1.
There were few people and fewer dogs climbing Runyon today. I read some vile, homophobic comments on the Sex Rehab message boards. I reported them as ‘harassment’ and they magically vanished.
When we were making our Sex Rehab show Amber told me never to look at the ‘boards’. I vowed that I wouldn’t but vanity gets the better of me. I want to know what people think. Well, they think I am sanctimonious, they think I bullied James, they think I like having sex with little boys etc. etc. They say that they would never let someone like me near their children. They think I am brave, sexy, handsome, and more attractive with longer hair, less attractive with a beard, well dressed, and should have known better.
The nasty things people write sometimes turn me on-that’s the kind of sex addict I am.
Whilst Sex Rehab airs, I have enjoyed that so many thousands of you have bothered to read my blog. The singular benefit of appearing on the show-that I have been able to share myself fully with you all. As the show winds down and it’s treachery becomes apparent I will miss your kind words and kinder prayers.
2.
It’s hard when someone you love thinks that they know more about everything than you do. I have learned to keep my mouth shut because ultimately it means little or nothing but at the moment, at that infuriating moment when I am being told things I have known for thirty years, I just want to say, “yeah, and?” but I don’t, I nod as if this is the first time I have ever heard these scintillating insights.
3.
I remember, as my mother approached 65 years old, she burst into tears. She was crying because she had been looking in the mirror and seeing an older woman look back at her, look her in the eye. An older woman than she remembered ever being. She was crying for lost youth. She said that she felt ‘the same’ but looked ‘terrible’. There is a theme that runs through our family about lost opportunity, lost youth, unfulfilled dreams. We were unable; it seems, to close the deal.
4.
Bumble Ward posted a picture of her freshly baked Christmas Cake. I was thrown into a nostalgic tailspin for everything I had left behind in my Whitstable kitchen. Bumble baked a rich fruitcake to which she had added cardamom and bitter cherries. Every year I lived in Whitstable I baked a Christmas cake and made the marzipan from scratch. I rolled out white, shimmering with glycerin, blankets of royal icing. I would bake with whoever was around to join in on the fun. Usually it was Georgina and her grandchildren. We would drive to Sainsbury’s, buy heaps of dried fruit then haul it home and beat and stir and bind and grate. Then, if we were feeling particularly ambitious we would make a huge Christmas pudding.
A great, steaming pan of fruit, molasses and shredded suet bound in white muslin. Oh I love cooking so much. I love the smell of allspice, orange zest and nutmeg, I love peeling almonds and soaking sultanas and currants in rum. The house filled with the intoxicating aroma of Christmas baking and pine trees. I love wrapping presents and serving mulled wine to my friends. I loved cutting out cardboard stars and covering them with silver paper. I loved the little children singing carols on my doorstep and the rare Christmas when snow fell. I love my glittering advent calendar and everything that a Christian celebration has to offer. I loved going to midnight mass with my bawdy, drunken friends to sing carols loud and clear. I love my Victorian town decorated festively. I love Christmas. I really do.
On Christmas Eve, after the smoky pub, weaving my way home through the matt black night I would sit by the fire and knit and listen to the sea gently lapping over the shingle.
You are perfect just the way you are. People are jealous because of your intellect, personality, kindness and honesty. I think you are brilliant…a shining star on a dark night. I follow you on twitter and your kindness comes through. I would tip back a few pints with you anytime. God Bless you and ignore the haters. The haters must have miserable lives and you are living a good life. I would hug you if I could.
that was a beautiful read! while my tiny red velvet cupcakes are baking in the oven, reading 1 – 3 had me whisper a prayer and 4 – the end made my cheeks hurt from smiling.
thanks for sharing this. and how i wish you would post those recipes!!!
xo
I love that you’re a knitter.
I so enjoy reading your blogs Duncan – thank you for sharing so much of yourself with those of us you don’t even know – and – I will be a fan of yours long after the thrill of Sex Rehab is gone – for you my dear – are a beautiful soul.
I gained five pounds just reading this…mmm-MM!
Keep singing, keep swinging, and I agree with Amber.
Forget the VH1 boards.
Your friends are face-to-face, and here.
Hi Duncan,
I’ve been reading your blog for a couple of weeks after I started watching Sex Rehab. I’m not an addict, but have been going through some rough times recently and started seeing a therapist a few months ago to get to the root of everything. For some reason I find some comfort in watching you and the others on the show do similar emotional work (though I wish for your and my sake neither of us had to deal with anything so difficult). I have found more solace in the show than you and the others on the show will ever realize. The progress you make each week is truly inspiring and makes me feel there is hope for what I am dealing with.
Anyway…this Christmas entry especially hit home. I have always loved the holidays too, and have found that during these rough times I am on a nostalgia spree as well. I’m not sure if you will be returning to your Whitstable kitchen this year, but I hope that whatever you do, you have a pleasant holiday 🙂
Duncan,
You have nailed this one.
While there may be a democratic aspect of the
Internet, and especially the evolution of so
called “Web 2.0” and “Social networking”…
…however, it’s often the worse parts of
“pure” democracy / mobocracy.
To make matters worse, there is this rather
strong sense of anonymity. Consequently,
people say things they wouldn’t dare say if
it were to another human’s face.
And they say it with a kind of security that
can only be found when immediate reaction is
given a high profile outlet in electrons.
Well done getting the homophobia deleted.
What sucks is sometimes it “all” gets deleted.
I had an account removed off sites because
I had the name GayInvestor. I had another
removed for being GayMagicPlayer.
This is another kind of homophobia. The
homophobia of our invisibility.
Thanks for your visibility.
Cheers,
Paulie
Duncan, I think Amber was right. I wouldn’t consider VH1’s boards to be the most well-moderated. I was expecting more intellectual discussion, instead even the earliest threads seemed to lack objectivity or open-mindedness (and I dare say that’s an understatement).
What a wonderful post about Christmas memories.
It can’t be healthy to read the opinions of essentially uninformed people who log onto the message boards with the intention to snark. We viewers are treated to a brief glimpse through a dusty window and grime-laden screen at what transpired during your stay, most of us know that our opinions are tentative. For what it’s worth, on the show you come off as soulful, scarily articulate and bright, and yes at times, angry and misanthropic. Your blog gives us a less obstructed view and speaking for myself you are all those things, but with this higher resolution those traits interact with others to create a magnificent, unusually complex individual.
Duncan,
This was a beautiful post about fond memories and, well, comfort and joy. Thank you for sharing. I agree, stay away from the TV boards. I find I enjoy certain blogs and forums enough to check out new ones sometimes. I am always amazed by the vitriol and hate that most of those places attract. Embrace a good one when you find it.
As an internet stranger that is prone to telling people things that I “know” about them. (And I while I would love to promise I won;t do it anymore, I know better.) I am glad this blog is here and doubly glad it gives you some joy. I appreciate your participation in the show and that you have found some peace in recovery.
A well written blog. I really do mean that Duncan and I am so pleased you allowed me to share it. I will be in-touch. Take care. X
At first I thought the Christmas Cake was overcooked chili…that’s an American for ya..LMAO!
Honestly though, I wish I had half the Holiday Spirit that you posess naturally (and I won’t even go into my ‘cooking’).
This blog was the find; not ‘Sex Rehab’. I do believe the one had to exist to do whatever it does, good and not so good, so that we could find YOU.
(No pressure now)
Oh Duncan, please avoid the “boards.” They’re inhabited by adolescent ninnies who haven’t got the sense to imagine that they might not have a lock on things they haven’t experienced or don’t understand.
Do–please please!–keep blogging, both for yourself and for the rest of us who get to enjoy beautiful posts such as today’s. I love to read your writing when it’s lovely and evocative and nostalgic…and I love it when you’re angry and passionate and have something more pointed to say.
The show has been interesting from a momentary-slice-of-life perspective, but honestly, I’m far more interested in who and what you are now and who you are becoming. (Not to diminish or minimize your growth in any way!)
Duncan, thank you for sharing your Christmas memories with us.
I agree with everyone else, VH1 Message Boards don’t exactly sound like they’d be over flowing with intellectual conversation.
Take care,
K
I would read the blogs and think “what a bunch of idiots.” I stopped reading them when I found your blog. It’s real, funny, sad, scary, heart warming/wrenching. You are a skilled writer. I look forward to it everyday.
Lovely blog today I look forward to seeing what you have to say. I feel like we would be friends if we had the chance to meet. But I will keep looking forward to my blog friends post to see what he is doing. As for me I will continue to bake also it too makes me happy.
I’ve never ventured over to those boards, but I’d just like to say my roommate & I adore you.
Dear Duncan,
Thank you so much for posting the pic of my cake. I am glad that it made you nostalgic and now I think you must make your own cake. I am a crap baker. A good cook but not a baker. I shall keep trying this recipe till it works. The cardamom really is delicious and makes me think of Norway (where my mother is from) and rather perfect timing thinking of Norway today on the day that Obama gave his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo.
Your blog is lovely. Keep on keepin’ on (as the man said).
Love,
Miss W x
Your Christmas memories made my heart happy 🙂
Hello Duncan!
Your blog never ceases to amaze me. I found myself looking through the VH1 boards, getting mad at the idiots blasting their stupidity. Then I found your blog and I’m very glad I did. I have enjoyed reading everything you have to say. It’s much more than a blog, it’s a masterpiece. Your writing is so moving and inspirational. Your Christmas memories made me laugh and caused me to look back on a few of mine.
Buon Natale :]
No.2 is SO hard… I try to learn that too. But sometimes I could just…
I love your christmas memories. I´m not in the mood for christmas. not with all the stupid rain and the temperatures here… i wish i could just fly somewhere where i cant see anything else than snow!
Wonderful Christmas memories. Thank you. If you like coconut, you would probably appreciate a lane cake. Look up a recipe online.
Duncan, my prayers go with you after Sex Rehab the show ends, after you leave LA, and if you ever stop blogging. You don’t have to miss them. They will keep going. I continue to pray for your happiness, peace, continued recovery and sobriety. Take care and God bless.
I think the show has helped broaden understanding by some and more denial by others. But the greatest thing is the awareness. As much as you grumble, I think most including me can see that you have a big heart Duncan. xox
I wish you had a Q & A section! It would be so great to ask you a question and get an answer. Just sayin… I know that would be a huge undertaking for you.
Hello,
There’s probably a chance that this may never reach you, but it’s worth a shot.
I love your uncanny ablity to write whimsically about insurmountable moments that may seem small to many.
With the end to a new day, new experiences always draw me to realease them onto a page or through some sort of media to freeze them in time, yet allow myself simultaneously clean my slate and embody what tomorrow may bring.
AKA also made me reminesce on my past and apply it to the present that constitutes my life.
It seems I can relate with you to an extent from runnng from my family into the unknown when I was sixteen, sheilding myself in the endless secrets that made me anything less than abhorrable to society.
Now at 18, nostalgia seems to find me through the simplist of experiences, yet lucid and surreal, pulls me into old experiences of joy, pain and prospect in which has defined who I am today.
I’m happy to say I hold you to high respect for what you’ve accomplished and who you’ve become today;however, I absolutely adore what you’ve managed to keep constant about yourself throughout your whole life as well, shown easily by the simplistic and eternal memories described above.
People tend to be judged by outcome, but the process combined with the outcome allows you to discern karma from Nirvannah: happiness over the horrors of life.
Thanks for being a hero.