Don McCarty was just 18 years old when he started dating Christopher Isherwood.

Chris was 48, and despite that age difference, the two of them were together for over 30 years.

They were known as the gay royal couple of their time.

Now, Chris was already a famous author by the time they met.

He's best known today for writing a single man, a book, which I am terribly fond of.

He also wrote The Berlin Stories, which became the musical cabaret, and Don has gone on

to become one of the most respected portrait artists in the world.

He's painted everyone from Betty Davis and Fred Astaire to Brad Pitt and a pregnant

Angelina Jolie. He's also painted non-famous people, like Jeffrey Masters? I think y'all might

have heard of him? After we originally spoke, I went back and sat for Don a few different times and he goes into this

kind of trance when he paints where his tongue dislodges from his mouth. And all this happens

with a massive portrait of Christopher Isherwood looking on from behind him. So today on LGBTQ and

we talk about the 33 years of Don spent with Christopher

Isherwood, his own remarkable career, and what it was like being an out-gay couple

in an open relationship in the 50s and 60s. So without further ado, let's hear it.

So you started dating Chris when you were 18.

You were 18.

He was 48, 30 years older.

And what I find so fascinating besides the age difference is that you were an out gay

couple in the 50s.

Yes. Look, there was no way we could hide it.

There was such an age difference, and everybody knew he wasn't my father.

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