Sweet Thing

The rain has finally stopped pouring over the house and into the view.  The skies have cleared. The sun is shining.  The sea is glistening…etc.

Confined to my room with painfully torn ligaments.

Ashley has been running around fetching and carrying.

Sweet thing.

Paying gardeners, buying logs, feeding me pain pills.

This evening she and her friend Aaron Rose sat by the roaring fire whilst my blue eyed friend Bowdy entertained us with unusually funny impressions. When he started his ‘performance’ I was dreading that he was going to be terrible.  He was GREAT!

It’s incredibly unusual in LA to meet a young actor who can actually act.

Aaron is curating a street art show at MOCA.  Next week he is in Paris working with young artists.  A commercials director..apparently they make a ton of money.  Do I wish that I had the ability to make commercials?  Just talking about it, the prospect of it…made the inside of my mouth dry up.

With Ashley making busy around the house life is filling up again with unusual and interesting people.  She is such a doll.

We discussed these three words:  Nigger.  Cunt.  Faggot.  The impact each word has and the power we invest in them.  It was a fascinating conversation.  We felt really naughty talking about each of them…as if overheard we might be arrested or torn from our lives.  It felt subversive.

We were talking about the concentration camps and Aaron revealed that he didn’t know that the pink triangle, symbol of gay pride, originated there.  The pink triangle (German: Rosa Winkel) was one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, used to identify homosexual men, as well as those imprisoned for sexual offenses such as rape, bestiality, and pedophilia. Originally intended as a badge of shame, the pink triangle (often inverted from its Nazi usage)  is second in popularity within the gay community only to the rainbow flag.

Alan Davies the British comedian and I had a fight in the Neptune Pub, Whitstable twenty-five years ago when he started wearing the Pink Triangle to prove his solidarity with gays and lesbians.  The problem was,  he was homophobic towards me.  After a huge shouting match and a bitchy struggle he removed the pink triangle.

I have been reading my old blogs.  The ones written when I first arrived here in the USA.   Not only are they a very good read but life sure was full up with people places and things.  Of late (and more contemplative) the written journey has been internal rather than external.

Every day I get closer to my goal of exorcising the ghosts of past love.  Things are getting so much better.  Not so very long ago I didn’t think I could go anywhere that we had been together..not Paris nor New York or Whitstable.   I feared that just walking down the same street we had strolled would ruin it for me.  But, you know, that was the voice of shame whispering seductively in my ear.  The shame I felt about failing to keep him.  The shame of making bad choices in love.

I am better than that.  Paris is a big city.  I am a bigger man.

I sometimes wonder in whose arms he rests now?  Placating him.  Telling him the lies he needs to hear.  Is he happy?  I know in my heart, I know that he will never truly be happy.  He has made terrible mistakes and those mistakes may never be forgiven.  He will try to put it right but not for her.  He wants her to forgive him so he can feel better about himself.

He will be in perpetual torment until he truly understands a selfless apology. Equally, she needs to fully embrace the act of forgiveness.  Can she forgive him?  Eventually she will.  She has no option.

Living with hate or resentment in one’s heart can ruin your life.

Forgive him for being frail and flawed and weak and cowardly and for telling inexcusable lies?  Yes, we can do that.  Eventually.

We are connected forever.  A dance with death.  A marriage with the Devil.  There is something oddly Gothic about it.

I called the small claims court to have the date moved so I can go to London and deal with this bollocks stuff.  Directly to London.

Sooner or later Jake and I will face each other.  Whether it is in the court room or on the street he will pay what he owes me.  He would be such a fool not to.

We will bump into each other.  I know that scenario.  If he has worked properly on himself he will have undergone the change he so badly wanted.  He will be gay.  Not like when I first met him:  A gay man sheltering in the husk of a straight man’s life.  He will be true to his own nature, to the mannerisms and voice that he was so scared to reveal.  I began to see the occasional gay moment when we were in France, the twist of the mouth, the limp wrist, the effeminate draw on the cigarette.  All quite normal for a delicate, passive homosexual.  Endearing.

Like so many ‘straight acting’ gay men he is petrified of being seen to be gay.

He will be revealed.  He will find happiness.  I pray for it.