Month: February 2012

Categories
Gay Hollywood

Private

For some reason best known to WordPress my entire private collection of blogs (over 350) suddenly became readable.  Past blogs that had been hidden from view.

I am now undoing what was done.  Annoying.

Yesterday was altogether the most satisfying day I have had for a long, long time.

Early mornings with the boys, lunch in Hollywood, afternoon with lawyers (more will be revealed at a later date) and finally a spectacular party in the hills.  A gay party, you know the kind…the sort that usually terrifies me…but on this occasion was great fun.

It was a cold night in LA and I was the only one wearing a coat.  The first time I have been appropriately dressed at that house.

I felt, yet again, as if I had left that judgmental Duncan back in the jail so was free to enjoy the party.  This has been a long time coming, this freedom.  A delightful French actor to sit with.  Many people told me how sorry they were that I had been in jail, that it seemed so wrong.

I was surprised by the reaction.  Part of my fear of going there was the fantasy I had that people disapproved…in fact, the opposite was true.

I hadn’t realized that people cared as much as they do.  Why is that so hard for me to believe?

Let me get back to privatizing my blog.

Categories
Gay

Let’s Make A Movie

Sat at home with the twins watching the Oscar coverage.  It was wonderful to see The Artist grab all of the best awards.  It was wonderful watching Plummer accept his Oscar with such elegance and dignity.

It was even more moving to see that little Producer of The Artist grab the Oscar for the best film.  That lone French Producer fit himself into the history of Motion Pictures, nodding to his predecessors…his heroes.

Of course I sat there and wondered if I would ever make another movie.  There is nothing stopping me…except me. The script I sent out just before I was arrested had some great feed back.  I reread it yesterday afternoon.  It has to be sharpened…but it’s good.  The stage play comes first, and the documentary…and the trial.

Life is filling up!  It’s not ending!  It’s just beginning.

I’ve been watching Robby grow up.  Watching him inhabit his new skin.  I’ve been thinking about him and you know who…but not obsessively.  Trying to work out what went wrong, why I reacted so badly and for so long.  You know, it’s obvious that I am a very bad gay.  I don’t fit it.  I don’t like them and they don’t like me.  God, I really tried.  I tried being gay here in LA, in NYC, I tried being in gay AA.  What a waste of time.

So, I wondered what it was that JB had that I didn’t have, that Robby has that I don’t have.  Well, they just seemed to fit in effortlessly.  JB met people and had dinner with them, sex with them, he is a likable fellow, largely uncomplicated (on the surface), doesn’t want to cause trouble. I am none of those things.  He fitted in immediately, he just did.  And when he fitted in I had no place in his life, there was no room for a misfit like me.

So it is with Robby as he makes his way, meeting people this unwitting Malibu dad doesn’t think appropriate for him…but that boy has to make his own mistakes and I am not his dad.  I am here to help, not to judge.

Perhaps I am indeed how JB described me.  Perhaps his assessment was just too accurate.  He will make some man so incredibly happy!  They both will.

Hey!  I’ve seen you smiling, it’s a lovely picture.  You look so happy, happier than when I knew you darling.  Of course, you were tormented then.  Tormented by guilt, by indecision…now look at you, staring into the camera.  Do you love him?  I hope you do.

You know, don’t you, that we would never have met as out gay men.   I would have passed you by and you would have thought me absurd.  Just like they do.  I know that I’m not meant to think about you…but I do!  I think hopeful thoughts.  I know that you’ll be happy.  Forever.  I am so relieved that the fury is over.

You don’t need to be scared of me darling.  I am fighting bigger battles.  Fighting for others.

Did I ever tell you that I was sorry?  Perhaps I didn’t mean it back then.  Just hollow words.

It must have been very scary for you all.  It was scary for me.  Well, it’s all over now.  All over.

Categories
Hollywood

Oscar Weekend

The week before The Oscars can be a great deal of fun.

One really doesn’t expect to pay for anything to eat as one can survive on huge amount of free food given away (largely wasted) at various events all over town: breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Yesterday was no exception.

I have been preoccupied with my legal situation so I hadn’t really put much effort into RSVPing or bothering to find parties etc.

Do you know who Deepak Varma is?  He played Sanjay on Eastenders, a British soap.  He’s an old friend from London and we always have great fun whenever he arrives in LA.  He has found success at home producing and writing theatre, making movies and getting married.

Filling his life with exciting possibilities.

He’s also working with disgraced ex Prime Minister Tony Blair and Lord Putnam on a project Deepak initiated called Faith Shorts.

Faith Shorts is a global film competition launched by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation that provides young people with the opportunity to express their faith through film.  

Anyway, he drove to Malibu yesterday for breakfast, primarily to discuss the play I’m writing about The Men’s County Jail.

You know…I haven’t even bothered to think about theatre for years, so it was really thrilling to sit with him and brainstorm.  I ‘d forgotten what it was to sit with anyone and act out an entire play and for them to react so positively.  How this meeting with Deepak contrasted with my meeting a film producer the day before.  Lackluster, bored, unfocused.  All the time I sat with the film guy my mind was elsewhere.

I just don’t have the energy to think about film.

After our long, creative breakfast that ran into an equally productive lunch we pulled on our glad rags and headed over to Hancock Park for the first of that afternoons/evenings pre-Oscar events.

The British Consul-General 

Dame Barbara Hay 

requests the pleasure of your company 

at a cocktail reception 

celebrating the British Oscar® nominees 

of the 2012 Academy Awards® 

The residence of the British Consul-General on June Street was the temporary home of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge during their recent sojourn in Los Angeles.  It is a large, Spanish revival affair, moorish details, manicured lawns, heated pool and art from the national collection hung randomly around the sparsely decorated interior.

Two rather lovely Howard Hodgkins hung in the drawing-room.

The food was British: Yorkshire pudding and beef pieces with horseradish cream etc.

There were rickety tables set up with fancy British cheeses and chocolate.  The garden had been lit with red white and blue lamps.  Projected on the wall were the words GREAT and in a smaller font the word Britain.  Deepak and I wandered around chatting with old friends, Stephen Daldry and his wife Lucy Sexton arrived with their 8-year-old daughter who was ‘cold and bored’.

I told them that I had been in jail. In fact, I told many people I had been in jail.

What do you expect?

I told Jeremy Hunt, The Secretary of State that I had been in jail.  I told Dame Barbara Hay that I had been in jail.  I told her how impossible it had been to reach the consulate.  She handed me her card and told me to call and share my experience.

I didn’t tell Gary Oldman I had been in jail.  I didn’t tell Julia Ormond.  I didn’t tell Victoria Beckham (sans David).  I didn’t tell Christopher Plummer I had been in jail. I didn’t tell the man who runs Virgin Galactic.  I didn’t tell the Christian intern working for the British Consulate.

Victoria didn’t look very happy.  She posed for the cameras, this odd long pose, contorting her body, her hand on her hip, her face angled toward the floor, her eyes looking upward toward the camera.

Jeremy Hunt gave a weak speech about his role as minister for culture and how important it was and (randomly) how the film Philadelphia had altered perceptions about HIV and AIDS.  He obviously knew nothing about the film industry.  He was, however, ‘very excited’ to tell us all about The Queen’s Jubilee and how it was only the second time in British history that a British Monarch had sat on the throne for 60 years.

He was incidentally ‘very excited’ about The Olympic Games.

The Brits who lived here suddenly remembered why they live here when he started waxing about The Monarchy.

Deepak collared Hunt after the speech and demanded to know why the same people who administered the lottery funding at The Film Council now administered the funds at the BFI?   He had rehearsed replies for Deepak.  He told us that the Brits made too many ‘art films’.  So, we talked about arts funding in the UK.

I reminded him that the hit show Warhorse would never have seen the light of day if hadn’t been for the subsidized arts.  He said, “That’s a very good example.” Fearing we were being too confrontational his American PR attempted to drag him away.  My hand on his shoulder, I told her that we were the people who elected Jeremy Hunt and paid his wages.   He looked perplexed.

Stopped in at Starbucks to meet a beautiful Brazilian boy I had met online.  More of that later.

The Warner party was fun.  Stephen Daldry and Lucy, Max von Sydow, Leonardo DiCaprio, delicious food.

Jeff Robinov (President of Warner Brothers Pictures) said, “What were you doing in jail?”  So I told the story again.  He behaved like he already knew me, then I realized that I had met him with Sharon yonks ago.  When I told Stephen Daldry more about the last few months of incarceration he looked sort of dumbfounded.

The Brazilian joined us after we left Warner.  He kissed me outside Serra Towers.

I was too exhausted to schlep over to the Ari Emmanuel’s party.  So we drove home with the Little Dog on my lap… replete.

Categories
prison

Willing and Able

Since I was released from The Men‘s Country Jail earlier this month I have noticed changes, changes in myself, changes in others.  Even though I have been occasionally combative and resolute when writing here…this may not be the whole story.

The story is revealing itself, the narrative unfolding in ways I did not expect.

There was an occasion in the jail when, after I heard that the immigration lawyers I hired previous to the wonderful Esperanza Immigrants Rights Project had fucked up.  I felt really desperate and powerless.  Carlton, the 24-year-old House Mouse. sat on my bunk and, seeing that I was beginning to flounder, took me in hand and firmly reminded me that The Country Jail was no place for desperation.  He reminded me that if I gave into weakness I would either go mad or die.

He said, “There are too many personalities in here.”  I knew what he meant.  I had lived in Los Angeles for a long, long time.

The other inmates understood that I had a greater purpose for being there and yesterday that purpose became apparent.

Crawling back into life has been challenging.  I feel tender, as if my whole body is bruised. I feel my age.  I am quieter, less prone to irritation, grateful for everything, trying to be kinder.  Becoming vulnerable for all to see, not just those who are the closest to me…everyone.

I had lunch at SH the day before yesterday, saw friends from London who are here for Oscar week.  I saw local friends who knew what had happened but were either too polite or worried to ask details.  If they asked where I had been I blurted out, “I’ve been in jail for three months.”  Then I tell them to read the piece in The Independent.

I sat down with those who needed to know and explained the whole story.

I am not spending every day on the mountain, I am making the effort to live.  I am not making the same mistakes.

Last night we went to a charitable art event in Beverly Hills.  I bumped into Paul Haggis, explained where I had been, the experience of jail.  I told him about Carlton and the men I’d met there.  I’ve no idea why, perhaps because he is a director, I told him things I had not previously mentioned. I painted a more complete picture.

Paul said, “There must have been a reason.”

My jail friend Steve reminded me daily that I was in jail for a purpose, he knew that someone like me doesn’t end up in a place like that without a reason.  That reason is being made clear both on a micro and macro level.

Steve told me, “You can help these people.”  So, it looks like I may very well be able to help.

That purpose will be made clear to you soon.

When I have my ducks in a row.

What is it to be vulnerable, kinder?  What will I lose?  What will I gain?

The boys are here, living here.  Three of them, taking their responsibilities seriously.  Occasionally they clear up without being asked.  Yet, their mess that would have previously pissed me off, scarcely affects me.  Who cares if there are socks all over the place, piles of towels in the bathroom?

What does that matter when I am so grateful they are here.

The life I lived before I was arrested seems like another time, like another place, like a different me.  I am wondering who he was, what interested him, what in hells name I was doing?

I was wondering how he could have got himself into such a mess?  Then I remembered that I left that Duncan back in the jail, the Duncan who was scared of being seen, the Duncan that made unhealthy choices, the Duncan who knew Jake.

When I write about death and suicide, I am really trying to articulate what it is to cast off something already dead. I am not interested in dying.  I have things, suddenly and without warning, that need to be achieved.  Things that before I was arrested never occurred to me.

Am I killing that part of myself that has bedeviled me for so many years?  Can you understand that?  Can you see what I’m talking about now?

Don’t fret my darling friends.  I am emerging from this experience with a different set of principals, new standards of living and unusual priorities.

What was previously important is now worthless.  Clothes, possessions, jewelry, power and prestige.

In jail I learned to get used to the idea of nothing and in nothing I found something I never guessed existed: that very thing after which I had been hankering a whole lifetime.

In nothing I found a peace of mind.

Categories
Health

AA

This morning, Mel picked me up from the mountain at 6.30 am.   He drives a large, white Hummer, his dog and my dog are best friends.  They are a similar size and their fur is the same colour.

I left a young black internet date in my bed and the twins slumbering downstairs.  I wore the Martin Margiela sunglasses Joan bought for me last year and I only removed them when Mel dropped me off 6 hours later.

The last AA meeting I attended was held in the chapel in The Men’s County Jail.  The speakers valiantly trying to spread the word whilst 400 tranny hookers caught up on the ‘T’ (gossip).  I sat listening to them that Wednesday evening wondering if I would ever go back to AA, whether I would even remain soba when I eventually left the jail.

Last night I poured myself a glass of red wine.  I didn’t drink it.  I looked at it in the 17C crystal glass, I sniffed it occasionally but I didn’t have the guts to drink it. Just like I have not had the guts to kill myself, even though some of you seem like you’re waiting for me to do so.

Taking a drink is like the first step toward a painful death.  Those of you who have not drunk for some time know what I mean.

Perhaps death is the solution?  That’s what they promise in the preamble of Narcotics Anonymous:  Jails, Institutions, Death.

I have experienced the first two, now I wait patiently for the third.

AA.  I committed to it so many years ago. I was so damned willing, so entranced, so desperate.  Now, I loathe it.  I sat there this morning wishing I was drunk.  My lips stained with red wine…preferably a rich Multipulciano.  That twisted smile I smiled when I was drunk.  Do any of you old friends remember that?  That strange half-smile?

I sat there listening to their white, middle-aged, bourgeois stories, stories of their mediocre triumphs and their miserable disasters.  Their engagements, their dying wives, their wayward medicated children…reassuring us that they were nothing without AA.

The most bumptious of them all flaying himself before us, describing himself as an arrogant scoundrel.  His tearful confession masquerading as humility.   Knowing, of course, that his well rehearsed speech would garner rave reviews from his adoring fans.  He had, after all, relapsed publicly, he had gotten back on the wagon with the rest of us (even though he had deceived us) he reassured his brethren that ‘we do not shoot our wounded’.

When it was my turn to speak I felt that crooked smile on my lips.  As if I were drunk.  As if I had already taken the first sip.

They knew where I had been.  They looked down their manufactured noses at the hopeless alcoholic who could not stay on the straight and narrow.  The ‘arrogant scoundrel’ looked about him at his friends, scoffing, expecting me to prostrate myself before them…begging forgiveness.

Instead, I told them about the tranny hookers, I told them that I had been in resentment since Jake revealed himself.  I let them know that the cloud of resentment, loathing, hatred had thickened so it blocked out the sun.  I reminded them that, for the longest time, I had forgotten what it felt like to live in the light.  I told them to re-read steps four and five and let me be a lesson to them all.  Let my story remind them what it looks like when resentment smothers a recovering alcoholic like wisteria a stone house.

I told them that going to jail had been the best thing for me and they nodded and agreed but they had no idea what they were agreeing to.

After I spoke, others with similar ailments, similar pathologies felt able to share.  They thanked me, they said that there was a fine line between sobriety and insanity.  They reminded the others just how many of us kill ourselves after many years of sobriety.  The darkness in men’s souls.

I was envious of those who had killed themselves.  I have wanted to be dead for the longest time.  I know what some of you will say…like Chris in Sydney and those of you who would prefer it…you would tell me to hurry on and do it.  You would say, go on kill yourself, good riddance to you Duncan Roy.

But when the time comes and I hold the pills in my hand like a fist of squirming bugs…something stops me.  Something tells me that just one more day and the pain of losing the man/dog/home you love might just diminish.

I may very well have ended my relationship with AA.

My great friend John Adler, my sponsor these past few years in AA and SAA abandoned me a few weeks after I was locked up.  Even though his own sponsor is a child molester and child pornographer, even though his wife begged me to get her a club membership, apparently I am a danger to him and his family.

It was a betrayal that I never thought I would have to endure, it was the one and only time I cried in the jail.  My best friend was a coward.

He wasn’t the only one.

I learned many lessons in the jail.  I learned about America.  I learned more when I read the comments posted after the piece published in the online version of The Independent.  The difference between the British and the Americans.  I was proud to be British yesterday.

For the record, I have to see the doctors tomorrow to work out what we do about three months of medical inaction.  God may very well be doing for me what I cannot do for myself.  If you know what I mean.  The pain in my belly is occasionally overwhelming.  It feels like my insides are being ripped out.  My kidneys burning.  The blood in my urine a daily reminder.  A serious situation.

It is more serious than the stupid charges against me, charges I cannot find the time to take seriously.  More serious than DA Anne-Marie Wise would want you to believe.

We sat in the deli after the meeting, before the long walk in the canyon, and Michelle Bachman was on the TV.  She looks like Anne-Marie, she has that look those women who think they are powerful.  Women who work for men believing the glass ceiling has been broken.

She’ll read this and she’ll try and prove how powerful she is…she’ll try and make life difficult, like she did when I was inside the jail, tacking on extra weeks of incarceration before the trial…waiting for me to buckle and except her pathetic ‘deal’.

Do your worst Anne-Marie.  Your very worst will not hurt me.  You cannot hurt me.  You don’t know me.

You should have seen her in the court with her pile of papers, feeling very important.

Fingering that cheap jewelry as if it were Cartier.  Taking it all so personally.  She probably goes home and tells her children that mummy does very important work putting dangerous men behind bars.  Not that she has been colluding with the super rich to steal from the poor.

You see, the resentment overwhelms.  It gets me.  It bites me in the neck like a vampire.  It keep me alive…even though I should be dead.

Let my slow suicide be a lesson to you all.

Categories
Auto Biography

The Independent 18th February 2012

So, here is the first press regarding my current tricky situation…read it here.

Enjoy.

Categories
art Auto Biography Gay

hard labour, hard fare and a hard bed

“Between August 2010 and March 2011 Roy wrote a 50,000-word blog to Bauman.

Roy coldly examines his career to date, how he had been a colourful agent provocateur, his art, like his paradoxes, seeking to subvert as well as sparkle. His own estimation of himself was of one who “stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age”.

It was from these heights that his life with Bauman began, and Roy examines that particularly closely, repudiating him for what he finally sees as his arrogance and vanity: he had not forgotten Bauman’s remark, when he was ill, “When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting.”

Roy blamed himself, though, for the ethical degradation of character that he allowed Bauman to bring about on him and took responsibility for his own fall.

The first few months of the blog concludes with Roy’s forgiving Bauman, for his own sake as much as Baumans’.

The second half of the blog traces Roy’s spiritual journey of redemption and fulfilment. He realised that his ordeal had filled the soul with the fruit of experience, however bitter it tasted at the time.”

…I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world… And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom.

Thank you Oscar Wilde, thank you Bosie.

Categories
Malibu

Give it up for Deputy Gonzales!

There are some moments that I didn’t want to share with you…but they have lingered like a prison fart.

Begging to be remembered.

One particular memory I hoped to forget:

Our dorm, as you know, was the school dorm…the honor dorm.  On occasions when the police came into the dorm to conduct the evening count, when we lay on our beds, our faces in the mat, our plastic identification bracelets on view for the deputy to inspect…the police would call out, “Give it up for deputy…so and so..” and it was our job to cheer and shout and welcome the new deputy into the dorm.

If the deputy was homophobic we would be primed to make even more noise, the more well endowed, busty trannies to leap up and show the deputy their tities or dance seductively around him.

The blushing deputy, bloated on the attention, would playfully curse his colleagues.

I refused to cheer and shout.  It made me sick.  I wondered if the Nazis had ever played games like that in the nissen huts at Auschwitz.  Making the starving jews/gays/gypsies play games for their amusement.

One night, an attractive deputy called Gonzales arrived and they cat-called him and cheered his arrival.  We gave it up for deputy Gonzales and he, in turn, ran a lap of honor around the dorm.  I thought, wow, he’s a good-looking man.

Weeks later Gonzales took a few of us to the visiting room but not before he had told us that homosexuals had a ‘sick lifestyle’ and we disgusted him.

It was strange to me that such a beautiful man had such ugly thoughts.

Today, I was arraigned which meant that I went back to court at 8.30am and plead Not Guilty.   It was odd being in court wearing my own clothes rather than my blues.  The DA, Anne-Marie Wise was wearing her badly cut, black suit, treating the event like it was a first degree murder of a small child…or something truly heinous.

Anne-Marie and I had Facebook friends in common (another DA) who she demanded de-friend me.  Surely she can’t do this?  Unbelievably her entire Facebook history is on view for the whole world to see.  Her kids, her vacations etc.  Why do people do that?

We were presented with the transcript from the preliminary trial so, I assume, this is all on public record.  Who I am, who he is, who she is etc.  I am still loathed to use his name…just in case it breaks some obscure law.

We met our new Judge, Judge Michael V. Jesic who seems like the most grown up Judge so far.  Like a real Judge.  He was a Hardcore Gang prosecutor.  Son of Yugoslavian immigrants, born in Belgrade.  He has gravitas.  He loves animals and met his wife at a pet adoption event.  Like most of them he is an ex-DA.  He seems, from the video published above, like a fair man.

The LA Times endorsed him in 2008 and he is most likely to be described as ‘ethical’ by his opponents.  Read a full description here.

However, he is a registered Republican (fiscally) and was strongly recommended by church organizations during his election campaign in 2008 as most likely to hold beliefs that would uphold their biblical values.

Judge Jesic will be our third and final judge.

The first judge (whose name escapes me) the first time I saw him last November, was a MESS.  Papers all over the place, tie off, hair askew…when I returned with TMZ in tow he had combed his hair, wearing his robe…his tie was neatly tied around his neck.  Showing his best side for the camera.

Judge Karen Nudell was our preliminary judge.  I was still in custody so the petulant, young deputy who lead me into the court would rearrange my chair and tell me off for wearing my spectacles on my head.

Judge Karen sat yawning, shuffling papers, playing with her huge earings and stroking her long hair.  She sat at an odd angle to the courtroom, like Mona Lisa…but less enigmatic.

She reminded me of the mother in the movie Carrie.

During the prelim Anne-Marie was trying to shame me for describing the victim as ‘The King of The Cocksuckers’.  I reminded her that we were gay and being good at cock sucking was probably not an insult.

You can tell what a fiasco the trial will be.  The press will have a field day.  Anyway, Judge Nudell looked appalled that the words cock and sucker were being used in her court in such close proximity.

My friend later commented that Judge Nudell’s grandchildren probably made excuses not to visit her on Sundays…

Let’s hope that Judge Jesic isn’t so squeamish.

You asked me to describe my arrest.  Well, let me tell you that the very courteous cops who arrested me looked like extras from a ZZ Top video.  Long beards.  Very, very long beards. So long in fact that their police badges were hidden behind them.

The detectives who interviewed me were charming.  The first was a good-looking man probably my age (looked better clean-shaven) and the second a younger, probably rookie detective.   I had no complaints about the way they treated me, they were doing their job.  I’m sure they would have preferred leaping over cars chasing rapists.

I have been slowly crawling back into my life.  The dog, who initially pretended not to recognize me, is back on my lap.  Three months apart, he had to make Jason his master.  He’s a one man dog.  Of course he was confused, poor darling.  We are getting on fine.  We walked to Sarah and Paul’s house on Hume but they moved out.  The house was open and empty…except for the leopard print, wall to wall, carpet.  He ran around the house looking for them.  So did I.

Mel took me to dinner at the Real Inn last night.  I ate fish and chips.  We sat by the fire.  We speculated about the couple sitting near us, whether they were having a first date.  She was wearing heels.  Her Angora sweater was too short revealing her fat hips.

The house is back to normal or as normal as it ever will be with three young men who find clearing up after themselves almost impossible.  Thank you twins and friend for being here.  Filling the house with laughter and youthful enthusiasm.  I delight in being mother hen…washing and making good food for them to eat.

I can’t complain about anything…even though I feel like I am already dead.

Categories
Gay prison

Two Weddings

Unusual and wholly unexpected events witnessed at the Men’s County Jail included two weddings held in the gay dorm.

The first within days of my arriving at dorm 5300.

Madeleine and Oscar were married before first count one Saturday evening.  A popular couple.  There was a great deal of excitement in the dorm from both the incarcerated and the deputies.

Madeleine, trans, 23 years old, white skinned, full-lipped, long dark hair, sexy voice marrying Oscar, a madly jealous, beefy Mexican boy with a huge bull-dog under bite.

Hedi Slimane…this is the sort of thing you should be photographing.

Madeleine wore a long white dress and veil made for her that week by a gaggle of excited trannies.  It was fashioned from two shredded tee-shirts.  It looked like a Vivienne Westwood gown.  Madeleine held a bouquet of toilet paper flowers as she walked between the bunks toward her nervous groom.  The rings were woven for them, their names inscribed on both. Oscar had re-purposed his pale blue jail uniform to look like a prom outfit from the 1970’s…complete with bow tie.

The ceremony was very moving, the deputies videoed it and then took pictures of the happy couple through the bars of the observation booth.

The House Mouse officiated.

Later, I discovered that Oscar had married 4 other boys whilst he had been in dorm 5300.  On the streets he’d also married two real girls and had several real children none of whom he was allowed to see.  This was Madeleine’s first time.

After they married they fought all the time.  Domestic violence.  “We fight hard and we love hard.”  Madeleine told me.  They sure loved hard…you could hear them all over the dorm huffing and panting.

The second wedding, held a month or so later in dorm 5200, was very different.  A double wedding for 4 black boys, Juan and ‘Baby Boy’, Reggie and Steve.   The service was very moving.  Ex Marine Juan and ‘Baby Boy’ really loved each other.  Reggie and Steve…not so much.

Juan and ‘Baby Boy’ made their vows and cried.  Juan read an extravagant love poem. “Baby Boy’ cried some more.  A huge cheer erupted as they were pronounced husband and husband.

After the short ceremony we ate a huge nacho spread on an abandoned top bunk.  I was the only white guest.

That night bunks are pushed together creating comfortable double beds, illegal ‘tents’ made of old sheets are hung around the bottom bunk for privacy and voila, the happy home is complete.

Reggie and Steve separated after a violent clash.  Bleeding noses, being torn apart by opposing groups of friends, then separated for ever into different dorms.

‘Baby Boy’ was released, leaving poor Juan to mope about the dorm until he found another boy to bunk with.

As I mentioned before, the bond that exists between these jail house gay boys/trannies can lead to unexpected consequences.  Unable to leave their loved ones behind couples reunite by forcing an unnecessary arrest.  Occasionally, however, by the time the released returns…their boy friend, the love of their life, has found someone else.

There sure was a great deal of fucking in the dorm.  The craziest couple, Kenyatta and Andrew, could not keep their hands off each other.  They fucked all day and all night.  She was a fun, feminine black trans accused of hit and run, he was a masculine latino boy with no personality.  She fucked him.  He couldn’t say no.

Coffee in Venice yesterday.  Lunch with lawyer.  Cooked dinner, boiled brisket, Brussels sprouts, snap peas and quinoa.

Ate a cup cake at midnight…bad mistake…up all night vomiting.  Can’t eat rich food yet.

Categories
Gay prison

House Mouse

Every dorm in the Men’s County Jail is represented by one elected inmate, that inmate is the dorm’s House Mouse.

Originally called the House Mouth his role is to liaise between the dorm and the police.   He fixes problems, discovers when holds are lifted, dates of release, learns when the police are likely to come into the dorm for unusual reasons and generally makes life easier.

If there is a fight in the dorm it is up to him to get the truth of the fight and make appropriate punishment decisions.

A fight may result in the loss of ‘Programme’: TV, vending machine, late night privileges, even access to the commissary or when things really get out of hand…and the police raid the dorm and rip everything up…we end up without blankets or mats sleeping on ‘steel’ which never happened when I was there but we sure came close.

The House Mouse is a tough job, he has to command total respect from both the inmates and the police.  He needs to understand who he can ask for favours and who he needs to leave alone.

The first dorm I lived in was a mess.  The 5300 Mouse was disrespected.  When he called for silence during the time set aside for dorm business nobody took a blind bit of notice.  When silence in the dorm is required he would call ‘Radio!’ I’ve no idea why but that’s what they do in jail.   It means, shut the fuck up.

In the second dorm 5200 our House Mouse Carlton, a young, great looking black man.  An ex gang member, all he needed to do was call ‘Radio!’ once and there was silence in the dorm.

I made friends with Carlton when he learned how good I was at playing Spades.  After a couple of weeks he moved me into the bunk next to him.  Intelligent, wise and stylish he really shouldn’t have been in jail.  If he’d been white he wouldn’t have been.

The language of jail has to be learned quickly.  If, for instance, we were walking outside the dorm and found ourselves approaching a deputy we would be obliged to call out, ‘Walking!’  which alerted the deputy that an inmate was behind him.  Once, I was being escorted to the attorney room and told that I should always be more than five foot from a deputy.

Many of the the younger deputies came to California to pursue other dreams but those dreams had to be set aside because of the recession…here they were marshaling men who simply hated them.   Marshaling the disenfranchised, feeble-minded, surly, mental patients…I mean…there were so many people in the jail with severe mental health issues.  They needed nursing…not policing.

Many inmates were just nuisances rather than criminals.  It’s an expensive way to look after the mental health of the state of California.

Some of the cops, of course, are unapologetic sadists.  Yet, even though I witnessed unsavory behaviour I had sympathy for those men and women.  They are, after all, in jail too.

We were allowed out of dorm 5200 a great deal.  School of course, outside on the roof once a week for three hours, church on Sundays and AA.  The AA meetings were not like any AA meetings I had ever been to in my life.  Imagine 300 trannies from 4 gay dorms catching up on gossip, not giving a damn about the ‘experience, strength and hope’ of who ever was brave enough to come into the jail and share it.

Some of those tranny hookers were really convincing.  Like really high-end chicks with dicks.  Some of them were just really ugly men with make up and long hair and over weight, crafting some sort of cleavage out of their fat pecs.

The tranny hooker market is so huge that most of them put very little effort into looking like real girls.

When Rosemary walked into the dorm the less attractive, more masculine tranny hookers looked very perplexed.

Rosemary was 5 foot tall, well cut hair, perfect tits, hips…a really pretty girl.  Even the deputies looked at her askance.  Obviously intrigued.  She commanded a huge amount of attention.  Good and bad.  She was caught telling another tranny in Spanish what she thought of a particularly fine-looking deputy.  Unfortunately he understood her, pulled her off the line, bawled at her, frisked her and threw her against a wall.

A big man throwing a small, delicate girl against a wall is not a very heartening sight.

The gay dorm in the County jail is unique, I have no idea if beyond California these dorms exist.  I know that they don’t exist in prison.  Which, by the way, was where everyone wanted to be.  Prison rather than jail.  Prison condition are a million times better.  Nobody wanted to do their time in jail.  There are three kinds of prison, the jail (run by the police) the state prison (greater freedoms) and the federal prison which by all accounts is like a country club.

The problem with the Los Angeles County Jail is that is it falling apart, it is over crowded and technically condemned.  There is no money to replace it and no political inclination.  During the boom time the jails were a luxury used to lure voters to vote for those who promised to fill them.  Now the prisons and jails are a huge financial burden and nobody has the guts or political gall to face this crippling problem head on.

The two biggest unions in California are the police officers and the gaolers.  Even if crime numbers fall the police make sure that the jails remains filled.  Consequently, There are a huge number of parole violators and drug offenders inside the jail squandering precious tax dollars.

Even more galling?  Whilst the police arrest and the judiciary hand down custodial sentences the LA schools are falling apart.

There is a correlation between these two facts.

A fearful tax payer would rather pay for more police and prisons rather than educate their kids.

Just look at the draconian Californian three strike law that keeps many, many men inside who really shouldn’t be there.

It is a totally broken system with too many vested interests.

The twins are living here with me in Malibu once again.  They are dancing downstairs.  Their friend Kevin has moved in too.  It’s raining.  I have to see my lawyer today.  Blah, blah, blah.