained exactly the same. They were in the same location, decorated in the same way, with the same people drinking the same drinks in the same positions around the bar. Pub-goers aren’t particularly keen on change. That’s the appeal of a pub. It’s always the same, which they find comforting.

  While I was there I was asked if I missed anything about England. I answered truthfully by saying, “Only my gas fire.” That annoyed people very much. But that’s all I could think of. You see, in my current room in New York, or in any room in America in fact, there is no fireplace. So, in the winter the room is hot, because the whole house is heated like a greenhouse. In the summer it is cold because you want it to be as cool as possible. But in the twilight zone, about now, or in the autumn, you walk about the streets thinking, “This is wonderful. It’s spring!”

  Yet, when you get home you don’t want to sit with your shoes and socks and your trousers and jacket on. You want to take everything off and lull about in a filthy dressing gown. And you can’t because it isn’t warm enough. And you can’t make it any warmer. But, however poor you are in London, you have a little gas fire, and you think, “When we get home, we’ll light the fire, and then we’ll sit by it.” Everyone in England has scorched shins and knees because they sit so near the fire.

  The English, much like the Russians, love to suffer. Winston Churchill understood this perfectly and he played to it. He never told them that things would be wonderful, or that victory would be easy. He told the English they would suffer and they loved him for it. They rallied round him in order to suffer significantly, which is an English pastime. And he constantly made speeches saying that it would get worse and we must fight harder and give up more, but that we would eventually win the war against the Germans because the suffering would pay off. Having suffered so much in my personal life, I wasn’t so keen that my burden be added to, but of course I had no say in the matter.

  I was enamored when the American soldiers came, but then, after a while, I was ashamed of being English, because the English soldiers treated the American soldiers very badly. The English soldiers were envious, because they said their Americans counterparts had money to burn and could afford to give the girls such things as nylons and boxes of chocolates. I mean, they could. No wonder they were popular.

  Of course, the real reason the American soldiers were a success was because they listened. The American soldiers would walk crabwise beside their dates so as to miss nothing. And girls like nothing more than feeling they are the center of attention.

  An Englishman never listens to what his girlfriend says. My brother was never without a girl in tow and he would take her to a bar, sit her on a stool, and every twenty minutes he’d say to her, “Are you alright?” And she’d smile submissively toward him. Then he’d go on talking to his friends, and when she had gone, he would say to me, “What a boring woman.” To which I would say, “What did you say to which she could make a witty reply?”

  Englishmen never talk to women about subjects they might be interested in. So, of course, they are not a success. The girls have simply gotten used to it and now just talk to one another. But they might as well be single if they’re just going to feel alone. I think they’re just glad to be with a man of some kind and they put up with the lack of attention. It’s sad, really.

  During the war, I did not have a favorite American soldier. I knew several of them however. It was almost as if I knew them by braille, because we would meet in either the dark of the night or else in some dimly lit or blackened room. They used to think I was a woman in the dark.

  I never had a favorite whom I claimed to be seeing or who rang me up. I just got to know a number of them, very briefly. They were very sweet. Some of the encounters were sexual. Some of them were just friendly, because Americans care much less about sex than the English.

  There is a passage in the movie of The Naked Civil Servant when an American soldier addresses Mr. Hurt[23], and Mr. Hurt says, “You think I’m a woman, don’t you?” And the man says, “I think so. Should I worry?” But what actually happened was a man spoke to me and I said, “You think I’m a woman, don’t you?” And he said, “You waggle your fanny like a woman.” And I said, “I should ignore that.” And he said, “I’m trying to, but it’s not so easy.” Which is so much funnier. It’s a pity that didn’t get included in the film. I can’t remember what I said back to that.

  The English are so edgy about sex that they can’t really be friends with anyone that they’ve had sex with, and they can’t have sex with anyone that they’re friends with. Americans don’t care. They are just out to have a good time. And, of course, during the war the American soldiers were away from their local schoolteacher, clergymen, their employers and their parents, so anything went! They were much less guarded.

  Life during the war was wonderful because, you see, first of all it was dark. And you could only go about by Braille, saying, “Wooden fence. We’re not at the road yet. Ah, brick! Now we’re at the end of the road.” And you went on like that and you found your way to various places.

  So, you were never conspicuous and you could go anywhere. You knew you were afraid because the only emotion that we know we feel is fear. And when the ground shook with antiaircraft fire and you could hear the shrapnel falling through the branches of the trees and tinkling on the pavement, you had to think that, if you stood still, you were no safer than if you walked on. So, you learned to disregard the war and that gave you the feeling that any moment might be your last. This was wonderful because then, like Mr. de la Mare[24], you looked your last on all things lovely every hour.

  I never went hungry during the war. We ate in restaurants where there was always food. Very simple, but nice food, and plenty of it even though everything was rationed. We had coupons and I used to exchange my coupons. You had so many coupons for meat, and so many coupons for bread, and so many coupons for clothes, and so many coupons for sweets.

  I always gave my ration of meat to someone who had a dog, because I could do without meat. In return she gave me her ration of sweets. I exchanged my tea coupons because I only drink one cup of tea a day and they gave me something else in exchange. There are some people in England who cannot live without tea, but I was not one of them. Some people drink it incessantly.

  With all my sweet coupons I bought a lot of barley sugar, because that is said to be, to some extent, food and, to some extent, calming to the nerves. It all worked out alright. I don’t ever remember going without anything. I remember people thinking we might all starve, but we never did.

  When war broke out I bought, as I have said before, five pounds of henna. I should think that lasted about six months. I only put it on about every six weeks, because it was such trouble. But a little went a long way. And I did right to buy it because it became very scarce as it came from Egypt, which wasn’t involved in the war but which had difficulty in sending anything to England. When I ran out of henna I went to hairdressers to have my hair dyed, which I had never done before. Previously, I had always done it myself.

  The war wasn’t actually a bad time for me, though of course I never got bombed and the house in which I lived never fell down. In fact, no one I knew well ever got bombed. So, there was this atmosphere of terror in which we lived, but really we just got on living ordinary lives. Some people were terribly put out by the blackout, but I lived through it quite easily. Back then, homosexual sex was all about anonymity because of the shame and the illegality. So, you would meet someone and they would be careful not to tell you their name. That was the way I lived my life when I was young. I never asked anyone their name or where they lived or what they did, because they would have said, “Why do you want to know?” It was as if you would use the information against them somehow - blackmail them or the like. So, the natural darkness of the war years simply aided the anonymity of every encounter.