Categories
Love This…
Month: June 2011
Categories
Brothers and Sisters
Yesterday we went for a long hike though the Malibu Canyon State Park.
Beautiful wild flowers. The Little Dog in 7th heaven. Drove home via the Malibu Farmers Market and prepared fresh chard for dinner. Bought delicious goats cheese flavoured with lavender. Made dinner for three of us then slept FITFULLY as the dog was up and down the stairs all night barking at wildlife in the garden.
Saw Chris Cortazzo the local, gay celebrity realtor wearing jeans that were far too tight for a man of his shape and disposition.
Did you know that I am the eldest of 11 (maybe 12) children shared between my Mother who had my half brothers Stuart and Martin and my errant father Kuros Khazaei who had 8 or 9 further half brothers and sisters with 4 or 5 other women depending on which story you believe.
I have met all of my half siblings except Jonathon (no contact) and Natalie who I have spoken to on the telephone. So, here goes, here are the rest of my half blood brothers and sisters born in wedlock/legitimately by my father: Dominic, Michael, Natalie, Jessica, James, Rebecca and Jonathon Khazaei. Illegitimately by my father Karen and there maybe another called Roya…but this might be a paternal myth. Like the diamond heist. Can anyone shed any light on that? Or that the Kray twins threw him out of a window? Or that he carried a tape recorder everywhere with him?
That’s all there is to tell you about them. Just wanted you to know. Some of you think I am an only child.
The beautiful Dane arrives from NYC next Sunday and a couple of days later we will head off on our ‘Great Adventure!’ all of which we will document here and on YouTube. Obviously it was at about this time last year that The Penguin and I went to France. I’ve been reading over my rather romanticized blogged version of those weeks.
My anger refreshed. Remember, the night I arrived in NYC he was already (I later discovered) seeing someone else in a ‘non exclusive relationship’ and decided to fetch his stash of meth from under his bed and snort it in front of me. I feel so angry writing this. That he would take such a risk with my sobriety.
By the time we left for Paris he had no respect or love or care for me what so ever. He just wanted the free ride.
Whilst we were in Europe he was hooking up with other men when ever he could, using internet pornography, skyping with his ‘non-exclusive’ boy friend and lying to me every single day.
I think of those weeks in Europe and my heart sinks. Mind you, how must his ex girl friend feel? That on every vacation they ever took together during their 7 years he would do exactly the same. Hooking up with random strangers in bathrooms then slipping into bed with her. Her sucking a cock that had just been up a strangers ass.
I have just been writing the final pages of my novel so this revisited fury has some provenance.
As for the novel? Anything I put my mind to…my heart into…what seems for others a long and painful process has become quite effortless.
I am now working with a book editor from the not so niche publisher. It is most often described in the press as a ‘leading independent publisher’. The time difference means that notes were waiting for me this morning when I woke up. My first notes. I was so excited I almost couldn’t look at them.
Wow, this editor thang is a revelation.
Working with someone who helps shape, define and redefine the work I am doing. Helping me be less self-conscious.
As for the imprint by whom I will be published..their rosta of edgy authors is very impressive indeed.
I just heard that Laura Ziskin died of cancer yesterday. Now I feel terrible. She was a great friend of The Penguin. I’m so sorry.
Yesterday I wandered the garden taking pictures. Here are some of them:
My name is Duncan and I am a sex addict.
The first time I qualified as a sex addict…I felt like shit. Attended by my ugly sisters: Shame and Fear, I sat miserably in my first SAA meeting waiting for the 60 minute nightmare to end.
Imagine what it must feel like to announce to the whole world that your sex conduct has gotten the better of you.
Today Anthony Weiner is shamefully headed for Lord knows where to get ‘treatment’. Will that ‘treatment’ be for depression, intriguing, internet pornography or compulsive/chronic masturbation?
Is Anthony Weiner a sex addict?
My fellow sex addict friends think he is. I am not so sure. Not sure until he is sure.
It is not up to me or anyone else to diagnose his problem, it is up to him. We live in prescriptive times. It is certainly not up to my sex rehab therapist Drew Pinsky and ‘experts’ like him who will no doubt castigate poor Weiner dog for his unmanageable sexting/twittering if he hasn’t done so already.
If I were Anthony Weiner I would be feverishly trying to plug the broken sewer that is currently flushing away his political credibility, his relationship with his heavily pregnant wife and his healthy 61% majority. I too would be heading for a spell in a ‘therapeutic facility’. Treatment might just mean a little time away from the media incubus that presently seeks to impregnate Weiner with all the evil of the modern world.
What the fuck do we expect of our elected representatives? That they are no longer entitled to the shortcomings we all share?
Why should congressmen have such unrealistic expectations heaped upon them?
Anthony Weiner has not broken any law. Not yet. He allegedly chatted innocently with a 17 year old girl. What ever improper thoughts he may have had he did not act upon them. This isn’t, as the media are describing, a ‘SEX SCANDAL!’ because there isn’t any sex.
This might be a Jerk-Off Scandal! Ostensibly an Intrigue Scandal! Allegedly a Bare Chest Scandal! At the very worst a Picture of a Hard Penis on a Cell Phone Scandal!
Monday update: President Obama describes the Weiner sex scandal as a ‘distraction’. Frankly, I am more distracted by the dodgy shenanigans of the laconic Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas. The lies, ethical violations and conflicts of interest that, ironically, Weiner was hoping to expose.
Weiner, unlike Thomas, is no crook.
Nancy Pelosi is demanding Weiner’s resignation when others in Congress have done far worse with real people rather than fantasy folk on the internet.
Internet addiction in all its very many forms is a world-wide epidemic, it affects millions upon millions of men.
Ordinary men, who at this very moment, are ensconced in private places away from their friends and family compulsively exploring the darker side of the internet: in ‘the zone’ as we say in Sex Addicts Anonymous.
There may be minor consequences for those who get caught…unless, of course, their internet use is deemed illegal or so sustained that they have scabs on their penises or they get violent if taken away from the intensity of the screen. Most relevantly…if their careers are compromised…jeapodised…lost.
Men take risks that seem entirely manageable until they bust their nut…then they can slink away from their screen to clean themselves up and rejoin humanity. Real people versus the fantasy that takes them away from the stresses of an ordinary world.
A toxic, ritualized compulsion driving the hapless clicker further from wife and children to unimagined places that only the internet can reveal.
Let us not forget Voltaire’s observation that ‘Illusion is the first of all pleasures’.
I have a huge amount of compassion for Weiner. He has been caught sending lewd pictures of himself to strangers. His ‘perversion’ is undoubtedly a product of the modern age. An age where I too, posting this very blog, live in a world of imaginary readers, little consequence and sexual hopelessness.
Sometime in the near future a contrite Weiner will stand before the press like Tiger Woods before him and admit his powerlessness. He will, unwittingly, confess for us all. For the shared sins of viral infidelity, cheating on his wife with the faceless, nameless internet that seems so benign just before ejaculation.
Categories
Pursuit of Beauty
Stayed over at the Lake House. Woke early. Made coffee. Fed Max.
Two sets of novel notes arrived yesterday…both were extremely promising. One from the publisher in London and the other from my friend who teaches at NYU. Very positive. I am still undecided about the end. Wish I could write about it without spoiling it. Something good is finally emerging from my time with him.
That pustulent, suppurating, festering, odious, limited…ugly little man.
Something beautiful is being born. From out of the shadows I will make something glorious! Eh up lad. Where there’s muck there’s brass.
Today I am in pursuit of beauty! In all its many forms. A row of freshly planted melons. A perfect cup of tea. A beautiful penis.
I have a friend on FB who takes the most beautiful photographs and yesterday he shared a picture of Thomas Heatherwick‘s Beach Cafe at dusk. Too perfect. This man Heatherwick is a genius. This is exactly what Whitstable needs. A fantastically bold architectural something.
I met a boy yesterday. A brief assignation with a 22-year-old from Maryland. A hotel room in Santa Monica. He was on vacation with his parents. He was my height, muscular, masculine. He had the most enormous penis. Incredible shape, thick. He wanted to ‘role play‘ but I refused. He was deaf. I did not want to know his name.
Robby waited outside until we had finished.
After I left the beautiful boy we headed to Home Depot where we bought plants.
Spent the rest of the day planting neat rows of cantaloupe, honeydew and water melons..we planted far too many. We also planted far too many ‘heirloom’ tomatoes. There are other bits and pieces in the raised beds in front of the house. Squash, pumpkin etc.
I am perplexed. There is a bare patch of land where the huge Bougainvillea used to be. Needs filling. Needs something. What?
We weeded and watered and dug compost into the dry earth. We trimmed the grape vines. The sun began to set.
Joined the Piettes at The Malibu Community theatre for Hannah’s performance of Tweedle Dee in Alice in Wonderland. The play was great fun. The girl who played The Mad Hatter (Sage?) was not only very beautiful but incredibly talented. Ate pizza during the interval.
We stayed until 10pm. Hopped straight into bed when I got home.
Tom suggested that I reprise my stage version of The Baron in The Trees.
Related articles
- Spun (Coriolis) by Thomas Heatherwick (design-milk.com)
- Building the Seed Cathedral: Thomas Heatherwick on TED.com (ted.com)
Categories
Waiting To Be Dead
The day passed slowly and uneventfully.
I watered the garden. “Why don’t you have an automated system for that?” I hear you say. Well, I do. But…a bit like our mad bad Prince of Wales I like watering the plants individually and chatting with each of them. The citrus trees especially respond to gentle coaxing.
There is something charming and rather annoying about the ‘we’ pathology of twins. We are with each other a little too much. Consequently, when we left for Lake Malibou, I wasn’t in the best of moods.
We all helped Jennifer with her Out of The Box Wednesday pack then Miles set off with the delivery.
Robby and I drove into Hollywood. I wanted to stop in at Fresh and Easy where I buy English staples. Tea, bacon, marmalade etc. I can’t do with out them. We, me and the Little Dog, sat in the ugly court-yard outside the supermarket drinking coffee waiting for Robby watching lithe men heading for 24 hour fitness.
A woman from Chicago, who had arrived in Hollywood two nights previously, looked down at the dog and said, “There’s a little person trapped in there.” She fed him chicken breast. “This has got to last me two days.” She told the Little Dog. She was plump, dyed black hair and red lips. She told me that she was here in Hollywood to pitch reality TV ideas to…God know who. She was going to pay to pitch her ‘concepts’.
I was overcome with pity for her. She told me a couple of ‘ideas’ she had thought of pitching.
It occurred to me that for forty years not one original thought had been formed in that sappy brain.
I went for a walk.
Hollywood is grimy. There is nothing of any beauty to look at…to be inspired by. I yearn for my garden.
Robby picked me up after an hour in the gym. We had planned on going to an art/film/glamour party in Beverly Hills but I was tired and irritable so we drove home.
Well, we drove back to Malibou Lake and I helped Jason cook dinner for the children. After dinner, as the children were going to bed, I sat at their Steinway and tried playing the piano. I had not played for thirty years. I was shocked by how clumsy my fingers were. No longer able to slide effortlessly over the keys. I began to sweat. Evidence of my old age. Evidence of my own mortality. It was so frustrating! My left hand refused to even practice the scales in unison with the right.
I lay in bed last night thinking too much. Waiting to be dead.
Not so fast Batman!
Next week I set off on my ‘great adventure’ culminating in the birthday hootenanny. There are people flying from all sorts of wonderful places to help me celebrate my 50th Birthday…before I am not. I am stunned that so many old friends even exist for me let alone want to jump on a plane and be with me. You know, this is what I should have done last year…but last year I was with him in the back parlor of Wheelers.
Last year there was no room for anyone else. WTF?
Categories
Eva Longoria
It was a wonderful day yesterday.
Had lunch with Jon in West Hollywood. Delicious chicken and polenta at Hedley’s. Great to see him. We hadn’t seen each other for weeks and had loads to catch up on. He is in very good spirits. Business is booming for purveyors of luxury furniture so he is doing very well.
Robby picked me up and we sat in the sunny Chateau Marmont garden and drank iced tea. Eva Longoria sat next to us.
Met Ryan F and his super sexy new girlfriend Kirsty Mitchell who was once Miss Scotland but is now a very bankable young actress. She worked with my old friend Billy MacKinnon in his and his brother’s film Small Faces.
We then headed into the hills under the Hollywood Sign where we met Tom D who very kindly let Robby try on the Wolverine talons used in X Men 1.
Had dinner at The Tasting Kitchen in Venice with Anna. Wonderful food. I had pork…again with polenta and baked cherries. Dropped into Gjelina to congratulate owner for sticking to his guns and not let Gordon Ramsey and ‘Lady’ Victoria Beckham bully them into making menu substitutions.
Arrived home late and fell into bed exhausted. Woke at 5am and watered the garden. My current obsession.
I had no idea yesterday was Monday. That’s embarrassing isn’t it? I genuinely thought it was Sunday.
Robby and I kayaked for a mile or so with the Little Dog. It was beautiful. From the Piette’s Malibou Lake, up an unnamed tributary. Our navigational skills left a little to be desired but we had a great time. It was beautiful paddling under the weeping willow to the Paramount Ranch and back again.
The rest of the day I hung out with the twins. Trying to finish my novel. Jennifer’s mother kept trying to talk to me as I was writing.
Max came home from school. The previous day three squad cars came to see him after he smashed the stained glass window in their front door. When the police arrived he escaped on a boat across the lake. My kind of adolescent.
He took the boat, hitched a ride to the local CVS where he bought himself a sleeping bag thinking he could sleep rough. Sadly, for him, it began to rain so he called his parents and they came and scooped him up.
Rather exciting adventure for a 13-year-old boy? A bit distressing for the parents but I rather like watching the adventure he is having. It reminds me of my own. I KNOW that I shouldn’t encourage him. I really hope that he comes live with me in September.
Later the twins and I went to Trader Joes where mama bear bought his lil family food for the week. Everybody thinks that the boys are my sons. Funny.
I was meant to go into Venice for dinner but stayed at home instead. I wanted to sit on my own and watch HGTV. I had spent most of the day murdering three people in my novel so I was exhausted.
Cary Fukunaga and Michelle Williams are dating. Wow, isn’t that odd? My friend Heath’s ex and the director the Penguin and I hung out with last summer. Perfect match I think.
A couple of pics from the w/end:
For those of you who have this blog emailed to you daily I just want to remind you that after I post my blog I usually spend an hour or so editing it and making additions. Just to let you know. You may be missing essential details. Ha!
It is raining today. Can you believe it?
Yesterday I pickled some beetroot. I cleaned out the drain at the back of the house. I spent another day happily in the garden…weeding. Moving pots of rare shrubs. The strawberries are producing. Delicious. Pottering, just like my maternal grandfather. Picking at weeds amongst the cacti. I like that I might be like him as I get older. For all of his faults he was a good man. From what I can remember.
Perhaps my Mother might remember him differently.
He was useless with money, a real dreamer. I think it drove my Grandmother to distraction. He had asthma and died during an asthma attack beside her in bed. A terrible way to die. Choking to death. She never really recovered. Catholicism unable to calm her. She wasn’t a very happy woman.
I remember visiting my Grandfather in hospital, he was sitting outside in the sun surrounded by huge apricot coloured roses.
There was also a sick clown from Billy Smart’s Circus. He was sewing diamonte buttons onto a silk costume. The clown told me that he would be on television the following Christmas. I held onto that memory for six months. My parents hated watching the circus on TV but I insisted. I didn’t see the clown. He must have died…or lied…or both.
The clown gave me some spare diamonte, I still have them.
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=62917
Listening to David Bowie. The boys are subdued. There is a huge cloud hanging over the canyon. The weather is most peculiar.
Last night Tom and Anna came to dinner. We grilled chicken, sautéed kale with garlic and I made a huge salad with Out of The Box produce. Tiny new red potatoes, green beans, free range eggs, olives, a tiny gem lettuce, golden beets. Delicious.
It was a chilly evening so we built a huge fire and gossiped. I felt oddly insecure knowing that Tom was so incredibly successful. I was tongue-tied and felt a bit foolish. For someone who has done so well he is just about the most humble person I have ever met.
Tom brought chicken, Anna brought a huge fruit salad and ice cream.
Finally, a friend of mine called to tell me how much I have changed these past few weeks.
“It’s like being with a different person.” She said.
It’s true. Without the demon penguin possessing me I am just my happily old self. Nothing to prove. I must just tell you…I forgot to mention it before: I had a treatment from a Dutch friend of Jennifer’s. She did this deep tissue massage/healing and made a rasping sound every time she touched me. It was amazing. She said that I was so full of poison she began coughing. Hacking.
The combination of her treatment (I was skeptical) and actually seeing him has done the trick.
Only now when I am out of it I can see clearly just how in my addiction I was. The demon drink, the demon opiate, the demon corn chip, the demon penguin.
It’s all the same.
Categories
$5 Walking Fee
- Gabe Paradise Cove
“Don’t pester old film makers about your film making. I don’t care about your process, your poverty or your inertia. All I care about is that you make a film. Just do it and make it good.” Duncan Roy June 2011
So, here I am again. Good morning hipsters! I spent an hour in the garden at 7am weeding and watering. It looks just dandy. Then I came in and within two minutes I had broken a sugar bowl, a cafetière and jammed my fingers into a draw.
I AM ONE CLUMSY QUEEN.
Yesterday Gabe and I went to Paradise Cove Beach Cafe on the PCH for lunch. We were charged $5 each for walking from the PCH where we parked into the restaurant rather than paying $3 to use their car park. I thought they were kidding. A $5 ‘walking fee’? Rip Off USA. It made me so mad. Gabe just looked bemused as I let the manager have two barrels of shit. In turn the manager just looked at the crazy man and rolled over like a puppy.
He offered us a beach side table, a waitress with psychiatric training and a refund.
A $5 walking fee? How can they get away with that shit?
We ate their mediocre ribs, drank their weak tea, sat on their grubby beach. Thankfully we sat next to an attractive married couple from Hollywood who really were worth meeting. He sells sex toys on-line. They were like a gay couple. Hot tub parties and three ways. I really liked them. She said that when they have a baby they might calm down a bit.
Gabe sat on my lap and held my hand, massaged my fingers. It was so sweet. We were the only gays on the beach. The out of towners looked at us suspiciously. Yet again I felt uncomfortable. Fuck! When I was with the Penguin/Matt/Jamie I didn’t care. Because, I suppose, when I was with them I didn’t care what other people thought. It was just us…and as I have said before: I would have defended my love with my life.
After lunch we investigated the pier, the peace paddle (some hippy event) we talked for ages to a lady who had worked in India on an ashram who now sells South Indian food from a food truck. She told us dolefully how the city of LA is targeting the food truck community (there are 500 of them) with all sorts of horrible rules. What ever happened to American innovation being encouraged and celebrated?
(Even the sex toy guy is despondent about how small businesses are treated. He is moving his cash to Brazil.)
Food trucks are a recessionary necessity. A perfect response.
The previous day Anna and I had been on Abbot Kinney. The first Friday of every month the streets has a kind of street party. The galleries open late and every thirty feet there is a food truck. It was so much fun. We bumped into Meg Ryan and her friend Laura Dern.
Anyway, we ate all sorts. We struggled through the crowds. Some man who thought he knew me. Said, “Hey! How are you?” I let him think he knew me. At the end of the conversation he realised who I was and the meeting came to an abrupt ending. This happened in Ojai too. It seems to happen more and more.
Last night I was talking to a young film maker and gave him the advice quoted at the top of the page. Very Ayn Rand of me.
Today I am hiking with Tom. Gabe is coming over to relax. Miles has recovered from his binge. Cooking dinner for us all tonight.
I feel rather wonderful. Having fun. At peace.
Categories
Sometimes…
I look at my blog site stats. A bunch of fluctuating numbers posted throughout the day behind the scenes of this blog. I used to be mesmerised by these stats. Especially when thousands of people read the blog every day. Now, those numbers have dwindled.
I could do more to boost my numbers but choose not to.
Each morning I get up and write everything that is on my mind. It isn’t particularly interesting to most people what happens to a man living on both coasts of the USA. Living on a small stipend delivered monthly from various investments made many years ago. Living with a small dog and a pair of beautiful twins. Living with bi-polarity. Living in his dreams.
Yet, every morning I feel compelled to write my life for you to read. I try not to boast, I try not to be too self piteous. I try to tell it as it is. Sometimes I am just talking to myself, sometimes I am talking to my Mother. Mostly I am just talking. Last year I seemed to be engaged in a one way conversation with him.
As the days pass between who I was and who I am, the years pass between what I thought I wanted and what I actually achieved, the decades between an impetuous youth and a contemplative old age. I become less frightened, more at peace.
I know that my writing about him has chased many of my regular readers away. I worked out that terrible obsession here on this blog. Do I regret writing it? What sort of diary would this be if I hadn’t written it? What sort of man would I have been if I sat here suffering and just candy coated what was the most bitter of all pills?
Of course I am capable of telling you lies but for the most part I get up and tell you whatever truth is presently haunting me. I have not written things and regretted it. When I was with him I often excluded him from the narrative and as a consequence the most beautiful moments we shared have been lost. Making love in the wood. I didn’t write about that when it happened and now it is as if it never happened. Writing retrospectively about those moments somehow devalues them.
I know that you hate me writing about him but he has been on my mind. When I stop feeling angry, foolish, sad…I still find myself wanting the best for him. Wishing him well. Hoping that he resolved his stuff with her. Praying that he now has the gay life he wanted so badly.
After all is said and done…I loved him. For good or for bad.
I wish that I did not now have to see him in September.
At this moment I have climbed fully out of the straight jacket I designed for myself. Life has become simple and manageable once again. My head no longer in two time zones. No more longing, fantasy, false hope.
I listened to the singer Adele talking about how her first album was crafted after a nasty break up. How she punched her ex bf in the face then wrote her album. This is what artists do. Copper’s Bottom, the play I showed at Sadler’s Wells in my mid twenties was all about a love affair I had with a policeman. The deep scars it left in me. This is what artists do. We craft something from our own experiences, we do not disguise our vulnerabilities, our history. I cannot deliberately disfigure the past.
When I was nominated for the BAFTA I finally had proof of sorts that being true to oneself and the stories we tell can reach much further than those of us who hide away. I have hidden away for most of this year. Licking my wounds behind my site stats, my failed love affair.
If I am to remain credible I must do what I do best: create. Wasting the rest of my life hankering after what could have been is just plain stupid. Whilst many of the folk I grew up with are considering retirement I must do what thousands of artists before me have done and just get on with it. Do the work.
Regardless of how many people are watching.
This morning I have watered the garden. Listened to the birds. Made strong coffee.
Miles is vomiting in the bathroom. He drank too much last night at the Whale Wars premiere. He is missing his girlfriend who has moved to the mid-west. Watching him struggle somehow helps me. I have no idea why.
“I’ve never been this hung over.” He moans.
I don’t have ANY sympathy for people who drink too much.
Now, what next? Apparently the niche publisher is not so niche and the nice woman there has already read my book and wants to talk further. I wonder what that means?
I put my film on ice but am ready to warm it up. I am meeting producers this Sunday. Whilst I was in New York I met another producer.
I seem to be getting back into that grove.
PS I got a 4k reduction on my property tax..which is now only 13k a year. Hurrah!