Categories
Queer Self Sufficiency

Monkton Wyld

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The harvest festival held earlier this month at St Andrew’s Church in Monkton Wyld, Dorset was quite an occasion.  The magnificent, flint faced, neo-Gothic church is rarely used.  It has an imposing steeple and a lavish transept, it has retained all of its original features.  St Andrew’s church and the matching parsonage were designed in 1848 by Pugin’s well-respected pupil Richard Cromwell Carpenter.

There are few souls living in this tiny hamlet and fewer Christians, the church opens no more than a handful of times a year.  The traveling vicar conducted 5 harvest festival services from Charmouth to Axminster that Sunday and by the time he had gotten to us at dusk he’d refined quite a routine.  As we sat waiting for the service to begin a dormouse skipped over the altar.

After singing a few elderly harvest hymns and reciting some appropriately salubrious prayers we drank locally made apple juice and ate locally made apple cake served with thick unpasteurized jersey cream.  There was an auction of local produce and people eagerly snapped up their neighbor’s home-grown vegetables… including a giant pumpkin. Katherine from the Monkton Wyld Community brought home-made sausages and Monkton Wyld Court cheese, it sold for a good price raising money for the repair of this delightful Victorian church.

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I’ve been in Dorset these past six weeks, looking after a friend of a friend’s huge and imposing Edwardian rectory.  Monkton Wyld sits on the edge of Marshwood Vale.  This ancient countryside is still divided by hedgerow, the roads flanked by steep mossy banks decorated with ivy and bracken.  As the autumn crept over us, the leaves fell from the beech trees revealing the sea at Lyme Bay and Charmouth beyond.  Catching the sun like great mirrors, two miles away.

This red brick house was built in 1901 to replace the draughty, original parsonage built conveniently next to St Andrew’s.   The parsonage below us is a neo-Gothic masterpiece, similarly faced with perfectly knapped chert.  The house sits proudly in a garden copied by Cromwell Carpenter from a surviving medieval English manor.

The rooms at Monkton Wyld Court are large and well proportioned, there is a delightful and unexpected internal courtyard where bats fly at dusk, a kitchen garden that provides enough vegetables all year for the community of people who live in the house and their paying guests.  A short way away from the main house, down a well trodden path there is a charming oak framed milking parlor that serves four cows, and every week I’ve stayed here I’ve bought Monkton Wyld cheese or yogurt or milk that tastes unlike any milk I’ve ever tasted.

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For the past 40 years I have returned to this valley.  Once, hitch hiking from Whitstable to Charmouth to revisit Monkton.  As a child I had a magical relationship with this place and I continue to return.  When I arrive (however I get here) I walk into the valley, past the stream, up the hill, down the drive.  I am immediately transported to a better place.  The laurel, the rhododendrons, the great ornamental pines.  The rope swing hanging from the ancient Douglas Fir and has done for 80 years, giving so many children so much pleasure.

This is where I went to school, albeit briefly, sadly getting expelled for appalling behaviour.  Yet, in 1971 I experienced moments of pure joy in this perfect place.  Here I learned everything.  I learned how to ride, play the piano, bake bread… I learned how to live in a house with two staircases and how to use an Aga.  I read the Norse tales and was read the Greek myths by handsome Chris under the same Douglas fir on lazy hot July afternoons.  There I met the Minotaur, felt intoxicated by the story of the king who held him in the labyrinth.  Names I will never forget:  Daedalus, Theseus, Knossos.

It was here I experimented with my fledgling sexuality with a boy called Jasper.  It was here I lay beside Amaryllis and held her breasts.  It was here we sped these lanes in an old land rover to Lyme Bay.  It was here the older kids took acid and we drank scrumpy.  It was in this place I read the banned magazine Oz and when I took that magazine home to Whitstable my parents confiscated it, stunned… as if it were Satan’s pamphlet.

The school kids were wild and articulate and the staff equally so.  Every day we had a noisy school meeting where problems were solved and punishments dished out.  We ate home-baked bread and whatever the kitchen garden provided.  We smoked, our hair grew out, we bathed rarely…. wandering around the school like homeless people.  The older kids listened to Alice Cooper and I bought my first single in Axminster, Gaye by Clifford T Ward.

My best friend was Tom Melly.  George’s son. Tom and I burned great towers of cardboard pretending they were tower blocks and commentated upon them like BBC journalists as they fell into a burning heap.  We explored the stream at the end of the valley and leapt over ravines and fought fern monsters, their tendrils wrapped around out legs like snakes.  We invented our own labyrinth and escaped from it.  My friendship with Tom wildly impressed my parents who asked endless questions whenever I hung out with Tom and his dad.  Yet, for all of this I could not deal with a life unfettered.  I had come from a strict house and the damage had already been done.  After a shoplifting binge in Lyme Regis I was expelled… and that was that.  But my love for Monkton never dimmed.  Every time I return to Monkton Wyld I wonder when I leave if I this will be my last visit.  I savor every minute, every star above us, every sunrise.

My stay here included meeting community members, some of the Monkton Wyld Community trustees and my immediate neighbors.  One in particular grabbed my attention, a single dad who teaches survival skills all over the world.  His curly blond hair and fair complexion, his sensitive disposition coupled with his physical strength.  What a man!

I met a very posh farmer from Dorchester who gave me a haunch of venison and two excellent cuts of pork.  Melanie DB cooked the venison and I cooked the pork.  The dogs set upon the bones ravenously.  I visited my friend Graham in Weymouth and had a lovely time.   We explored country churches and had tea with the Earl and Countess of Sandwich at Mary Lou Sturridge’s Seaside Boarding House.   I ate delicious lunches on my own at Hugh’s River Cottage restaurant in Axminster and one very ugly lunch at Mark Hix’s ghastly restaurant in Lyme Regis:  three goujons of cod and a pile of rancid chips for £20.

Of course I looked at property and imagined building a place in the middle of nowhere.  I traveled to Exmore and stayed with Rachel Campbell Johnston and her dear daughter.  We had long walks along the cliffs near Illfracomb and dropped in on Laura Carew.  Laura and I hiked the perimeter of her estate which took hours.  The little dog soldiered on valiantly.  Then, when all was said and done, I drive back to Monkton and sleep soundly in my huge, comfortable bed.

Monkton Wyld School closed in 1981 and now the old parsonage houses a Centre for Sustainability Education, The Court is run and maintained by a residential community as well as a team of short-term volunteers.

Here is a short documentary about Monkton Wyld School made at the time I was there:

 

Categories
Alcoholics Anonymous Hollywood Queer sex addiction

Harvey Weinstein: Sex Addict

These past few days he caught my attention.  Harvey Weinstein.  Unmasked.

Petulant, controlling, surly.  Harvey’s behaviour well-known in LA, often reported.  His verbal abuse of others tolerated, excused, even celebrated.  Harvey believed the only way to achieve his ambition was absolute control.  The only way to win Hollywood.

Then, Harvey’s life unraveled.  The women spoke out.  The Mossad agents protecting Harvey stood down.  Stories leaked, reputable media outlets ignore the story until the sound of those women screaming could no longer be ignored.  Rape, molestation, finger fucking.

I am powerless over my addiction… my life has become unmanageable.  It’s a pretty astute description of any addict.  I am powerless over that which may kill me: drugs/drink/gambling/sex/food.  I do not consider the consequences of my actions therefore: my life falls apart.

Any addict who confronts their addiction must first accept the notion of powerlessness. This seems obvious to most addicts hitting our desperate rock bottom… but I betcha a billion dollars Harvey Weinstein, whose name is synonymous with the word control, will struggle to understand this baffling first step. He may never understand but unless he humbly embraces his part in this catastrophe of his own making there will be no second chance, no triumphant return to Hollywood for Harvey Weinstein.

I met Harvey a few times these past 20 years, notably at the NYC Philomena screening with Fern Mallis.  He was gruff and rude.  I didn’t expect anything else.  Weinstein had long ago become a grotesque caricature of himself.  There are so many apocryphal stories about Harvey Weinstein from too many miserable producers and directors… their projects in tatters after Harvey intervenes; re-cuts, re-imagines, ultimately buying and bludgeoning the outcome of their project into his project.  An editor told to lose all the wide shots from a director’s cut because, according to Harvey, wide shots are meaningless if one is watching the movie on a tiny screen in an airplane.

Harvey could make or break a career in Hollywood.  There was no other narrative on offer.  Film folk strode bravely into the Weinstein inferno never knowing if they and their film would return ruined or gilded with Oscar gold.

Men like Harvey are very familiar in Hollywood.  The executives, CEOs and super lawyers I met owning up to their addiction in the rooms of AA and SAA in LA all had similar stories, sobbing when they got caught, pleading with their wives not to lose access to their children.  Every day confessing misogyny to their peers at stag meetings all over the West Side.

Powerless…

Let’s get one thing straight.  Harvey did not act alone.  He had a bunch of conspirators: lawyers, assistants and relatives.  The most powerful players in Hollywood looked after him, turned a blind eye to his appalling behavior… ’cause he made them billions of dollars.  Studio and Agency bosses who, although they did not do the abusing themselves, aided and abetted his abuse. He could rely on a cabal of powerful white men to get him out of trouble by paying his victims and making them sign crippling nda.

Unless you’ve sat with men like Harvey Weinstein listening to their most troubling secrets it is impossible to explain how they get away with what Harvey got away with.  These problems go to the very heart of the Hollywood star making… and taking away machine.

Let’s remind ourselves, this outrage wasn’t generated by women. Women’s stories have been used as evidence for the prosecution but this scandal was manufactured by men to strategically bring Harvey Weinstein down.  D’you think for one moment if he hadn’t pissed somebody off really badly this story would be news?

When Harvey became too much of a liability, powerful men removed his protected status.  Why did they choose to bring him down now after years of abuse?  Why did it suit them to make an example of him?  Why?

There are many men like Harvey in positions of power in the entertainment industry… in every industry, behaving just like Harvey.  There’s little appetite for real change.  We condemn people for not speaking up sooner, for not breaking the silence.  Yet, some of the brave women who told the truth about Harvey have been savagely criticised for doing so.  Why did they accept a cash settlement from The Weinstein Company in lieu of the truth?  We all know why.  Male abusers are preciously, lavishly safe guarded.

Unlimited access to sex with whomever you desire is the greatest prize afforded to those who make millions and achieve high status.  Men, who without question or sacrifice can ‘grab them by the pussy’ without consequence.  Can cum over an intern’s blue dress as she kneels demurely in the Oval Office.  Can grab a young boys ass and know he wouldn’t dare complain.

Nobody wants to hear the truth about powerful men.  Everyone wants to shoot the messenger.  Remember when I wrote about Bryan Singer?

Another ‘open secret’: fashion photographer Bruce Weber continues to behave like Harvey Weinstein toward young male models. Taking pictures of them naked for his ‘private collection’ molesting and assaulting and promising lucrative campaigns if they give in to his gentle caress, taking the campaign away if they refuse.

This is as big a secret as Harvey’s expose. How does it sound? Who wants to shoot the messenger? Every fashion editor in the world turns a blind eye, a deaf ear. When Terry Richardson was exposed they said nothing.  Terry still works…  making money the rest of us can only dream of.

I had these experiences. Accepting the invitation construed as a tacit agreement to have sex. And yes. It’s all about privilege, entitlement… my first ‘date’ with a very famous hair dresser ended with what I now understand was rape. I was 18. He had the power to change my life. My story sounds pathetic when I tell it to myself in isolation, I learned not to tell it. Together these stories change perceptions, and make us stronger. This outrage breaking over the world about Weinstein sends a clear message to those men with power and entitlement to reconsider what is acceptable behavior. I am not a victim. Telling our stories will not make us victims. I am not my story.