Strict Tuition Given

I don’t know anymore if gay men leave notes in toilets and telephone boxes or call to pay for ads in free gay news sheets.  I don’t think so.

I don’t know if men who exchange glances between subway stops or on street corners publish advertisements in the lost and found?

You, blond..blue eyes.  Me, wearing ripped jeans.  Leicester Square.  North East corner last Saturday night.  We smiled.  You passed by.

I remembered him for years.  Keeping me awake for a decade thinking about those blue eyes.  What happened to him?  Where is he now?

I confided in Ashley that I did not get my first mobile phone until I was 33 years old.

The drawings of the boys I made twenty years ago.  Just so I could see him naked.

The sun crawled up over the ocean this morning casting a pale yellow glow on the walls.  I wrote my blog and started writing the film.  I sat looking at the page.  The empty page.

I started to dream about what these particular men in my film would look like.  Where they lived.  Their world.  I wondered what I would do to these men in their world?  How difficult or comfortable their world would be.  I thought about their past loves, their clothes, what they kept in each and every draw.  I wondered if they still loved each other?  I want to write about love…and for a moment I remembered what it felt like to be in love.  What confidence it gave me.

Go on, I challenge you, look at me.  Look at me!  Fucking LOOK AT ME!

I have been an out gay man for as long as I have walked the streets.  At first, like so many men, I learned to keep my eyes averted for fear of the crushing blow.  That was then..at the beginning of my story.  By my late teens I was looking directly at you.  I was rarely afraid.  Of course, I did not want to be hurt.  Cut.  Hit.  Insulted.  I wanted to walk the streets safely.   Yet, there was no doubt in my mind that I needed to be seen to be gay.  That it was who I am.  To hide who I am would betray who I am.

Do you understand now why I have such disdain for you being the coward that you are?  I loved you, willed you to be true to who you are, cared for you as you revealed all those terrible truths.

The end of a great and passionate love affair.

I sighed after I wrote that.  Sighing a lot recently.

A deep sigh from a long way down.

Even though I have said terrible things about him.  Made public what was private between us…I loved him.  I wanted him to be safe and protected.   Upon his peace of mind, mine depended.  When he sighed my chest heaved.  I could not bear to see him weep except through tears of my own.  And when I could not see him…I worried about him.  When I loved him I could not walk the streets without his walk being safe and sound.

Now look?

What has happened to you? Do I care if you live or die?  In whose strange arms you find yourself tonight?   I tear at my own heart so that it will not beat another beat.

I believe in romantic love.  Love and romance!  One big man protecting another is all I ever wanted.  If I were the big man or you were the big man I wanted to protect or be protected.

Protected from those who still require us to keep our hands to ourselves when in public.  To stay away from young children.   To be afraid to kiss my lover good night for all to see.  Today, in many countries all over the world, men and women together keep this secret.  They wave cautiously at each other before disappearing into the night when all they want to do is kiss each other in plain view for all the world to see.

You have hurt me more than I can begin to tell you.  Even though you will never understand until you have fallen in love with a man and they betray you.  It is nothing you have felt.  Like nothing you will ever want to feel again.

You think that falling out of love with J compares with this?

Those boys out tonight..you know the ones.  The ones we loathed, the ones who traded any hope of intimacy for meaningless intensity..day after day after day.  Well, I wanted to protect you from the prying eyes and those mediocre boys.

I didn’t ever want you to get hurt.

I wanted you to eat freshly picked peaches and delight you with a world of wonder.

Now, as if cursed,  you are one of them.  You always were.  I just thought, wanted to believe that you were different.  I was just too blind to see it.  Too deluded to care.

You wanted that?

Jake.  You broke the deal.  You said things!  Unspeakable things.  I warned you never to cross me.  I warned you that you would regret having written those cruel and vicious things to me.

Worst of all, you brought me into a world of bad taste, appalling sofas, laughable art, mediocre ideas and suburban women with bad hair.  I have done my level best to avoid such places.  They can scar the soul!

Bad taste is like throwing acid in my face!

Will we remain locked together?  I don’t want to ever see you again.   I had the best of you.  Just for a moment.  I will remember having the best of you before you became one of them.  There will never be that scene in our movie when the two men forgive each other.  Not for us.

I would rather have nothing at all than just one tiny speck of your ghastly life.

What do we know about men who fall in love and out again?  Who knows that story?  Can you tell it?  Can you tell me about falling in love with another man?  Can you tell me about that great romance you know existed between two men?  I don’t mean fuck buddies.  I don’t mean men who leave notes in telephone boxes.  I don’t mean men who cat call on the street or men who just want to fuck…but men who call out to another man “Hey, don’t forget…I really love you!”

Jake and I had to go through this…this fucking nightmare.  We did!  We will never forget each other.  Rather, he will never forget me.  Ever.  How ever much he tries to drink and smoke and fuck his way into oblivion I will be there like the Devil on his shoulder…just so he never makes those mistakes again.