Month: October 2010

Categories
art Gay Rant

Hallooweeeen

Back on excellent form I decided to go Halloween party hopping.  Started at SHLA which was a fucking BLAST.  Wearing a huge fur hat, all night it was stroked and fondled.  The rest of me wrapped tightly in black.  My new heroin chic thin frame.

My waist has shrunk from a chunky 36 ins to a very palatable 33ins.

Yum fucking yum.  Nice to wear all those form fitting togs.  Vintage Helmut Lang.

Actually, even though I intended to run around town my Halloween party hopping ended as it began.  I started at SHLA and ended my night there.

It’s time to start eating again.  I am getting too thin.

Anyway, the party at SHLA was really well planned.  They had spent a fortune on art installations and costumes.  Money well spent…the theme for the night: phobias.

Ornithophobia (birds)

Chiroptophobia (bats)

Emetophobia (vomit)

Dendrophobia (trees)

Arachnophobia (spiders)

Aviophobia (flying)

They should have had a homophobia themed room:   Spiteful little fingers.  Eyes that gaze out over your shoulder looking for something better.  Meaningless conversations.  Somebody whispering that they love you as they pick your pocket.

For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.

The greater part of my evening was spent on a sofa on the terrace flirting with an important (she said) artist (male) and a successful (he said) gallery owner (female), flirting and groping.  He was dressed as wolf man and she a pussy cat.  He told me to touch his cock which I did.  The gallerist squealed.  Then she joined in.  Finger sucking.  She gave me her card.  I left it on the table.

She said, “Which would you prefer?  To eat my pussy or suck his cock?”

I told her that I could do both at the same time.

Nikki Haskell joined us dressed as Marie Antoinette.  Everybody loves Nikki.  The ‘important’ artist asked her to touch his balls and she told him very imperiously to fondle hers.

“They’re made of pink satin.”  She said.

I met a bunch of  drunk ‘A’ gays who wanted to whisk me away to a gay party in Laurel Canyon but I bailed at the last moment.    I am not ready to throw myself into anything too gay at the moment..anyway I had too much fun flirting with the straight men stoking my hat.

It was a very festive end to the past few months.  The BEST thing about the party was that everybody from all the other parties all over town popped by so one really didn’t have to move at all.

Most famous person there:  Leo.  He asked if I had made anything since AKA.

Todd Feldman my ex-agent was having a party that I fully intended to join but why bother?

Spent the earlier part of yesterday with Luke who very kindly bought me lunch.

Like it or not there is still a shadow cast over me from the morbid events of the past few months, this will take time to pass but I am NOT staying at home being miserable.  I am out there doing what I do best: meeting people and having fun.

I took one number from one man but will delete it.  I have no desire to meet or engage with another man…not after JB.  That was enough to last a decade.  The idea of getting close with anyone other than those I already know is enough.

Ashley and Aaron Rose for breakfast.  Satie’s Gymnopedie playing.

Drifting over the garden like something aromatic.  Carrying me over the lush vegetation and down to the sea.

Life:  this is it my friend.  It is as it always was.

On my own.  Thank God!

Categories
Gay Malibu

Paid in Full

It rained steadily all night.  This morning the sun is shining.

Yesterday stayed in almost all day.

Dinner at Frank’s Whitley Heights apartment.   Very little traffic on the 10.  There were ghastly British people who Frank had met randomly at another party.  I left early.   Food was good though.  He made some sort of Brazilian coconut chicken with rice.

Parking in Hollywood is shit.

I like Frank..even though his slimy British friends just wouldn’t stop talking about how much they had drunk the night before.  “So Duncan, why did you come to LA?”  I told them that Los Angeles had more AA meetings than any other city in the USA.  They looked baffled.  After a difficult moment of silent processing the Brit said, “Each to his own old chap.”   He really did call me old chap.

Before dinner this black kid from the deep south sang/warbled/yodeled a prayer.  I looked at my feet in HORROR.

Met JA at Soho House.  Drank espresso.   Miles arrived looking very dashing.  Saw Eugenio Lopez and told him about Steve Martin‘s book.  He was DELIGHTED and reported this to his friends.  “Steve Martin has written pages in his book about meee…tell them Duncan..tell them.”  I told them the Getty story.  Eugenio was with an older gentleman and a slobby boy whore who he scolded for putting his feet on the furniture.  Eugenio was wearing a black sequined jacket.  Seemed delighted that Martin had written about him.  Who wouldn’t?

I was going to hook up with some random dude from Grindr but he didn’t turn up on time so I left and we all (dogs) curled up alone in my big white bed.

Oh yeah, I forgot, Jerome (my next door neighbor) rented his house this weekend to a young couple who threw a huge, ornate wedding…could almost be described as baroque.   The ceremony took place in the garden.   You could hear the dreary, clichéd classical music…a good third of a mile away.  All the obvious shit mixed in with random film scores.  They probably couldn’t tell the difference between Ennio Morricone and Pergolesi.   Idiots.  A disparate group of badly dressed men and women gazing admiringly at this bride and this groom about to be locked in matrimony.

The dogs started barking during their vows.  I didn’t do much to stop them.  I didn’t want to hear their fucking vows broadcast over my quiet valley.  Obnoxious white, straight people.  A coalition of the entitled.

The party continues there today.  A simpering European party/events planner slimed around to the house like a huge slug..apologizing in advance for the noise.  Thank God this is a random event.  Events planners btw are always the worst kind of gay and always the dullest human beings on earth.  Who the fuck would ever find an events planner interesting?  Oh yeah, I remember.

JB sent the money he owed me.  Deal done.  Goodbye JB.

A fit black guy contacted me on Manhunt.  He wanted to fuck.  He asked if I was good.  I replied..does it matter?  Do I care if you think I am good at fucking?  I cum you leave.  I won’t be reading the reviews.

Categories
Love Rant

Robert Evans

Spent yesterday feeling very spirited and positive.  Things just got better and better.

Getting out of the house helps tremendously.

My Palisades 7am AA meeting set the tone for the rest of the day.  This, coupled with my no longer wearing the CLOAK OF RESENTMENT! cast off a couple of days earlier had the effect of opening my ears to the nourishing effects of a good AA meeting.

It was like taking a psychic shower.

Cleansing and salubrious.

The Bad Baby sleeps.

When I got home after my meeting I had totally forgotten that I was meant to be meeting another Manhunt man in Venice.  I dashed down the hill.  Manhunt Date No.11:  Chubby and sweet but not my cup of tea.

Whilst at breakfast I received a call from a member of my Wednesday meeting who said that my particularly violent share this past Wednesday morning had upset him and others.  Well, if we can’t talk honestly about our feelings in therapy where can we?

The ongoing effects of early abuse continues.  Wretched feelings of powerlessness.  The furies.  I talked about it graphically.   John pointed out correctly that part of why JB and I had such a connection was our master and servant…S&M…me firery…him timid arrangement.   There were indeed elements of abusive behavior carried on in our relationship that I had learned from my step-father.

I become him when the other demands it.

My hand on the back of his neck when we were driving is all at once erotic and controlling.  A man who needs a firm hand.   I attract this often into my life.

I can feel his soft skin on my fingers.  The soft hair on the back of his neck.  Let me remember these perfect moments.  There are plenty more but it’s still hard to remember them.   His birthday in NYC.  Jane Hotel.  Watching him walk.  Catching his hand in mine.  Let me remember what was good.  Thank you.

Last night!

Met J & J at SHLA for the Robert Evans screening of The Kid Stays in The Picture.  I sat with Robert DuPont at the back of the plush new Soho House screening room.  Ms DuPont was dressed as Warhol for Nikki Haskell’s Halloween party held at Truesdale.  It was all a great deal of fun.  Ashley introduced Evans and the film.  After the credits rolled Larry King asked Robert Evans the kind of questions he is famous for.  Evans reminisced about Larry Olivier, Dustin Hoffman and his wife Ali McGraw.  He talked movingly about how she was still his friend even though she was a ‘bohemian’.  We were all in awe.  He described in the film and in the room how he lost the only woman he had ever truly loved.  It brought a tear to my wrinkled eye.

A passionate, wonderful man.

Bold Facers in attendance.   Lots of them.  Bumped into Michel Comte who, even though I really like him and his wife, can be a vapid contrarian.   He owns the most beautiful house in LA by far.

There was a huge buzz in the club after the screening.

What a life!

I came away feeling energized, inspired, heady.  Nobody is going to stop me from making this next film.  Nobody.

For those of us who have had wonder, delight and great triumphs early in life nothing can be bettered or compared.

I am listening to sad songs.

I can listen to a sad song one of two ways.   I can feel miserable about the past or accepting of the past.  As I listen to moody music this morning I have a smile on my ugly mug.   Remembering all that was good.

Let’s remember the scene in our romantic movie.  A huge wide shot of the sea, panning toward 4 men and a little dog.  Let’s remember walking from Adam’s Mother’s house after he took the picture I now use as my blog Gravatar.  Walking from Seasalter to Whitstable along the shingle beach with JB, Barry, Adam and The Little Dog.  The sun shining, taking a route I had taken for half a century.  With a man I loved.  One of the men looks back at the other and they exchange a glance that only lovers know…

Screening tonight and Halloween parties all weekend.  Then…London.

Categories
Rant

Meg Whitman

Meg Whitman has now spent nearly $200, 000, 000 of her own money on an election campaign to become California’s next Governor.   This is a woman who previously never voted in any election nor to my knowledge ever engaged in public life at any level either charitably or politically.

Perhaps for what she is best known will end up losing this election:  the treatment of her Latino housekeeper Nikki Dias.

Only yesterday Whitman said that nobody would remember Nikki Dias after she has been deported.  An undocumented worker who for 11 years worked tirelessly for one of the richest women in America.  Meg’s cavalier attitude toward Nikki has without doubt influenced the people and their opinion about Meg Whitman.

UPDATE:  Meg actually said “Come November 3rd nobody will care about Nikki Dias”

In these tough economic times most people can relate to disenfranchised Nikki Dias and not Whitman who spent as much as it costs sending 2000 California students to an Ivy League University…which is why Jerry Brown now has a 12% poll lead over the profligate, uncaring, miserable Meg.

By the way Meg 2010, smiling that big false smile your advisors have advised you to smile on TV simply isn’t working.  It looks absurd.

Come November 3rd everybody will be thinking/caring/remembering Nikki Dias because they know that the way you treat your staff may say something about the way you treat us.

Therapy at 7am.  Home by 8.30am.  I had a lovely time in my group this morning.  Felt strong and secure.  The sun is shining.  The Santa Ana’s are blowing.  Ashley is eating gluten-free corn flakes.

Dan Savage.  Hmmm.  Still not ready to eviscerate him.  Still researching.

My mother wrote this to me when she heard about the JB debacle/fiasco/upset:

Those who have never been wounded in love will never be able to say I have lived…because they haven’t.

I think that it may surprise some that I have a parent who cares sufficiently to say that she loves me and is as upset as any parent when her child suffers.

I know that she is there but I rarely call for help.  This health thing will be dealt with as I have dealt with any hard ball thrown my way..on my own.  Part of the sadness around him was that he seemed to dump me at the very moment I called for help.

For this very reason I loathe asking for help.  That I will be abandoned when I am most vulnerable.  His inability to help me selflessly when I needed it undoubtedly fueled my rage.  After all, I really tried to be of service to that boy.

The Bad Baby slept through the night.  He is still sleeping soundly.

OK.  Dan Savage and his It Get’s Better campaign.

This is difficult.  My primary beef with Savage is that he rejects that Sex and Love Addiction exists.   Surely it exists if self-diagnosed addicts say it exists?  Addiction is always self-diagnosed.  Acceptance is key?

Listen, my doubt about the ‘It get’s better’ thing is that for so many young men who come out it simply does not get better..because the community of gay men ready to accept these boys and girls is predatory, limited and frankly without morals.  What and where is our ‘community’?

Breaks my heart to write that.

What in hells name, outside of big cities, do we have to offer young gay men and women?   Younger gays, indeed like most young people, simply don’t relish the idea of being identified as different.

This is a country where difference is rarely celebrated and oft maligned.

Categories
Gay

Best of Times, Worst of Times

Manhunt Date No. 10.   With the end of this gruesome chapter in sight I decided to meet with someone from the internet and have sex.

He arrived on time.  A beautiful black man from Culver City.  I undressed him.  I fucked him.  Everything worked.  Everything just worked.

He left.

I realized that if there was to be any sort of lasting legacy from the past year…then that was it.  The confidence to meet a stranger and have meaningless sex.

I didn’t even want to know his name.  This was an exercise in futility.

Of course, this is not what I want.  I am merely retraumatizing myself.

I learned to connect sexually and emotionally with JB and perhaps one day I will indeed be able to have what I had (passionate, present, emotional) with someone else.  When will I be ready?   At this moment, thankfully I am no longer consumed with hatred, my visceral resentments no longer regurgitating all over everyone around me.

More happened yesterday than meaningless sex.

I had the second interview for what may well mean that I make another film.

I am thrilled about this.

I have been holding on to this idea of an end.   Now it is mine.  I remember when JBC and I were effectively divorcing and going to court and winning..it didn’t feel particularly like winning..winning but not feeling like a winner.  I would end up giving him half a million dollars because it was the right thing to do.

It’s over!  As I write those words a huge sigh makes its way from the very heart of me.  From my heart.

I want to remember that I cared very deeply for him.  Today I want to detach with love.  It is my simple goal and always has been..we tried before, knowing that our love was compelling and destructive.  It’s not like we didn’t know!  Every time we thought it was the end and attempted to let go honourably…we obviously needed to keep going..because we did.

A few days of silence then one of us would send a random text or Facebook message then we would Skype and we would get sexual and then everything bubbled to the surface..all over.  No more.  I am so happy that we will never meet again.

So happy that he resides in my past.

You think I miss him?  No, I don’t.  But I will keep sacred what I have loved whether it is a man or a moment or a beautiful view.  Isn’t that what life is all about?

Of course I am saddened that we didn’t resolve all of this sooner but hey, that’s the way it was meant to be and there’s nothing I can do about it.

This couldn’t and wouldn’t have happened without the intervention of one nameless man, and as you can imagine there are things that I am not writing because I am honoring this man who is doing the best for his family.  I am honouring him because he endured a great deal through no fault of his own.

Wow, I have just been reading my past couple of months blogs.  Such venom!

Finally, late last night I was shaken out of a long, bad dream.   I feel normal again but Christ where was I?  Who was I?  Don’t fuck with the Bad Baby!  That baby can hold a RESENTMENT!

This is the first time since January that I feel like myself.

Elsie hasn’t been singing for some considerable time.  Now she sings!  The fat lady sings!  Look at that, blog after blog..day after day..the screaming baby, the very bad, Bad Baby.

Months of vitriol spewing over just one person.  Mostly me.  It’s enough to rot your soul.

Thankfully common sense has prevailed and we can put our eviscerating tools back into their hessian sack.    Thank you, thank you, thank you.

It is time to look back fondly rather than bristling with hate.  Before I could not remember even one moment of what was good.   Remember what was beautiful and move on.

Elsie is singing Master and Servant.

Oh yes!  I didn’t comment on the “It Gets Better!” campaign.  What a load of old SHITE.  Tell me how it gets better?  Let me know.  I have huge problems with Dan Savage and will write more about him in the future.

Categories
art

Limited

Samia

Samia, my ex lover, would describe the people she had least respect as ‘limited’.  It’s a jolly good word to describe those we cannot be bothered with.

I love writing my blog.  Just as I loved writing my diary.

Some blog posts get particular public attention.  The most popular being listed to the right of this page.  Kristian Digby‘s Funeral in particular gets as many hits per day than any other post on this blog and cumulatively is the most read post on this site.  It heartens me that so many people leave messages for him there.  Sweet, kind, sad messages from people whose lives he touched.

I am so lucky to have been his bf for a few months.  I am so happy that it didn’t end in recrimination or bitterness.  I am just lucky that I have had the opportunity to know so many wonderful people.

I wish I could pick up the phone and call you Kristian.  I needed you these past few months.   I really did.

Kristian Digby

I am in a sparkling good mood this morning.

Oh my God!!!  Such dark days!  Such misery!  Such a BORE!  Coming to an end.  Well, I still have to deal with my balls.

My balls ache.  My back aches.  Let’s get this testicular party started.  I am sure that by the end of this surgery episode you will get tired of listening to me bleating on about the operation.  Apparently the penis gets quite bruised when they operate.  Black, blue and yellow bruising in the groin department.

Perhaps I should have it inverted and become the ugliest transsexual ever.  I am not likely to be using it recreationally any time soon.

I feel free to leave now.  What has been holding me back is finally resolved.  Perhaps having a vagina would solve my problems.  Maybe I wouldn’t be such a cunt.  Ha ha ha.

My poor doctor in the UK despairs of my hanging around here.  She thinks time is of the essence.  She tells me that I am risking my life.  She will be pleased to know that I am leaving soon.

Back to wintery London.   I wonder where I will stay?

Listening to really loud music.  Elsie de Witt is here, she’s singing along with Simon and Garfunkel.  The Bad Baby is sleeping soundly.  I hope she doesn’t wake him.

Elsie de Witt

The sun is shining.  I spent more time yesterday fixing the spa.  The light is working.  The air jets are fixed.  It’s a real spa!  I think I might heat it today and sit in it with my friend.  Under the stars.

A huge weight lifted from my shoulders.

Tim had his triple by-pass.  He’s only a few years older than me.  My old drinking companion Tim Willis.  His book is doing good business back at home.

Elsie is singing Midnight Train to Georgia.   Hush Elsie!  The Bad Baby is Sleeping.

Categories
prison

Prison Romance

Prison Calendar 1983

This is the calendar that I kept in my cell.  I marked off the days one by one.

The month before I was released from my ten month stay in prison in 1983 was perhaps, like many prisoners,  the most difficult of any time I spent there.  I had what is commonly known in British prison parlance: Gate Fever.

The terror at the prospect of release.

Since my arrest the preceding February I had  spent time in both Brixton prison, at that time a holding pen for the unconvicted or remanded prisoner, then once convicted I was transferred to Wormwood Scrubbs Prison in West London.  I was offered the chance of going to an open prison which would have been very comfortable indeed but I had fallen in love with Tommy, the prisoner with whom I shared a cell.

Our relationship lasted the duration of my sentence.  I was released before him and upon his release he returned to his wife and children.

Foolish love, it seems, has always caused me unnecessary repercussions.

Why in hells name was I in prison?  Well, I hadn’t murdered/raped/robbed anyone.

I was convicted at Knightsbridge Crown for Criminal Deception a charge relating to my not paying a credit card bill..my own credit card.    Not, as commentators would have it, someone elses.

At the time it never really occurred to me that I was being unfairly treated.  I had not paid the credit card bill and had avoided doing so.  In retrospect the sentence of fifteen months in prison seems like a gross over reaction by the court to what was surely a nothing sort of crime.

Stephen Fry At 17, absconded with a credit card stolen from a family friend and as a result spent three months in Pucklechurch Prison.

Fry stole someone else’s credit card and got 3 months at exactly the same time I was handed a 15 month sentenced for over using my own.

I was 22 years old when I was sent to prison for this non-violent victimless crime.  A crime like mine in 2010 would not even be a crime in modern Britain.   It was nothing short of class warfare that sent me to prison in the first place.

Posh versus Common.

Let’s face facts, I was sent to prison for my unusual back-story.   A back-story that should never have been mentioned in court because I was pleading guilty.  A back story that included royalty, the ruling class and a working-class upstart like me.

The Lords and Ladies who had become my friends during the time I pretended to be a Lord were indignant but I don’t think any one of them would have wanted me to be sent down.  The class outrage that caused such a harsh sentence was, of course, motivated by the aspiring middle class.

Judge Babington was a bourgeoise, one-armed circuit judge who died in 2004.  His family was described embarrassingly  as ‘well-to-do’  and in so being was in awe of the aristocracy, in awe of a title and outraged that I had simply acquired mine by lying about it.

Stephen Fry took me to the Garrick Club years later and there he was, Anthony Babington sitting in an over stuffed chair reading a broad sheet.  I looked at his withered arm and chuckled.

Stephen once said to me, “They don’t want to forget that you have been in prison Duncan.  It’s very unfair.”

Prison has defined my life.  I am that guy who went to Prison.  Jay Jopling would tell people, “Duncan has an amazing story.”  In this way I became a very British performance art piece.   A social freak.

When I am scolded for treating 30 year olds who make mistakes like grown ups I often remember that I was forced in a very public way at a very young age to accept my wrongs and grow up.

Even though, when I was released,  I did not crawl away and die like Patrick Kinmonth suggested.  Prison left an indelible mark on my psyche as well as my public and private standing.

Sure, had I not been sent to prison I would never have made as much money as I consequently made from AKA or telling that story over and over for TV, Radio and the like.

I would never have developed a taste for working class heterosexual men and I might have kept on the straight and narrow.  Prisons in the UK are often described by those of us who have experienced both as reminiscent of British boarding schools.  Consequently I rather enjoyed the routine, the monotony, the sex.

Once you have been imprisoned unfairly..YES IT WAS UNFAIR!..one has a very low regard for society and the rules of society.  Part of my fearlessness comes from knowing that if sent back to prison I would know what to do immediately.  How to behave.  Whom to defer.  Who to fuck.

I would not miss the endless choices of the modern world.  I would not miss a full wardrobe, a well written menu, compulsive internet use?  No.  It would be a relief.

I would miss my dogs.

If I could only get back there without breaking the law.

I have no shame about going to prison because I should not have been there in the first place.  It was like visiting a foreign country.  That’s what it felt like when I was 22 years old..like visiting a foreign country and I, a mere anthropologist, sent to eat their food and study their culture.   My crime and the associated press amused my fellow inmates and warders (screws) alike.   Nobody took my Criminal Deception very seriously.

Some of the men that I shared cells with whilst on remand in Brixton (the red headed rapist) are still in prison.  They never left.

There was one slight man who murdered a little girl.  Tiny little thing he was.  Never wanted to leave prison.  Never applied for parole.  Wanted his own death so badly.  Already dead inside.  Sad.  Those who killed loved ones, family members were the saddest of all.  Wishing that they were dead.  These men were not abstract villains, their names writ large on the covers of tawdry newspapers, they stood beside me in line waiting for cabbage and sausages.   It amazes me now how forgiving and accepting I could be with them…however ghastly their crime.

Funny, isn’t it, that I could accept and forgive the most terrible people capable of the most terrible crimes but I could not forgive you my dear JB.

So, today I am free?

I am free?  I am free to choose?  I am free to say what I want when I want to?  I am free to love a man?  I am free?

These freedoms do not make me free.

Categories
Health Rant

closer and closer

The days between me and the operation dwindle.

The rain has fallen steadily over Malibu these past weeks.  As unseasonal as it may be it comes as a great relief to those of us who live up here during what is normally described as Fire Season.   One can only hope that it remains damp rather than tinder dry.

An encouraging weekend of old and new friends.  New friends include a charming Pepperdine student who came for tea on Sunday evening and another internet date who was almost perfect…but not.   He was intelligent, handsome and age appropriate.  Our unusual date started at Intelligensia on Abbott Kinney, a trip to Home Depo to buy chlorine tablets and  lunch at Sauce.

I replaced the cap that I lost at Stronghold.

I have no idea if we will ever see each other again but he made the possibility of meeting someone appropriate in the future very real and that in itself was a great diversion from my crazy head.

At lunch we both discussed our recent relationship issues and rather amazingly he became quite emotional:  he had been the Jake half of his relationship.  Eager to hold onto someone who loved him but wanted to sleep with other men.

Why?

Today there is another house viewing and I must make a start on my script.

Saturday therapy went well.  Today I went to an early session in the Palisades.   I emerge from these groups feeling stronger and more complete.  All in all it has been a very gratifying weekend.  I am somehow not prone to the great fear.  Perhaps this has something to do with the full moon or maybe I am just not taking any notice of the demons.

The house is so beautiful today.  The spa is working.  Ashley pays her rent on time.  The work on the road to the PCH has resumed.   The dogs are well behaved.  Why go and ruin it with invasive surgery?

I am making a huge oxtail stew for our dinner.  The sort of recipe that takes two days to do properly.  Every day I must do something creative in some sort of way.

Life is serving up a great and perfect opportunity.  I can feel it.  After the heavy rain, the plants are convinced it is springtime.  New growth, budding cacti and the great orchid trees in the garden are suddenly covered in succulent pink flowers.

Barry from Whitstable is on his way here to stay en route to his new life in Australia.  It will be fun to have him here.

Categories
Auto Biography

My Part

22 years old a bottle of whiskey by my side

EVERYTHING I JUDGE I WALK THOUGH.

With all this JB fury and indignation, these health issues swirling around my brain these past few months I seriously overlooked or ignored the way I have treated others in my very own distant past.

The way JB treated me perfectly mirrors the way I have treated others. This is life’s great symmetry!

My indignation has blinded me to my part in all of this.  You know, I am perfectly sure that there are men and women out there who are delighted that I have, at last, been taught a lesson in love.

To you all, to past loves, to those who tried..today I want to make my amends.

To AH who I cheated on.  To JBC who I used.  To CS the NYC photographer who I took advantage of.   TK in Amsterdam I have tried to find you to make my amends.  These people tried so hard to do good for me, reached out selflessly as I did for JB.   And,  just as I was fucked over by JB, I fucked them over each and every one.  Without care or consideration.

Four people who I can remember right now who could and should be outraged by my behaviour.

In each instance I paid the price that needed paying either with my heart or my wallet.  That they still haunt me is testament to my guilt…to something unresolved.

I will add more as and when I can remember them.  If there are any?

To be treated as I have treated others is of course all part of GOD’S BIG PLAN.

There is no excuse for bad behaviour.   Not when you are a grown up.

You may be wondering why JP is not on this list, well..we pretty equally destroyed each other and I long ago owned my part in that sordid affair.

There are many apologies that I need to make in many different ways.  Eventually I will get around to all of you..eventually.  Remembering, forcing myself to remember the way I have treated others has softened my heart even more toward JB.   We all make mistakes, we can all use and abuse.  We can all take advantage.

If I am going one day to die at peace, a smile on my face then I must make these amends.   It is essential.

This was the very last piece of the jigsaw puzzle that needed finding and with great relief it is now in place.  The picture is complete.  My part, my mistakes owned up to.

Of course I still want JB to pay me as I have paid others what was owed.   It is the right thing to do and he must learn the right thing as I have been taught by taking the wrong turn over and over.

Yesterday I went to therapy.  I talked about my anger.  After I did I felt so much better.  JA and I had lunch at SHLA.   After lunch I came home and messed about with the spa.   Sarah and Paul came for dinner and we watched Nina Hagen sing My Own Personal Jesus that Paul produced.  Remember this summer when she was here?  Her daughter is so beautiful..as is her mother.

The sun is shining and I am in a great mood.

Rambla Pacifico, the direct road to the sea has hit a snag and I have no idea if it will ever be finished.  The work continues but there is an easement problem that needs fixing.  Oh dear.

JB, can we just end this absurd fight?  Can you just send what is owed and leave me alone?  Please?  I have this picture of you.  Wearing my hat…now lost.  It is how I want to remember you.  My friend and lover.  Like a mouse set free in the garden.  You HAVE to do the right thing or this will never go away.  I am desperate to remember you fondly and though I can never, ever see you again I want for us to be at peace.  Is this possible?

Jake Bauman

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Rehab

Elsie de Witt and the Bad Baby

One of the unseen moments in Sex Rehab included our crafting in clay what our sex addiction looked like.   The monster inside.  Mine was a fragile baby.  So fragile in fact that it’s head fell off the day after we made them.

The baby is somewhere in the house but I can’t find it.  When I find it I will take a picture of it and post it here.

The idea of the bad baby stems from something my step-father once said to me, that I was a ‘bad baby’.  Of course that’s absurd isn’t it?  A distressed baby maybe but not bad?

One of my performance pieces was called Bad Baby.  The mother in the performance lived in the fridge.

As for Elsie de Witt?  Well, she’s a character that I invented with Lady Rizo during one of our epic two-hour putting the world to rights telephone calls.  Elsie is the great chantreuse, the over stuffed opera singer who resides within..as well as the bad baby who also inhabits my currently very thin frame.   The dramatic and dynamic Elsie and the screaming baby.

Finally received some of the money that JB owes me so in a gesture of good will I took down his full name in my blog.   His spidery, fragile hand writing all over the cheque softened my heart.  Now all he has to do is send the rest.  I wrote to him offering to reduce the amount of money he owes me if he would just show willing and send it.

 

Bad Baby made in Sex Rehab

As JB fulfills his obligation to me I feel myself detaching from him in a positive way.  He has held on for too long by owing me this cash.

I wrote him a conciliatory note urging him to send the rest of the money.   I imagine that he wants to go to court and fight and that is his prerogative but all this will achieve is yet another cataclysmic collision.  I imagine that he is being urged on by his new gay friends who never like to take any responsibility for anything.  His new cheerleading team after I was dismissed.

Occasionally they write to me.  His new friends.  It’s funny.

So much more is happening in my life than you can imagine but I cannot write it.   I don’t want to jinx potential job opportunities, burgeoning romances.  I am loathed to write even the silly things..like the spa in my garden that I have renovated and is now operational.  It’s the oddest contraption.  Heated by an ingenious wood burning stove which almost boils the water like a huge kettle.  A friend and I sat in it last night under the stars, looking out over the ocean lit by the full moon.

Willie, as he is predisposed, stole my friend’s sock.

Do I at moments like this wish that it was JB in the spa?  Well, less so.   Those are indeed moments that should be shared with a lover.  He had ceased to be my lover, to be my one and only long before we ever left for France.  He was just pretending to my lover.  I felt the disconnection.  Knowing that he probably already had someone else to fixate on.

I realize now that he had already met somebody else and simply came to France because he could.

Yesterday I went to therapy for the first time in ages.  The theme was integrity and the others mused upon the lies they had told to wives and co-workers..yet to me a lie is subjective and we live in lying times.   The truth is subjective.  As I have said before,  exponentially the more honest one becomes the more isolated you feel.  One can only hope to do the right thing by those we share our time.  That’s all.  If we can’t or don’t?  Well, we make our amends.

JB was incensed that I lied to the Ferry people in Calais to get us all on board without incident after they told me that Lil’ Dog’s carrying case was made of the wrong material.  If I had told the truth at that moment it would have meant taking a cab into Calais Ville buying the correct carrying case.  This exercise in honesty would have cost a fortune and we would have missed endless ferries and dinner with Georgina in Whitstable.

He used that as an example of how I always told lies.

Lying about a dog’s carrying case and cheating on someone for years seem like two very different kinds of lie.  One expedites an unnessessary situation the other steals a soul.  Perhaps he couldn’t see the difference?

Naturally there is a philosophical conundrum for a man who says, “I always tell lies.”

I learned so much from JB about myself and others.  I learned a great deal about gay men.  Their attitude toward him for instance.  That he had no option but to behave as he did.

At the beginning, when I met him and he came out to me, we started flirting, sex camming etc.  I knew immediately that it was wrong to do what he was doing to her and as I reread emails within a few days of his coming out to me I was urging him to get honest.

I was conflicted about his coming out as we became closer.

It suited me that he was with her because I knew where he was at night.  I knew that he was mine.  I knew that the moment he was free of her he would be just like all the rest.

Everyday this JB stuff gets better in my head.  As I sift through every detail.  As I attempt falteringly to detatch with love rather than hate.