Tag: Parent

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Gay

Bully

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All this talk about bullying.

How do we teach kids not to bully when we pay Gordon Ramsey and Simon Cowell to bully others? When we invade Iraq and kill the innocent people we were there to protect?

It’s not just the gays who get bullied….

homophobic/racist/classist/fatist/ginger/glasses/smelly/poor/good grades/bad grades… all reasons kids are bullied.

Go on add to the list…

I’ve done my fair share of bullying. On set. Within relationships.

Growing up gay: you have two options… let the homophobes beat you down or fight back. I’ve always fought back. Spent my life fighting.

Probably to my detriment.

They called me BLEACHED NIGGER at Primary School ’cause I had black curly hair.

Yet, the worst bullying in my life occurred after I left school from other gay men. Especially as a youth. Bullied into sexual liaisons.

Vicious bitchery. Cruel and catty.

Yet somehow forgiven because it was meant to be funny.

My body image shot to pieces by gay men. Having to subscribe to their standards of beauty.

Ultimately… as my granny said: what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

I embraced my curly hair, my gangly legs, fought off the men who tried to shame me into sex or told me to lose weight, shave my head and balls, go to the gym…. and carved my own little niche which ended up being quite a crowded place with other like-minded people.

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Auto Biography Malibu Rant

Troubled Child

My friend’s 13-year-old troubled child is here at the house.

To tell you the truth…I don’t find him very troubling.  Why?  Because I was just like him when I was his age.

Difficult, intransigent, argumentative, addict manque.

Though our home situations are very different I began feeling a deep regret for how I had treated my mother and brothers.  Without doubt the genesis of my anger toward them had some basis.

Seeing him treat his parents so appallingly, confound them, fight them…distresses me and everyone who witnesses it.  He demands money with menace, internet privileges and rides to see other equally troubled, weed smoking teens.

It has been a particularly hard week for my friends.  Interrupting a drug deal he was making with a pair of 16 year olds in a car, a deal funded by money he had stolen from his mother, he attacked his Cambridge educated father and literally ripped the shirt off his back.

Until that moment his father had been his great ally and protector.  Until he saw what the rest of us had seen for some time…that there was nothing his own child wouldn’t do to get what he wanted.

The violence toward his parents is shocking to witness but he tends to behave properly when I am around because, rightly, he is scared of me.  I refuse to co-sign his bullshit.  I am bigger and potentially twice as violent and, of course, he knows that I will not acquiesce.

He steals anything he can lay his hands on and lies about it.

The last time I was at the house he stole $20 from me.  I just demanded it back and he handed it over.  When caught he tends to walk into a weird cloud of denial.  Glazed, fearful.

After he attacked his father the police came and cuffed him.  They wanted to take him to juvenile hall but his parents balked at the last moment.

It is only a matter of time before he ends up in very serious trouble.

I was sent to boarding school so my parents could live a normal life.  It suited me to be away from the house.  It suited them to get on with their normal, family life.

The problem seems to be that this kid has no passion for anything other than money.  He isn’t, as I was, sketching imaginary couture collections, writing plays or poring over houses I would one day build.

His stated aim: the acquisition of money.  He will do anything he can to get hold of it.  He doesn’t have anything particular he wants to spend it on.  He just craves hard cash.

Ultimately he will leave home and make his own mistakes…in his own time, on his own dime…but for now he tortures his parents and sisters with tantrums, violence and vile words.

When things get really bad at the house his desperate mother calls me and I sleep over.

Calm is restored.  Last night we made tea and dipped strawberries in chocolate.

I know, of course, how things will end up for him: jails, institutions and death.

It is the way of the addict.  We are all similarly destined until we take those imperative steps toward sanity and abstinence.

Categories
Gay

The Strengths I Imbue

After Stephen left yesterday afternoon for some appointment somewhere…I lay on the sofa and mulled over the days events.  One thing was certain, The Penguin no longer rents space in my head.

I kept marveling at how I had once found him so intoxicating.  I finally saw him as others saw him.  When Charlie said, “He wasn’t like anyone I had met you with before…”  I felt vaguely insulted.   “The boys you usually introduce me to are beautiful.”

Yet, Charlie was right.  My love for him made his fascinating.   The pictures I took of him made him look like a model.   The life I handed him.  The strengths I imbued.  When I took him to Paris all he brought with him was his mediocrity.

I realized that I had never seen him, in all the time we knew each other, with anyone other than my friends and family.  To see him interact with his parents was a revelation.  They looked at his iPad and laughed.  The sham, It might have worked if his Mother didn’t look so incredibly sad.  Amongst them The Penguin looked for all the world like the entitled brat who would think nothing of taking drugs to their house, using their kitchen as a porno web casting studio or telling them bare-faced lies.

Their ‘unconditional’ love created The Penguin.   I had hinted before that this may have been the case but just seeing them together confirmed my worst fears.

I suddenly understood Jessie’s fury in a way that I had never understood it before.

He wrote:

“Well, it’s over.  She came home, got me to confess a bit more truth–that i have had sex with men before–then after a lot of kicking, hitting and screaming, she kicked me out.  I took the train to my parents’ house, where I told my mom everything (my dad is out of town which made it all a bit easier actually), and she held me and told me it will all work out.  Jessie called her to make sure I’d gotten home, which gave me some hope that she might not hate me forever…but after she got home tonight it became clear that there is no going back.  She accused me of ruining her life, of being a deceitful sociopath, of being a bad person who she wishes she never met.  This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.

 Part of me feels like I wish I’d never met you–your were a catalyst of sorts and without that catalyst everything right now would probably be as it was.  But I know that “as it was” was not as perfect as I wanted it to be, and beneath all the pain right now I know I did the right thing.  Thank you for guiding me towards the truth,,,you are so incredibly strong…I can hear it in your voice, your words.  I hope I can be as strong as you and I really want to thank you for being here for me.  I cannot fucking believe this happened today.  Love you a lot.”

The truth is:  he would never have ‘come out’ if I had not been the crazy man I am.  I had threatened to ‘un-pick’ his life and he knew that the truth had to be told.   I forced him to tell her the truth.

His lies made me physically sick.

Whilst he was with Jessie I wrote:

You are making me unhappy.  There is no fucking hope.

 I refuse to be the other person in your life whilst you selfishly shit on other people.

 It is not fair on any of us.

 I refuse to be the levelheaded guy who just puts up with you.   Then, when and if it suits you, you turn on and accuse of craziness.

 I can’t do it.

 Yes, today I felt fed up with you because I don’t trust you.  Why should I?

 Why should anyone?

 What the hell did you expect from this?  That I just have no feelings?  That we just fuck?   That you sit in your room and jerk off on camera and that was going to be enough for me?

 Jake, PLEASE stop living a lie.  Leave that poor woman.  Be single for a while then find a man to love.

 Please.

I think often about Jessie.  How he treated her.

Let’s talk about who I became yesterday.  I didn’t really like me yesterday.  I didn’t like the goose-stepping, mad man who took obnoxiously loud telephone calls in the court waiting room.  It seemed like I just had to be THAT GUY.  It seems like it’s the only way I know how to protect myself.

I was the wrong size when I left the court.  So it was that I had to get back to being the right size.   Not too big, not too small.

Alex called.  We had dinner at Angelica’s Kitchen.  I ate steamed vegetables.  We talked briefly about the day but I was done.  Done talking about The Penguin.

We fell into bed and I kissed him.   Everything felt so different.  Fresh.

Just two men in bed, two men in bed without any expectations.

I am on Fire Island this weekend house hunting for the summer.   Very excited.

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