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

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

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

When they first met, Christopher was already a famous author.

He's best known today for writing a single man and the Berlin stories, which later became

the musical Caparay, and Don will later become one of the most respected portrait artists

in the world.

He's painted everyone from Betty Davis and Fred Astaire to Angelen and Joel Lee and Brad Pitt.

He's also painted non-famous

people like, well, me, Jeffrey Masters. Hi. I went back and sat for Don after we talked,

and when he paints, he goes into a trance. His tongue dislodges from his mouth as he works.

And all this happens with a massive portrait of Christopher Isherwood looking on from behind him.

So today on LGBTQNA, I'm talking to the 84-year-old Don Picardy about his life with Christopher,

his work, and what it was like being an out gay couple and an open relationship in the 50s and 60s.

All right, on to the interview.

So you started dating Chris when 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.

Everybody knew he was queer. Yeah. So I had to be that unspeakable teenage boyfriend.

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