Duncan Roy's Blog[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8yghncsxRs]
Matt Rowe arrived from London. Lunch with Casey at Westville. Steven and I ate an early supper and held hands in the street. I felt my whole body tingle with excitement. Late dinner at lil’ Frankies with my pride boys. I love them.
Gave up after that. Exhausted.
I found out that somebody for whom I had long-held a candle is in fact gay…
Much more to tell but have no time.
I can’t really write about yesterday morning. Needless to say I will. In time. Maybe tomorrow.
Had lunch at the Mercer Kitchen with a friend. There were many, many tired looking servers/shop assistants etc., in New York the day after Pride. Grimly going about their working day at the mercy of rotten hangovers.
Only one of the twins arrived from LA. Miles had to stay home and guard the fort.
Robby has never really been to NYC before; you should have seen his face! He was delighted. He had such a big Robby smile. We wandered the East Village and as much as he complained that smokes were triple the price you could tell that no amount of money spent on ciggies was going to ruin his NYC state of mind.
We took the subway to 42nd Street. Excited to see Transformers 3. 3D.
Tom’s film will have grossed more than 3 billion dollars by the time all is said and done.
I am not going to review the movie. He’s my friend. Watching a friend’s movie is not like going to the cinema and just sitting down and watching a film.
I am already invested.
OK, I’ll just tell you a couple of things. Frankly the film was a bit confusing: the transformer goodies and the baddies melding into one heap of scrap metal with no clear battle, no defining heroic moment.
Even the casting was confusing; I thought John Malkovich was Gary Busey. What has he done to his mouth? His teeth?
There were too many quips and not enough story.
The special effects were remarkable and keep the tension levels high. Somehow watching any well-shot fight captures the imagination even though in this case one might not know what they are fighting about.
The lead girl, a Victoria Secrets model, was appalling, all lips and hair and pout. The camera fetishizing her lithe body. The director forcing his camera into her face, her mouth.
Shia looked worse for wear and has certainly lost that youthful vulnerability that carried him and us through the first of this blockbuster franchise.
The parents who amused us and grounded us in the first film have become irritating non-secateurs. Great actors and not so great actors deliver cheesy lines that segue into another well-crafted fight. The disparity causing some general merriment in the room
Regardless of what Transformers has become Tom’s initial idea had integrity and poise. It is important to remember that.
For the second time in as many days I wished I could have gotten fucked up.
This is getting crazy.
Everybody falls in love with Robby. Robby, quite rightly, drowning in positive affirmation. I am proud of the way he handles himself in these situations.
My big birthday party on Thursday night, there are people flying from Hong Kong, London and LA. It’s going to be a blast. I am really looking forward to it. 100 people. Entertainment. Hootenanny.
I have now re-written the end of the novel and await notes.
Determined that my party will neither depress or stress me.
It is 6am. Monday morning. The day after NYC Gay Pride. I am sipping strong black coffee like a man who has a hangover and a job. I have neither.
There is a great deal to do today. Mostly unpleasant. The Transformers 3 party tonight. The twins are winging their way to New York. Robby called me late last night. I was too tired to talk. I wonder if he changed his mind?
Let’s talk about yesterday.
I can’t remember what I did before 12. It is lost.
At around one o’clock I wandered down tenth street to see the parade. I thought I might meet Tom and pals but they had other plans. I had a great day on my own and not on my own.
I made a few out reach calls.
Let’s face it…that’s what I like best. I like being on my own or with strangers who don’t know me.
I carried the little dog in my arms through the drunken crowd. I saw Dan Savage on the first float. His very own apotheosis. I watched Andew Cuomo, recently beautified by the gays for the bone that he threw down at us…like a fake holy relic. The body guards around him formed a tight cordon. It was funny that he should be so frightened. Needing that many body guards. We need him to guard us. Protect us. His appearance in the parade was unashamedly about his re-election.
Those about me thought that what he had done for them was wonderful.
“It’s a start!” They explained to me as if I were retarded. I have given up trying to explain my position. I just look at these men and smile weakly.
I remembered being in the Sydney Mardi Gras. How many years ago? 1990. I was covering it for the BBC. I made a BBC Radio 4 documentary. I was entranced. I should fetch out my old diaries. I should try and find that material. I don’t have any record of anything I made for the BBC.
Mardi Gras. Being in the parade. From the street looking up at the millions of faces staring down at us from every window on Oxford Street. I remember taking ecstasy and wandering into the rancid, hot bathroom and watching men fuck each other. I stayed in Sullivans on Oxford Street just like I always do when I return to Sydney. Where I will be this winter.
The parade and the party afterwards. I accepted the decadence. It was as if in that sinking ship…we had no option.
I did not question our behaviour then because it was my behaviour.
If young documentarian Duncan chanced upon yesterdays parade. Given that ship is no longer sinking? What would he learn about being gay in 2011?
Well, if I was as fucked up as I was then I might have come to the same conclusions. I was just chasing a drink, a line and some tail. Loving the attention that a young gay man gets.
The attention has waned.
I thought about Paul Keeting the Prime Minister of Australia being so publicly inclusive. Letting us know that his government included/represented us too. It was the first time in my life I had ever heard a world leader positively acknowledge my existence.
Keeting reminded fellow Australians that the LGBT community paid taxes, were less likely to cause trouble or end up in prison…he then signed an anti vilification bill into law which really felt like it was real. It was. It made people think about what they said to us and how they treated us.
Yesterday, every elected politician in the state made an appearance in the parade. The police were cheered heartily as they are every year in every GLBT parade and I wondered why? Even as I was wondering why I felt the same wave of emotion that everyone else seems to feel.
I bumped into Jeremiah Newton.
He took me briefly to a tranny party in an apartment overlooking the parade. I thought of Diane Arbus. The apartment was very dark and decorated crudely with red plastic. The ceilings covered in rainbow flags made of cheap gauze. It was too depressing. There was some sort of tranny chaser sitting on his own in the kitchen under the flourescent light. He directed me to the chicken pasties. I ate some jelly beans.
I left.
I bumped into a beautiful couple I had met on-line in Los Angeles. We ate a very late lunch at Westville (not east) and fed the Little Dog a huge chicken breast. The food seemed better (cleaner and fresher) at their West Village location.
We separated at around seven. I will see them again.
That night I thought I might watch the fireworks or go to a club. If I had been drinking or taking drugs I might have. But not drinking and not taking drugs somehow lessens the experience of being gay.
Of course I thought about Jake in that melee. What a perfect gay man he most probably is now. Drugging, drinking, fucking. Selfish, self obsessed. And I wondered if I was jealous that he could do those things and I could not. I wondered if I was missing out on being gay? I wondered if I could still be dignified and take a drink.
I thought about taking a drink a great deal at Gay Pride 2011.
Dan came home and we rearranged art on the freshly painted walls. He showed me a picture he had hidden in his office that he thought might be Sol Lewitt. He doubted it. I knew the moment I saw it that it was real but we shucked the frame and there was the neat signature.
Consequently it is off to be reframed in something more befitting.
That’s how important art work gets lost. People forgetting, not knowing. Not believing.
Last night I slept in a bed.
The previous nights I slept whilst they drove the car. Thomas in detention. The Dane miserable and grumpy because his best friends New York life had crumbled to dust. Lucie just trying to make the best of a bad lot.
I left them in Austin and settled into the four-hour wait for my flight to NYC.
I had nothing better to do so decided to get my hair cut. I walked through the oppressive heat to Birds Barbershop under the freeway at the ghetto end of 6th Street. Walking less than half a mile from the city center Austin’s miserable underbelly reveals itself.
Firstly, and most oddly, dogs are not allowed in barber shops in Austin so the Little Dog sat in a shady spot outside. Lara was assigned to cut my hair.
I asked for a number two buzz all over my head and beard.
Lara, less than five foot tall began shaving my head. She told me to uncross my legs. She told me to sit straight in my chair. She told me to put my feet on the foot rest. Then, when things were obviously not finished she announced that she had finished and how did it look? It looked terrible. It was perhaps the WORST hair cut I had ever had.
I told her to re buzz it so it might at least look even. She said, “I’m not comfortable with that.” As if she had been taught in some barber class how to avoid unwanted advances.
She picked at the mess of her own creation with a pair of scissors. Then she started trimming my beard. The past few days had been so exhausting I just let her hack at my face.
I paid the $25 and walked away.
In Austin airport I sat next to a thirty something French man who I ended up in bathroom stall. He has a huge, uncut cock.
My plane unloaded in Charlotte but the plane to Newark was cancelled. Charlotte airport is just packed with army boys. I could live in Charlotte airport.
Finally, after resigning myself to a night at the Novotel in Charlotte, I found a flight to Newark. On the plane East I completed the end of my novel and started sketching out the associated film idea. Because I now know the story so well it was easy as all hell to write the treatment. In fact, it may be one of the best things I have ever written.
As I sat in Charlotte thinking about the curious French man with the beautiful penis Dan texted me to say that same-sex marriage was now legal in NY state. I had two opposing thoughts, it struck me that even though the gays would celebrate this change in the local law it is actually merely a sop to us.
So? So? I thought angrily. This isn’t going to help Zach and his Scottish boy friend. If they get married immigration will not recognise their union, no one official anywhere is obliged to recognise this marriage anomaly other than the states where segregation is outlawed.
Then I wondered if Jake celebrated the change in the law, whether he owned that this vote applied to him. I thought about him getting married to a man, taking that man to his parents house. If he could stay loyal and monogamous?
I thought about gay marriage and just because we can…should we?
Arrived in the East Village just after midnight. Walked dog. Slept really well.
Party tonight and Monday night.
I have boring admin stuff to do this week. Then…thank God…I have my party.
Austin is as beautiful as El Paso is not.
The people in downtown Austin look like they just walked out of the East Village.
The last time I was here Joe and I stayed at The Driskill Hotel. This time around I am spending the day writing before I move on.
I would like to have stayed a little longer but fate well and truly intervened.
I am exhausted.
Yesterday, after I was released by the ICE guys with my passport re stamped I spent an hour by myself. It was blissful.
The Dane and his ex picked me up from the small Sierra Blanca cafe at the edge of Interstate 10 where I had eaten unexpectedly delicious Huevos Rancheros with the cops.
Reunited with my fellow travelers, back in our luxurious transportation. The Dane, Lucie and I headed back to El Paso where we parked ourselves in a coffee shop…like I am doing now…and The Dane anxiously attempted to help Thomas by calling his friends, family and officials.
As we drove into El Paso I noticed something strange and scary.
All the palm trees were dead.
Trees that formerly decorated the forecourts of the huge car dealers on Montana are now just sad, brown stumps.
The same is true of commercial and domestic palms. Palms of all varieties…dead. Their bark ruptured, waiting for the woodsman to take them down.
What killed the palm trees?
Global warming? Climate change? El Paso just had the worst winter…ever. It killed palms, mesquite and cactus. If I had doubted climate change before…this was indeed the smoking gun.
I am persuaded. Climate change exists.
We would spend all day and most of the evening in El Paso at either the coffee shop or at the alien detention center where, at 7pm, we were allowed to see Thomas.
He looked miserable and cried a bit but anyone who has been to boarding school can attest this is just first day nerves.
Unlike boarding school they wouldn’t let us sit in the same room as the ‘detainee’ so we spoke on telephones peering at Thomas through bullet proof glass.
He held his hand up to the window like Billy Hayes in Midnight Express but unlike the film Lucie didn’t rub her tits over the glass and Thomas did not jerk off looking at them.
Nor did we hand him a book stuffed with dollars.
For me it was a total waste of time.
This idiotic boy had deliberately over stayed his visa, not renewed his passport and had the attitude of any entitled prick who thinks he should be allowed to stay anywhere he pleases.
I was even more pissed at The Dane for getting me involved with his half-baked friend. His ex Lucie was really sweet and had a great attitude. I have no complaints about her.
I just knew the moment I met Thomas that he was going to cause trouble.
An immature, exhibitionist thirty-one year old man who cater/waiters for a career is not someone I necessarily want to know. No, I am not being a snob. I am just angry. You will be pleased to hear that I did not lose my temper and remained remarkably calm.
Whilst they were fruitlessly contacting embassies I wandered around El Paso in the searing 110 degree heat checking out Kinsineta couture…see above.
I bumped into Nicholas, the manager of the El Paso hipster coffee shop who offered to not only help us out by visiting Thomas in detention but also offered to show me around. I leapt at the chance. If only to hang out with a relatively normal human being.
As they were moping over poor incarcerated Thomas, Nicholas took me to the very authentic Chico’s Tacos which was amazingly tasty and cheap.
We were both well fed for less that $5. Check the wiki link above. He then drove me to a mountain that over looks not only the city of El Paso but into the violent border town of Juarez, Mexico where there are (apparently) several drug related cartel murders every day.
“It is a miracle when there are no murders in Juarez.” Nicholas said sadly. “I love my country but we are not very good to each other.”
He told me about gunmen bursting into schools and shooting students. Weddings and funerals where the same happens. Endless, brutal Cartel related murders. He told me that the children of the Cartel roam El Paso boasting who their parents are and scaring the locals.
From the mountain we could very clearly see the controversial border fence that separates the USA from Mexico.
“Everybody in this town is involved with smuggling.” He said, looking over the vast, hot landscape. “People and drugs.”
I dropped Nicholas at his car then returned to The Dane and Lucie who had now finished with Thomas.
Inspired, I took them to Chico’s which they loved. I fed the dog and for the next four hours I drove through the night toward Austin from El Paso.
Lucie took the helm at 1am and I slept fitfully in the back of the SUV.
When I woke at 7am we were in Fredericksburg. A charming Teutonic historical town, tastefully planned and well manicured. We sat in the German Bakery and ate buns and drank hot, dark coffee. It was such a fucking relief to be out of El Paso and experiencing a different, altogether more understandable world.
Frankly I couldn’t wait to leave The Dane. It was not his fault per se but he and his friend took a risk with our vacation/trip to NYC that is not easily forgiven.
Thomas will go home to Sweden where he will hopefully grow the fuck up. Even in the detention center he was imagining that he could marry his girl friend at the facility and they would let him go back to his studio life in Brooklyn.
Yeah right!
I am in Sierra Blanca, a two-horse strip of nothing near El Paso Texas. I should be in Marfa looking at art but life has a remarkable way of getting in the way of ones intentions.
Yesterday started off badly and ended up even worse.
We woke up in the New Inn Willcox. The four of us. Grumpy and tired.
We set off for Marfa, ended up in Las Cruces by the Rio Grande.
This tiny, charming place made famous by the forests of pecans and pistachios planted around the town. There was a small street market where we baked in the midday sun.
I found a dedicated AA meeting-house.
Bagel was worried by our travelling through these southern border towns because his Swedish passport was well out of date. We scoffed. We weren’t going anywhere near the border. Yet, the proximity still scared him.
After lunch everyone was in great spirits, the road was clear, we were making good time. Lively, intelligent conversation. That was until we were funneled into a homeland security border control and everything went to shit.
Big time.
We were routinely stopped and asked if we were US citizens.
None of us are.
Of course within minutes they discovered that Thomas’s (Bagel) passport was out of date and he had over stayed his welcome in the USA.
Then, to my horror they told me that my passport had problems and I too was detained.
Detained. For the next twenty hours I underwent a harrowing scrutiny.
I must say however that all of the border control agents, the ICE patrol guys and every single official I came into contact with was courteous, kind and helpful.
Quite unlike any British police officer..except the detective I met last summer with the sociopath.
These men and women have a tough, demanding job but, from what I saw, within that tiny little office at the edge of Interstate 10 there is a good family atmosphere. They seem to mainly deal with cannabis infractions. The sniffer dogs leaping on anyone with weed in their car.
Each dog is an official agent and has it’s own badge.
Just as I was leaving they brought in ten young goth men and women. Their tattoos and piercings at odds with the uniformed officers.
Again, I only saw the agents be utterly polite, once going out of their way to fetch an elder lady a wheel chair.
My situation was more complicated than Thomas’s as he had simply over stayed. So, after many, many phone calls I was released with my passport re-stamped correctly.
Thomas was not so lucky and is now languishing in an alien holding camp with a thousand other illegal aliens.
Of course all I worried about was the Little Dog who had to sit in a huge cage whilst they were processing me. He looks a little traumatized this morning. If I had been traveling on my own they would have called the pound.
It does not bear thinking about.
So, here we are. In El Paso at a cool coffee-house near the convention center hooked up to the internet waiting for 6 o’clock to roll around so we can visit Thomas. The Dane is obviously worried about his friend so we are obliged to curtail our trip.
This means that I will be in New York for the premiere of Transformers 3 and other choice events.
I have a great deal to achieve this coming week. I have hospital appointments, friends arriving from London and LA for my birthday party.
I am just thankful that the border immigration folk expedited my passport problem.
I have not written this diary properly for a few days. A great deal is going on. Traveling East.
It seemed like I said yes to far too many dinner invitations and ended up cancelling all of them.
I am talking to sales reps about The Picture of Dorian Gray. Finally. It is time. David Gallagher is the breakout star in Super 8 so we may very well sell it. With David looking so amazingly fit and grown up and Aleksa in Boardwalk Empire…perhaps we can sell it for what it is worth. Anyway, I’m talking again to sales agents so let’s see. I just want what it is worth. Not selling it for anything less.
I am still not happy with the edit.
The desert. We drive into the night. The Freeway. Homogenous America. The same 6 restaurant chains, the same names…again and again. Nothing to differentiate state by state. The desert is beautiful. Desolate, hot, 110 degrees yesterday.
I am now in Willcox Arizona, sitting in the Safeway Starbucks where coffee is twenty cents more than The Palisades. To prove that people must be BORED beyond reason living out here I have been recognized more in the past ten minutes than the past ten months.
They are playing Nights in White Satin by The Moody Blues.
So, we left LA yesterday morning. The previous day we spent dozing on the beach then had dinner at the rancid Taverna Tony’s. Flayed shrimp. The Beautiful Dane’s Swedish friend arrived and we all stayed in Malibu that night leaving early the following morning with Robby.
The Swedish friend (whose name I refuse to remember) is a clumsy idiot and I don’t expect revising my opinion any time soon. They call each other Bagel. Within ten minutes of meeting me he had knocked my phone out of my hand.
Robby and Miles returned from their wedding weekend, apparently the bride and groom washed each other’s feet in the Christian ceremony. Robby looked great. They are such sweet boys.
Very clean feet.
The Dane sings Riders in The Storm in Danish which is funny.
Picked up a huge SUV at The Dane’s insistence. Expensive, gas consuming behemoth.
We drove to Glendale Station where we picked up another Dane, a girl called Lucie who used to work in the fashion and textile department at the Met in NYC. We had a great deal to talk about.
It seemed like a good idea to fill the car with friends but as it turns out the idiot friend and the Dane have a very specific sort of relationship and Lucie is his ex gf who he took two years to get over.
I began to reassess. My farts stink.
We drove from LA to Phoenix. Dinner at The Royal Palm Resort which is incredibly beautiful. Taco Tuesday. Luxury on a budget. The Swede nipped off with his good-looking friend and bought two dresses from H and M for him and the Dane which they changed into in the parking lot.
We stopped in a gas station and a man told his friend very loudly that the dress wearing men should be arrested. As we drove deeper into Arizona the dresses caused me some panic as I really did not want either of them to get shot.
As you can tell from my voice. I am trying a little too hard.
Stayed in a small motel with wi-fi and a big black dog. The room cost us $60.
We are on our way to Marfa, Texas to the Donald Judd hangers.
If you want to see all of the videos from this trip…go to my YouTube channel.
We are off soon. Long journey ahead. They are playing Joe Jackson’s Stepping Out. The Starbucks girl is blending caramel frapaccino and I will never see Willcox Arizona ever again.
“If something pleasurable and strongly desired is prohibited, it becomes an obsession” – Kinsey
So, this will be my life for the next week or so as we aim toward NYC. Cute, sexy men. Yum, fucking yum.
The Dane and I picked up Bagel from LA and now we head east.
It’s none of my business what you think about me. Remember that. Duncan Roy…asshole.
Busy past few days. Mostly interested by the end of my novel. Eluded me until last night. Then, just as we are serving dinner (Michael B), it hit me like a rock in the head. The dignified end that had been requested of me.
I have had to really listen these past few days. Listen to somebody I have never met yet whose opinions I trust. Somebody who although several thousand miles away, is as engaged as I am with my book. It is all at once disconcerting and exhilarating.
He asked if I was wedded to the idea that this be a ‘gay’ novel. Don’t! That’s what I thought. Please don’t do this to me. Then, without a moments thought I said that I wasn’t wedded to the idea but didn’t know if I could write it any other way. He suggested that I re read a certain novel with similar themes. That I might be inspired. Well, I did and I was. He was right.
As a result of his suggestion..everything has to be re-jigged but it is smoother, less…his words…’self conscious’. That seems to be what he levels at me most often…that my writing is ‘self conscious’. Then I think to myself, you are out there helping me write a better novel. Do you want to write? No, he says. That’s not my job. I don’t have those aspirations. Like a therapist he is loathed to talk about anything else other than my work and me. He is a closed book.
He helped me with the POV (Point of View) which I had thought about a million times when making a film but never when writing prose.
So, there’s a beginning, middle and an end. That’s that.
What else? Well, I have been in the garden for hours. It looks amazing. I am either at my desk editing or I am in the garden planting and pruning. My nails are constantly black with mud. There is a trail of dirt through the house where I can’t be bothered to take off my shoes but get very grumpy if anyone else forgets to.
I went to a dinner with Tom and wished he didn’t want to sleep with 19 year old boys but wanted to sleep with me. I had sex with the deaf boy whose deafness kinda turns me on. We fucked. I wish I knew him better.
The Dane arrives this evening and we set off on our adventure. What is it with me and adventures?
Have been to therapy every day. I feel great. I feel complete. I know, God damn it, that this will pass but being active in the body and the mind seems to placate my yearning heart. However, I am acutely aware that when I feel good like this I start hankering for more. Where’s mine?
Dawn. Crows cawing. Dawn chorus.
There is so much dew it looks and smells as there has been heavy rain. I spend an hour every morning watering whatever I can from the path at the top of the house. I enjoy this.
There are so many snails.
Had lunch in Hollywood yesterday with a writer. Actually, we didn’t eat lunch. I drank some iced tea. Met the man who owns Mama Shelter in Paris. I have known him for years but I just didn’t know that he owned that hotel. You know we stayed there don’t you? This time last year.
How can I spend so much time wishing away the past?
Long conversation with a man in Sonoma who makes chicken coops. They are expensive but look great.
Jennifer bought fresh garbanzo beans which seem like they might be easy to grow in my garden. The melons are growing. The black tomatoes are doing well. Something ate the pumpkin seedlings. The lemon trees, after the wet winter, are laden with fruit. There are figs and plums and ruby grapefruit.
There are roses blooming all over the property.
What else can I tell you? I write my novel as per suggestion. It gets better and better. Perhaps I get better? It started as one thing and already, with a little intelligent coaxing, is evolving into something quite different. It started with vengeful intentions. Now it is getting funny. It started with a view to kill. Now it embraces the will to live. These are not my ideas.
I would prefer my original plan.
I have just a few weeks to finish writing The Scarlett Empress. It is by far the most commercial thing I have ever written. It is helping me though. Helping me think in a different sort of way.
The more I write the other stuff…the less I want to write this. Yet, this spurs me into action.
Three days until the ‘Big Adventure’. The Dane arrives from NYC on Sunday.
Becoming a Pilgrim. You’ll enjoy reading about it. I have had to keep the plan a big secret. I don’t want anyone ruining it.
The twins are running around the house in their boxers.
Pains in chest and arm. Balls ache once again. Nasty cough.