The Penguin

Torrential rain.  Lightening.  Veselka.  East Village.  NYC.

Every day in NYC is unusual.  Most every day in LA is usual.  NYC, Paris and London are cities where one is forced to expect the unexpected.

So it was that yesterday, after I walked the dog, I made my way to China Town to find sulphur soap.  I popped into the Family Court to get a feel of what to expect next month.  Another tawdry location.   It takes a long time to file a petition.  It can take all day.  The Penguin must have sat in there for a long time.  It would have given him ample time to reflect on his shortcomings.

Again I had to walk up Varick St risking bumping into him.  The Subway at the back of my building must surely disgorge him every single working day.  I had a late breakfast with Pierre.  I met with my lawyer who was on sparkling form.    This evening we discuss strategy with the very expensive litigator.   The expensive, mean litigator.

The Penguin is forefront in my thoughts.  I spoke to Jill and Drew the day before yesterday when I was feeling less stable.  Thankfully I feel good again.  Apparently it often happens that TV people are ensnared by crazed fans.   Drew was so helpful.

I sat in the steam room for an hour.  On my own.  I lay naked on the black marble, sweating and groaning in pain from the searing heat then, enduring a different agony, under the icy cold shower.  My heart pumping.  I lay resting under thick, white towels.

I had lunch with handsome Philippe and at 6.30 I met Ross at cafe Gitane fresh from his weekend in Barcelona.  He is such a funny little dude.  We ate their ‘signature’ avocado on toast and I drank hot chocolate.  A drunk, homeless man started talking to us.  He must have been 70 years old.  He shook my hand.  He told me that he respected those who could care for a dog.  My patience for humans is worn quite thin.  My compassion for any dog is evident.

I had my head shaved at the barbers on 9th Street.  Boris trimmed my beard a little too extremely.  I look like a Spanish conquistador.  I wanted to look good for my trip up town.

UP TOWN!

I have not been north of 30th Street for many years.  Remember when I first lived in NYC I found myself on Columbus and 86th.   The day I arrived was the only time I ever saw a man raise a firearm in anger.   That was years ago.

I took a cab.  That part of town looks less salubrious than it did when I lived there.  A bit broken.  Dinner with an Armenian friend of my lawyers at a greek restaurant on Columbus.  Lamb shank.  It was passable but nothing special.  We had a nice time.  After dinner he showed me his apartment: a few rooms carved out of a giant mansion that was once very beautiful.  Thick architrave,  cornices,  creaking stairways.

I fell asleep on his bed whilst he collated his resume.  Woke up at 1am.

On a whim I decided to walk home.  I walked via the Ace Hotel.  Thumping music.  Pretty boys.   Pretty girls.

82 blocks to contemplate.   An 82 block contemplation.

I thought a great deal about what The Penguin and I will say in court.  I was torn between two stalls:  pity for the boy and derision.   The more one finds out, the more one realizes that he mixed a catastrophic cocktail of deception/desire and would not stop until he got what he wanted.

He chose the wrong man to fuck with.  His timid, delicate, winsome, coquettish facade masking the hard assed sociopath that lay within.  He compartmentalized his life: home, family, perversions/drugs/drinking.

If only I had been like the others and just seen things his way.  Poor boy, trapped in a heterosexual relationship that he didn’t know how to escape from.   That girl paid half his rent so he could live an East Village life, cheat on her with endless men.

My heart bleeds for him.

I kind of blame his hapless parents.  No…I do blame his parents.  They are not idiots.

Then, when I am done being angry, I imagine how embarrassed he must be that the whole world knows that he chose me of all people to come out to, to tell that he loved.  To be involved with.   What an idiot!

He doesn’t want you to see the picture I have of him sucking my cock.  My fat white cock in his mouth.

At least with most/all of my ex’s they were equally abnormal.

He wants to re-write the past so I am no longer in it.  The Penguin will even attempt to censor this blog, challenge my first amendment rights.  Tricky, if you work for a publishing house that must surely enshrine the values of FREE SPEECH.  Nice press angle…for me.

Dinner conversation inevitably turned to him.

Almost every gay will ask if his ex gf suspected that he was cheating on her, then congratulate him for an excellent piece of deception.

The view that all women are essentially worthless to gay men, indeed maybe even a threat…is a view commonly held but very rarely articulated.  The Penguin’s relationship with his ex ‘best friend’ (how do you treat your ‘best friend so?) was an excellent example of how gay men abuse women.

He had no regard for her.

One might say that all men who cheat are the same…but I am not interested in what heterosexuals get up to.  I am interested in the way gay men treat women.  Since interviewing so many of them for our film I understand better that gay men still have little or no respect for women.  They treat them like brood mares when going through the surrogacy procedure.  They are expunged from the surrogacy story.

They might have fag hag friends who dote on them but to me that is the most lethal symbiosis.  A no win situation.  Like marrying Jesus.

By the time I got home it was late, late, late.  I took the dog to the park.  I cadged a cigarette and smoked it.

The Penguin was bullied as a child for his short stature and beak-like nose.  His fingers are fused together, resulting in flipper-like hands.  He waddles like a penguin when he walks.  He was forced as a child to always carry an umbrella by his over-protective mother.   In keeping with his pretensions of being a refined gentleman, he prefers to wear formal wear.