OK, it’s really time to forgive. It’s so fucking hard to forgive someone you have loved. I don’t know if it’s the right thing? We had such an intense time together.
I dealt with the unresolved financial aspect today but it gave me zero pleasure.
I think..why the fuck should he get away with anything. Here it comes again..the wave of resentment.
I wish on more occasions that I care to admit that I could remove every single mention of him on my blog just like he wanted but now look..the pages are covered with him. Mentions and pictures and insults. I know that it must have hurt him terribly. For what?
Because I loved him. Because I don’t want to love him. Because I want to let him go..forever and this seemed like the only way.
I broke my promise to celebrate every moment of his new gay life.
Two people come together for what ever reason and try to make something happen. The moment the heart is engaged it becomes treacherous.
Toby and I went out last night to WeHo where I thought I wanted to be happily surrounded by own kind. It was GHASTLY! I LOATH mediocrity! Jake wasn’t mediocre. He wasn’t deliberately cruel. He was just confused. I should have known better..but why should I? Why should I know just because I am older? I keep thinking about The Velvet Rage. How we become who we are shaped in a hostile world. Having to invent ourselves as we go along.
I don’t know the answers…why should I?
I tried to be there for him, to help him but I couldn’t help myself..I fell in love. So, every time I eat a tomato I think of him because we bought those beautiful tomatoes in the market in Sanary and ate them like peaches.
Every time I sit opposite another man on a ‘date’ I compare them to him. Every time something good or bad happens I want to share it with him..yet I have no right. I never had any right. You see, he always made it perfectly clear after he left her that he wasn’t leaving her for me. The damage was already done. I was already in love, I believed him when he wrote to me telling me how much he loved me.
Even though I urged him to get honest I think it suited me that he wasn’t. When he finally told her I was in SHOCK. It seemed like the most brave yet foolhardy thing to do. There were other ways of telling the truth. But that’s just my fucked up head getting in the way. He did the right thing.
When I told John the Saturday morning he told her he was gay we both looked at each other in SHOCK.
As we became more involved I couldn’t just continue with things the way they were. I couldn’t bear listening to him tell me about other men and not be profoundly hurt however generous I wanted to be.
I didn’t want it to end but it had no future and if it had no future I couldn’t continue.
I need either to be on my own or to share my life with a man who gives equally, kindly, compassionately.
This will make you laugh: I met a man (my age) at dinner the other night who wanted a date but cancelled after reading my blog. So, it’s just me and my blog.
As for the money? I don’t care about the money, I just care that he’s not getting away with anything. Then of course..I do care. When I am feeling angry or resentful I care so much about the fucking money.
It’s 110 degrees in LA. At the end of the week we return to sultry days and chilly evenings.
Where are the grand romantic gestures? Should I have moved to NYC ? I simply couldn’t. I couldn’t shift my life east because I loved him so much. I always knew that I would eventually have to let him go.
Now look, these pages are littered with every mean thing I could have written about him. But inside my crazy head every mean thing I think about him is balanced with a good thought, a lovely memory, a kind gesture.
I just don’t want you to think I am weak, laying in bed this morning and trying to conjour up good thoughts of Jake, wanting to remember all that was sweet and let the loathing go.
Toby and I went into Weho last night. It was a cluster fuck. The Abbey was throwing a birthday party for its owner. We left a few minutes after arriving. It was shirtless night there. Just more flesh. More male bodies, shaved chests, cropped hair..like walking onto the set of an endless porno shoot. Aspirations reduced to one thing: cock.
When I craved, in the 1980’s, more openness for our gay culture so we were not hidden from those who might harshly judge us..did I ever imagine this:
From the sidewalk we could see into Mickey’s where half-naked men gyrated on podiums with dollar bills stuffed in their knickers. At East West more half-naked men on podiums wearing cowboy hats trying to dance unsuccessfully to country and western music. In Fiesta Cantina karaoke boys sang moody songs very badly and worst of all, just a few doors away in Rage a man was being bound and gagged in the entrance of the bar and hoisted above the audience by a vile, tattooed queen in leather.
I, like the dumfounded straight people around me, looked in at this horrible spectacle. I felt sick that this carnage was the public face of our ‘culture’. The freaks, the mediocre, the wet brains, the fools..and (however beautiful they were) all so ugly..so inauthentic.
That we had all fought so hard to be taken seriously…and crave marriage and equality.
I let the little dog out of the car and he ran like a lunatic around the West Hollywood park and I felt as if in some small way my faith could be restored in the world.
6 replies on “trying to forgive”
Keep trying to forgive. The griefing process is not linear. You jump back and forth. One day, the sun is out and the next, the cliff outside your window looks real good. Each day you will say his name less and less. Each day he will be further and further away from your heart. One day, hopefully in the near future, you will think of him and just smile. No pain, no resentment.You will get there. As for “gay culture”. I’m subjected to the sight of thirteen year old girls in skirts smaller than my underwear. We have put everything you can think of on display, making it all cheap and sleazy. Gays don’t corner the market in that, my dear.
Sonia,
Thanks for bringing up grieving. The end of a relationship is a loss that needs to be mourned in order to heal and move on. And young girls trying to be “women” when they’re bodies have way outstripped their emotional or mental growth. Sad. We’re eating our young. It needs to stop.
Blessings,
Amanda
I can see why you horrified by the prtrait of gay men you described. It offends your sensitivity. If it’s any consolation, I feel the same way about hetero/straight people when they get drunk or high and behave like that too.It offends all my sensitivities too.
They are, after all, probaly dealing with their own too, issues in a particularly bad way to the onlooker who is sober. I’ve been that obnoxious drunk and now look back and think ‘whatthehell”.
It’s ok to look,it is a reminder not to go there EVER.
Best to try and limit the jake indulgant thoughts if you want to move on.it is early days.
Duncan – I share your dismay about the male gay community in LA. That having been said at least there still is a male gay community. Except for a pocket of lesbian culture in Long Beach, there is little left of the lesbian community whatsoever near LA – just one or two questionable bars in WeHo. In Orange County there is zero because all the queer women have somehow assimilated (good for us?). Lesbians used to have bookstores, coffee houses, discreet bars, classy restaurants, community centers and “goddess shops” all over the Southland from the ’70s to the ’90s. Now it’s mostly gone. I hear about you wanting to be with “our kind” – except the remnant of “our kind” has devolved to lowest common denominator and that’s a shame. You might yearn for the gentlemanly culture of E.M. Forster’s “Maurice”, Gordon Merrick’s classic “The Lord Won’t Mind” or the sweet and pure love story of Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited”. Perhaps it would be a comfort to you to find these books and escape into them for awhile – to heal your soul.
Leslie,
I totally get a need for community and a sensitivity to mediocrity and crassness. (Which is not the same as average. Average is the majority of hard working men and women, who keep the wheels of the culture and industry, greased and running. It is not an epithet.) I wonder though when you talk about assimilation, as in being as good, bad or indifferent as the rest of the culture, except choosing same sex partners and then say “Good for us?” with that question mark at the end.
Duncan has the same ambivalence. Wanting the choice to marry, to have kids, to be a suburban or urban same sex couple that no one in the culture, (hopefully, soon) will even think to describe as that nice — gay — couple that lives down the block but just that nice couple, period. (Just as hopefully, no one will need to have to mention the race or religion of our president. Or to add the descriptor, woman/female to a job title.) As soon as that’s said, there’s this need to demarcate one’s elite separation from the hoi polloi.
Artists, actors, musicians, the brilliant scientists, who make the breakthroughs, whether gay or straight, are rarely part of large community of peers. It’s hard to find people who get you. That doesn’t make you better or the people who aren’t gifted, worse. You’re just different with different gifts and different roles to play in society. And to sneer at “regular” folks is to just isolate yourself even further. A “regular” person may not have been to the Louvre or the Tate and maybe can’t have a conversation about artists of a particular period or the artistic techniques of a particular painter. But they can appreciate beauty. They can be engaged in a conversation about what’s beautiful. Or challenging. Or provocative. In art. In music. In the culture in general. We can always find something to talk about with another person if we’re not holding ourselves up on a pedestal. Wrapping ourselves in our “specialness” like a cloak of invincibility and invisibility. We all have something to teach and something to learn.
One of my favorite lines is from “Silverado” where Linda Hunt’s character, Stella, who’s very diminutive, tells Kevin Kline’s character, Paden, that if you don’t fit the world, you make the world fit you. That line works for most things in life. I’m not suggesting that you (or Duncan) start a bar or a bookstore but what about a salon? A place where smart, funny talented people can get together once or twice a week and talk about ideas and culture. Talk about menus and mores. Anything but celebrity gossip and cynical realpolitik. Bring back the discourse and the culture that you want to find. Just a thought. It’s only lonely… if you don’t reach out.
Blessings,
Amanda
Duncan,
You were never in love with Jake. You were in love with who he presented himself to be — false — and with your illusion of him as you wanted him to be — false, again. And yes, you were trying to distract yourself from the aftermath of “Sex Rehab” and, it seems, from your health scare, which a respondent here, said you knew about 6 months ago?! (BTW, what happened with “Sober House”? Aside, from the agent, Vigliano, who wanted to meet with you, did Jake help sabotage that as well?) I get it. However, as much as you cooperated with the perpetuation of the illusion. YOU DIDN’T INITIATE THE DANCE. HE DID. HE APPROACHED YOU. AND YOU DIDN’T SEE HIM COMING. THE REAL HIM. THAT’S WHY YOU’RE ANGRY. You were betrayed. You betrayed yourself. Do you remember what you told us your friend said when seeing pictures of the two of you on Facebook? Your friend said that Jake didn’t look like he even liked you. But you were useful and your connections were useful. And that’s just so sad and hurtful for you. I’m so, so, sorry.
But you need to move on. And you do that by letting yourself mourn the death of a beautiful illusion. Mourn your misplaced trust. Let the anger move through you totally and move out. Don’t try and force it down when your heart is trying to purge the poison from your system. Don’t dishonor your true feelings. Don’t worry more about his feelings than yours. Right now, don’t worry about his feelings, period. You do need to forgive him but when you’re emotionally ready, it won’t be so damn hard. It’s still raw. Part of having feelings is dealing with the ones that get shamed. And anger’s one of them. Some anger is justified. And the more you let yourself feel the uncomfortable feelings and find a constructive way to take action on them, the more power you reclaim from Anthony.
You’ve previously said “Everyone else could see that he was just a using fame whore. I hadn’t had anyone want me just because I had been on TV. I genuinely thought he wanted me.” But that he was never deliberately cruel. Yet you also said this “When he started seeing those Manhunt men he would tell me in minute detail what he had been up to. A slight smile on his face. I thought to myself, yeah, well..in the imaginary guide to coming out that’s what gay men do! They become cruel and insistent and it’s ok.” I’d say that that’s pretty damn cruel. What… you were supposed to judge his performance on a scale of one to ten? WTF.
You said that you wanted to remember his kind gestures in counterbalance to all the bad memories. What kind gestures? When you said that he’d fucked some guy the night before but couldn’t be bothered to make you dinner before you left for the trip? when he didn’t come to your defense and your comfort when the iPod debacle — that he precipitated — occurred? When you said that the day before, you had provided food and enough water for the two of you during your drive but that when it was his turn, there was nothing? His immediately ponying up his money due you for the trip when you returned? And on and on. Do you get why you’re still angry?
It’s a process. Despite my dark side’s love for this saying “If can’t say something nice about someone, come sit here by me.”, mostly, the saying that needs to be followed in these circumstances is “If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.”. Pouring gasoline on a fire may make you feel toasty but it does nothing to put it out. Discretion sometimes IS the better part of valor. Feel your feelings but try and edit. But most of all, be gentle with yourself. YOU ARE YOUR NUMBER ONE PRIORITY NOW. YOU GET TO BE SELFISH FOR NOW.
As for the exhibitionism of the gay bars and gay culture and your aspirations in the 80’s for the community to have openness… blatant sexual exhibitionism is just a refection of the culture at large. Straight strip clubs, massage parlors, dance clubs that are little more than meat racks. It’s not a culture of free “love”, it’s a pimp/whore culture of exploitation and meaningless, pleasure-less hook-ups. We all need to heal. I really don’t have a problem with casual sex if it’s in the spirit of play. If people are at least nice to each other for Christ’s sake. Men and women have a need for sex. How they express it is pretty much culturally determined. But I also believe in the need for loving, partnerships between two people who commit to each other’s growth, healing and joy. There’s room for all expressions of sex and love but as it is with every period after one of repression, the balance has swung way too far to the crazy, live for today, forget about tomorrow, whatever feels good do it, cult of me, myself and I. Balance will come with time. If you think about sexual repression in general, it hasn’t been that long ago since the Victorians. We really have come a long way. It’s a process. We need to be kind to each other. And less judgmental. Believe that progress IS occurring. And that our souls WILL shine through.
Blessings,
Amanda