On Sunday I went hiking in Ojai with Anna and her friend Marge. We found a wonderful trail by the Matiliga creek and hopped from boulder to boulder along the river bed. It was extraordinary to see how the Little Dog learned to negotiate what at first perplexed him. The first time we crossed the river he waded through the water, the second time he followed me jumping over the rocks, the third he found his own path, from then on he would guide me.
God daughter Lily
We explored the town of Ojai which is pleasant enough although a little heavy with craft/art shops and white people. We counted only two black faces. No Asians, no Indians, no Afro-Caribbean. Just white, hippy looking rich people.
Us included.
Had lunch at Farmer and the Cook as per Jen’s recommendation. A shack on El Roblar Drive which reminded me of The Goods Shed in Canterbury. The Mexican food was a little bland but the produce looked spectacular. The staff were lovely. Big crush on Brandon the red-head,
To tell you the truth, I am not a great fan of Mexican food. It is always so stodgy but, I suppose, good pre hike fuel.
On Monday I stayed with the Piettes and my God Daughter Lily. We attended the Malibou Mountain Club soft ball match. I looked after the children whilst Jason played soft ball. Jennifer had her Out of The Box orders to attend to. It was a simple and lovely day.
Miles came with me. Robby was stuck at work…and sick.
I wore a very chic black suit and tee-shirt with a picture of a scantily clad woman on it. Hair much longer than it has been for weeks and sporting a fuller beard.
The little dog loves Toby. He jumps around on his back legs whenever he sees him.
Many beautiful, interesting boys. Two girls.
Jeff Davis writer of MTV’s new Teen Wolf series told me that he insisted the gay character in his very promising new show be played by an out gay man.
That was brave, or perhaps reckless in Hollywood? I have no idea.
I applaud Jeff’s audacity.
Maybe things really are a’changing?
Had longest chat with rich gay about US equality politics. Of course I remember his name but it wouldn’t be polite to mention it. Even though I told him that I would blog about the party I don’t think he thought I would blog about him in particular.
He is as passionate as I am about gay equality though his solution seems very different to mine.
We agreed that both HRC and GLAAD are getting it wrong. But where as I think change needs to start with an aggressive ad campaign that positively validates us, our love and our history…his strategy boiled down to making lawyers richer by changing things judicially.
I suggested that men like him and David Geffen and women like Ellen should publicly stop paying their taxes until they have equal billing..he balked.
I urged him to ‘take the bullet’ if he truly believes in equality. I reminded him that there were men and women in Yemen this very night risking their lives for freedom, equality and democracy.
I didn’t necessarily agree with his point of view but tried (unusually) to look for the similarities rather than the differences. I was feeling, shall we say, diplomatic.
Another Ken Mehlman apologist. Apparently, even though our Ken has been a very bad gay he can help us by getting Republicans to speak out for gay marriage. Oh gawd. That argument is nearly as convincing as trickle down economics.
My new friend was a firm believer that all things gay are good and we should not under any circumstance be questioned or challenged.
He seemed perplexed when I suggested that by keeping our own side of the street clean we might attract rather than promote people to our cause. We seldom ever look at our own behaviour, morals or lack of them.
He told me rather imperiously that he did not have any friends with drug or alcohol abuse issues. Forgetting of course that his good friend Elton has been sober for many years after many more years of a torturous drug and alcohol problem.
He had not read or even heard of The Velvet Rage.
We parted on good terms.
One young queen kept hounding The Little Dog. The Little Dog took offence and tried to bite him. Oh how we laughed.
Generally very good party even though I missed the sausages.
Almost the entire Teen Wolf cast in attendance.
Bumped into my very old friend Tom D who scarcely recognised me. I must look very old. He claimed it was the beard. He has become a hugely successful and incredibly well-respected producer. We hugged a lot and agreed to meet very soon.
The beautiful Dane and I are going on an adventure. Watch this space.
The first time Joe ever took me to Fire Island Pines I was immediately convinced that something I had always hankered existed: a place where gay men and women of all ages could live together, experience life together and express themselves without shame.
I have heard from black friends who traveled to Africa for the first time that they experienced a sense of truly understanding how it might be to live an unfettered life.
There are exceptions.
I have just finished reading A Black Man Confronts Africa.
Unlike many black Americans who romanticize Africa, Richburg looks back on his time there and concludes that he is simply an American, not an African-American. This is a powerful, hard-hitting book, filled with anguished soul-searching as Richburg makes his way toward that uncomfortable conclusion.
I am a gay (adopted) American. I do not belong. The laws of the land preclude me from being truly equal. The streets are periodically mine but not consistently. Really? I thought things had changed for the gays? Strangely, post Will and Grace things have not changed. I urge any one of you (gay or straight) who think things may have changed for gay people in contemporary USA (and I have said this many times over): Try holding your same sex friends hand in a street anywhere other than NYC or LA.
See what happens.
Returning to Fire Island this summer for the first time in a decade I am excited to see how things have evolved since I lived there and if the idyl I first experienced still exists.
The beautiful beach, the beautiful boys, the sunset and sunrise…no cars. Dinner prepared by groups of men who sit down together and share. Share being the operative word. What ever share you may have in the house you are renting…doing things collectively is the modus operandi.
Have I idealized my memory of this slim sand bank set at the edge of the Atlantic? Have, within a decade, my memories been burnished?
I wonder.
Firstly, finding a house to rent has been quite hard. I guess my demands are not normal by gay Fire Island Pines standards. When searching for a house I made it quite clear to the realtor that I am sober. I do not drink and I do not take drugs. I told him that I was not interested in the big gay beach parties (drug festivals). That I am going there to write.
Almost every house that I looked at was a ‘party’ house. Almost every person I spoke to told me that they wanted to have fun…read that as excessive drinking, drug taking and sexual unmanageability.
Having a sober person around might mean curtailing the ‘fun’.
I have heard that The Pines has become quite trashy. I have heard that they have ruined the ambiance.
The über gays have long since deserted The Pines for The Hamptons. Aping upper-class American straight people rather than investing in the peculiarities of The Pines.
What is it that draws me back there? What is it that I loved so much?
Well, Joe and I had a wonderful time together in our pretty little house. It was the nexus of gay culture and me. For the first time in my life I saw both old and young gay people going about their business (during the day) just like common people. Fetching their shopping on small, red carts. Dressing up, holding hands, not dressing up…alone.
For the first time in my life I felt as if I owned the space around me, that I could not be judged in this place.
Until I got there I believed those things to be true but I had been kidding myself.
Just getting there from Manhattan was an adventure. The car to Sayville. The ferry ride from Sayville to the island, the palpable excitement of the passengers. The great piles of supplies and dogs and suitcases.
Thank you Joe for taking me there.
The first man I saw when I scrambled down the gang-plank was an elderly man with a stick walking slowly along the board walk. It delighted me. “Is everyone gay here Joe?” I thought to myself that there was indeed a place where I could be free when I was his age. I knew even then in my late 20’s that being old and gay was going to be difficult. My premonition has come to pass. Being old and gay is going to be horrible from what we found out when researching The Scarlett Empress.
Unless, of course you have a spare $160, 000 to buy a surrogate child who might look after you.
I had thought about going back to Whitstable in my dotage but not even Whitstable holds much allure to me. Being the old gay man in town…I have seen the way we are treated.
When I arrived at The Pines I understood how life might play out. The options. I looked around and even though the bars were full of very drunk gays (I was one of them) the look on their faces was different. They looked relaxed, they looked happy.
We went to gay bingo, we involved ourselves with the gay fire department. We had opinions about dune reclamation. We walked barefoot to the beach and watched the beautiful naked men play ball and walk their dogs. We paid for limousines from JFK for our friends and delighted them with our house, our gay lives.
Our routine rarely altered. Watching the sunset, hanging out on the dock to see who would get off the ferry. Buying expensive food at The Pines Pantry…the store was just like any store but crammed with fancy queens buying $100 steaks.
When I got sober the AA meetings were quite small on Fire Island…now they are huge.
I really have no idea what it will be like to live out there once again for the summer.
I am excited at the prospect.
Of course there are other places where one might feel free, where YOU might feel free. Perhaps you have already found your very own utopia elsewhere.
The Fire Island Pines experience is short-lived. In September this utopia is disassembled. The grand houses are shuttered, the store closes, the ferry comes but once a day.
There are other places for us to go. Unless we vanish. Those of us who look kindly upon our strange ‘culture’ can find our tribe elsewhere.
Not until I got to San Francisco did I have that sense of belonging once again. Where the streets were mine. The neighborhoods belonged to us. Where fear and shame were banished.
Like Keith Richburg I am aware of the anthropological problems but still happy to have experienced the adventure. Let me for a moment love it all without criticism, let me love what we have carved out for ourselves both good and bad and celebrate our difference. Celebrate.
There have been times recently when I have seriously thought about suicide but life always delivers so much more than death ever could. Why would I want an endless night when I have the glorious day?
This too will pass. A tiny rule that reminds me daily that life is worth living. That love, lust, hate and anger all have a certain shelf life and it’s only a matter of time before relief is found or misery returns.
When I was a kid things were so confusing, so traumatic I made two attempts at taking my own life. Once with a knife and secondly with pills. I failed to complete my mission on both occasions. Thankfully.
When I had my breakdown during my mid twenties I met young people, at the Henderson Hospital, who seemed determined that life was not worth living and had made far more serious attempts at ending things than I had.
Sarah’s story, particularly, sticks in my mind. I may have written about her before but let me refresh your memory.
Sarah was a young, pretty blond girl who had been serially abused (sexually and physically) by both her parents, foster parents and finally by her adopted father.
By the time I met her she was a husk of what she should have been.
She trusted no one. Why would she?
Every day at the hospital we would congregate for an obligatory house meeting. Sarah was missing. I was sent (by the nursing staff) to her room to find her. When I opened the door I was met with a blood bath.
There was blood everywhere, on the sheets, the floor, sprayed on the ceiling and the walls.
Sarah saw me and said sweetly, “I’ll be down in a minute.” She was pathetically dabbing with a blood sodden rag at the mess on the walls. “I just want to clear this up.” She smiled at me. Softly. She had severed an artery in her wrist and as fast as she mopped up the blood more spurted out.
I grabbed her wrist and called out for help. Screamed for help. Eventually someone arrived. We were hustled (still holding her as a human tourniquet) into a car and to the local ER.
By the time we got to the hospital I was welded onto her and had to be surgically removed from the congealed, bloody wound.
I have no idea what happened to Sarah. Perhaps she succeeded and did indeed kill herself. I have no idea. She didn’t come back from the emergency room.
I don’t remember ever asking about her. Out of sight, out of mind.
Those who threaten suicide are frightening people. A disregard for their own life could very easily become a disregard for yours. A suicide is a murder. A murderer may kill you too.
During the past decade of sobriety I have met many men and women (mostly men) who managed to kill themselves. It always amazed me that even sobriety could not save them.
Death seems so alluring to some people. There is nothing alluring about death: a premature death is just absurd to me. We are dead all too soon and for those of us who do not believe in heaven we may as well find heaven on earth.
Anyway, I am too much of a coward to kill myself. Too much of a coward to drink or take drugs. Too much of a coward to be successful. Too much of a coward to say no…to open letters…to say goodbye.
I have learned to live with depression (without drugs) mental illness (without therapy) inertia (without fear) and love (without conclusion). Some people cannot face the power of life itself. The beauty, the grandeur, the mystery seem so threatening to them and end up dead by their own hand.
Perhaps they cannot/will not respect this extraordinary world, this abundant place.
Recently, as documented here, I have felt vulnerable and sad. I felt (falsely) as if life could only be lived in a certain way…with a lover at my side. On those occasions I am blinded to what I have and drawn to those things I do not have.
These past weeks since the great ‘closure’ my eyes are open, I am bathed in light. The night is no longer a terrible and foreign place. The day begins without yearning nor ends with tears.
One of my favorite directors Leonard Kastle, originally an opera composer who unexpectedly found a niche in film history as the writer and director of the low-budget 1969 crime-thriller film “The Honeymoon Killers,” died on Wednesday. He was 82.
When I made my worst ever film, The Method with Elizabeth Hurley I stole, almost shot by shot, one of Kastel’s brilliant murder scenes. See attached video.
Sadly, not even appropriating Kastel’s genius would save that terrible film.
One of the most shocking lines from any film ever written? When angry with her jewish boss Martha Beck says, “I’m not so sure Hitler wasn’t right about you people.”
In the 1950s and ’60s Mr. Kastle enjoyed a modest reputation as a composer of melodic, romantic operas and as a musical director of works for the stage.
Fame arrived by an unexpected route. Warren Steibel, the producer of “Firing Line” with William F. Buckley Jr. and of Mr. Kastle’s television operas, was given $150,000 by a rich friend to make a film. He hit on the idea of making a grim, documentary-style work based on the story of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, who were known as the Lonely Hearts Killers.
Fernandez was a balding lothario, Beck his obese lover. Together they sought out victims by reading newspaper personal ads, and when Fernandez had won the trust of those they contacted, they robbed them. The couple murdered two of their victims and the 2-year-old daughter of one as well. Fernandez and Beck were electrocuted at Sing Sing in 1951.
At the request of Mr. Steibel, who died in 2002, Mr. Kastle sifted through the trial records at the Bronx County Courthouse. Then, after studying scripts by Fellini, Pasolini and Truffaut, he wrote a screenplay.
Both men envisioned the film as a cinematic rebuttal to “Bonnie and Clyde.” “I was revolted by that movie,” Mr. Kastle said in an interview for the 2003 Criterion Collection reissue of his film on DVD. “I didn’t want to show beautiful shots of beautiful people.”
For his director, Mr. Steibel hired Martin Scorsese, whose first film, “Who’s That Knocking at My Door?,” he had seen recently. But as filming began near the summer home that Mr. Steibel and Mr. Kastle shared in New Lebanon, N.Y., trouble loomed.
It quickly became apparent that Mr. Scorsese’s deliberate, painstaking approach would break the budget and play havoc with the shooting. Mr. Kastle said that after Mr. Scorsese and Oliver Wood, the cinematographer, spent an entire afternoon filming a beer can in a bush, it was clear they would need another director.
When Mr. Scorsese’s replacement, an industrial filmmaker named Donald Volkman, also proved unsatisfactory, Mr. Kastle stepped into the breach. Against the odds, he turned out a quirky masterpiece.
“The Honeymoon Killers,” with Tony Lo Bianco and Shirley Stoler in the lead roles, stunned moviegoers and critics. Brutal, unblinking and ruthlessly honest, with a powerful undercurrent of black comedy, it quickly earned an exalted place in American cinema.
Variety, in an early review, hailed the film as “well-scripted, harrowing, brilliantly acted” and “deserving of a class build-up.” Roger Greenspun, in The New York Times, called Mr. Kastle “the real star of the movie” and placed him “among the important deliberate artists of his medium.” François Truffaut, on more than one occasion, included it among his favorite contemporary American films.
The film performed tepidly at the box office in the United States, despite strong reviews, but found a receptive audience in Europe. It reaped a new harvest of acclaim as it made the festival and art-house circuits when it was re-released in 1992.
“Even 20-plus years after its original release, this picture’s implacability and refusal to compromise are as startlingly pure as ever,” Kenneth Turan wrote in The Los Angeles Times.
In 2006 Jared Leto and Salma Hayek starred in a remake of the film, “Lonely Hearts,” with John Travolta as the detective who pursues the murderers.
It was Mr. Kastle’s first and last movie.
Mr. Kastle was often asked why he never made another film. It was not for lack of trying, he said.
“I have six or seven screenplays, and maybe something will happen,” he told the interviewer for the Criterion DVD. “But one thing I can always say — and not every director can say this — I never made a bad film after ‘Honeymoon Killers.’ ”
We stepped out of the restaurant for a moment to smoke and a young woman approached me.
She said, “I saw you on the show. You’re very brave.”
I felt like a total fraud.
I wanted to tell her that since the show I have broken every rule, every principal I had ever committed or adhered to. These past few moths I have run roughshod over all the progress of the past 13 years.
I feel like I am at square one.
Sure I didn’t drug or drink. Sure it was brave of me to reveal myself on TV…but look at the trouble it has caused. I let myself succumb to the vagaries of love. With a chimp.
The beautiful Dane wanted to know what she was talking about. I told him. I suppose now he’ll see everything. I wonder how he’ll feel about it? Time will tell.
I love talking with him. We talk and talk, his stories are riveting and compelling. This is more like it. He’s only 33. Suddenly we are surrounded by people we know. Friends we know rather than he or I.
Feel comfortable, relaxed and happy.
So happy I begin to cry, my nose stings, my eyes fill with tears. I think about what Jon said when I first got sober in SAA. He asked me to imagine what a relationship ‘looks like’ I cried then too. I just didn’t think it was possible. A healthy relationship with a healthy, kind man. Then, by way of alcoholic sabotage, I proved to myself and the whole world that I was incapable of making good choices.
I am so happy to be in the bosom of AA. Surrounded by men and women whose language I respect, whose journey I relate to. Listen, there could be an argument made that every relationship I have ever had (except Matt) has been with active alcoholics/addicts.
Last night, after the poetry reading, I walked the dog…wrote this blog and went to bed. I woke at 6am to arrange the apartment for the return of the decorators. After our rather wonderful breakfast I caught a cab to JFK and am now on a plane to an undisclosed location for a couple of weeks in the sun.
I may have been brave (I was brave) when I told you all the truth about my childhood suffering but the consequences of being on that show have been very severe. I would never in a million years have met or absconded with, danced with, dillied or dallied with that terrible man. I would have remained ignorant of his ugly face, his dishonest world. I would never have worshiped his stinking hole or kissed his lying mouth.
I would certainly never have risked losing my sobriety. I came THIS close!
I would rather be single than take those risks again.
What does a relationship look like? I don’t know if it exists. Not because I am unworthy but because the damage has been done. If only you could see it on my face like a burns victim. If only you could see the ravages of child abuse on my face.
A relationship? The damage maybe too severe. I have to look at it like that. The war is over but I am limbless, traumatized, impotent, angry. There is nothing I can do other than STAY AWAY from normal human beings who say they love me.
They just can’t see.
They think I am healthy, able bodied, sane. Until they uncover the truth.
For the time being I will stick to my own kind. I am never lonely with my own kind. I never have to kid myself when I am with my own kind. My own kind never try and kid me. They treat me carefully.
What does a relationship look like? Well, it’s me, myself and I. That’s all I can hope for.
That’s all I will ever need or be able to depend upon.
Remember, if you meet me, that I am covered in the most terrible scars inside and out. You should think twice about getting involved. Alcoholics seem to see the scars and hold out their hands so I can walk proudly amongst you…but don’t be deceived.
Good God, such an incredible day. I didn’t make it to the island.
The beautiful Dane visited instead. We have a good thing going. He is incredibly sanguine. For a Dane that’s pretty damned unusual. He sweeps back his long hair, looks directly into my soul with his grey/blue eyes. When we hugged goodbye I could feel his heart pounding in his chest.
He saw that I had been hurt, that I was angry. He wanted to know what had been happening. I didn’t tell him about the recent past. I don’t want to sully this sweet arrangement with anything sour.
I went to AA meeting after he caught his train. It wasn’t a great meeting. A Brit with an attitude.
Spent the afternoon arranging my birthday party. After last years miserable fiasco in Whitstable with him and his anal leakage. This year I am going to push the fucking boat out. So, today I started planning. In a few short hours: Venue booked, performers booked. Dinner for thirty then a good old fashioned hootenanny for 50 more after dinner guests. Aleksa and Devon, Amelia…it’s going to be a blast. Publicist, photographers. Just like it should have been last year.
This evening I went to a bar called KGB on 4th Street to my friend Anthony’s poetry reading. He is definitely going to read at my party. He was fantastic.
On the way home I stopped in at This little Piggy on 1st Ave which sells, of course, roast beef. I stood at the bar stuffing myself with beef, drinking orange soda and tapping my foot to Frank Sinatra. To top it off he didn’t charge me because he recognised me from Sex Rehab. Ah, the spoils of war.
I am home now, just jumped off the phone. Amelia and I…plotting and schemeing.
After a late breakfast I met Michael L at Mud. He was wearing a DIVINE pair of Prada shoes…an extraordinary wing tip/espadrille hybrid with Nike soles.
I LOVE YOUR SHOES.
I told him that I had seen JP at my AA meeting.
On the spur of the moment we decided to go to Savage Beauty, The Alexander McQueen retrospective at the Met. Sunday afternoon, it was OVER RUN with people. JAMMED.
Jammed with people who may or may not love fashion but certainly not enough to line up for two hours!
Thankfully we were Met members so went directly to the front of the line.
I didn’t give a damn how many people were there. I just loved the show from beginning to end.
This enchanting, inspiring exhibition gave me a great deal to think about.
Firstly, let me tell you that I hadn’t seen McQueen’s work up close like that. Why would I ? I don’t know Daphne Guinness.
Not a single photograph anywhere does his work justice. It really has to be seen to be believed. I was utterly dumfounded by the drama, the workmanship, the unexpected depth of emotion it inspired.
There were a million obvious references: Balenciaga, Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier (fucked him once after the IRA bombed The City of London). Regardless, it was uniquely beautiful. Uniquely Lee. Westwood without the bustle. Balenciaga without the cassock. Gautier without…
I loved the fabric woven for the Plato’s Atlantis collection. Fabric woven to look like the re-imagined skin of mythical serpents.
The Razor Clam dress was exquisite. The dress sprayed by ballet dancing robots…heavenly.
My most favorite costume were from the spring/summer 2005 collection, It’s Only a Game. Using burlap, hessian, raffia, leather, crude mechanical embroidery. I loved, most particularly, an appliqued Japanese inspired, floor length dress. Lilac tulle softly billowing out of the structured bodice around the feet. Sublime.
This entire collection (as curated) left one breathless.
Eshu 2000, a simple shift made of tiny yellow beads and black horsehair. The yellow beads spread like caviar on crisp toast, dripping provocatively onto the horse hair.
McQueen bejewels the constellation of dead couturier that include Christian Dior, Yves St Laurent, Paul Poirot, Madame Gres etc. Twinkling stars inspiring us from above. Isabella Blow is sitting right there beside him laughing with her protégé at how mortals now wait in line to worship at his alter. They were never meant to. The world of high fashion, like the world of high art, is exclusive by design and inclination.
I thought about the very few times we met. Check on Wire Image for the picture of me, he and Lucy Ferry. If you don’t believe me.
I thought about his suicide. How lonely being that much of a genius can make you. How protected he was by the women in his life who never really approved of any of his boyfriends because they felt ‘married’ to him. Lucy, Sam, Naomi, Kate, Isabella, Daphne, Anna etc.
No one was ever good enough for Lee so he became more and more isolated.
Too embarrassed to introduce the kind of boy he wanted to those grand arbiters of taste. How could he spend all day designing beautiful things and bring that home.
Fag hags think they are doing you a big favor by keeping trashy boys out of our lives…in fact…all they did was keep Lee McQueen lonely. I hold all of those women partially responsible for his death. If he had only been allowed to fall in love…but those kind of women are little bit too eager to have an opinion about a gay love life thinking that Lee was just one of the girls.
Straight women really don’t understand gay men as much as they claim they do.
After McQueen we stopped in at the Ben Cohen event at Boxers. Flirted mercilessly with wrestler Hudson Taylor. Will post pics asap.
Ben Cohen is a straight British rugby player who is making a name (and a great deal of money) for himself by championing LGBT causes. Beloved by the gays he has a cherubic face and huge chest.
“I can’t understand a word he’s saying…but he’s gorgeous.” One man cooed.
Ben was making an impassioned speech about bullying and homophobia. The gays just looked on in awe. Objectifying poor Ben and gorgeous Taylor. They didn’t give a fuck. “Take you shirt off!” They screamed as he appealed to them for a more tolerant world.
GLAAD gave him some award. ‘Cute Straight People Who Like Us’ award…or something. Michael (?) the head of GLAAD NY was there last night. “It’s not political.” He reassured me.
Then something rather irritating happened. Zack’s really dull friend arrived. The sort of boy who thinks he’s attractive but hasn’t got two damp sticks to rub together to get any fire started….anywhere. He pissed me off sufficiently to make me shout at him.
Apparently my present anger is quite healthy. I am so…fucking angry. With myself. I have NO ONE else to blame. I used to be angry with The Penguin. Now I am angry with me.
Livid that I let myself be duped. Blinded by love. Blinded by compassion. I don’t blame him. I can’t blame him. There’s nothing to blame. Other than the CON. I don’t blame him for making me fall in love with him…he is just a child, as was evidenced when I saw him with his parents. Bouncing on his mother’s knee.
Enmeshed.
A sad situation existed in that house. I realised why I found the father so interesting…he reminded me of someone. Rather than concentrate on his son and wife, he was staring at us. Not because he was trying to intimidate…he was just…more interested.
Emotionally absent father, more interested in solving his patients problems than focusing on the needs of his son. The Penguin wanted his father’s love so badly. It’s not his fault. Shame on them! I can imagine that he wasn’t just absent for The Penguin but for the entire family.
Mother and son thrown together in some emotionally incestuous swamp. Hanging onto each other for dear life.
If I can’t have you my husband….I will have him. My darling son.
Enmeshed.
He looked…like an aspergers boy when he was with them. Which is odd because isn’t that his father’s speciality?
Let me tell you how things have changed since I saw him. I blame myself for being so damned stupid. I blame myself for letting a petty conman/thief run rampant through my life. I blame myself for constantly letting him off the hook. I blame myself for convincing anyone who would listen that I loved him. I blame myself for thinking he was beautiful. I blame myself for not running out the door the moment he took heavy drugs from under his bed and asked if it was ok.
I have been a fucking idiot….and I am really, really pissed off with myself.
Quite by chance I have fallen in with a bunch of super cool, inclusive gay men.
Men who achieve. Men who live fun, proud gay lives. Because of them I’m really enjoying my life here in NYC.
Don’t for one minute think I take any of it for granted. I know that a life like this can vanish as quickly as it appears. I’m really enjoying the opportunity to connect, feel supported and breathe.
There are many different tribes of gay men in NYC. There are so many of us here.
As usual I couldn’t stay in bed past 7.30am regardless of who is slumbering beside me. I need to get on with the day.
The apartment is being decorated so whilst the painters set up their ladders and pull down the light fittings we went for a long breakfast in the occasional sunshine. Sitting in the sun, eating scrambled egg. Reading the newspaper. Looking at the cute Saturday runners jogging by in their silky shorts.
Took subway uptown and by chance saw an old friend, an actor from my Dorian days. This is exactly why I loathe and love the Subway, you never know who you are going to bump into. Trapped in a subway car.
Anyway, we picked up his suit that needed altering and met up with the boys for lunch. Lunch from food trucks at Madison and 26th. Everyone seemed obsessed with this RAPTURE shit. I think people were half expecting it to be true. The storm clouds didn’t help.
Thankfully it didn’t happen. Or maybe it did?
My dog and Zack’s dog didn’t really connect.
Kaolin joined us in the park. He is so funny. We went shopping for shirts and other essential items for a wedding next weekend in Los Angeles. I bought a vase in ABC as a thankyou gift.
Birthday party at Vig 27. Very lively, good people. Met the sex columnist from Time Out, we bonded with over our respective health issues. We talked about gay men, how they behave. Our self-destruction. A daily fascination.
We talked about Dan Savage, he applauded Dan’s It Gets Better campaign…which, as you know, I think is a load of baloney.
It Gets Better? Better than death maybe…but not much better.
I had agreed to stay until 4 but bailed at midnight.
Stumbled, briefly, into The Eagle.
It is far too early in the year to wear white linen pants. I did anyway.
Realness: Pony, Kaolin, Zach, Lil Dog and me in Martin Margiella
