Categories
Gay Health Rant

Vivid Dreams About Death

I am in a great deal of fear about this operation.  Sorry to go on about it.

I just am.

I have been putting it off, putting it off.  Why?  Because part of me, a big part of me just wants to die.  To never go through the pain of the past few months ever again.

When did I stop fighting to survive?  When did the fight become too exhausting?   I think there were moments on our European adventure when I knew I just couldn’t, wouldn’t carry the both of us.  Between stations in Lille when I vanished to get food for the trip.  I wanted to run away.  That I had done so much for him with so little return.

The problem is:  I stopped fighting for me too.   The more honest I become…the harder life is.  A lie can separate you from the harsh realities.  A lie can make everything better.  The more honest, the more in focus life becomes then the more brutal it is.

To love without trusting is almost too much to bear.  This is the legacy any cheater leaves behind them:  She will never trust another man.  She will always be left wondering if, when her new man goes out, he is cheating behind her back.

At least I knew he was a liar and a cheat and chose to continue.  To get involved.  To catch him as he fell.  All I ended up doing was colluding with him.

The legacy I am left with?  Oh, I blame myself.  Again and again.

Then, there is the perverse thought that we will be OK one day.

Until I don’t believe that we will be friends some time in the future then I am doomed.  Part of me thinks that there will be a moment…even when I am an old man…that we will look back at our time together and smile.  There is NO moment of resolution.  There will be no quiet moment in the future the two of us forgive, when we will laugh at what happened.

It just wasn’t that funny.

I can never ever imagine meeting him again.  Just the thought of bumping into him in the street fills me with revulsion.

Why am I writing about him AGAIN?  I was doing OK..then:

All night I dreamt about JB.  All night.  I may be dealing with him in my conscious life but he is alive a kicking in my unconscious.

There are two dreams:  One where we are making love shuffled in with another altogether more insidious dream.  In the second dream he is changed.  In the second dream he is a gay man enjoying his life.  Subtle changes about his body include the hair on his chest manscaped.

Of course, in the dream, he had his lap top on his lap.  He is chatting with Phil at the house in London.  Telling her about his new apartment, telling her about going to gay pride.

He is letting us know that he is OK.  That things worked out just fine.

He looked so normal and calm.  Perhaps he really was just letting me know that things were OK.  That he is OK.  Communicating this through my dreams.

I dreamt about Issie Blow when she died, and Dione and the Big Dog all in the same way.  They wanted me to know that they had found peace and it was all ok.

Like a grieving dream.  There he was in his life.  Getting on with it.

It’s odd isn’t it that the dream happened in London.  In Phil’s house on Langton Street..though maybe not.  It was there that we had the fight.  There that he lost the iPod and encouraged me to shout at those kids.

I don’t think I will ever stay there again because of him and his stupid iPod.  His clumsiness.

A night of terrible, roiling dreams.  How long will this last?  How long will he be so solidly in my head?

The problem is:  I think he got away with it.  Supported by people who think he is sick rather than duplicitous.  By people who accept that his cheating was perfectly understandable in the circumstance.

The thoughts of JB bubble up over the fear.   Swamped by him rather than face the facts.  I know what’s going on.  I know it.

Categories
Rant

Lively House

Who would have guessed that the process of grieving and forgiveness would take so long?  I have still not forgiven myself for the death of my Darling Bog Dog.

Part of forgiving, as they say, is forgetting and I am almost sure that I cannot remember why I was so angry with JB to begin with.  The more complicated the resentment the more difficult it is to hang onto.

Yesterday I mostly stayed at home.  Miles and another friend came by and Ashley joined us later.  I made a delicious cauliflower dish for dinner which we ate with home-made pickled beets.

I was planning on staying in all day then CNN called and sent a car and suddenly I was in the studio talking about Tyra and Dr Drew and a 15-year-old wayward girl/fame whore.  I looked odd on TV without my beard.

Managed to get the driver to stop off on way home so I could do all my errands.

Miles stayed over…no…not like that.

The house is packed with lively, amusing people.  I am happy here.  It all makes sense.  It all makes a great deal of sense.  As the time approaches for me to go to London for my operation I am not without a certain amount of trepidation.

What will it feel like..down there?

What can I tell you?  My head, increasingly, feels back to normal.  I rarely, if ever, give JB any serious thought.  I am getting to the point where I want the best for him as one might any stranger.

Disconnected bonhomie.

The war is over.

Of all days, the most miserable days to choose…I decided to finally leave the house.  Without a chauffeur…I made my way to Venice to my favorite restaurant just off Main Street, the adorable Sauce.  The owner made me hot chocolate, gave us a huge piece of pear…and of course we ate breakfast.

I came home and I finished the treatment.  Sent it to JA.

We all walked in the torrential rain.  The dogs came home covered in mud.

What CAN I say?  It’s a normal day without fear, resentment or shame.

Categories
art Gay

Are you Innocent? Are you a boy?

Innocentboy7 baring his ass..sent me a ‘wink’.   That’s what happens when you sit on Manhunt long enough.  Unlike the real city, this virtual city has no surprises.  Asses and cocks on view before they risk you judging their ugly mug, their pretty face.

A mountain of heaving pink and brown flesh.  Like some virtual concentration camp.  A tangle of broken limbs.  Faceless.  Broken.  Made to kneel at the edge of the pit before the single bullet to the head.

People like me and my friend Jon and his son.  People like me and Ashley.  People like me and my friend Rose.  Made to run over ploughed fields.  Naked.  To the pit.  To the single bullet.    A woman in a beautifully cut coat and dress protecting herself from two big dogs.  Her felt hat on her head.  Where is her bag?

Innocentboy 7 are you innocent?  Are you a boy?  I asked him.  He replied, “Yeah dude, I’m a flight attendant.”  He ‘unlocked’ the pictures of his face.  Thanks for the introduction.   I wasn’t interested in his ass or his face.

I love the city.  That’s where I want to trawl for men, male encounters.  The streets, we are all equal on the streets.  We can be mysterious.  We can be men.  In the summer, sweaty kisses.  Letting them undress you.  In the winter warming your hands on their hot bellies under layers of coats and scarves.  Strangers in virtual streets now wink at me.  “Hello Ducky, have you got a light?’   “Do you know the way to Piccadilly?”   or,  if you’re feeling particularly fresh, “My boyfriend and I..well, we was wondering?”

What is the point of meeting anyone if you know exactly what you are going to find slumbering in their underwear?   Where is the delicious mystery?   I don’t want to see your cock…or your ass.  Not until we have made a contract.   Your hot breath on my face, on my neck.  Kiss my eye lids.  Kiss me.  Seal it with a kiss.

Without doubt I have met some interesting people from the internet.  But…they ain’t going to fit in.   Will they listen to The XX?  Do they have the ability to light a fire?

Can they stay?  Did you ever think about just staying?  Turning your back on the life you had?  Just staying over and never leaving?

There are great forks of lightning dancing over the Pacific this morning.   Like those elephants in the Dali paintings, you know the ones..the paintings?  The real paintings.  When he was painting.  I think they are in Tampa, Florida of all places.  Did you know that?

Fixed the hot tub spa thingy yesterday.  It looks great.   Can’t wait to get in it.

Gayboyforolder just sent me a picture of his cock.  He is coyly pulling his underwear from his groin to reveal his meat, his cock, his prick, his weapon of war, his 8 and a half…well…sadly…it’s an ugly little thing.  I can’t imagine doing anything with that.  Not a girl like me.  It needs photoshopping.  It looks jaundiced.  It looks toxic. It looks traumatized.

Do you know who I am?

I have songs to sing today in imaginary opera houses, in Carnegie Hall, on the South Bank.  I have songs to sing.

Have not left the house for 8 days.  Last night a friend popped by and he was playing with my lap top and there was a moment when I wanted to hit him on the back of the head with my heavy metal torch because I HATE people messing with my laptop.  I would rather they looked at my soiled underwear.

Categories
Auto Biography

Bully For You

Woke up at 4am.  Bugger.  Spent a little time online then went back to bed.  Fell into deep sleep.

A knock at the door at 9am.  I had meeting with a writer from a popular TV show who had read my blog and wanted to meet to talk about her new TV show.  Kathy.

A charming and funny woman who is currently dating a very beautiful ‘A’ gay director friend of mine.   What a gorgeous couple!   The meeting was meant to last an hour but ended up lasting 3 hours.  Ashley joined us at the end.

Whilst we were talking I remembered one of the fabulous Whitstable gays I met as a child who totally shaped my idea of what it was to be gay.

Firstly, he taught me that being gay could be WONDERFUL.  That man, an antique dealer from Thanet, was called Christopher Stocking.  He drove into Whitstable weekly to search for antiques and that’s where he found me, sitting at the back of Zoe’s antique shop one cold winter’s afternoon playing with her kittens by the fire.

The shop used to be on Harbour Street opposite the harbour entrance which was rather sadly demolished in the 1970’s when all that grubby Georgian architecture seemed to bore town planners.  Thankfully, Whitstable was largely ignored by Canterbury Council so there was little to no ‘urban regeneration’.   No wholesale destruction of our old homes and shops.  Whitstable was left to decay.   Thank God.

Jake and I went to Whitstable…he loved it…that was a nice moment.

Anyway, Christopher Stocking found me in the back of the shop and realized IMMEDIATELY that I was a trainee homo and took me for a spin in his pink Jaguar.  I remember his sweet and unusual smell.  He asked a bunch of questions and I remember being so ashamed of where I came from that I think I lied every answer.

I really looked forward to Christopher’s weekly visits.  He taught me what was what without ever mentioning the word gay.

He’d say, “He’s gorgeous isn’t he?”

And I would get all red-faced and nod my head.

He was a perfect role model…consequently I never had any difficulty being a gay.

It all seemed perfectly natural.

A couple of years after we met Christopher told me that he wanted to tell me something.  Seriously.  We sat in the Tudor Tea Rooms, he held my hand and told me very gravely that if I was going to have a good life, any life..he stressed the word life..I would have to leave Whitstable.  That this small seaside town wasn’t going to be big enough for me.

He told me urgently,

“You have to get out of here and make something of yourself.”

I knew that he was right but I didn’t think it was possible, plausible…mine to have.

Heroes are never quite who you expect them to be.

A man and a boy holding hands in an English Tea Room talking about the future.  About the future. He was saving my life..and he knew it.   He knew that there was no one else in that place who could possibly tell me what I needed to know.

That my life could be assured if I left Whitstable.  That I would be valued, validated, loved.   Sadly, his dream and my dream for enduring happiness diverged as I grew older.

The disease of more.  Who could have foreseen that outcome?

For those of you who think bad thoughts..no..we never did anything inappropriate.  He was a very appropriate man.  I was 10 when I met him and 14 when he vanished.  If he had made a move would I have let him?  You betcha.

That afternoon in The Tudor Tea Room I saw my future reflected in his face and knew instinctively that it was essential for me to listen very carefully and remember every word he said.

Amongst the shop owners there were other gays.  There were the gay twins who ran the antique shop on the corner of Albert Street and Harbour Street which is now an elegant tapas bar.  Johnny and Jimmy.  Clones:  checked shirts, full moustaches and tight denim jeans.  They scared me a bit but they were kind to me.

Everyone was.

They guessed, they knew, they never made mention, they saw the bruises, they held out their hands just in case I needed to hold on.

The years passed.

For a few weeks I moved in with Michael the gay tax man.

Our local gay bar: The Guinea on Island Wall.  Florence, the very grand landlady, was always throwing people out for no good reason.  She had thick red lipstick on her lips and teeth…a crow black bouffant.

When the boys got too hot and bothered in the snug she snarled,  “Darlin’ you’re barred.”

The kissing boys would feign outrage, throw their scarves over their shoulders, theatrically deliver a particularly vicious bon mot from the threshold of the pub, slam the door and scamper out into the night..until tomorrow of course when they would sit in exactly the same spot nursing pints of thick, warm beer and kiss each other as Florence was serving out of sight.

I remember when you could be thrown out of a bar, a gay bar, for kissing another man.

So, this morning, Kathy and I talked about gay men and the community.  Our community that existed around the bar.  Every community has a bar.  THE BAR.

When the Guinea closed we headed to The New Inn, Margate.  I didn’t drive and God knows how I did it but I got there and back 30 miles every Saturday night.   Compelled by the need to meet other gay men.

I rarely went home with anyone.  They were all so pig ugly.  When the pub closed at 11.30 my very camp friend Mark and I went to a  ghastly Margate club which was always half empty..called Skids.  Ew.

The men there knew I was different from them.  Somehow.  They urged me, like Christopher had years before, to take my big ideas elsewhere.  In their own way they let me know how much more of a world there was than the one I had chanced upon in Margate.

We talked about being bullied and I told her that I was bullied at school and life was pretty miserable for a few years but I just knew that high school was not the sum of my life.   I knew that Christopher and men like him were out there somewhere.  That I could and would be like them.

I knew that my time at boarding school would eventually come to an end.  Anyway, as I mentioned before..bullied by day, blowing by night.  Usually the same boys.

All these bullied kids killing themselves.  I know it’s hard to be singled out to be gay by your peers, but you can’t be so sensitive.   Get tough!  Fight back.  Ask for help!  The sad fact is, when I was being bullied I rather enjoyed the attention.  I learned to fight back.  Ruthlessly.  I knew the people who bullied me were simply appalled by my difference.  It scared the shit out of them.  I learned that to be different you had to seek out your own kind.

I have searched and searched.

So…I went to Paris and New York and I ended up here.

Thank you Christopher Stocking..wherever you are.

I owe you my wonderful life…when I can remember that it is wonderful.  I owe you my Malibu view.  I owe you my aspirations.  Thank you Christopher, thank you the boys..thank you the girls..where ever you are…thank you for reading…thank you and good night.

Categories
Gay

Decide Now

I shaved my beard.  I am watching TV.  I am going to bed early tonight.  Clean white linen sheets.

A Beautiful Moment in Europe

It was a lovely day.  Nice people came to see the house.  Really nice.  This afternoon I worked with JA on the film which just goes from strength to strength.  It’s very reassuring to get ones writing mojo back.  As I mentioned before, it just FLOWED.  I have something to say and I know how to say it.  During the past few years I have written a couple of  scripts but I wasn’t motivated to direct or produce them.   They were bad scripts.  Today I am writing from my heart.

We mapped out all three acts and it works on so many different levels.  I will really enjoy producing this new film.

It’s not usual for me to write  two blogs in one day but as so many of my blogs recently have been hideously miserable I wanted you to know that I feel great this evening.  Very peaceful.

JA is not only my friend and producing partner he is also a fellow addict who really gets me.   So, after we had finished cooking lunch and writing he asked me why I was still so angry with Jake and I was forced to admit that even my anger is running out of fuel.

I cannot really remember all the resentments I constructed into my hateful narrative.

Yet, having said that, my anger has to be addressed.  What I have not talked about is perhaps the most sensitive reason for why it all became so nasty.

As some of you know if you saw me on the TV show Sex Rehab my sex issues have always been a problem.  For as long as I can remember I have never really enjoyed or felt connected sexually with anyone.

From erectile disfunction to an inability to be held Jake and I managed to overcome many of my problems.

Even though Jake and I had ‘issues’ what bound us when we were together was our physical connection.  Well, for me it was pretty amazing.  For him it was probably just routine.  He once said that he was only good at skiing and sex and he really was very good in the bedroom.   I never saw him on the piste.

He, like most of you, had no problem expressing himself sexually but I have never had the kind of wonderful sex that I had with him.  So, when I finally understood that it was over I felt (and still feel) without self-pity that I will never ever again have the connection that I had with him.   Now, you may say, Oh don’t be silly..you will.  But, I know deep down in my soul that this gorgeous time with Jake may have been my last chance at connecting with someone I loved and had a stab at fulfilling sex.

Once  you understand this missing part of the puzzle you may very well see the root of my frustration and sadness.  I tried to do everything I could to keep hold of a man who was patently wrong for me but with whom I had a profound sexual connection.

I really do want my money back but ultimately does it really matter?  What matters is that I must grieve for a life devoid of sexual connection.  It just made me so angry that I go on paying the price for my childhood abuse.  My distrust of men, my fear of expressing myself sexually.

My fury with him stems, almost certainly, from his understandable but insensitive desire to share stories of his sex life with others whilst we were together.   It was horrific listening to someone I loved describe something I knew I could never give him.  For me he was the only man I have ever made love to.  Ever.

It was unthinkable to have sex with anyone else.  It still is.

You may think me pathetic for trying to love him but I tried so hard to separate myself from him on many, many occasions as I documented in this blog.

He knew how addicted to him I was and he would play mercilessly with my emotions.  Knowing that I would always pick up the phone.  Knowing that I would always respond to his text because I knew that he was deeply sad after he left his girl friend.  That he was lonely and despondent but I also knew that if I felt similarly I could not rely on him to be there for me.

As was proved that fateful day in August.

Every morning I pray that this obsession, this anger, this grief these resentments will end.

As I was reading part of the new script to JA I started, finally to cry and the pressure cooker of emotions began to express themselves. I began to express myself.

I tell you again for those of you who might not believe it:  He made me very happy and I was prepared to overlook his flaws.  There were moments of pure joy for me whilst we were away in Europe although nowadays I really have to work hard to sift those moments from the crushing disappointments.

Lastly, I don’t really want to write this blog.  It had become, like most things I do, yet another symptom of my addiction.    As I read the earlier entries, before he bust into my life and I let him in…I let him in…well I remembered what it was like to be happy and I have been so very far from happy these past few months.

Even though he has been cruel and insensitive  he was also very vulnerable and turned to me for help when he needed it most.   You know, I tried to help but I am not a therapist nor am I the most stable person in the world.

Addiction for me is a daily emergency.

What have I concluded?  I need to be on my own.  I cannot begin to have relationships.

He never gave me the opportunity to say a kind goodbye…ironically, the very thing he wanted from his ex-girlfriend, even though that seems unlikely.  I really tried to say goodbye to him with dignity.  To end it in a civil and kind way.  To let him go.  I really did.   I was exhausted.  To end with kindness was my plan.  A plan he did not share.

So, JA unlocked the pain and by doing what I do best I can let go of my heavy heart.  I don’t have anywhere else to go with this other than forgive and forget.

I hope I can.  I really want to.  This is making me really ill.

Categories
art

Yo Yo Yo HIV and Other Tales

Woke up in a panic.  The thing growing in me.  That thing.  Must get it removed.  Have to get it removed but can’t move until everything is sorted.

Too much to sort out before I get there.

Manhunt Date number 9.  A 28-year-old Kuwaiti doing a PhD in architecture at UCLA.  He drove from Brentwood in the thick fog arrived at 10.30 was gone by midnight.  What do people think they are when they describe themselves as masculine?   What in heaven’s name does it mean?  Needless to say this was a huge queen under the thinnest veneer of ‘straight acting’.

The last ten minutes of the ‘date’ he was looking at his kindle and I was staring into the fire willing him to leave.

He left.

Poor lamb, driving up my foggy wet mountain in the pitch black only to be sent home because he didn’t meet my exacting standards.  He asked me about my past relationships.  Of course I told him the Jake saga but as I told him I thought..why am I telling you this?  Not even I am convinced by this story.

One interesting note, when JB was kicked out of his apartment by his long-term gf for being a lying, sociopathic, cheater Jake’s ex-gf  told him he had to pay his part of the rent until the lease expired..I think it expires this November from what I can remember…anyway.  When I told the Kuwaiti that he had been thrown out and had to live with his parents in Westchester the Kuwaiti was outraged that the gf had demanded half the rent.

The gays never get that bit of the story..why he couldn’t just walk away without paying her anything.  They never get the commitment/contract part of a relationship.  They squeal, as did the Kuwaiti, “Why should he continue paying his part of the rent in an apartment that he didn’t live in?”

When Jake complained to Pal the artist he was fucking with (allegedly) HIV behind the gf’s back about the rent issue…(Jake told me that he only found out after they stopped fucking that Pal was HIV positive..but I doubt it.  Pal doesn’t look like the kind of man who would keep quiet about his HIV positive status knowing that Jake was in a sexual relationship with a woman?  No, he looks like a responsible kind of guy.)

Well…

Pal, allegedly, told Jake to stop paying the rent and cut JA out…like a cancer.  This was a woman who had cancer scares ALL THE TIME!

Thankfully Jake did the right thing…he continued paying his part of the rent and the electricity bill despite casting himself as the victim to me and his gay friends.  He was so pissed when he got kicked out of the house…because it meant that he had to live with his parents.

He might have to behave responsibly.  Of course the moment he moved in he just did what he always did, acting out with drugs, alcohol and online hook ups.  But with the added advantage of having parents who would now co-sign his bullshit.

What a fucking moaner!  Unable to see his part in anything.  Complaining about his sister Emily’s wedding and the part he had to play in it.  Complaining about going to Cape Cod.  Complaining that he didn’t live in the East Village anymore.

You should have told the fucking truth!  How about that as a radical idea?

Weinstein pay him $7k to rewrite/line edit scripts for them.  He did three of them the fortnight before we left for Paris and he was still loathed to put his hand in his pocket to buy anything.  The day we drove all day to Cannes he bought me a Mars Bar.    I drove all day and he bought me a lousy MARS BAR?  And you are wondering why I am taking him to small claims court?  The day we drove from Sanary Sur Mer I packed the car with inexpensive and delicious food.

The first time I told him definitively that we should break off our relationship was when I realised that he was drinking and driving.  He would get totally DRUNK in NYC then take the train all the way to Katonah then drive to his parents house..drunk as a skunk…then call me moaning or crying about how TERRIBLE his life was…or text me from the train because he was lonely and I would (foolish me) always be there for him..because as he mocked in one of his last emails…”you find me irresistable…admit it.”

I did.  I found him irresistible.

Jake lived on the filthy underbelly of life because he chose to.

BTW art lovers!  Do look at Pal’s fantastic paintings…they are fucking GORGEOUS…if you are decorating a hospital.  He’s a handsome man.  Pity that he fell into Jake’s ‘straight boy honey pot’.  I wonder if he really did lie about his HIV status as Jake claimed.  Jake lied about everything.

If I were her I would sue that piece of lying shit.

My producer comes today to shape the treatment.   My friend RF tried to visit yesterday but blew a tire on the way up here.  I drove down the hill to find him forlornly at the edge of the road.  I had a long chat with Sharon about film funding.  Things seem to be picking up.   I worked more on the script and loved it.

I ate two bowls of corn flakes and felt tired in my bones.

My heart has been broken and rather than cry gently to myself I am so fucking angry.

That entitled prick has got away with murder and I am daily incensed by how he treated me and others.   Even 6 months after he came out he was still regretting his decision.  He would have been perfectly happy to stay in his vampiric relationship with her whilst he fucked men on the side.  That was a choice!  He knew exactly what he was doing and used her.  Don’t you dare lecture me about collateral damage!  I didn’t cause this mess.

JB is a reptile.

Categories
art Auto Biography Gay

Closet/Opera

As you all know Joan Sutherland died last week.  The great Opera Singer.

Occasionally I wonder why some gay men (including myself) love opera so much, and if they don’t love opera we love Streisand or Madonna.  For many gay men women sing their thoughts, express the drama and pain of their love.  I don’t know many gay men who choose male singers to express their feelings.

As I have said before, it makes me sad that I never heard a love song on the radio where a man sang about his love for another man.  George Michael came close.  Elton never wrote his own lyrics so sang Bernie’s heterosexual love songs.  Perhaps ‘Blue Eyes’ was the only song he ever sang that seemed to be about men loving men.

This is how, in so many ways, popular culture lets us down.  Our extraordinary love ignored.  Perhaps I am just old-fashioned and don’t listen to the radio anymore so miss out on The Scissor Sisters or who ever is playing OUR tune.  You’ll know.  Let me know.  Teach me.

Ryan, who I have actually enjoyed hearing from these past few days inspired me to think about the ‘closet’.  You know what that is don’t you?  I don’t need to explain what a closet is.  Do I?

OK…I will.

Figuratively, a closet is a place where one hides things; ‘having skeletons in the closet’  is a figure of speech for having particularly sensitive secrets.

Thus, closet as an adjective means secret—usually with a connotation of vice or shame, as in ‘a closet alcoholic’ or ‘a closet homosexual’.

To come out of the closet is to admit your secrets publicly, used almost exclusively in reference to homosexuality.

Was I ever in the closet?   I don’t think I ever was.  There was certainly some pre-pubescent awkwardness but that particular ‘coming out’ moment was stolen from me when I was 12 years old by my Mother who told our doctor that she thought I was gay and then regaled me with stories about the gay men she knew in London when she worked as a waitress at the Carlton Club.

I was PISSED OFF about her telling the doctor as part of me wanted it to remain a secret whilst I worked out what it all meant.   By the time I was 12 I already had sexual contact with men.  At boarding school.  Consensual sex with other boys.  My Mother wrote darkly to me in one of her daily letters, “Don’t do anything you can’t understand.”  Of course, I would spend the next 40 years doing quite the opposite.

Thankfully I was brought up in a secular, liberal seaside town where gay men lived open and rather exotic lives for all to see.

As I said to Ryan, not all closets are created equal.   The closet that Ryan alluded to is quite different from the one my darling little scum bag constructed for himself.  Ryan’s closet built in the deep south of shame and fear is quite familiar, it seems, to most gay men.

My experience of being gay is bloody different from nearly every gay man I meet.  Most have the obligatory ‘coming out’ tale and talk about it like debutantes.  I never had a ‘coming out’  I had a ‘let’s get on with it’.

I don’t want to dwell on scum bag today.  Needless to say his closet was quite unlike Ryan’s and should be called something different.  It should be called maybe a ‘walk in’ as it was roomy and comfortable and well constructed.

In the past when ever I have encouraged people to get honest about their sexual orientation I have suggested that when telling their parents/friends/loved ones the truth that they be as magnificent, as heroic as they possibly can!  Tell them the gay truth with a smile on their face and without fear.   “I have something WONDERFUL to tell you…”

With all this press about bullying and suicide it reminds me that whether we like it or not this resolutely Christian society may not condone these deaths but still colluded with them.  Iranians may hang their gays but we make it so uncomfortable for ours that gay men, steeped in shame, take their own lives.

OK, as for the rest of yesterday?  Friends popped by including all of my very cool neighbours.  The ones who are moving out of their foreclosed house.  Waiting for the bank to tell them to leave.  The problem is, nobody wants their house so once they go it will sit their at the end of the street falling slowly into disrepair.  Not great for the neighbourhood but familiar to all of us here in the USA.  I only have one derelict house on the block, many people have entire streets, house after house falling down around them.

This economic meltdown is so despicable.  It has so cruelly displaced so many people.  Like a terrible plague.  Makes me vomit how the government can do nothing for ordinary people whilst helping only the richest stay richer.

I am proud to tell you that at these times I enthusiastically embrace my European hybrid socialist values.

I have said for some time that I am willing to lose everything in this gamble.  I came here and I lost the bet.  That’s OK.  Better to have tried here than stayed in Whitstable in the warm and dry.  Better to take a risk than never risk at all.

God only knows, I know that most Americas disagree with what they think socialism is but that is only their contempt prior to investigation.  I wish they knew more about how the people can truly take their power back.  It worked in Europe.

It certainly has nothing to do with the tea party movement.

It’s kinda funny watching the GOP elite struggle with all these potty new Republican candidates.  Christine O the witch.  Now, she is FUNNY.  Almost worth electing to see how completely unprepared for power that woman is.  Just like her idol Sarah Palin, whose prime objective is to enact the word of the bible and blow up Iran.  Yet, even though I think the tea party movement is misguided it is still strangely invigorating.  I am slightly in awe of how these new Nazis have energised the nation.  Oh, did I call them Nazis?  Sorry.

Most of these ghastly tea party politicians are, of course, snake oil sales men.  Raising money from desperate people to pay their rent rather than fuel their campaigns, selling the people easy solutions for difficult problems.

America has to change but as former President’s have said..these changes may only truly come when the people are hungry and angry enough to get off their asses and into the street and say that enough is enough.

OK.  I actually wrote more of my film yesterday.  Fleshing it out.  It was good.  I like this film.  It has heart.

I am preparing to go back to London.  Preparing to get my ball dealt with.  I think the fear around that is unresolved.  John is holding the fought.  I have to deal with the spitting incident when I get there too.  Damn.

It is cold and gray here.  I light a roaring fire every night.  Ashley joins me for breakfast.  We tell our stories then she heads off to work.  I wait up for her like an anxious mother.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG5N3GC-m20]

Categories
Rant

Bad Baby

“What you looking at?  Slag!”

“What the fuck are you looking at you slaaag?’

“Slag!”

I love the word slag.  It fills me with joy.

We live in timid times.  Nobody wants to offend anybody.  Yet, everybody seems so angry.   We all need to live more robustly.   I loathe lots of things..but I should not be defined by my anger.

Some fluffy queen left comments for me yesterday.  He had that part of his brain missing that determines’rational thought‘ or ‘over view’ or ‘context’.  He felt ‘sensitive’ and marveled at my well-documented insanity.   He thought I might be ‘obsessed’ and accused me of ‘cyber-bullying’.

Ho Hum.

I could hear through the written word his rasping voice…his terror of living in the light.   As ‘Ryan’ defends fellow tribe member JB I want to drink a glass of neat whiskey.

I want to drive fast up the PCH in a red sports car to escape his whimsy.  I want to call hookers and tell them that I will only pay them if they remain mute.  If they keep their fucking mouths shut.  If they said one word…I would not pay them.

Of course, I don’t have a red sports car and I am not interested in any kind of hooker..even a mute one.  Ever.

Like the cancer in my balls the cancer in my head is JB.  I am plagued with him.  His flapping gait like some kind of untreated Victorian cripple.  His wide eyes, open mouth, the face he affected of child-like-innocence that had indeed sucked a thousand cocks…just before he choked down mine.

I think I should give Ryan JB’s address and have them meet.    They could be very happy together.

Last night I cooked dinner for a friend.

This morning I have more research to do.

Last night I watched the last Chilean miner pulled out of his tomb and into the light.  I cried but wanted to cry more.

Categories
Gay

Strict Tuition Given

I don’t know anymore if gay men leave notes in toilets and telephone boxes or call to pay for ads in free gay news sheets.  I don’t think so.

I don’t know if men who exchange glances between subway stops or on street corners publish advertisements in the lost and found?

You, blond..blue eyes.  Me, wearing ripped jeans.  Leicester Square.  North East corner last Saturday night.  We smiled.  You passed by.

I remembered him for years.  Keeping me awake for a decade thinking about those blue eyes.  What happened to him?  Where is he now?

I confided in Ashley that I did not get my first mobile phone until I was 33 years old.

The drawings of the boys I made twenty years ago.  Just so I could see him naked.

The sun crawled up over the ocean this morning casting a pale yellow glow on the walls.  I wrote my blog and started writing the film.  I sat looking at the page.  The empty page.

I started to dream about what these particular men in my film would look like.  Where they lived.  Their world.  I wondered what I would do to these men in their world?  How difficult or comfortable their world would be.  I thought about their past loves, their clothes, what they kept in each and every draw.  I wondered if they still loved each other?  I want to write about love…and for a moment I remembered what it felt like to be in love.  What confidence it gave me.

Go on, I challenge you, look at me.  Look at me!  Fucking LOOK AT ME!

I have been an out gay man for as long as I have walked the streets.  At first, like so many men, I learned to keep my eyes averted for fear of the crushing blow.  That was then..at the beginning of my story.  By my late teens I was looking directly at you.  I was rarely afraid.  Of course, I did not want to be hurt.  Cut.  Hit.  Insulted.  I wanted to walk the streets safely.   Yet, there was no doubt in my mind that I needed to be seen to be gay.  That it was who I am.  To hide who I am would betray who I am.

Do you understand now why I have such disdain for you being the coward that you are?  I loved you, willed you to be true to who you are, cared for you as you revealed all those terrible truths.

The end of a great and passionate love affair.

I sighed after I wrote that.  Sighing a lot recently.

A deep sigh from a long way down.

Even though I have said terrible things about him.  Made public what was private between us…I loved him.  I wanted him to be safe and protected.   Upon his peace of mind, mine depended.  When he sighed my chest heaved.  I could not bear to see him weep except through tears of my own.  And when I could not see him…I worried about him.  When I loved him I could not walk the streets without his walk being safe and sound.

Now look?

What has happened to you? Do I care if you live or die?  In whose strange arms you find yourself tonight?   I tear at my own heart so that it will not beat another beat.

I believe in romantic love.  Love and romance!  One big man protecting another is all I ever wanted.  If I were the big man or you were the big man I wanted to protect or be protected.

Protected from those who still require us to keep our hands to ourselves when in public.  To stay away from young children.   To be afraid to kiss my lover good night for all to see.  Today, in many countries all over the world, men and women together keep this secret.  They wave cautiously at each other before disappearing into the night when all they want to do is kiss each other in plain view for all the world to see.

You have hurt me more than I can begin to tell you.  Even though you will never understand until you have fallen in love with a man and they betray you.  It is nothing you have felt.  Like nothing you will ever want to feel again.

You think that falling out of love with J compares with this?

Those boys out tonight..you know the ones.  The ones we loathed, the ones who traded any hope of intimacy for meaningless intensity..day after day after day.  Well, I wanted to protect you from the prying eyes and those mediocre boys.

I didn’t ever want you to get hurt.

I wanted you to eat freshly picked peaches and delight you with a world of wonder.

Now, as if cursed,  you are one of them.  You always were.  I just thought, wanted to believe that you were different.  I was just too blind to see it.  Too deluded to care.

You wanted that?

Jake.  You broke the deal.  You said things!  Unspeakable things.  I warned you never to cross me.  I warned you that you would regret having written those cruel and vicious things to me.

Worst of all, you brought me into a world of bad taste, appalling sofas, laughable art, mediocre ideas and suburban women with bad hair.  I have done my level best to avoid such places.  They can scar the soul!

Bad taste is like throwing acid in my face!

Will we remain locked together?  I don’t want to ever see you again.   I had the best of you.  Just for a moment.  I will remember having the best of you before you became one of them.  There will never be that scene in our movie when the two men forgive each other.  Not for us.

I would rather have nothing at all than just one tiny speck of your ghastly life.

What do we know about men who fall in love and out again?  Who knows that story?  Can you tell it?  Can you tell me about falling in love with another man?  Can you tell me about that great romance you know existed between two men?  I don’t mean fuck buddies.  I don’t mean men who leave notes in telephone boxes.  I don’t mean men who cat call on the street or men who just want to fuck…but men who call out to another man “Hey, don’t forget…I really love you!”

Jake and I had to go through this…this fucking nightmare.  We did!  We will never forget each other.  Rather, he will never forget me.  Ever.  How ever much he tries to drink and smoke and fuck his way into oblivion I will be there like the Devil on his shoulder…just so he never makes those mistakes again.

Categories
art

6am

 

The day started out well enough.  Happy, creative and calm.  Then, after a nasty conversation with the bank, an unrewarding chat with my lawyer and a scary call from my doctor I was hit with a wave of resentment and fear so overwhelming and debilitating I was sent into a paroxysm of fury.

Before I knew it I had written a whole blog about Jake, more revealing than anything I had written before.  More detail, names etc.

I am not going to post it.

I just want to forget about him.  I just want him out of my fucking head.

I rue the days he contacted me.  Lied to me.  Slept with me.  Text me.  Traveled with me.  Relied on me.  Lent on me.  Loved me.

A tsunami of emotion that, THANK GOD!…this morning has subsided.

I cried with joy for the release of the Chilean miners.

There was an interesting piece in the NY Times.  The journalist was amazed that none of the miners were prescribed antidepressants but wanted cigarettes instead.    It says a great deal about how deluded Americans are when it comes to the insidious use of these terrible pills.

Alberto Iturra, a psychologist who worked with the miners, talked to them, sometimes several times a day, to sort through their frustrations and depression.  After first sending down nicotine patches, officials later sent down cigarettes to the miners, most of whom were smokers.  Still, Dr. Iturra said that doctors never ended up sending down medication for depression.

So,  late afternoon, Ashley dragged me out of the house to the Getty to see A Conversation with Frederic Tuten and Steve Martin.   I pulled on some old Helmet Lang black pants that now fit me once again.  I have lost so much weight.  I wanted to wear an old tweed suit but I couldn’t find the pants.

I’m not really familiar with Tuten’s work (I knew vaguely about his Lichtenstein connection)  although after I met him I realized, or rather we realized that we had met before many years ago with Freddy Hughes.  They both read excerpts from their respective books.  Tuten’s by far the more interesting although I am going to read Martin’s first as he has written a fictionalized account of the era I was most connected to the art world.

There was a lively and entertaining discussion after they had both read.  The moderator was really bad.  TERRIBLE.  Thankfully these two men were more than capable of entertaining a huge football stadium with amusing anecdotes and bon mot without the intervention of a  moderator.

After the Q&A we all ate a rather delicious dinner together.

Ed Moses, nice to see him.

Ironically the passage that Steve read from his book was a fictionalized description of Art Collector Eugenio Lopez’s house and dinner party.  Eugenio’s name in the book becomes Flores rather that Lopez.   Details included: Eugenio’s legendary lateness for his own events.  The art.  The meticulous renovation of that amazing house.  Christian, the house boy/assistant who lives with Eugenio, was described as wearing black leather.

“Do you think he’ll appreciate the description of his house?”  Steve asked.

“The house yes, the house boy no..”  I replied.

“Oh..”  Steve’s eyes widened.  “Black leather?”

Saw Bettina Kourek who had organized the event and Jonathon from Lead Apron.  Amongst other saw Kevin West and his new boyfriend a psychologist called Justin.  Very sweet couple.  It was good to see Kevin.  He is the West Coast editor of W.

We arrived home to two very excited pups.  I brought them both a huge plate of Kobi beef that was going to be thrown out after the event.  The little dog was THRILLED.