Tag: Gay Lesbian and Bisexual

Categories
Film Gay Hollywood Los Angeles politics Queer

Wrinkles

I am downtown. Downtown LA. We are drinking coffee in a chic coffee shop.

It is reassuringly sophisticated.  It feels like NYC. It feels like a city.  Spring Street. Coffee bar.  The people who pass by are dressed well and don’t have that Hollywood vibe. The women are not showing off their chests and legs, the boys are wearing well cut pants and have covetable accessories.

Having the car makes life more interesting. I am scarcely at home.  I am writing this on my phone.

I had dinner with an old friend on Saturday night. We ate at Bossa Nova then we saw Clash of the Titans 2 at the Chinese Theatre.  There were less than 10 of us in the theatre.  The film was terrible, Olivia was terrible. Everything about that terrible film that could be said…was said.  He brought two young men. They didn’t say much. One was gay, the other ‘in training’.  Outside the theatre there was a costume exhibition. We poured over the ormolu costume jewelry Elizabeth Taylor wore in Cleopatra.

We explained to the boys the history of Century City.  You know that story don’t you?  How Cleopatra bankrupted 20th Century Fox? How the back lot was sold and Century City was built?  Everybody should know that story, if they live in LA.

It was pouring rain.  Under the theatre, in the parking lot, valley girls were vomiting out of SUVs onto their fake Louboutins.  We drove west, we sat together at my club and they drank cocktails. I drank coffee.  The boys remained mute.

Not feeling at all combative, I found myself passionately discussing racism and gay equality which quickly disintegrated into a nasty UK v USA argument.  At one point my friend told me that if he could press a button and eradicate all Muslims he would.  I pointed out that my father was a Persian Muslim and technically so were the majority of my 11 brothers and sisters. That he would have to kill my young sister Rebecca.

How did he feel about that?  His genocidal zeal was not diminished.

How come it’s become ok for reasonable men to become so islamaphobic?  The conversation further disintegrated into how retarded the Brits were for accepting equality without the word marriage in the equation.  It made my blood boil that he would rather have nothing if he couldn’t have the word marriage. Civil unions in the UK seem, to those who have them…just like being married and my friends who have civil unions think of themselves, describe themselves, as married.  Anyway, the m word is now being fought for in the UK but more as a nice after thought attached to the equality that we already enjoy.  You know how I felt, and people like me felt about that word. Archaic, patriarchal bull shit…antiquated in the secular UK.

Then, this morning, I found myself listening to Democracy Now on the radio as I drove the 101 Freeway.

Van Jones being interviewed.

He pointed out that in the civil rights game played out in the USA…if you are prepared to be arrested for what you believe…and there are enough of you, change happens quickly.

Be seen to fight for what you believe rather than playing the faceless gay equality/marriage ‘incremental’ tactic…employing expensive lawyers and fighting state by state…  He mentioned the names of 5 or 6 black civil rights leaders. I got to wondering where our civil rights leaders were? Who are they? Why can’t I name them?

I suppose Lance Black has become a recognizable leader/voice of the gay community but this seems accidental rather than deliberate.  It has always been my dream for the gay men and women of the USA that they get the human rights they deserve.  But…what are they prepared to risk when demanding those rights? How many windows do they need to break?

There is something weedy and unfocused about the movement.  Worse, by articulating this frustration I risk people like my friend telling me that I am letting down the cause.  We need leaders, we need direct action. It is the only way the unelected justices (who get the final say) at the Supreme Court will truly understand how important equality is to us.

The system has failed us.

Meanwhile, Justin Bond shared on Facebook a piece from the NY Times about the suicide of a gay man struggling with the notion of old age…amongst other things.

Read it here: gay suicide

Some of Justin’s friends dismissed the piece as worthless. Some of them understood how important it was.  Some of them, quite rightly, wondered why the piece was in the style section. Our community wrestles with all sorts of problems peculiar to our people. It is absurd, at moments like this, to pretend that we are just like everyone else.  Our generation of gay men, used to unlimited sex, sexual validation, Peter Panism at its worst…has to wake up and acknowledge the wrinkles.

So, it’s been quite a week. A date last night that went really well. Passionate discussions and…well the dogs.

What more could I want?

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Categories
Dogs

Tap Dancing in a Mine Field

The twins are falling in love.  Not with each other.

Their friend Kevin (my Oscar weekend wing man) and I are left at home, listening to the stories.   They return battle-scarred from long nights with new lovers.  It can be frustrating.  Watching them make the same mistakes we all made.

Robby in love: tap dancing in a mine field.

The hyacinths died.  The man who brought them is sick with gout.

The house is so beautiful at the moment.  The pale, watery Californian winter sunlight…perfect for my English decor and sensibility.

I must have written that a thousand times during the time I have been blogging.

The twins have their 22nd  birthday in two weeks.  They don’t want a party, they don’t want any attention.   We’ll see if they change their mind.

I have a new dog.  A Chihuahua/Boston Terrier mix called Dude.   A rescue, he can’t believe his luck.  He peed on Kevin’s bed last night.  He trots along like a Lipizzan.  He has a deep, croaky bark.  He follows me around like a shadow, much to The Little Dog’s profound irritation.

Washed all the sheets yesterday, the linen smelt heavenly when I crawled into bed last night.

Press conference at the end of the month.  Testifying for the ACLU mid April.  Dinners planned with the most unlikely allies.

Charity dinners for the LA Gay and Lesbian Center’s Homeless Youth Program and a Freedom to Marry event in April.  Trying to throw myself into the melee.   Trying to be of service.

I have categorically decided that I will not be sober much longer, just waiting for the right moment to take my first drink.  It is possible to drink and believe in God?  Many people do it.  My primary concern.

Unless I find alternative meetings where there are people more like me?  I don’t mean gay meetings.  It’s bollocks…this AA shit.

Good intentions ruined by a bunch of alcoholics.

Categories
prison

Brothers, Sisters, Mothers and Fathers

Spent the greater part of yesterday removing redundant blog entries from this blog.  Bloody hell, what a waste of time.

It was frankly embarrassing re-reading all that shit.  All that fury, that indignation I had for him.  It was just so embittered and…not very well written.  Beware the curse of resentment!

From 11am-3pm I sat with a journalist discussing my ongoing legal story.  They are sending a photographer.  It’s a cover story.  The last time I had this much interest from the press I was making movies.  Now I am doing something for the greater good, I have been handed an oppertunity to help others and I am grasping hold of it.  Nothing will unseat me from doing the right thing.

I left something of myself in the jail. I left that Duncan who deserved no respect.

Do you understand that darling? Do you remember when I was serious, contained?  You found it so attractive?

Everything from my old life, pre jail has become irrelevant.  The artifice, the indulgence, the decadence…it was a worthless occupation.  Chasing infamy?  Even the places I used to visit daily are of no interest to me.  The people I know there, the people I knew…caught up in their own peculiar madness, their preoccupation with power and prestige.

I remind myself to be truthful, to be kind.

The people I have been meeting since leaving the jail, the activists, the lawyers, the human rights advocates…I am humbled by their brilliance, their focus, their dedication.

Lastly, as I was sitting with the fiercely intelligent man who interviewed me yesterday I remembered something about the jail that impressed me.  Something peculiar to the gay dorm, peculiar to that community of trans and gay men.

On the streets, elder trans women ‘adopt’ younger trans girls as their daughter.  These  relationships were strengthened in the dorm, references to ‘my mother’ or ‘my father’ baffled me.  At first.

Family connections emerged, not bound by blood but by commitment.   Young gay men needing advice, support, succor and council turning to those they respected.  Adopting one another as mother and daughter.  Father and son. Letting those about them know that familial ties now existed, that they were to be honored.

My son is fighting.  My daughter wants a dress. My mother has had bad news.  My father’s husband is being released.

As we ate together at night.  These ‘families’ helped each other practically:  feeding each other, sharing the loaves and the fishes.  Sharing the support, the love, the strength, the gossip.   That which may not have existed from real parents, from blood brothers, from those who we take for granted…from whom we were born.

Many young black men from Compton, Watts and Inglewood had spent their formative years co-opted into gangs.  The Bluds and the Crips.

Their coping skills would horrify you, you my dear readers…but kept them alive.  Murder, guns, retaliation, fighting to the death were common for most of the young black men I met.  Frequent.

On top of all that, against that barbaric backdrop they had to deal with coming out.

More of this later.

Categories
art Malibu

Convoy

There are pale, grey days by the Pacific that remind one of home.  Thunder clouds over Catalina.   A huge rain over the ocean,  blasting the surface, then fierce sunshine through the clouds like so many celestial arc lights.

There are more storms forecast for next week.   Just as the house fills with Thanksgiving guests and I prepare to leave for NYC.  Early December shopping and once again…him.

Usually, at this time of year, the mountain is parched and brown but last summer was unseasonably wet.   Everything is dark green, richly hued, sweet-smelling earth abundant with as much wildlife as I ever saw.

Last night at 2am I passed three young, regal bucks on Rambla Pacifico.  Their velvet antlers and fearlessness making them all the more beautiful.  There is a huge owl that now roosts in the palm tree on the drive.

I know why he’s here, to eat the squirrels and rats.  The Little Dog killed a rat yesterday.  It had a beautiful pale grey coat and a long black tail that squirmed like a snake minutes after he snapped its neck.

I have been going to events.  Small talk with strangers…boring.

AFM.  GLADD.  Etc.  Why would I ever want to leave my mountain?  I meet bumptious gay men with nothing original to say.  Invisible people, terrified of being seen, identified, different.  Straight acting.  God, that bores me.  I wore a Derby.  They couldn’t even identify a Derby.  That thought it was a Bowler hat.

Then a beautiful boy arrives and turns everything upside down.  I can feel him beside me now.

Last night I cooked dinner and, as it may be the last time before I sell it, I powered up the huge Sylvie Fleury neon piece that hangs in the parlor.

Doesn’t it look beautiful?  CURIOUS!

Can you believe that Rachel Maddow, of all people, gets hate mail?  Hateful, terrible things.  Everyone who has ever been on TV gets hate mail.  Anonymous fools sitting at their computers, steeped in resentment, conspiring against the world.

Regis Philbin gets hate mail.

The storm is coming, there is nothing we can do except bring in the cushions, clear the drains, avoid falling rocks loosened by the deluge when we drive.

Can I tell you something?  I haven’t been here, to this blog…very recently, because I had other things I needed to write.  A film to finish, the essays to map, the novel is done with.

I met friends for dinner and ate far too regularly at Gjelina.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I had meaningful assignations with beautiful men.  I walked the new road with the dog and did not fall down.

I removed the bulk of my blog archive because it was no longer appropriate to keep it there.  I kept the essays that seem to give you most pleasure.  Instead of writing this…I concentrated on other things.  The trash was put out on time, the Caster Oil Trees that grow by the spring were chopped down.  The trees that died last year must be felled and cut up for fire wood.

I travelled in convoy from one event to another and blended as much as I am able.

We are not expecting anything so inclement that our lives maybe risked.  The worst that could happen, after the heavy rain, is another slide.  That, my friends, is life on and off the mountain.

Categories
Gay Rant

Fuck You Dan Savage

OK, quick update. Returned California Monday night. Michael picked me up from the airport.

Ate dinner at Sauce on Hampton. Home by 9.30.

Couldn’t stop myself from compulsively watering pots, checking the apparently broken (wasn’t) irrigation system. Nipping downstairs to the newly vacated rental apartment…the mess was dealable with.

Nothing a few hours on my knees scrubbing couldn’t handle.

Much to Michael’s amusement I found a pair of shears and, at midnight, hacked at the month’s worth of hedge growth I just couldn’t go to bed thinking about.

On the plane home I had a terrible revelation about my novel. It was written from the wrong point of view.

To my tremendous relief, this morning, everyone agrees with me.

So, I immediately began work rewriting the entire thing.

The gardeners came and restored order. Swept the paths and stowed the trash. Robby came by and we had lunch at the Malibu Country market. Robby is soooo adorable.

Took dog to vet..he has a hot spot. No idea what that is. Anyway, the gorgeous Dr Victor tended to him. Gorgeous and recently married. He gave me a powder I have to squirt on his wound. Don’t you just love the word squirt?

After my reference yesterday to ‘activist’ Dan Savage…who did I chanced upon being interviewed by Keith Obelman?

Our great friend and apologist: ‘Activist’ Dan Savage.

He was raving about critically acclaimed musical The Book of Mormon. That was OK. It’s good. Then he started in on Christian America and how everyone who critiques/damns the gays is either in the closet or jealous of our freedom.

As you know by now…I believe that our so-called freedom seems to enslave most of us.

I am not convinced that Dan Savage is radical or dangerous. He seems mediocre and conformist. He is married and has a kid. He wears boring clothes. He has a predictable hair cut. He probably lives in a gay ghetto.

Benoit introduced me to Dan Savage after I was on Sex Rehab. ‘Activist’ Dan Savage refuses to believe that sex addiction (any addiction?) exists. Why? Because it doesn’t suit his view that we should be able to do anything, whenever we want…without censure.

He can’t believe that something he enjoys so much should ever be labeled as addictive.

Yesterday, there he was on Obleman’s Coutdown tearing into bi-sexual folk who had ‘chosen’ to be straight rather than gay.

Pompous Dan apparently…damning their choices. The arbiter of your sex conduct.

Dan calls those who believe in choice, the ‘choicers’. Dan continues, revealing his limited (Judeo-Christian) understanding of contemporary sex and sexuality…you are either one thing or the other.

People like Activist Dan keep bi-people/people who experiment sexually away from being honest and open about the sexual choices they make. A straight man will rarely, if ever, admit to having sex with another man…because people like Dan Savage will claim him for the cause.

He suggested that bi-sexual people have made a ‘choice to stay in the closet’. Bi-sexual people fuck with Activist Dan’s head.

Is Dan pro-choice? Well…if it suits him. Choose to be gay or straight, choose to fuck out of your gay marriage, choose to live by Dan’s rules. Choose sexual liberation! As long as you choose the gay way.

I mean…I’m just asking. Don’t take it the wrong way…If you have a choice…why not chose a straight lifestyle? If Dan is so damned opened minded and sexually liberated…why shouldn’t that same hetero choosing bi-man also choose to see men on the side? I mean…what’s so different from that and the gay men I know who see other people outside of their relationships?

It’s their choice!

Bisexuality, sexual fluidity, acknowledging our right to choose an evolving sexual continuum.

Why not?

Dan may very well find those sort of bi-choices personally threatening.

Yet, in my experience, those bi-men who fuck other men outside of their straight marriage..are perfectly happy, not conflicted, secular…and of course…EUROPEAN.

If, ultimately, these men choose to ‘come out’…so be it. People leave each other all the time!

Many bi-men have a community of like-minded men and women around them. These men and women are often more closeted than the gays…not because they live in Christian shame but because those who live at either end of the sexual spectrum make it impossible for them to speak freely and honestly about who they are, what they want and the experiences they have had.

The choice to express themselves has been stunted by people like Activist Dan.

Dan’Bi Now, Gay Later‘ Savage.

Dan’s limited and sophomoric opinions about sex are frankly…dangerous. He does as much damage as Tony Perkins the Family Research Council president who denounces the idea that kids suffering from “abnormal” homosexuality kill themselves because they are bullied.

Dan is the equal and opposite of Tony Perkins. His passive aggressive, liberal, sexual free-for-all is as damaging to us as the hate spewing from the Christian right.

Whether we like it or not…Christians have the right to disagree with our lifestyle…why? Because they can. Because sometimes they are right.

Sometime they say things that I agree with.

Am I a self loathing homo? Am I jealous that you are young and getting some? Am I just bitter?

Is this how I can agree with SOME of the things our enemies say about us? Because I am jealous?

As for Dan’s notion that the moment we step out of the closet and embrace gay life we suddenly ‘live with integrity’.

Bull shit Dan.

Obelman asks a reasonable question about men and women trapped in the closet for 50 years. Savage, yet again, blames Jesus.

I have met men who didn’t come out of the closet because of what the gay community had on offer, couldn’t imagining themselves fitting in. The lifestyle simply wasn’t for them.

Can some of us believe that what we have isn’t everyone’s cup of tea? Jesus wasn’t keeping those guys in the closet..we were.

I have no experience of the closet…but I do have experiences as a gay man which include choosing to sleep with and have emotional bonds with women. I presented myself as a gay man to those women and choices were made. Get used to it.

There is something mithering about Dan’s tone. He believes as surely as Tony Perkins that he is right about everything. He is as sure as the preacher who damns us all. The gays here in the USA love Activist Dan. He is their saviour, their dog in the manger, he is their apologist, their very own MMA fighter prepared to get down and dirty defending the gays.

Sometimes I agree with him. Mostly I don’t.

Compared with a true activist like Peter Tatchell this buff hack is just another money spinner, whipping up the gays to buy his stuff so he can live the dream. He is as bad those in the GOP who hate us in public so they can run for office.

Have any of you read Right Wing Women by Andrea Dworkin? It’s worth the read. She doesn’t go after the clan leaders, she goes after their wives. It reveals the experience and motivation of women like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Anne Coulter.

Right wing women who attack feminism even while they are the beneficiaries of its work.

I am not interested if Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has, as he claims, gay friends or a gay head of staff. I am interested, however, in those gay friends and head of staff who have subordinated themselves to Rick’s cause…are willing to overlook his hateful rhetoric, set aside their integrity (magically bestowed upon anyone who steps out of the closet in Activist Dan’s world) and make a pact with the devil.

Dan has made a great deal of money out of being our gay saviour. Many in the gay community are devoted to his unquestioning beliefs, his naive rhetoric, his easy answers (blame the Christians) and his dashing good looks.

Straight liberals like Obelman love him because he’s just the kind of gay friend they would like to have.

He makes me puke.

See the interview with activist Dan here.

Related articles
Categories
Gay

The Way We Were

19 Years Old

If gay marriage had been an option when I was young would I have made different sorts of decisions?

Would I have behaved differently?

Would I have looked for a serious relationship with another man to whom I would have proposed, married and had children..rather than leaping from one man to another…exhausting each and every one of them?

If that narrative had been on offer, as it is now, would I have married Joe or Matt or the beautiful Dane?

Joe and I were as good as married but it was a marriage of convenience.

If I had believed that a commitment between men was possible or respected or had some kind of future, perhaps I wouldn’t have wasted other opportunities.  I may have stuck around.

Did I even trust the love that dare not speak its name?  The legitimacy of love between men?

When I hear a man say, ‘I love you’ it turns me on.

Tell me that you love me.

I will make love to you.  Be part of you.

When I was a young man I felt hopeless, convinced that this strange love was simply…pointless. That to say ‘I love you’ to another man…meant nothing, could never mean what it meant when I loved a woman.

But you’re gay!  Did she know?  This woman.

One woman in particular.

When I fell in love with PH, it was a surprise to everyone…me included. She was so beautiful. She was so beautiful and she wanted me. There are very few things I do not write about here. She is one of them. Our relationship that spanned half a decade.

After years of enjoying a gay life I saw the world renewed. I looked into her eyes and I never wanted to forget her face. Every time I left the house I would memorize an indelible snapshot of her.

When we were in love every record played on the radio meant something. Holding hands in the street and never once a strangers savage glance…my love blossomed. Without the withering contempt of strangers my love blossomed.

Do you know what I mean? Whenever I held a man in my arms in a public place I felt the withering contempt of others. Have you ever felt that? It soured me. What other people thought.

Biracial couples know what I mean.

The artist, Marc Quinn said to me when he saw me and Phil together, “I knew you weren’t gay.”

That was then. This is now.

Before he and I stopped speaking he told me that he had met a man in Central Park and kissed them. They held him in their arms. He told so many lies yet somehow this lie was forgivable. He told me that it had happened before I met him…but I knew from the look on his face how new and exhilarating it had been.

An experience that he wanted to share but was too afraid of hurting me.

Well, we may never know how it might have been if I had the luxury of marrying a man.

Time has past, now I am too old to fall in love and make a man my husband.

Darling PH, even though we are estranged at the moment because of what happened last summer with him.  I want you to know that had you not been in my life I would never have experienced a brimming heart.

You trusted me and nurtured me and protected me and loved me unconditionally.

Watching my young gay friends emerge into the light, they have a different sort of gay life on offer.

During the past 50 years life for gay men has changed radically. When I was born homosexuality was still a criminal offence. So, I was lucky to have grown up without my sexuality outlawed.

This generation of gay men are freer than any generation before them. I salute the work we did to make a more equitable life for them.

Occasionally I am pissed that the young don’t recognise the sacrifices we made..but I am also aware that I seldom give a thought to those who fought for me to live a free and abundant gay life.

As much as I hate to remind you, these rights and freedoms could be taken away just as easily as they were given. We must not take our good fortune for granted. There are dark forces at work against us.

It’s election time!  Here they go again, debating my future, my expendable rights.  Using their disdain for our lives to get votes.  Championing gay hate to ‘motivate their base’.

Listen to what they say about us.  The cruel rhetoric they use.

I am tired of being the liberal hot potato thrown around at times of national debate/election.

Gay marriage, gays in the military, hate crimes, equality.

And finally mr/mrs republican candidate…what do you think of the gays?  Is this the kind of America we want to call our home?   We want our country back from the niggers and the faggots!

We are once again the devil’s proof of an evil, liberal America, a decadent America, a democratic America that Jesus would never sanction.

Apparently, like abortion, we must be outlawed.

I am sick of having my nature, my rights, my existence used by others in some heartless polemic.

Read my lips:  My rights are non-negotiable, un-repealable….mine to keep.

If you vote Democrat I am not proof positive of a better America. If you are Republican I am not responsible for every natural disaster.  I am just what I always was…alive. Doing what I always did…living. Hoping like I always will…that you leave me and my sexuality alone.

Some woman on FB reassured me that Jesus loved me but hated my sin.  The sin of homosexuality.  The Jesus I was taught about on Sunday mornings in St Alphage church Whitstable never really hated anyone.

All he wanted was a fair and equitable life for us all.

Categories
Rant

Not all Closets are Created Equal

We are at the lake house.  The little dog and I.  Yesterday a fire department helicopter arrived and scooped up water and flew away.

This is not a very good video.

I am still content and centered although I feel a bit apprehensive.  Next months appearance at court.

I really don’t want to see Jake.

The nasty little troll dragging me back into his mediocre, dreadful world.

Fuck!  Why did he ever contact me?  Why me?  Why did he choose me of all people to come out to?

What a selfish, self obsessed pig he was.  Throwing me into his shit pit.

He created this mess.  Let’s face it…if he hadn’t stalked me with his lies and deception we wouldn’t be here now.   He had many gay friends, his boss was gay for goodness sake.  He had been hooking up with Pal for over a year, Jake could have had Pal help with the process…God only knows, from what he described, Pal tried to help Jake.

I let him into my life.  No amount of due diligence could have forewarned me.

The problem is that Jake is far too un-evolved to accept his part in this drama.  He wants to blame me for his shortcomings.

I wrote to his lawyer offering a mutually binding solution but Jake has obviously shucked his fake ‘timid’ facade and revealed his recently grown balls.

He wants to fight in court…so be it.

His lawyer, (refers to himself as George Clooney on his laughable website) has still not sent any evidence.

The problem with Jake is:  he has lived two lives for so long.  Lied to everyone he knows.  Ultimately he got away with it.  Hurting her.  She probably forgave him.  Poor Jake.  His world split asunder.

Let’s feel sorry for the scum bag.  That doesn’t sound like I mean it? Ha!

I don’t want to be angry with him.  I really don’t.  It doesn’t get me anywhere.

Will you help me?  Can you all help?  We could pray for him, forgive him, wish him all the best.

I prefer this option.

My prayer, whenever I am forced to think about him:  God, please help Jake be happy, let him succeed, help him be truthful, make his dreams come true.

God, please let Jake find love, a healthy relationship, a sober life.

Amen.

Categories
Hollywood

Boy Friend?

Let me reiterate…I would rather work in an office.  I would rather work in an office than have a boyfriend.  In fact, it’s almost the same thing.  Giving up one’s freedom…just to be like everyone else.

Accepting second best.  I can’t do that again.

I have no intention of EVER having a boyfriend/partner/husband.

They say, “You’ll fall in love.”  “You’ll meet someone.”  “There’s someone out there for you.” Ha!  It simply isn’t true.  Why?  Because I am not looking, not interested…scared.

It was hot yesterday.  Very hot.  Looks like it’s going to be another hot day today.  BAFTA garden party at the British Embassy this afternoon.

My ankle is not getting any better.  My ‘wait and see’ policy worked on the left leg but not on the right.  I am shuffling like a decrepit.  Doctor on Monday.  We shall see.

Zachary came by yesterday and we hurled ourselves up the 101 and into Hollywood.  Hanging with some New York friends on Doheny.  A gay event…cute, pleasant people.  One of them had seen the ‘A’ List and asked…about the watch.

We ended the evening slumping into sofas at a private roof top club receiving all comers.  We had a pack of American Spirits so were very popular out there on the terrace.

Zachary is a dancer/performance artist.  He is off to Rome to show his work in a prestigious gallery.  I like his zeal.  It reminded me just how much fun touring a live show can be.

Samantha joined us, she was wearing knee-high leather boots, her hair tied back…she looked like Theda Bara.

We chatted with super chic Kelly Osborne.  We met a gay couple in an open relationship.

We drove home at midnight past a very fresh accident on the deserted PCH.  An inebriated man sitting at the edge of the road wearing a white button down…clutching his bloody chest.  His girlfriend standing by…weeping.

A two car collision.  His car visible, the other car (a police vehicle) had, it seemed, crashed over the edge of the PCH and into the Pacific.

Gawkers looking into the black sea.  The deputies, I read this morning, were not drowned.  Look here.

I am in NYC next week, post Irene.  Robby is there to see but he has a life in NYC (at our instigation) and I may very well not be a part of that.  That’s OK, he’s appropriately grateful.

Categories
Rant

The Truth Will Set You Free

Only three weeks until I am yet again due in Family Court to fight the spurious accusations, lies, falsehoods from that dwarfish, dishonest man who lied his way into my life, my wallet, my heart and my underwear.

This vile fame-whore will rip me out of paradise.

Some cheap liar who had devoted every day of his 30 years to deception.

When he saw me on TV he merely saw his next victim.

Someone else he could use in his war against a woman he said he loved.   Risking her health, her sanity.   Someone I heard blaming for his shortcomings.  He was so angry with her that she didn’t see things his way.  A woman who had blindly believed in her man, who will never do so again.

The bigger problem when you let a liar into your life…you end up never trusting.

Every man I have subsequently met I have looked upon with suspicion.

If YOU have had experiences of spurious restraining orders or false orders of protection let me know by emailing me on [email protected] or leaving a message here.   If you want to come to court in NYC and support me on the 8th September 2011, let me know.

If you want to cover this story for your gay publication…let me know.

If you have been fucked over by an ex, lied to, cheated to, infected with HIV by someone who said they were clean…if you have never had recourse to get revenge.  Let me know.

Men or women.

Let me know.

If you are sick of keeping quiet about the way gay men…men treat each other or women.

Let me know.

Dan Savage‘s It Gets Better campaign may save teens from killing themselves, but what next?  We don’t treat each other very well.  Sometimes I think that Better than Death is not good enough.

I used to have compassion for that man.  I used to make excuses for him.  I stayed up waiting for him to call.  Worrying about him.  I urged him to tell her the truth. I convinced him that the truth would set him free. Until recently I thought he should be forgiven.  Some people can never be forgiven.

He may have learned his lesson, maybe he tells the truth nowadays?  Regardless, he has unfinished business.  We need to deal with it.  Some day soon the truth will be revealed.

Orders of Protection are well-known for inflaming benign situations, creating malignancy where there was none.  He has done just this.   The cells of resentment, hatred and revenge are multiplying before my very eyes.

Hey..and before you lecture me about how stupid I was to fall for him.  That he was just a 30-year-old kid…look at the men who are killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Teenagers. If you think that love has logic?   Take a look in the fucking mirror and tell me you haven’t done the same.   Before you advise me to let go of my resentment, tell me why I should.  This may be eating me alive but that’s better than being dead.

He could have killed me.

Before I get advice from angels…take your own inventory.  Your own moral pulse.

P.S.  No, I don’t have HIV but I hear plenty stories of men who have been cheated out of their negative status by lying queens.  Just another thing our fucked up gay community wont talk about.

Categories
Gay Love Malibu

Am I Weak?

I had no idea yesterday was Friday. I thought it was Wednesday. That’s how disorienting the mountain can be.

I have been trapping squirrels. Peanut butter and Weetabix. My secret weapon. The little dog at my side. Spent the rest of the day under the deck clearing dead leaves.

Paid water bill in Malibu, picked up some milk.

Dinner with friends. Crappy Cafe Habana. The rudest waitress on the planet.

Cold mist over the mountain. The weather is totally fucked up.

Apparently The ‘A’ List is very amusing.  Ian had an advance screener.  I probably don’t come off very well.  Never mind.  I am, according to Ian…referred to as ‘smelly’.   Watch the show on Logo, Monday night.  More will be revealed.

Because you love me (huh?) an anonymous ‘friend’ out there decided to send a recent picture of Jake.

Please don’t do it. As you are well aware, it just inflames the situation.

I don’t want to see him or hear anything about him.  I am at peace with him. Want the best for him.

I forgave him for writing that horrible email, for lying to me.  His lies, in retrospect, were perfectly understandable.  He was in a terrible situation.  I forgive you for being selfish and insensitive….for doing what perhaps all your non-sober friends would think perfectly reasonable.

I forgive you for wanting me to be something I never was.  I forgive you because you didn’t know.

What is my part in all of this? When everyone around me was warning not to get involved I ignored you all. I ignored John. I ignored Mr. P. I ignored Dr. D and my therapist Jill.  Instead of going to meetings and connecting with dependable friends I sank into my addiction. Acting out with a straight identified man.

Regardless of what he morphed into…he was not mine to love.  It is indeed very alluring to be told that you are loved but I am old enough, experienced enough to have seen it for what it was.  I chose not to.

I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger. I’m sorry for bruising you inside and out. I’m sorry that I couldn’t stop myself from loving you. I’m sorry that I was insensitive and selfish. I’m sorry for shouting.  I’m sorry I lied.  Most of all, I was wrong to have waged this war against you, not least because I have done myself irreparable damage.

I was wrong.

I was weak.

I fell for him…as many will.

You are a beautiful, sexy, romantic, intelligent man. Above all…you are curious.  If you are not already, you will make someone very happy, very proud.  You will make some equally honorable man a great husband, you will be a good father.

I wanted you for myself. In a different narrative that wouldn’t be so bad. But you had just come out, bravely left one life to make something brand new.   I should have been a support, a conduit.

Peace comes from acceptance and forgiveness.

I hope one day you will find it in your heart to forgive.  I don’t need to know that you have.

My Whitstable mash up…I was his age when I made that video and it reminded me of what sort of man I was. Unprepared. I was unprepared and willful.

I imagine that he is out there doing his best to be honest. Living in New York, working every day.

Connecting to his new gay life.

I hope he marvels at his good fortune: his new gay life. The opportunities it affords. With marriage and babies and freedom…it’s a great time in New York to be a gay man.

Both Zach and Dan told me that I should stop writing about Jake.  Zach told me that it made me sound weak.  Well, that maybe.  Weak or not, it’s time to move on.

At some point soon I have to remove (yet again) any reference to him from this blog. Any photograph, his name etc. It just has to be.  Not because I am being forced but because it is the right thing to do.  As if it never happened. As if we never happened.

This blog and his name written here ties him to me as much as I have strapped myself to him like a suicide bomb.

So, Adieu my friend.

I am writing this at The Country Mart in Malibu waiting for Karim as he stands in line for our lunch.

He is off to Patmos, Paris, Antibes and Athens for the rest of the summer. Places I love.

Some of those places we visited.  I will cherish those memories.  I will overlook the problems.  I will keep quiet now about what we loved most because only we know.