Category: Rant

Categories
Christmas Dogs Queer Rant Whitstable

Frances Roy/Spark and the Whitstable Trolls

There is something lost and broken about a small town.  Not on its surface.  Beneath, where the new working class flex what little muscle it has.  Withered by austerity and the banking crisis, lifting their weary faces and skinny fists toward the last of the watery sunlight.

Whitstable has always attracted freaks and frauds.  Crooks and drifters.  Before the gang of yummy mummies arrived with their plantation shutters, gumming up local stores with giant strollers… gangsters sat in Wheelers back room making deals.  Far enough from London, close enough to get home for their tea.

Life is evenly divided between Whitstable my home town and the world I created elsewhere.  You know, in the newspapers and on TV.  To come home is a mixed blessing.  My estranged brothers and frail mother have become litigants rather than family as I sue for my part in David’s will.

Even though Whitstable is a very small town one can totally miss seeing someone for decades.  Yet, with very little effort, I saw my mother on the street.  She looked animated, mid conversation with other mothers, presumably after dropping my nephew Oscar Roy at school.  Frances Roy, Frances Spark, Fran.  I don’t know what she calls herself nowadays. I walked closer, I tapped her on the shoulder… she turned to face me.  I was shocked by how badly she has aged.  The face I once adored is now smeared over her large skull, her features drawn, jowls and ear lobes drooping like melting tallow.

I was momentarily pleased to see her.  I felt protective once again.  I wanted to reassure her things were going to work out.  I thought the violent abuse we received from David would somehow bond us forever. Sadly, she has never been anything other than utterly selfish. She may have once but now she no longer wants the best for me. I am a stranger to her.

Unplanned pregnancy, shame and derision have shaped who she is today.  She learned nothing from her own story.  She never made amends.  She was never proud or encouraging of any of her children.  The older we got the less interest she showed. She had no ambition, no desire, no love.

I used to make excuses for her.  I’d tell therapists, “The nuns at the mother and baby home made her life miserable.”  I explained to psychologists, “Her father was cruel, her mother insensitive.”  “It was a different time.”  “When she looks at me I reminded her of him.”  I said.  And all the while, unbeknownst to her, the world was changing.  She told the doctor at the hospital, when I later read the notes, she was ashamed of me being so obviously gay… a gay child.  The sight of me flouncing around upset David.

They tried to shut me down.  The harder they tried the harder I fought back.  They tried to cure me with anti psychotic drugs.  They gave an 11-year-old gay child, badly abused at home… anti psychotic drugs.

I protected her from what others might say.  I melted when she cried.  She used her tears to avoid the truth.  Any difficult subject… she would cry.  One day I told her the crying wasn’t working.  I wasn’t going to cry with her anymore.  She stopped crying.  She didn’t do it again.  My mother does not deserve my protection. Sooner or later we are all owed the truth.

I was 22, I had a show in the West End.  She didn’t take the train, she didn’t see the play.  She couldn’t be anything other than embarrassed, four gay men talking about our gay lives.  She didn’t see me at the Edinburgh Festival, she didn’t see me.  She had excuses.

The next show, The Host performed in the Oyster Company great hall, my mother came with her sister Margaret and giggled in the back row ruining it for other people.  She didn’t come to the ICA or Sadler’s Wells, she didn’t come to The Hen and Chickens.  I don’t think she said a word when I won my place at a prestigious film school.  To this day and to the best of my knowledge she has never seen any of my films.

I’ve never written about her in this blog, explored who she is or was. I never once described her casual homophobia.  I wanted to believe she was a better person than she actually is.  A better person than me.  But she wasn’t… she accused my boyfriends of being gold diggers, made gay slurs about AIDS and ‘disgusting gay diseases’.  She failed to ask about my relationships, my work and my life.  When Joe and I bought a Porsche I was excited to show her.

She looked at it and said, “You ponce.”

That is the sort of woman she is.  Yet, when she was homeless I let her have one of our homes… even though she was the one who walked out on David… taking nothing.  Like so many women, she left it behind.  She walked out on my inheritance.

I have loyally hidden her true nature.  In the film AKA I did not reveal she colluded with my abusive father.  I continually let her off the hook.

When she called to tell me my brothers had been sent to prison, she blamed the police, she blamed everyone but them. My brother Martin Roy sends an abusive note to my lawyer.  I do not read it.  He storms into the solicitor’s office and demands to see him.

Whitstable High Street.  She’s nicely dressed.  I tap her on the shoulder and say hello.  She looks shocked.  She looked beaten.  She holds onto her friend, she links arms… as if I am going to be rip her away from them.  I ask if we can have coffee.  She shakes her head and looks like she might cry.  “I don’t want to talk to him.” The other mothers try encouraging her to have coffee with me.  They advise her to talk it through but my Mother dare not do that because she has been lying so long… she knows if she accepts a coffee it is time to tell the truth.

Her friends say, “She speaks so highly of you.”

“Really?” I reply.  “She scarcely speaks to me at all.”

I ask them if my mother Frances Roy mentioned to them she did not tell me my father was dying of cancer, she did not tell me he had died and then concealed his funeral from us all.  She grips hold of the other woman frantic, terrified.  Her brain racing for a solution.  Fear.  I return to the car.  She runs up the street as fast as her 73-year-old legs can carry her.

2.

New Years Eve we sat in a small group in his sitting room.  Whitstable people.  An MBE, an artist, the celebrity gardener, the Michelin star chef, the academy award nominee and a couple of imported diplomats… friends of our host.  He is wearing a djellaba.  Black linen, a rust colored silk shawl and Saudi slippers.  At midnight we toast the new year and hug.  I check insta and snap chat.  They are toasting in an ice palace in Reykjavik and the Sydney opera house.  Sam Taylor Johnston posts random snaps of black men preparing her dinner and black men entertaining them with dancing.

The following day, New Years Day… we reconvene at Windy Corner Stores.  At another table I see a man whose name I no longer remember, he has piercing blue eyes, he’s in a local band.  I stare at him.  He knows who I am.  Like looking into the eyes of ones captor.  Throughout my childhood this blue-eyed man mercilessly bullied me using gay slurs.  I thought to myself, should I say something?  He knows me.  He knows what he did. I say nothing.  I just stare.

A few days later I post this on the Overheard in Whitstable… Anything Goes, Facebook page.

Returning to Whitstable has been a positive experience. However, I’ve seen a few people around town who were openly and violently homophobic to me as I was growing up. I have never been ashamed of being gay and those who resorted to homophobia were the kind who resented ‘openly gay’ men, us who refused to be cowed by their hate. These people may now explain away their homophobia as a cultural phenomena but as with historical child abuse, historical homophobia must be answered to. Attitudes may have changed but the effects of homophobia should be acknowledged. If I see anyone in the town who was homophobic in my past I will remind them of their past cruelty. Most gay men in their 50’s either forsook marriage or children or waited until late in life. We lived through an aids epidemic. Whilst that was happening graffiti was written on the side of my house in island wall, it said: aids available here. LGBT people do not have to hide who we are and who we love. The privileged white men I have confronted so far claim they are the victim because I had the audacity to remind them of their hate. The homophobe, the racist, the misogynist is not the victim. Those who peddle hate must own it and make amends.

Of course, this note punctured Whitstable’s fragile, dark heart. I am harangued and homophobicly abused.  Along side the homophobic abuse, energetic white people assure me nobody cares anymore if you are black, gay, fat… etc.   As long as you keep quiet about it.  If you complain… these illogicals demand you pipe down.  It is still typical for white heterosexual people to shut down gay people who have the audacity to share their negative experience and challenge homophobia.

Of course, being a public figure I am used to the abuse.  I have never been compliant.

I was most interested to hear from one commentator, Kris Howell. The rest: feckless female trolls, thin-lipped and spray tanned, their dyed hair in lank bangs.  When I returned fire with equally vile invective they became outraged, like prodding a termites nest.  The little termites ran around screaming.

For my amusement I suggested to one morbidly obese woman she may be in receipt of benefits.  An excellent way to upset an oik.  I found a picture of her wedding, her huge pink body wrapped up in acres of synthetic fabric. Her husband, pallid and inert.  She told me she owned three cars.  ‘You think I’d be on benefits with £70,000 worth of cars in front of my house.”  It brought into sharp contrast just how different their world is from mine.  I looked at my watch and smiled.

Kris Howell, better known as Les (ironically he also changed his name) caught my interest because once reeled in said exactly what I expected to hear.  He wanted me to know he had bullied me not because I am gay… but because I am me.

He refused to differentiate between the two.  As if the two could be separated.

Compliant homosexuals put up with being picked on, bullied, imprisoned and generally kicked around.  They learn how to be invisible.  Those of us who refuse to go quietly are branded difficult, hated for not keeping quiet.  Other gay men who play the game as prescribed by straight white people are just as offended when a fellow gay rocks the boat.  As the trolls railed and raged over my post the local gay hairdresser pinned his colors to their mast not realizing he had been co-opted into a seething pit of homophobes.

Les Howell refused, despite reasoned argument, to grasp that being gay had defined me, and I have good reason to be angry and better reason to fight back.  How did a ten-year old me deal with being repeatedly called pooftah and bleached nigger at school?  I was keenly aware of both racism and homophobia.  We were taught by the vicar of St Alphage that the black boy sitting naked before Christ was a savage and would not know how to use a toilet.  My uncle Norman confirmed this by pointing at black children, reminding me they were filthy savages.

Remember, even though homosexuality had been decriminalized by Woolfenden in 1965 gay men were still being arrested for consensual sex well into the 1980’s.  I was born a criminal and I had every reason to be angry but that anger, as the years passed, turned me into something I would have preferred not to have been.

Yet, as Les Howell spewed his vitriol, so full of hate… like most enraged fools, he lost his grasp on reason.  It was perfectly ok to remind the world of a man’s indiscretions he said, but not his triumphs.  He told me he was law-abiding but balked when I reminded him both his friends Stuart and Martin Roy had been in prison for worse crimes than spending money on a credit card.

Like most fascists his argument have nothing to do with logic and what he may or may not think of me… and everything to do with who he is and the resentments he carries.  Hate, like water, will find its level.  It will seep into everything and rot where ever it remains.

He wanted me to know I was a liar.  He said, “You were a liar before you went to prison and you’ve never learned your lesson.”  I wondered what the lesson should be? And I thought, you know, lying is a particularly gay thing.  I called Stephen Fry and we talked about gays and lying.  The genesis of our fantastical lives.  He had also gone to prison.  He had stolen credit cards from other people, I had merely run up a huge bill on my own credit card.  The difference?  He would still have gone to prison in 2018, I would not.

Why do gay men lie?  We lie to save ourselves.  We lie until we come out of the closet.  The longer we are in the closet the more we lie, the easier it becomes, there is no longer a taboo.  The truth is negotiable.

The following day the trolls were chattering on-line like agitated chimps.  Upset ’cause I had removed the thread.  “Has he tagged you?”  The wannabe silver back asks the girl with thin lips.  He is holding up his metaphorical pool cue reminding everyone he won the argument.  He won the fight.  They talked cryptically about rinsing and reeling people in and unicorns.  The woman in the synthetic wedding dress said she was sick of being maligned (my word not hers).  A couple of them private messaged me in the hope I would re-engage.

Anything Goes’ on this Facebook site simply means: trolls and their dumb friends get to spew hate at anyone they feel they can bully and misinterpret, using xenophobia, misogyny, racism and homophobia as their weapons of choice. Their lives do not bear scrutiny.  They are neither patriots nor evolved. They hide behind fake accounts because their truth is unbearable. They lie yet cannot bear anything but the truth in others, they insult but cannot stand being insulted.

They are kids in the school toilet.  Writing notes and passing them around, scrawling over pictures, insulting who they believe are more vulnerable.

Dealing with the mass market can be very revealing. The British general public, like the woman in the white synthetic dress, are presently emboldened by Brexit.

3.

The following day I had tea with Barry Green at his hotel, The Continental.  His son Richard was my best friend in the 80’s.  We talked about Brexit.  He told me he was a keen leaver and I asked him why.  I’ve always respected Barry.  I want somebody I respect to convince me Brexit is good for the country.  I want to be wrong about Brexit.  Barry Green was the second successful business owner, Susanna Atkins at The Goods Shed in Canterbury was the first, who came out to me as a stalwart brexiteer.

Actually George Wilson, our local Scottish millionaire, was the third but we didn’t get past talking planning permission.

I am fascinated by their Brexit.  How it works for them? Susanna’s family (sons and cousins) had to bring in the harvest last year because they couldn’t get anyone to work on their farm.  Susanna thought it was great, she suggested we all bring in the harvest.  As it was, long ago.  I could not imagine the sickly woman in the synthetic wedding dress on her knees in the fields.  She might have a word or two to say about that when the local aristo land owner requisitions her, dragging her screaming from her smart phone, from Celebrity Big Brother on her giant flat screen… to pick asparagus for the 1%.

Barry told me he voted Brexit… he assured me not because of immigration (he is married to an Eastern European) but because of the common agricultural and fisheries policy.  Ok, I said, so who is going to write the new agricultural and fisheries policy for the UK?  Barry didn’t know what sort of policy or quota we would have after Brexit because he thought we might not have one at all.

“Do you think a free-for-all out at sea will work fine for our fisherman and fish stocks?”  I inquired.

Both Susanna and Barry think the country will be best served by an army of artisans, baking bread, catching fish and selling our surplus to who ever wants to buy it.  They believe their small-scale business model can be translated into something the whole country will adopt, setting the country free from the rest of the world.  They crave autonomy, they crave sovereignty.  They resent the rules, they want to catch what ever they want when they want it and bugger the cod stocks.  They know what is best for the people if only we can return to simpler, less complicated ways.  Bringing in the harvest with a new peasant class and take what we want from the sea as we need it.

Profit now, conservation later.  They believe in the Dunkirk spirit.  They believe the English will overcome adversity.  An adversity we created for ourselves…  we now delight in overcoming.  Meanwhile the EU are preparing a no deal Brexit while our government prepare for nothing.  Hurtling toward an arbitrary date when we fall gently off the cliff.

Barry Green sat on the brown leather Chesterfield whilst we chewed over the past.  I congratulated him his success.  He told me I was the kind of person who could have done anything.  I remind him, I’ve done more than most.

“Those houses you sold are worth £3 million pounds now.”

“But I wouldn’t have had any adventure, Barry.”

He remembered the play we performed in the Oyster Company, the summer of 1985.  “The red knickers.” He chuckled. “Tatiana’s red knickers.”

“Do you remember the vase of blue Corn Flowers?”

“Yes,” he marveled.

I’m not going to explain.  You had to be there.

4.

The dogs curled up on the sofa.  They ate cheese.  They are still sleeping.  It’s midday.  They don’t have to worry about the pig and the dog we shared our time with these past few weeks in Barnes.  We are going to walk in the rain.  We are going to meet him, feel his soft skin under his coat.  Just like the old days.  Kissing in the street.

Categories
Gay politics Queer Rant

Civil War

IMG_0801

1.

Acting as an English aristocrat during my formative years I would meet men and women of the British upper class who openly sympathised with Hitler and fascism. So it was I met the original alt right British leader Oswald Mosley and his wife Diana the year before he died in 1980. His mind riven by dementia.

We were invited for lunch, Charlotte Mosley (their daughter in law) and me. In the car to Orsay, Charlotte warned Oswald might mention his belief the British people were still eagerly awaiting his inevitable return to power and I should ignore his delusion if he shared it with us.

When we arrived, Diana Mosley (a dedicated Nazi) was overwhelmed… lunch was canceled because Oswald had taken a shit in the dining room.

2.

“Since I am an immature and wicked man, war and unrest appeal to me more than the good bourgeois order.”

Ernst Röhm, the openly gay founder of the Nazi party.

A young gay fascist, UK born Milo Yiannopoulos has stolen America’s alt right heart. Milo reminds me of another gay man, Ernst Rohm who ‘discovered’ and groomed Adolf Hitler. Röhm ran the thuggish SA, the precursor to the highly effective SS.  Hitler initially protected Röhm from other elements of the Nazi Party who held his homosexuality in violation of the party’s anti-homosexual policy.  However, Hitler later changed his mind fearing Röhm a potential threat to his power. Ernst Röhm was executed by his formerly close friend Adolf Hitler during the Night of the Long Knives.

Like the SA before, the Waffen-SS offered sanctuary to a large number of closeted and not so closeted gay men… (think gay priests hiding out in the catholic church), gay men in the SS were protected from the more rigorous Gestapo. Consequently the SS gays arrested the dykes, the pansies and the trans and put them into concentration camps where they were experimented on: castrated, filled with water like balloons until they exploded.

Kissing, mutual masturbation and love-letters between men served as a legitimate reason for the police to make an arrest.

Gay men suffered unusually cruel treatment in the concentration camps. They faced persecution not only from German soldiers but Jewish men and women would beat them too, many gay men were beaten to death by other inmates. The SS were known to use gay men for target practice, aiming at the pink triangles their victims were forced to wear.

Are Milo Yiannopoulos’s views abhorrent to me? No. I think he’s a clown, Trump’s gay jester who The Donald uses as evidence of non discrimination.  Does he deserve to be silenced?  No. At present, Milo lives on the super fuel liberal censorship affords him. As Trump’s power increases Milo’s influence will become a nuisance to the alt right.  Milo’s campery will prove too much for macho fascists. As Trump’s alt right message becomes purer and more distilled Milo will be dispensed with. Like Ernst Röhm, he will become a liability.  

At that time… the civil war will be well underway. Milo will vanish, added to the vast pile of bodies I see before me.

Milo referred to Donald Trump as ‘daddy’. It is maybe the first time I’ve heard my own particular bent described so efficiently, so eloquently and with so much erotic charge.

3.

For thirty years gay men have been at the heart of every major fascist movement. With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the most high-profile fascists in Europe have been gay. Fascism isn’t a nasty heterosexual habit, it is a gay thing… and it’s time for non-fascist gay people to wake up and stop smelling the amyl nitrate.

Germany’s leading neo-Nazi during the 1980’s, Michael Kuhnen died of AIDS a few years after coming out. Martin Lee, author of A Study of European Fascism, explains, “For Kuhnen, there was something super-macho about being a Nazi, as well as being gay, both of which enforced his sense of belonging to an elite. He told a West German journalist homosexuals were ‘especially well-suited for our task, because they do not want ties to wife, children and family.’”

Whenever I mention gay nazis to liberal gay men they become outraged. It is beyond their comprehension. They call me a liar and a fraud.

Now all I have to say is: Milo Yiannopoulos and they shut the fuck up.

4.

My Trump prognosis?  I predict a short, violent civil war with a million or so casualties.  I can hear my friends scoffing, but they scoffed when I said Trump would be elected. I’ll say again: civil war is inevitable.  Rather than ignore this inevitability… we must accept a terrible truth: it is perfectly normal, when ideas become entrenched, for opposing humans in the same tribe to start afresh elsewhere or fight each other to the death.  Nowadays, there’s nowhere to emigrate, we are stuck with our enemies.  

At first, those who disagree with Trump will be silenced… then they will disappear. After a year or so of vengeful President Trump, random acts of violence shamelessly executed in broad day light will be ignored by those who formerly thought themselves brave. Recording these bloody incidents will result in immediate arrest and indefinite detention.  As the numbers of dissidents swell, camps to house them will be built. Our ‘liberal’ society will quickly absorb fascism. Fearful of losing their jobs, their bank accounts, their social media… the people will swiftly acquiesce. They will feel safe once more, hemmed in by new laws written to restrict discredited ‘freedom’.  The police will be fair but feared. We will once again enjoy apartheid and those who rock the boat will vanish.

5.

Finally, don’t be fooled by the black faces at the Oscars this year. One diverse year will not make up for the past 40. Where are the women directors? Where are the black producers/studio execs/agents/managers?  Follow the real money in Hollywood, the fancy mansions, yachts, private airplanes and it leads to one place… white men. Every agency, studio head, management companies and most production companies are owned and run by mostly white jewish men. They have excluded black faces and women from the money, the power and prestige.

Categories
Film Hollywood Queer Rant

Racist Hollywood

  
Did you think I was oblivious?  When I toured the fancy talent agencies?  Meeting the managers in their art filled, airy offices on the west side?  Shaking hands with eager entertainment lawyers. Do you think I didn’t notice the teamsters and the grips and the sales agents… the casting directors, the art directors and the camera department… do you think I ever said out loud… why are none of you black?  Why are so few of you latino or asian?

When I arrived in Hollywood, at the talent agencies, they introduced me to gay agents… because I’m gay.  They thought I might feel more comfortable. They talked gay with me.  They told me about their husbands, they hoped I might party with them in Palm Spings. What do they do with their black clients?  All those white agents perfecting their patois, their chicken and waffles… their white shame… their apology.

On their own… feeling safe, they tell you what they really think.  On the golf course, in the AA meeting.  Listening to the talent agency owner whilst he disparages woman (‘nobody wants a woman director’) and people of color (‘they just don’t have our work ethic’).  At the white AA meeting we attended in The Palisades I watch in awe as the sober, white entertainment lawyers… hoping to do business with the fat, short, racist… laugh in agreement.  It doesn’t go unnoticed that most of the powerful white men I meet pandering to low grade racism… are Jewish.

I was told by one mega producer who famously makes very, very white super hero films that he wished every muslim would either convert or die… and when I wrote to him the following day explaining members of my family were muslim he replied it wasn’t his problem I was related to ‘rag heads’.

I was called a rag head and sand nigger by a well known gay white writer when we fought about money.

The white, gay caterer told me last week he didn’t employ black people.  “It makes my clients uncomfortable.”  He smiles, he hopes his winning smile will somehow deflect my critical glare.  He hopes, because he has come out as a racist, I might extend some sort of sympathy, some understanding.  When he came out as gay… he was a hero.  Would his honesty about race garner the same result?

Sales agents told me, when casting  my film Dorian Gray, “Don’t even think about a black lead, we won’t be able to sell to the Middle East.”  They were unembarrassed by their racism, actively excluding black people from lead roles, from leading, from leading a better life.

I asked talent agents to suggest people of color to play Dorian Gray.  They couldn’t.

Charlotte Rampling and Michael Caine are not the problem.  The teamsters and the agency boss are the problem.  Of course Charlotte and Michael see black faces on set, in the make up trailer and at Craft Services.

They say the Oscars don’t matter.  Of course they fucking matter.  White people with an Oscar nomination can expect a wage increase of a gazillion %.  Awards are factored into contracts, an award contractually guarantees the writer/director/lead cast more money.  That’s how contracts are structured.

Pretend, as Robert Redford did yesterday, it was the work rather than the award that mattered… betraying his disingenuousness.  His elitism.  If awards don’t matter… get rid of the Sundance awards.

White men (gay and straight) keep women and people of color away from the big money, excluded from the validation, the opportunity, from the prizes.  

Prizes that suddenly don’t matter to Robert Redford… because it’s not about the glory, it’s about the work.

Tina Gharavi is an Iranian Film Director.  Her statement on Facebook today should bring tears to your eyes.

I am constantly told, oh it doesn’t matter, doesn’t exist, it’s not worth getting upset over…. or that it will change with time, that it’s all in my head… or make a film that they cannot ignore… or if you were any good, it will happen anyway…. At the end of the day, my whole career has been needing to prove myself twice more over than those on my left and right and it is exhausting. More than just the work itself, it’s the fact that people deny the prejudice even exists. When I first met my partner, he was skeptical that there were systems at play that did not give me the same chances as other filmmakers. After 5 years of watching, he has seen the many times that opportunities were given to others less qualified… of the invitations that never arrive… Now he is more livid than me…. He sees the fact that the panels will invite the white male director (except when it is a panel where they need to discuss diversity or need a female to turn up). Truth is many black filmmakers watch their white peers rise up with projects which are less interesting and challenging… well, one can imagine the effect that has on the soul. Films are a commercial as well as an artistic expression. I have said this before, sometimes I wish I had never left painting. You can paint without much money but filmmaking… that means a lot of people have to have incredible belief and support for your vision. Most of the time, however, it is a failure of imagination… and that is were we are all poorer. We need to confront this and Charlotte would do better than making choices and decisions based on her own experiences. I don’t know many black or ethnic filmmakers who would agree with her. I challenge her to work on my next film, not as an actress but as an Exec and watch exactly how many opportunities I am given which impoverish my fellow white filmmakers. I call her out… if she wants to really see what the truth of it is. If she was following my story so far she wouldn’t have said what she did. I don’t want a leg up just because there aren’t enough black filmmakers…. I want an equal opportunity because I have important stories to tell.

Categories
Film Gay Hollywood Queer Rant Tivoli NY

Carol: Lesbian Love Story


Carol, the well written, well designed, well shot, well acted but ultimately turgid new movie by avant garde industry darling Todd Haynes has a fan base… an angry, indignant fan base.

Many beyond the film industry feel this mostly second rate film should have earned a place in the best film and best director categories at this years academy awards.

The vociferous fans feel the film has been ‘snubbed’.

There are blogs and op eds and blazing Facebook posts about this apparent injuctice. The fans blame homophobia, misandry, misogyny and fear of women’s sexuality.

Even though Carol has in fact been nominated in 6 categories including the prestigious written adaptation category this is not enough for many disgruntled Carol fans.

There’s plenty to complain about this award season.  People of colour are vanished from the awards. Female directors?  None.  The roles women are asked to play:

Best Actor jobs: Screenwriter, astronaut, trapper, inventor, artist.

Best Actress jobs: Mommy, lady, inventor, girl, wife.

I’m wondering if, after this so called scandal, members of the academy will bother voting for this slight film at all.

Wether they are directed by white men or not (Carol was directed by a white man, a man… why?) most of the other nominated films are simply more engaging and well directed.

Personally, I’m rooting for The Big Short. There, I said it.

2.

Tivoli is under siege this afternoon,  gangs of identically dressed gay men.  Fur trimmed Parkers and skinny jeans.

Identical white gay boys.  Vile.

They stare at me dressed in my tweeds and hunters like I’m a fucking circus freak.

Fuck off.

Categories
Los Angeles Queer Rant Whitstable

The Deserving Gay

Jim Lande

1.

What used to be a trickle of exceptionalism that marred a tiny portion of the white gay male community has recently become a lethal torrent.   Perceived ‘equality’ has revealed the true nature of many, many gay white men.  No longer humbled by their treatment at the hands of an unfair, homophobic society they have sprung ahead of the pack, claiming that a ‘seat at the table’ is not good enough… instead we must build, decorate and chair the table… governing any meeting it may entertain.  Moreover, we don’t really want to share the table with anyone other than really, really good-looking gay white men who all agree and never get angry.

Being gay is like joining a cult.

At gay AA… the greeters don’t greet you unless you are ‘hot’ or ‘famous’.

A Provincetown celebrity (aren’t they all) posted a picture of his smiling mug along side two other grinning, bearded gay men.  All three based in Provincetown, on perpetual vacation, they look for all the world as if they are happy.  As if they are care free… as if trouble seldom blights their gay paradise.  Great pic!  They may very well use the pic and pics like them to lure boys on a well-known gay hook up app.  In gay paradise everything is perfect.  That’s what they insist you believe.  Of course… scratch a little beneath the surface of any gay man and one releases the foul odor of resentment, addiction, crippling narcissism and judgement.

I mentioned to Jim Lande who posted the pic that everyone seems so happy all the time in Provincetown?  He replied, “Only for the deserving.”   Of course, we know what that means.  Jim means there is no room in a perfect gay society for an opposing view, an ugly mug, for poverty, for people of color, for mental illness…  the deserving are hand-picked from the glut of meat delivered weekly to Provincetown, Fire Island and resorts like them.

Jim describes himself as a Boulevardier, a bohemian… he compliments a video I posted of Sebastian Horsley my great friend… I remind him that Sebastian was a bohemian, Jim is just a gay man wearing a velvet jacket… there’s a difference.   He retracts the word bohemian from his description.  He attempts to shame me for going to a boarding school that helps kids who have been abused.   It’s the gay go to punishment:  SHAME.   Did you read that?  This exceptional, best little boy who worked in government all his life spying on the good people of the United States is doing what the rancid gay does best… he is trying to shame me for something I could not help.   I had no say.

Jim Lande is trapped in Provincetown, posting pics of his amazing life, his amazing friends… he posts endless reviews of the film he helped fund, Love is Strange by Ira Sachs.  He describes Ira as a ‘Hollywood Darling.’   Blighted by gay exceptionalism… he reminds me how much money he is going to make, the awards they will win… the plaudits they receive.

2.

Dan spends his summer hop-scotching across the world from gay resort to gay cruise to gay sightseeing.  He travels in a pack of identical men.  The same age, the same color, the same body weight, hair distribution, the same dietary obsessions… the same unresolved traumas.  He is the ‘deserving’.

I met a young man on-line the other day.  We had the briefest moment of intimacy.  He is ‘desperate’ to be in the film industry.  He is ‘discreet’ which is short hand for: I’m careful who I tell I’m gay and what I’m into because it might ruin my career chances.  He’s not scared that straight people will find out, little Austin is scared the gays will judge him, the gays will shame him.  He doesn’t want gay men to know anything.  He is secretive, sneaky and as a result… thoroughly unattractive.   He has built himself a hybrid closet (like a panic room) protecting himself from the gays.

(The actor I dated this summer was secretive, sneaky and lied about everything.  The gays live in a shadowy world of fantasy, make-believe and lies.)

3.

The society photographer boasts that the boy who loves him is ‘disposable’, he boasts that he fisted him… when I ask the boy what happened… he tells me that the hardest thing about the photographer were his fingers.    We seldom talk about erectile dysfunction.  Anything other than a hard cock renders a gay man utterly useless.   You know, the gays hate me writing my blog.   They write snarky notes insisting that I correct tiny details… (“I’m not a director I’m a producer”)  as if any one cared!  

4.

On Facebook I am pretending to be an old Whitstable codger, enjoying a thread on Julie Burchill‘s Facebook page.  Julie hates all Muslims, her page is rife with anti islamic rhetoric.  If you disagree with her POV you are immediately branded a ‘jew hater’.  She says, “I think I may have mentioned a FEW times that I am a Gentile Socialist Zionist? Why would people come here just to get cross? If you don’t like the tiny democratic state of Israel, surrounded by fascist fiefdoms, fuck off to one of the thousands of Jew-hating Facebook pages? Cheers!”

Her fans scream with joy!  Her fans ecstatically revile Islam.  Her fans start out by reminding us firmly that they are not racist (they don’t support the British National Party) then, without irony, they go on to say how much they hate all Muslims and want to kill them.  I suggested meeting one of these crazy women to discuss exacting revenge on the Muslim population of Chatham…. amazingly she private messaged me in the hope of exacting revenge on Muslims!!!

Then it got pretty scary… these people are fucking INSANE.  Julie has no idea what her crazed followers are capable of.   She really needs to take that seriously.   Whipping those guys up the way she does may lead her to some unsightly trouble… exactly the same trouble other radical preachers have, facing the same criminal charges.  You need only one crazy person to do something dumb and cite Julie B as their inspiration…. well, you know the rest.

BTW what exactly is a ‘gentile socialist zionist’?

5.

The only person to spout that kind of anti Muslim shit to me here in the USA was a white gay Producer who told me he believed (as a patriot) that all Muslims should convert or be eradicated from the earth because they didn’t like gays.  I said, my deceased father was a Muslim and several of my 12 brothers and sisters too.  He didn’t care.  He still thought they should be murdered.  Whilst I can sort of understand Julie’s naive zeal as a pre op convert to Judaism I found this Christian hatred and rabid insistence to kill millions of people based on their beliefs… utterly stunning.   Mind you, this guy has always been a person to be suspicious of, he tells everyone who will listen that he will help anyone he can… any way he can… but when the time comes… he is nowhere to be found.

Categories
Alcoholics Anonymous Gay NYC Queer Rant Rehab

GoProud Jon Fortin/Brayden Forrester

IMG_7019

1.

Philip Seymour Hoffman died this week.  The rooms of AA were full of weeping newcomers grieving his death.  Finding spurious reasons to hitch their wagon to his hearse.  Sober people with many years of sobriety rolled their eyes as crocodile tears drenched the disingenuous faces of people claiming intimate friendship with the deceased film star.

At the Perry Street morning AA meeting the press stood in packs, enduring the frigid February winds waiting for people who might have known PSH.  Many were less than discreet and sang like canaries.

The press was awash with sentimental descriptions of Hoffman, endless references to his ‘genius’ ‘talent’ and the ‘tragic waste of life’.

There were long essays by addiction ‘experts’ describing how addicts like Hoffman had no choice, that he was predestined to die with a needle in his arm, that his death symbolized something more in American culture that just the death of a ‘lonely’ junky.

You know, junkies who are taking drugs on the lam tend to isolate.  It’s hard to load a syringe, find a vein and discreetly nod off in a room full of people.  Especially when you are a household name.  He wasn’t lonely, he was alone.  He needed to be on his own to conduct his junky life.

The police arrested the guys who allegedly sold Hoffman the heroin.  They arrested the wrong people.   They should have gone after the directors of the ‘for profit’ treatment center he attended last year.  The snake oil sales men who promise relief from active addiction by cosseting addicts in expensive rehabs, re packaging the 12 steps of AA with no chance of long-term sobriety.

Criminal sober people with no interest in helping the desperate addict, just screwing them for the big bucks year after year for short-term relief.

Anyway, he’s dead.  Just like thousands of other junkies all over the USA but he gets a fanfare… they get a pauper’s grave and the shame of the addict heaped upon them.

Addicts are selfish, self obsessed monsters.  He chose to call his dealer rather than reach out to a sober person.  He chose to load his syringe rather than pick his kids up from school.

Now he has a million apologists who think he had no choice at all.

2.

Yesterday I signed up for the NYU AA men’s retreat to be held at Bill W’s house in Massachusetts.

As I walked into the room where the event was being organized the young gay white men with no more than 7 years of sobriety looked imperiously at me.  They could scarcely concealed their contempt or their bitchy sneers as I sat down and asked pertinent questions about travel and accommodation.

Their faces began to droop however, as they grasped that there was very little they could do to exclude me from coming to their cozy gay event.   The idea they could be trapped at a country retreat with me… for three days filled them with total horror.

The Gay men from the controlling gay AA cabal… who don’t even attend the NYU AA meeting are organizing the event.   I’m perfectly sure they went into isolation overdrive.  What could they do to get rid of me?

They were texting each other furiously.

We will see what shenanigans they come up with.  This is going to be very interesting.

3.

Jon Fortin/Zac Bissonnette

Last Saturday I went to the birthday party of a model publicist at The Skylark on 39th St.  It was a dreary affair, too few people bumping around a cavernous space.  Andy Roddick and Brooklyn Decker, a gaggle of ‘event gays’ and some asian women I convinced my friend were rifling his gym bag.  Yes, he had his gym bag with him.

After a moment of party remorse I decided to talk to some dull looking gays at the bar.  I wasn’t disappointed.  They were terrible.  Anyhow, I was introduced to one mealy-mouthed homo called Jon.  Jon who?  Jon Fortin.  He told us that he had started and had consequently left the organization GoProud the Republican gay group that represents gay conservatives and their allies.

I thought  Jimmy LaSalvia started GoProud?  No?  Hadn’t he recently renounced his republican affiliation?

Hmmm,  Jon Fortin.  Name didn’t sound familiar, between cranberry and sodas I snuck away and there on my second screen was Jon Fortin.   Google turned up very little about Jon Fortin other than a brief mention in the Gay Blade as a booth helper at the RNC and in his Linkedin profile as a Political Consultant for GoProud, The Whitehouse and John McCain.

He took my number and we met for brunch the following day with my friend Vanessa.  The brunch was very enlightening.  Firstly, he told us that he had fucked Aaron Schock the republican to whom Itay Hod alluded in some crude Facebook posting but was subsequently roundly discredited.

Jon described how he had picked Aaron up from Dulles airport, taken him to his hotel and fucked him.  It was very convincing.  My friend and I were both entranced.

Secondly, after brunch… during the boring Super Bowl he took me to one side and with sad eyes and wet mouth revealed that he had left his wallet at home in another coat.   As you may know dear readers I really don’t mind paying for lunch but I really mind paying for alcohol.

He left, promising to make it up to me the following day.  Yet, when the following day came around he refused to meet me on the east side where I was at my 12.30 AA meeting (listening to PSH stories) preferring a spot near where I lived.

Annoyed that I was being asked to walk 15 blocks through ten inches of wet slush I balked.  I told him that it was up to him to come to me as he owed me lunch.  After a bit of text argy bargy which included him telling me that I should just forget about how much lunch cost, he decided to leave $72 in dimes at my club which they very kindly processed.

It was an amusing stunt and one that had taken some careful preparation.

He paid his share.  I didn’t care if it were in pennies or euros.  It was paid.  Republicans believe that we are all ultimately responsible for our actions and there are consequences for our mistakes.  It was only right that he paid.

That was that… I thought.  Until this morning when an unidentified source revealed that rather than ‘political consultant Jon Fortin’ I had in fact fallen foul of Brayden Forrester porn star and hooker.

I Googled Brayden Forrester and my screen was ablaze!

Of course he had ‘lost’ his wallet.  Of course he was pissed that I asked him to pay his share.  Poor love.  I felt rather sorry for him.  30-year-old ex porn star fails to secure free lunch at exclusive club.

I let him know what I knew about his porno past and he called me a train wreck, a psycho, mentally ill, insane.   The usual insults.  I’m used to them.  Yep.  Sounds accurate.

Jon.  What did you do?

I received calls from the gays.  Don’t blog about him… it will ruin his life.  Ruin his life?  How?

In my humble opinion the truth will set Jon Fortin free.  He should shamelessly embrace his Brayden past.  The gays love a good porn star and Brayden knows how to take a big cock/load.  CHECK IT OUT BITCHES.  He’s far more interesting to me as Brayden than he ever will be as Jon.  Most gays agree.  Lance Black only benefitted from those X Rated pics of him getting fucked… in the ass… without protection.

My unfortunate encounter with Jon/Brayden reminded me of the equally repugnant/misguided writer gay:  Zac Bissonnette, author of the perfectly revolting and poorly written book  How To Be Richer, Smarter, and Better Looking Than Your Parents.  Yes, he really wrote a book with that title.

This elitist prick became infuriated when I mentioned on Facebook that he didn’t write particularly well to my friend Benoit Denizet-Lewis.  This solicited from Zac the sort of invective only the gays have ever reserved for me.

Zac trolled the internet and after reading vile and libelous comments left by anonymous queens… repeated them back to me as facts.  Accusing me of being a pedophile, trying to shame me for filling for bankruptcy, suggesting that I deserved to be in jail, he reminded me that I am old and ugly.  You know, the usual gay shit.

Smelling a delicious and potentially lucrative law suit I urged Bissonnette to make the pedophile accusation public.  Of course… he refused.  “Without proof I would never say that publicly, do you think I’m an idiot?” He minced.

Yes, I think you’re an idiot… Zac.

Zac (like Jon) believes that unless you are living a life that almost exactly replicates his with his specific design for gay living you may as well be dead.   In an attempt at peacemaking Zac offered an olive branch but it’s kind of hard to forgive a man who accuses you groundlessly of fucking children.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Categories
Fantasy Gay Los Angeles Love NYC politics Queer Rant

Gay Itay Hod Fucks Straight Aaron Schock (Pictures)

20140107-010935.jpg

First, if you’re going to out someone, then out them. Itay Hod did not out Schock in his piece, he outed a “hypothetical” congressman who just happens to fit Schock’s resume. He also presented thin evidence, which consisted of hearsay from an unnamed journalist friend and video footage that he claims TMZ has of Schock “trolling gay bars.” Hod knows a Facebook post is the only place this cuts it; that’s why it appeared there and not at any publication.
Secondly, a group of several gay journalists and activists on Twitter — including Dan Savage, Michelangelo Signorile, John Aravosis and Josh Barro — have decided that mocking Schock for exhibiting stereotypically gay attributes, like caring about his clothes and body, or following Daley on Instagram is the way of dealing with him. This is the same sort of behavior that the same people have said is harmful when it happens to closeted LGBT kids in schools. And, when I look at this happening publicly, I know that those closeted kids could be seeing it too. If it’s harmful for those kids to see athletes say anti-LGBT things, how isn’t it harmful for them to see prominent out people teasing Schock for his pants?

Chris Geidner

Chris Geidner is the sole brave gay journalist who dared criticize the velvet mafia for their inchoate name calling and bullying… aimed at Republican Politician Aaron Schock… the reason for this gay vitriol?   Hunky journalist (we only agree with the good-looking ones) Itay Hod posted some ugly, muddled references on his Facebook page to a man who might hypothetically be Aaron Schock.

I’m not a fan of Aaron, he’s a typical… loathsome republican with typically unpalatable views with an unlikely sartorial edge, an atypical personal aesthetic and a body that most gay men seem to die for.

Most gay men seem to think Aaron has a ‘gay body’ so must be gay.

Rather than homosexual… Aaron Schock looks to me like a right-wing narcissus.  Remember the art of the Third Reich?  Remember Die Partei, Arno Breker‘s statue representing the spirit of the Nazi Party, fetishizing male perfection?   Like most young contemporary gays, young nazis were encouraged to aspire to an idealized body as proof of their loyalty to the state (the state of gay) and their undying patriotism.  A common right-wing obsession.

Aaron has embraced the people’s fascination with his perfect abs and pecs whilst extolling the values of racial purity, militarism, and obedience.  Perhaps that’s exactly why the white, elite gays believe Aaron is a homosexual… because he is a full on, 100%, bone fide narcissist.

And, if you are wondering… defending him from the gay mafia does not make me a self loathing homosexual.  It makes my blood boil that hate speak usually reserved for gay people is being used by gay people against a man who may or may not be gay.

Aaron!  If you had only kept your abs to yourself, your (some might say) good looks under wraps… and your Instagram private… the gays wouldn’t have noticed you in the first place.  But all those pics of you with your bronzed pecs and tight white underwear have driven the gays wild.  And, like Tom Cruise before you… all the gays really want… is… to fuck you… convincing themselves and others that if they want you that badly… there’s no chance you’re straight.

You’ve confused the average gay, blindsided him with your million watt smile.

If you had been an ugly troll saying hateful things… the gays wouldn’t care less who you were fucking.  Anyway, they’d have already caught you with your mouth behind a glory hole or paying for boys on rentboy.com and dismissed you with a limp wave and a meh.

But Aaron, much to their consternation, you seem to be sexually abstinent.  Nobody has caught you with your pants down with anyone… male or female. Because you don’t take your pants down?  The gays NEVER understand celibacy or abstinence or how all men are not exactly like them.  It drives them crazy that they can’t catch you, shame you, kill the demon of homophobia within… then fuck you.

Itay Hod and his jacked up supporters are crude, repellent people. Old fashioned bullies… judgmental and prescriptive. If you dare disagree with their group think assessment you will be damned to hell… just like Chris Geidner…

For a bunch of guys who loathe judgement in others the gays sure got judgmental about the rest of the world.  Since the Supreme Court DOMA decision the gays have woken up… emboldened, embracing their power.  Like children, testing their parameters, the boundaries of what can and what can’t be said or done.  Sadly, after a life time of hibernation, they have taken on the attributes of their worst enemies.

Dan Savage, Michelangelo Signorile, John Aravosis, Josh Barro.

They are, after all, just men.  White gay men, looking down their noses at the rest of us.

While the affluent, white gays sink into a sanctimonious swamp the rest of the LGBTQ alliance look on at them with barely concealed embarrassment.

Their treatment of Schlock, their asinine assumption that he is gay based on pics of his bare-chested, manicured body… his trousers, his shoes… says more about them and the type of gays they are… than the kind of straight man Schock is.

Dodgy circumstantial evidence convicts Aaron Schock of homosexuality in the court of the velvet mafia.  Using gossip and here say, bad shoe pics and plaid pants as indisputable proof of his gayness.

This is BULLSHIT!

I thought is was who we were fucking and loving rather than who we were aping that made us gay?

Perhaps Aaron Sch-jock is truly asexual?  Maybe he’s waiting for the right guy… maybe he’s a pedophile practicing abstinence… or suffers erectile dysfunction and hates the gays because they are so obsessed with hard cocks?

What of it?  It’s all conjecture until he tells us what he is if he feels so compelled.

The guy is a republican hater who dresses like a european and loves showing off his abs… have you seen Instagram or Tumblr recently? Based on this proof… this ‘criteria’… the whole world (hopefully) would be gay.  All of my young straight friends are posting pics of their abs and their shoes on Instagram and Tumblr every day.

Haven’t we got past this crap?  That only pansies and girls do that sort of thing?

God forbid, what happens if Aaron comes out? Like Ken Mehlman before… who caused untold harm to fellow gay people.   If indeed Schock is gay and comes out?  There will be a parade.  It will take the baying gays about ten seconds to shamelessly forget his homophobia, objectify his abs… go to his pool parties and drink his vodka whilst he condemns immigrants, destroys women’s rights and turns a blind eye to racist colleagues.

But don’t worry… he’ll be out and proud.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Categories
Film Gay Hollywood Los Angeles Love Queer Rant

Dustin Lance Black

20131205-172525.jpg

Tuesday,  a woman I know sent me a revolting picture of a skinned, live puppy attempting to escape a pot of boiling water.  The following email I opened that day was a friend telling me the young Olympiad Tom Daley was dating Dustin Lance Black.  The similarities between these two emails far outweigh the differences.

Black, known to his friends simply as Lance has been around my life as long as we have both been making gay films.  Despite how we have been described, Lance and I are NOT friends. Never have been, never will be.

Recently, Lance’s films have fallen by the wayside. His famous friends and perfect Hollywood pedigree can not augment his startling lack of talent.  Despite the luxury of many recuts his film Virginia remains almost unwatchable.  One of his producers told me that Lance cannot and should not direct.

He claims that he loves my British Academy Award nominated film AKA.   Yet, for all his ‘love’ of my work… he and me have never really connected.  I’m not… a) a young blonde boy,  b) a Hollywood grandee,  c) interested.

Like so many gay men in Hollywood he is ruthlessly ambitious.

Lance Black (born to the Mormon faith) is an affluent, white, gay man.  I stress this because it defines who he is as a so-called gay activist.  We see each other at gay apartheid (white only) parties in the Hollywood Hills.  I am usually the plus one.

He lives in a nice house on Fairfax Avenue in West Hollywood.  It is sparsely decorated. For all his riches Lance lives a frugal life.  One might say the house lacks imagination which is odd for such an imaginative man.   One of the bedrooms in his humble home is reserved for the two surrogate children he is planning in his not so distant future.

The only fly in the ointment?  He will not have children unless married.  Sadly, his seeming inability (like so many gay men in Hollywood) to keep just one man, a man to marry… the bassinets remain empty.   He is drawn predominantly to much younger gay men.   The subject of child rearing, when discussed, often leads to amicable separation.

It seems that Lance may have found in Tom Daley a young man he can marry who shares his desire for an immediate family.  Let’s wish him all the best and that child-birth comes quickly… he doesn’t want to be an old dad, too old to play football with his young child.

Lance’s pre occupation with a nuclear family is at odds with how I would determine an activist.  But Lance is no ordinary activist.  He passionately wants for all gays to perfectly ape what heterosexuals seem to have.  Nothing less than full integration will do.  He fights vehemently for the gays to participate in the traditionally right-wing institutions of marriage and the military.

He hangs primarily with a gang of affluent white men who share similar mores.

Gay activists like Lance Black were quick to blame California’s African-American voters for the defeat of Proposition 8, the anti gay marriage amendment.  People for the American Way president Kathryn Kolbert, criticized “the speed with which some white gay activists began blaming African-Americans—sometimes in appallingly racist ways.”

Black is wedded to right-wing gay organization the HRC who once famously refused to support the rights of trans people then issued a groveling apology.  Not learning from their white gay mistakes the HRC recently silenced the voices of trans and queer undocumented activists outside the Supreme Court during the DOMA Supreme Court decision, again… apologizing after the fact.

The gays at the HRC, it seems,  have a very narrow view of sexuality. The LGBTQ coalition leaves many affluent, white gay men feeling uneasy and confused.   Unsurprisingly, like so many gay men, Lance questions the legitimacy of bisexuality.  A nettle the gays prefer not to grasp…

Read more about the dark practices of the HRC here.

“In recent years, HRC has been working to contradict its former reputation as an organization overly focused on issues of concern to affluent white gay men, combating long-simmering charges of transphobia within the organization.”

When Lance first started calling himself an activist and regularly going to Washington to meet President Obama I bumped into him at Cafe Solar de Cahuenga on Cahuenga Blvd in Hollywood.  Solar is a tatty south American coffee shop/restaurant popular amongst young actors and writers within sight and sound of the busy 101 Freeway.

I praised him for his film Milk which he valiantly produced and won an Oscar for writing.  I didn’t ask him about the controversy whirling around the gay gossip vortex in which we are both hapless victims.  Amongst the back stabbing gays his success and authenticity were being questioned.

Hadn’t he stolen the Milk project from another gay producer?  Did he even write the script that won him the Oscar for best film?  Some people said Ron Nyswaner had in fact written the final script that Gus shot?   The gays told me that he took his Oscar everywhere.  That he couldn’t put it down.  They scoffed that he used his power and prestige within the gay community to snare impressionable young boys.   They said he should have been wearing a condom when he was fucking his ‘boyfriend’ in the infamous shots of Lance with a cock in his ass… if he was at all interested in being an ‘activist’ he should have been wearing a condom.  They said that he should practice what he preached.  They said that the original documentary about Harvey Milk was far better than the film.

Harvey Milk made Lance Black famous.  What Milk would have made of Black personally… I wonder.  What Black would have thought of Milk if he had met him contemporaneously… I wonder.  Milk was a charismatic, bombastic, driven, older jewish man.  Lance channels Milk’s political inclusivity when he claims that all he wants to do is ‘give people hope’, this wholesale appropriation of Milk’s legacy… sticks somewhat in the caw.

Lance hangs with Milk’s contemporary and true activist Cleve Jones.   Lance riding Cleve’s activist coat tails?  Cleve seduced by Hollywood glamour?

What kind of political activist is Dustin Lance Black?

Whilst whistle-blower and trans hero Pvt. Chelsea Manning rots in jail, ‘activist’ Lance Black lead the ‘human rights’ charge on The Castro for San Francisco Pride.   SF Pride chose to controversially exclude Manning from the official Pride demonstration in fear of upsetting Pride’s corporate donors.

Back in Hollywood, Lance sits writing on his own in the middle of the coffee shop sipping green tea.  Everyone could see him there.  We talked about British equality legislation fashioned by Waheed Ali.  I told Lance about British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell.  He seemed enthralled by Peter’s unique brand of direct action so I organized an introduction.  When the time came for him to meet with Peter… Lance bailed.

I sent a dismissive note.

We didn’t speak again until he started dating a dear friend of mine who was at that time living at my home.  My friend is perhaps one of the sweetest man I know.  Kind, considerate, thoughtful, intelligent, curious and recently out of the closet.  In fact, history repeating itself, my friend came out for Lance.  My friend made the first move.

Knowing that my friend was falling for Lance I tried to stay as impartial as I possibly could.  It didn’t last long.  I was supportive and kind for as long as I could be.  I asked Lance over to the house for his new boyfriend’s birthday lunch.  Lance bailed.

During the next few months of their relationship I watched my friend fall apart.  My friend started therapy.  He was torn and confused and miserable.  At one particular gay pool party Lance rudely left without telling my dear sweet friend that he was leaving. Lance ended up at another Hollywood party, at Roland Emerich’s surrounded by more young boys.

My friend was distraught.

Thankfully, when Lance took my friend to The White House he didn’t bail.  They ran around with Don Lemons stealing Christmas cookies.  They had access all areas.  They hung in the Oval office.  My friend was delighted to see history being made… for affluent white gay people.

I maintained my impartiality.

I have no opinion about Lance and Tom.  Sadly, others do.

Tom Daley is being scolded in the bully chat rooms by the petit bourgeois gays for ‘making the first move’ as if his teenage innocence and delight can be construed as a devious attempt at star fucking.

The British public love Tom Daley and they will not let him get hurt or tangled in anything other than a relationship they deem appropriate.  For the time being they will give Lance Black the benefit of the doubt. I am sure the British press will keep tabs on Lance.  If he thinks for one gay moment that he can get away with any duplicitous behavior around Tom Daley… he had better think again.

The problem is:  no one expects gay men to have morals, or stick to the rules.  Gay white affluent man have written their own rules and nobody dares question them.  They have become a super elite, their access to the world stage unparalleled.  But with wider acceptability comes broader scrutiny.

Elton John once said in front of me, “10 gay men run the world… and I know all of them.”

Tom Daley is a beloved young British boy.  We may begin to see this corrupt, elite gay world through his teenage eyes.  It is a shadowy world of sexual un-manageability, pedophilia and other unsavory obsessions.

It is not what the elite gays want you to know,  whilst they paint a public picture of themselves that makes them seem… just like you.

Categories
politics Queer Rant

Clément Méric: We Cry For You

black-1.2

It is a black day for the international LGBTQ community.

Clément Méric is as good as dead.  His brilliant, 18-year-old queer brain mangled by right-wing thugs on the streets of Paris.

He is presently kept alive by a tangle of opalescent tubes.

In Russia activists are targeted by government sponsored bullies.

In London intellectuals are beaten to the ground by members of the EDL.

In NYC a black man is shot in the face and killed.

Trans people are murdered every day all over the world, often without investigation.

Have you heard?  There is, amongst the general population, a perceived inevitability about LGBTQ equality.

Some amongst us are becoming complacent.  Bloated on the success we think we have.

Basking in the support we think we get from the President.  In fact we are silenced by him.

His words over deeds have silenced us.

We must speak up.  Continue to challenge. Continue to be seen.

We must not shirk our responsibility to queer martyrs like Clément Méric.

Speak up. Heckle.

ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) is only now being widely discussed after the petulant FLOTUS was confronted by GetEQUAL queer activist Ellen Sturtz.

I congratulate Ellen.  Finally, a voice for the queer poor heard over the screaming voices of the queer rich.

As the Great Recession continues in so much of the USA, ending workplace discrimination (especially for trans people) is essential.

Listen to me or you can take the mic, but I’m leaving. You all decide. You have one choice.

FLOTUS

Remember.  As we strive for parity there will be those with equal and opposite views.

There will be violence.

There will be those who will kill an 18-year-old queer boy because they can.

African-Americans had to face nearly another century of lynchings before the Civil Rights Movement was powerful enough to push back strongly against violent racists.

The women’s movement of the 1920s, side-tracked for a generation until the 1960s, with so many needlessly broken lives and life expectations as a result.

Queer people are being attacked all over the world: Paris, Moscow, New York, London by increasingly emboldened haters.

As we demand equality in the workplace, the home and in the establishment these attacks will become more frequent.

We must, whether we like it or not, form a true LGBTQ alliance not only in name but in practice.

It is too late for fear to drive us into the shadows. We are out. We are visible.

We need to be more fearless and more visible.

LGBTQ.

This means YOU.

This means ME.

Reading about Clément Méric this morning, looking at his sweet, boyish profile… I began to question my own behavior.

I have, of late, let resentment toward the gays shape my own kind of homophobia.

For those of you who have read my blog these past couple of years the provenance of this loathing may seem understandable.

Today, I need to jettison those resentments.

If I truly believe in this fight… I have to accept those I detest as my queer brothers and sisters.

Categories
Gay Queer Rant Whitstable

Winning The War Against Homophobia/Racism/Sexism

Garden 3

Ha.  Don’t hold your breath.

Will you tell your grandchildren that you remember a time when people hated on black people because they were black and your grandchildren raise their eyebrows in disbelief?

Will you tell your grandchildren that you remember a time when nearly all top jobs in industry and government were taken by white men and your grandchildren raise their eyebrows in disbelief?

Will you tell your grandchildren that you remember a time when a gay man was shot in the face in the middle of the most liberal city in the western world for being a faggot and your grandchildren raise their eyebrows in disbelief?

A thousand years from now?  Maybe that’s the kind of incremental change brown people, women and queer people expect?

When will you fight for more?  Why do you put up with the status quo?

Fight for marriage and all things are equal?  No.  Fight for white men to stop taking everything, determining the agenda and we might get somewhere.

A French octogenarian shoots himself in the face because he hates gay marriage.  If he were American he would have massacred first then killed himself.  I think that this scenario seems plausible.

I wouldn’t like to hang around in gay bars right now.  Not with all these emboldened haters amongst us.

Thank God I don’t drink.

I am wearing my pink shoes.  People understand what I am when they look at my feet.

I’m trying to jettison ‘straight acting‘, I’m trying to abandon my invisibility but I know what that means.  It means hostility from gay men and straight men.

I like it when they describe drag queens as fierce.  That’s what I have spent life being:  FIERCE.  Of course, this has been perceived as angry or anti social or…  can I explain something?

Anger is an emotion related to one’s psychological interpretation of having been offended, wronged, or denied and a tendency to react through retaliation.

Anger management?  The management of justified anger.

Listen to this.  I have been reasonably angry for a long time.

I was a kid and I knew I wanted to fall in love with and have sex with men (and women) but the man part of my desire was outlawed, derided.

I fell in love at school.  I fell in love and explored men’s bodies.

I remember when I was 14 I was walking along the beach in Whitstable.  I met a man.  I lay on the sea wall with him.  Furtive.  Illegal.  I never saw him again.  I wonder about him.

They hated us for something we could not change.  I ignored them.  I parried the blows.

I lived in a dream world because living in that reality was simply too painful.

Margaret Thatcher didn’t want me and men and women like me… she didn’t want us to exist.

I’ll tell you what makes me angry:  Brown people not getting a fair trial.  A third of all black men in the USA are in jail.  Women in the military being raped and sexually abused.   Drag queens damning trans people.  I am angry that some people are denied bail.  I am angry that my lover left me when I found my tumor.   I am angry with myself for falling in love with men who could never love me back.  I am angry that the breast cancer gene is privately owned, that innocent brown people are still being held in captivity in Guantanamo Bay.  I am angry that gay men think that marriage is the answer.  I am angry that I grew up with an angry step father.  I am angry that Monsanto kill bees.  I am angry that my neighbors park in front of my gate so I can’t get in and out of my house.  I am angry that two young girls are criminalized for falling in love.  I am angry that most agents (realtors and talent) are sociopath.  I am angry with gay men and straight men for over simplifying sexuality.

How do you live with that?

I set it aside.  The anger.  I find peace wherever I can.  I pull weeds.  I walk the dogs.  I feed the fish.

I forgive them for their sexism, their murder, their bullying, their insistence that they WIN.  At all costs.  Like the bees.  Winning the market means… killing the bees.

When I buy something at auction the others applaud.  They congratulate me.  They tell me that I have won.  I didn’t win.  I just paid the highest price.  It’s not hard to do.

So.  Today I am wearing my pink shoes.  There you go.  ‘Nice shoes,’ they scoff.

Oh, I’m wearing them because I’m queer and I really want you to know.  Because I exist somewhere between Liberace and Jason Collins but I’m still trying to work it out.  Working out what kind of man I am.

I don’t think I’m alone.

Men make their own history but they do not make it as they choose.

Karl Marx