I can still remember when we climbed out of the car, and Jack was standing there on the curb looking after the Hudson as Neal pulled away. It was as if Jack were thinking, asking him, What happened? Why is he doing this to me? And, in truth, it had nothing to do with Neal’s feelings for me or for Jack, or with our feelings for him. But it came as a total letdown, especially since Jack had given everything, all the money he had. When Neal dropped us off, we didn’t have anything. What little money Jack had had, he had given for the trip—and yet there wasn’t a backward glance on Neal’s part. He didn’t ask, “You guys gonna be all right?” or anything about how we were gonna manage.
From the moment we got into San Francisco, Neal was looking for some place where he could drop us off. As we’re driving along, Neal says, “Well, where do you want to go?” And I looked at Jack, and Jack looked at me, and there was no place for us to go! The only thing I could think of was the hotel I had stayed in when I was here before, and so I said, “I guess, O’Farrell Street.” That was just what Neal wanted to hear. “Fine, fine,” he says. “Oh, that’s great, that Blackstone Hotel! Fantastic!” And then when we got there, Jack asked me, “Have you got any money?” and I says, “No, I haven’t got any money.” You know, we hadn’t had any money for days! And he said, “What are we gonna do?” And I said, “Well, I don’t know whether I can or not, but once before the manager of this hotel had let me stay, and then I paid him later.” So I told Jack, “All I can do is try. Keep your fingers crossed, and I’ll go find out.” So I went in and talked to the manager, and luckily at least we got a place to sleep.
We got the room, and then I took him immediately over to that girl’s house to see about getting us some food, because we hadn’t eaten anything either. Neal was going home—he knew Carolyn would have some food. So I got us some food, and after that we were just sort of floating. Like I said, we would just stay in the room three and four days at a time, not knowing what else to do or where to go or anything. I mean, had I been a little older I think I might have handled the situation better, but I was in a rather confused state by that time myself. I knew that I had created a lot of these problems because I had allowed myself to get involved with Neal again.
My feelings for Jack were deep, and they were honest. But Jack and I didn’t have anything to build on; we didn’t have anything to hang on to. We didn’t have anything, period—let’s put it that way. And even though we could lay there at night and talk about being together forever, and talk about marriage, we both really knew, I guess, that we were just talking. Because how were we going to start a life together, unless Jack had taken the initiative and said, “Well, I’ll wire home and get some money, and we’ll both go back to New York”? But it was as though he was worse off than I was. He really was; he was the most lost person I had ever seen. Since I first met him, he’d always seemed at odd ends, like he had nothing to do in the world—nothing except write, of course—but now he just seemed at a total loss about everything.
It’s the first time I have ever mentioned this to anybody, but the first night after Neal left, Jack laid in my arms and cried like a baby. He really did. He was really, really desolated and hurt. We had some pretty long, deep talks. We thought we had everything sorted out. Of course, then morning would come and we’d be faced with another day of “Where are we gonna eat?” and was the manager gonna throw us out? And it didn’t seem like Jack had any plan at all. It was like he was kind of waiting for me to do something. At times like this, he could be completely passive, and just let other people decide what was gonna happen. But especially right then, I needed someone to say, “Okay, now, let’s take some action.” I would have worked with him and done whatever there was to do. But I also needed someone to encourage me, and give me confidence that we could get out of this mess. But like I said, Jack was in really worse shape than I was.