Categories
Dogs Hollywood

NO MORE DEAD WEIGHT

Darling Big Dog

7am started packing.  The apartment very quickly unraveled.  The paintings came off the walls, the books from the shelves.  I made a pile of things that I am sick of dragging from place to place with me.  NO MORE DEAD WEIGHT.  That means no more people or things that I carry around just for the sake of it.

A tidal wave of resentment hit me this morning.   Remembering the ‘we were both very vulnerable when we met’ line from Jake’s letter.  I was far from ‘vulnerable’, I was riding the recovery wave.   He was vulnerable, trapped in a meaningless relationship that he was too much of a coward to get out of.

What singularly pisses me off is that he deliberately hunted me down to exploit my specific vulnerability: bi-curious men.    He watched me on TV spew my guts about my triggers then offers me the equivalent of crack to a crack addict all under the guise of being a lit agent.

When he realized that he was way in over his head he told me that all he ever wanted was something ‘shallow and meaningless’.

I used to care what he was up to.  Now, I don’t give a fuck.

I don’t care what he’s doing.  He can snort poppers, get banged senseless both ends by multiple partners but of course he’ll never be happy until he’s made his peace with her.  Indulgent FREAK.  Good luck with that one Jake.  His fantasy:  they could live together as friends.

Getting my needs met.

I chatted with some guy who wanted a date.  I told him straight:  we can have coffee but if you have no conversation I will be leaving in ten minutes.  I am sick of bland, unsophisticated men who expect me to be interested in their miserable pathology, their dull life story and their appalling disinterest in the world.  More reasons NOT to be in any kind of relationship.  I don’t care how big your cock is…if you don’t have anything to say you can fuck off back to where you crawled from.

As I deconstruct the apartment of course I remember the big dog.  She really didn’t like Hollywood preferring Malibu and her life in the country.  She was such a bloody good dog and as I write this HUGE tears well up in my eyes and splash onto the laptop.

We both miss her so much.

She is something worth missing, not some trashy, popper snorting, closet queen from Westchester.

Categories
Rant

Moving Back to Malibu

I did not go to therapy this morning, instead I stayed at home and did my chores. The faster I can complete everything here the sooner I can get back to London and deal with this problem.

I am in a sparklingly good mood.  I tell you, being single, not having to worry about Jake and being here on the temperate mountainside is just perfect for lifting the spirits.   I don’t want this to sound embittered but I feel like I have woken up after a very bad dream.  As if for the past eight months I have been watching myself act out the charade of being in love.  Deluded old fool.

Just finished reading an advance copy of Tony Blair’s riveting memoir.  A JOURNEY.  The age explained.  I voted for him and was pleased to see him elected.  I was upset when Will Self told me that he hated him.  I was saddened when his occasional speech writer Stephen Fry told me that Blair would go to his grave with the word Iraq engraved on his heart.  Like Mary Tudor had Calais engraved on hers. (“When I am dead, you will find Calais lying on my heart“)  Yet, I am afraid, they were both quite right.

What did I like about the book?  As a recovering alcoholic I loved that he admitted that he drank too much..that was rather inspiring.  Is he an alcoholic?  Perhaps.  Drank on his feelings.  Reading the British press I am a little confused, as I think they may be.  Why should this book be such a revelation to most British political commentators?  Most seem to think that the moment you become a leader you stop being a man.  That all human vagaries should be set aside.  How naive.  They wonder at his childish spats with Brown, that Blair admits to self-doubt, frailties, manipulation and the like.   They marvel at how frank he is.

They seem embarrassed and caught off guard.  However poorly I may now think of him, however he will be judged by time and further revelations..I was impressed by his book..how very candid and relaxed he seems.  Although I am sure he will be further reviled and doubted by most for this entertaining memoir, I rather enjoyed it.

There is, as my granny would say, no peace for the wicked.

I must remind myself of that sometimes.

I forgot to mention just how wonderful the last renters were.  A sweet couple and their gorgeous dog.  Vegan, into meditation and rebooked immediately for next year.

I am slowly moving back into the house.  Brought a bunch of things with me from Hollywood yesterday.  I am enjoying ironing the linen and folding it neatly and making piles of sweet-smelling pillowcases.   Putting everything away.  Lovely.

Simple pleasures.

Not much to report other than a very funny story I heard from my six-year-old and very beautiful god-daughter Lily.  She loves acting and singing and three times a year performs as part of a local theatre group. At the end of this summers performance she told me that an old lady in a fur coat came up to her and told her how wonderful her voice was, that she had seen her in the last play and how delightful she was.  Her parents giggled, the old lady in the fur coat was Barbra Streisand.  That’s Malibu life for you.  Just a little community of regular beach dwelling folk who are, for the most part…billionaires.

Had dinner with Eric at Sauce in Venice.  I love that little restaurant.  The waiter had huge hair and a cheeky smile.  I ate pulled pork.  Delicious.

I am going to get dressed and walk to the new road.

Categories
Malibu Rant

Susan

I have known Susan since I was 13 years old.

We used to giggle together in Quaker meetings and she and her wonderful family became the mainstay of my adolescence.

For her, I will always have a place in my heart.

She called me today from Oxford, where she lives, and we chatted for an hour or so about our lives.

It was so reassuring to hear the voice of an old friend who, even though we have only dipped periodically in and out of each others lives, as the decades passed we maintained a life long love for each other.

It was wonderful to catch up and maybe she will come visit me here in LA.

As you are aware I have still not made any definite plans to deal with the lumpy ball tumor situation.

I have been avoiding doing anything about it.

The emotions I have been going through with Jake seem to take my mind off the critical decisions I have to make.

The bottom line is this:  I must go to London and sort it out.

I can’t afford to begin the surgery here and so have no option but to go home.  As soon as I move out of my place I can think clearly about taking the next step.

I reread JB’s letter this morning and feel a little less angry with him.  He is not a monster, more like a confused kid.

I have to learn to be more compassionate.  I have to learn to forgive.  I MUST remember that he has been through a great deal.  Anyway, I did as he asked and removed all mention of his last name and occupation.  It was kinda cruel to have done it in the first place.

I have had an online tantrum and now it’s time to try to put the pieces of the smashed vase back together and hope that we can go our separate ways without derision, scorn or hatred.

I have said and written things that although true were insensitive and unkind.  He is just a regular guy with a broken heart.  He wasn’t to know that being friends was the last thing I could ever imagining happening after we stopped being lovers.

Resentment, shame and fear (as usual) shape my relationship to the rest of the world.

This morning I tried to be of service to another recovering addict.  It made me feel a great deal better about my own situation.

I really, really loved and cared for that timid man.  He was quite unlike anyone I have ever loved before.  Everyone that met him was delighted that I had found such a normal, sweet man.  I think that we had, when we weren’t fighting the best time.  We laughed a great deal.  We shared a number of the same interests and in a perfect world where two unencumbered men could come together, unfettered and unaligned we could have made something work out.

It is not a perfect world.  It is an imperfect world riven with complications and aberrations.

It seems that only the very few get to share their lives with those they love without catastrophic problems.   I wish I could be one of those people but I am not, I will never be, I can never be.

That is why I committed to being single.  To being alone.  To relish and respect a single life.

I am a single man who will not hanker after my own death… because being single is perceived by so many as a crime against humanity.

Categories
art Rant

PUKE

Guess who I received a long letter from yesterday when I got back from the Emmy do at SHLA?  Yes, you guessed it…Jake. What a smarmy bastard..of course he couldn’t just let it all go.  He couldn’t leave me alone.  He had to reach out.  Just as I was NOT thinking about him, getting right with our situation.  DAMN.  I was in such a positive mood.

I went to bed feeling all confused and mushy again.  Thinking all manner of absurd things.

He timidly suggested that we don’t meet for the time being.  How about we never EVER meet?   Why don’t you just fuck off and lean on some of your other friends like you lent on me for support?  They’ll get sick of you too, bleating and moaning and missing her.

So, why was he writing?   He asked for his full name to be removed from the blog which I did ..then I re-read his letter.  It was all about him.  Blah fucking blah about his coming out and how much I meant to him.  Bullshit.  If I had meant anything to him he wouldn’t have contacted me.  Not once did he enquire about my continuing health problem..not once.  The more I thought about it the more annoyed I became.

He asked after the ‘darling’ little dog which nearly made me PUKE.

So, I called him and left a long message on his phone.  I told him never ever to contact me again.  That his mate had emailed me from Mt. Kisco to tell me that he was laughing at me with Jake and other friends behind my back.  That I hated him.  I wanted him to hear my voice.  That I meant what I was saying.  That I am serious.  Like when you call your dealer and tell them to lose your number.  Like when you tell your friends that you are not coming out for a drink.

The funny thing was he didn’t want to demonize me..well Jake, that’s very reassuring.   I am having NO TROUBLE demonizing YOU.

So annoying!  I had been really getting my head together.

Saw George Clooney, said Hi.  He seemed to remember me from the evening Sharon introduced us at Chateau Marmont.

Had dinner with Toby at Pace..his steak cost $50.  My soup $8.  I drew these:

Categories
Gay Love Rant

You’ll Never Really Know..

After Joan Didion‘s husband John Gregory Dunne died she wrote perhaps the best book of her entire career A Year of Magical Thinking.

I have been told that there is something incredibly liberating after the death of a loved one…as there definitely is after the end of a relationship.   One can suddenly see everything so very clearly.

The only thing I miss about being in a loving relationship with another person is to check in, to share, to make sense of a troubled world.

Someone who is committed to listening as I am committed to listen.

Since last weeks end of relationship prose I have not only felt creative again but quite by chance have found what I was looking for..to be at peace.  It was without doubt the answer to the most nagging of all my prayers.  Was I, could I…am I even capable of making a relationship work.

The answer has to be a resounding NO.

I am not sad about this conclusion, in fact I have found much peace from finally answering this most perplexing of questions.

You will have your own ideas about this but for the time being I tell you I have found my equilibrium.  It has been a very bumpy ride.  Not just the past eight months but the past 50 years.

You see, he thought I was like the man he met on the TV…but I had been edited that way.  Compassion and kindness are only a small part of who I am.

I want to write this blog entry just feeling the breeze on my face.  Listening to music.  There were days when I could not feel a thing I was so distrusting of him and full of fear.  Within weeks of meeting Jake I found it hard to trust.  Looking over our long email correspondence it is obvious that I become toxicly paranoid with those I say I love.  I have felt the same with others..this is nothing new.  You have said that he was too young.  Well, I am not the sort of man who worries about age appropriateness.  But I am the sort of man who frets about appropriateness.

I am blighted with the most gayest of disabilities: always wanting something better then..when something better comes along..strangling it to death.

There is a stigma attached to those of us who finally throw in the towel and accept singularity.  Yet, my grandmother was a widow for 40 years.  She owned her aloneness and for that I am very grateful.  She was not a particularly loving human being, prone to complaint and curmudgeonly conversation yet she taught me that she would rather be alone than have someone in her life who would not compliment it.

I am sick of feeling guilty for the crime of being single.

My mother’s greatest fear for me was that I would die single.  Well, baby, most people do.  There are retirement homes crammed with human husks who will die today alone.  They are unlikely to be missed, there is no hope of an obituary.  They will die oblivious that they have been processed (three score years and 10) through the mill of modern humanity.  Born, worked, reproduced, ate, died.

I stayed with Jason and Jennifer last night.  Their marriage is tight but they bitch and complain like any couple.   I watched this morning as Jason was thrown out of the piano room.  He moped around for a little while then seemed to forget all about his gripe.  I know from recent experience that this is no easy task. When I look back at the time I spent with Jake we seemed more often than not to be locked into some kind of squabble.

So, where have I found this peace and acceptance?  Well, knowing, owning, accepting that I will be single for the rest of my life dovetails beautifully into the work I have been doing in therapy.  The search for sex or relationships, the intrigue and flirtation and unrequited love has all been set aside. In doing so I have a clear head, clear enough to begin writing the chapter of my last years.

I am not and never have been lonely when alone.  I have only ever felt lonely when I am in a relationship with another and they are not there.

Some people have few or no friends, are not connected to community, do not believe in God (I remain nondenominational) and most crippling of all:  they are not creative.  Without doubt I am most excited about how creative these years will be.  If it is only me and my writing then I may as well marry my pen as soon as possible.

To say out loud that one has accepted absolutely ones destiny as God intends it is indeed the first hurdle to making sense of the rest of ones life.

Without Jake constantly in my head, without the fantasy of the great dark man, without the perpetual search for sex or sexual complication I can avail myself of some peace.   I am more than middle-aged.  I used to sneer at my Grandmother because it seemed to me that she had given up but the truth is:  she had only just begun.  A healthy relationship with one’s self takes as much time and energy as a healthy relationship with anyone else.

I have given up so much, things that others take for granted to get them through every day: drugs (prescription and recreational), alcohol, television, white flour, career, and now..romance.    You’d think life would shrink..but quite the opposite seems to be happening.

The house in Malibu is set above the glorious ocean.  The land around begs my attention.  Sometimes I do not get further than the first step outside the house.  Some days I cannot leave my bed.  This is not the sort of life I want.  If I am going to be single forever then I must start engaging with the land as I planned many months ago before I met Jake.

I am sure that some of you will think that I am just giving up for no good reason.  Well, I am very sorry, I don’t buy your dream  that there are ‘plenty more fish in the sea’, that there is ‘someone for every one’ etc.   That is your dream.  My dream is that I can be alone without resort to catastrophic thinking.  I have lived on borrowed time for as long as I can remember.  Everyday should be a delight!  By cluttering my life with suspect romances I have only served to degrade the quality of the one thing I truly own.

I am grateful that I met Jake because in 8 months he has done more for me than almost anyone could have.  Without realizing it he held a mirror to my face for long enough so I could see in startling detail just how ravaged I had become.

Relationships make me so unhappy.  They bring out the very worst in me.  I don’t like sharing my bed or my head with anyone.  If I don’t like me when I am in a relationship how could anyone else?

In the night I think of him but as I have said many times before it is not him. It is the ghost of what never was.

Categories
Rant

Glenn Beck/Barack Obama

My irritation with Glenn Beck is balanced almost perfectly with my frustration for Barack Obama.  It is easier to listen to Glenn’s simplistic message (as it has always been when the right open their stinking mouths) than Obama the intellectual buffoon.

The problem, yet again, when the left of center are swept into power by the cheering crowds (when the pendulum swings) is that they are woefully unprepared to deliver what the people want.  When the right get into power they let off bombs and create armies and the fearful are made safe, the patriotic are assuaged, the rich rub their hands in glee.

When the left of center are elected they ‘negotiate’ with their enemies, they want to be ‘bipartisan’ and have absurd ’round table get togethers’ with their opponents to ‘sort everything out’.

Of course I am disillusioned by Obama just like you are.  I cried when he was elected.  I was so happy.  He promised so much and has delivered so little.  He and his administration cow tows to the likes of Glenn Beck.  Obama moans and whines, he says pathetically that “change is hard”.

Was the only ‘change we could believe in’ the black faces of the first family?  Was that it?

For those faces to then be called liars out loud by pasty white-faced congress men?  For those same black faces to doff their caps to people like Glen Beck?   To be called racists? Obama has not adequately taken the reigns because deep down he fears the consequences, he may be president but he does not behave like a president.  His rhetoric is merely that..rhetoric.  Hollow promises, empty gestures.  He looks haunted, like those negro men and women in the black and white photographs taken in the deep south, covering their heads as the police hit them with batons.

He looks beaten.  He sounds washed up.

Yet, all it would take is just one moment of clarity, one moment to take back his power, a moment of shock and awe.  It is unlikely to happen.  He is just too busy having his photo taken like JFK in the oval office with his little daughters.

Last week a friend of mine confided in me she had heard from reliable sources that Obama would not run a second term and that Hillary would be elected and everything would be just the way we want it.  Bullshit. Of course a second term for Obama is unlikely but not because Hilary is waiting in the wings to take the crown that was promised her. The people will choose a simpler message, a familiar message.  One that they can understand.  Change maybe what they want but they have washed their hands of change.  It’s too complicated.

The nation is crippled, the people are meek and fat and stupid and unable to change anything.  The nation is crippled by inactivity, inertia, fear.

The banks and their paid friends in government have deliberately crippled the USA.  They will do nothing to heal this country until they have an elected government who sees things exactly their way.

When the dependable right get back into power..everything will change.  Lending practices, house prices, small business..all will suddenly change and the people will breathe a sigh of relief.  The banking reforms will vanish, the Obama health care system will too.

My friends tell me that President Obama has achieved much but they forget that I come from a country where real socialists have changed the fabric of society for the good and the bad.  Where the pendulum really swung, where the people were represented and the legacy of that extreme governance is health care, education, infra structure.  That’s all I want for you.  So I do not have to endlessly put my hand in my pocket for the steady stream of homeless beggars now on every street in America.  Millions of desperate unemployed.

Obama has achieved nothing of any consequence, no real and immediate healthcare, no real financial reform.  How could he?  He surrounded himself with banking insiders.  Rahm Emanuel and Tim Geithner are complicit in the devaluation of your house, the loss of your job and as one government melded seamlessly into another oversaw a massive banking Ponzi scheme: the banks took your TARP money tripled the value of it and with huge grins on their bloated faces returned chump change to you the people.

Nowhere else in the world did this happen so effectively than here in the USA.  The Americans tried exercising monetary hegemony in Europe but the European Union is too disperate.  There are simply too many politicians from too many fractured political parties to bully and bribe and most of them have more integrity in one member’s little finger than the entire American congress and senate put together.

The European Union cannot be bought.  This explains the British ruling elites fear of the Euro, the European Union and everything east of the Channel.  Yet, look at what is happening in Europe.  The economies are growing, the people did not lose their homes, communities were not compromised.

We have had revolution in Europe.  Revolution is essential to destroy the status quo for the status quo is not good for the people.  It is good for the few.

The media and Obama hating pundits, as well they might, evoke the ghosts of the French Royal family but Michelle Obama is no Marie Antoinette.

It is easier for us to discuss Michelle’s vacations and high-waisted fashion faux pas than the dead and the maimed and the wounded in our fruitless wars.  Fruitless, unless you are the owner of a munitions factory or a service industry dedicated to war.  We will never be able to stop profligate war funding because we are coerced by the rich to believe it is our patriotic duty to support our troops by giving them more and more money as our schools rot and our teachers become beggars.

I am eager for revolution in whatever form it may take.  The people voted for Obama not to be meek or timid or careful of his enemies but to take back what had been stolen from us during the Bush years.  To restore what Glen Beck is now touting..some American honor.

Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have chipped away at the truth of Barack Obama so that today more and more Americans believe that Obama is a Muslim, that he bailed out the banks, initiated the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

They believe that Obama is not and has never been..is not and has never been a bone fide American.  They believe that he is not like them, that he has become president by suspect means.  That the good people of America could never have deliberately elected a black man and his descended from slaves wife.  How could that have happened?

Their racist outrage has never been stamped upon, outlawed, mocked.  Why?   Because we were too busy, like bullied kids in the playground, crying and running away after trying to befriend and engage those who are simply incapable of listening.

Categories
Dogs Rant

Malibu

The house by day is magical.

Jason and Hillary, quite separately, popped by and both brought lunch.  Hillary arrived with a friend’s dog called Willy who decided to pee on everything the moment he came indoors.

Hillary made a delicious gazpacho and Jason brough chevre and smoked salmon.  Three mad brits eating an Enid Blyton lunch in our tree house over looking the ocean.

I ate bread which I bitterly regret having eaten today.  I am bloated and my tummy aches.

The house after dark can be a little noisy.  I lay in the dark listening to the raccoons squabble, the coyote’s howl and the owls hoot.   The little dog had a restless night, so, of course did I.   He was up and down the stairs shouting at anything that disturbed him.  After an hour of this nonsense I closed the windows and he slept peacefully.

It was meant to be in the 100’s all week but by last night in Malibu it was colder than Whitstable.  I am sure the firemen are very happy as there have been so few wild-fire warnings.  Everything is very damp in the morning from the thick mist that rolls off the sea.

Jason left and Hillary and I decided to take the dogs for a long walk along the length of the new road (Rambla Pacifico) that leads to the PCH.  The house is now walkable from the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) and since they started building the Rambla Pacifico extension empty lots are now for sale, lot owners who abandoned their lots 26 years ago are on the mountain with contractors discussing driveways and bedrooms with ocean views.  There is a certain excitement up here which cannot be ignored.

I applaud myself for paying so little for this house.  I just KNEW that one day the road would be built..who knew that it would be so soon?

Apparently I am not the only resident who regularly walks the muddy track which will one day be our new road/life line.  We saw a man armed with shopping bags marching over the hillocks.  Everyone is so impatient to feel less isolated.

It is only a few weeks until the rainy season starts so they must get a move on and finish this project.  The worst that could happen is that heavy rains come before it is finished and all their hard work is washed away.

If only Malibu would buy the road so it can be used by everyone rather than a select few.

Watched TV until midnight…yes there is a TV here and fell into bed.  I watch home improvement shows and laugh gently at how cheap and ill-conceived the ‘improvements’ are.

The Lil Dog was exhausted from running after Willy all day and his long walk but not, apparently,  exhausted enough.

P.S.  The despicable Glenn Beck is holding his reclaim America from anyone who isn’t white rally today in Washington.  For those of you who underestimate the ambition of people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin I urge you to take notice of their message.  They are determined to undermine the goodwill and inclusive character of this great country and, my friends, they will succeed just like their right-wing predecessors.  They will use all the usual tactics:  fear mongering, false patriotism and the invocation of their malevolent God.  These men and women are not clowns, we cannot afford to grandly sneer at their absurd antics.  For as the liberal elite laugh in their grotesque faces they are gathering speed.  If we are not very careful it will be soon too late for those of us who believe in freedom to stop them for we were too busy laughing.

Categories
Gay Hollywood Malibu

Jane Fonda

I’m in Malibu.  It ‘s 7.30am.

A veil of mist has enveloped the house.

The fierce sunlight refracting through the pure white cloud is exactly the same light as if it had been snowing.

Yesterday, after making peace with the memory of JB, I met Michael at Solar and discussed scripts.  He is a delightful man.  I told him that I’d read his script but was loathed to say anything.

People ask for criticism but they only want praise.

I dashed off to see Danielle and she worked through her slate, her list of projects.

We sat opposite Jane Fonda who looked a little frail but still radiant.  I was briefly introduced and told her how much I adored Klute.   She shared a few anecdotal memories about the making of the film.

Bumped into Degan who is moving in with his younger boyfriend.  I didn’t balk.  I thought to myself (as the ghost of what could have been passed through me) well, that was then this is now.  As I’ve said before it’s quite obvious that I’m never going to have that moving in thing happen to me so I may as well just accept things as they are and get on with it.

There is no room in my life for melancholy.  I have devoted too much time to drama, misery and bad choices.

It’s an illusion that the young are happy, an illusion for those who have lost it.  The young know they are wretched, for they are full of truthless ideal and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.

My meeting with the accountant was fruitful.  Apparently life is not quite as fraught as I thought it was.

I met Hillary in Venice and walked the entire length of Abbot Kinney gossiping and laughing.

We ate a light supper at Wholefoods.  I’m sorry but eating food outside a grimy supermarket is just too much.  I bought a grilled chicken that I shared with the Lil Dog.

Fantabulosa is the bio pic of actor and British TV personality Kenneth Williams starring Michael Sheen.

BAFTA organized a screening for the members in a small Santa Monica cinema.

It’s a sad film.  I identified very much with Kenneth’s sexual anorexia, his inability to form loving relationships with other men and the mask he wore to get through a life he considered useless.

Met the boy who played Joe Orton in Fantabulosa.  Kenny Doughty and his wife seem very pleasant.

“It is difficult to know people and I don’t think one can ever really know any but one’s own countrymen.

For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the county in which they are born, the city or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives’ tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they played, the poets they read, and the God they believed in.

It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can’t come to know by hearsay, you can only know them if you have lived them.”

It seems so easy, helping my friend in London put his film together without any thought of directing it myself.  It has given me a great deal of pleasure.  Of course I know how to negotiate the making of a film.  A big film or a small film.  Films naturally find their own scale.

I’ve no idea yet what sort of film we will make.  We are currently looking for a great script.

It was lovely listening to Michael Sheen talk about Kenneth Williams.  He obviously developed a profound affection for Kenneth by simply walking in his shoes.   I wondered what the similarities were between these two very different men.

Michael talked amusingly at dinner about meeting Tony Blair at Rupert Murdoch’s house.  He talked about Polari, the 17th Century gay slang, I introduced to Jake B.  He described his friendship with Barbra Windsor.

I hope I helped JB understand the culture and history that precedes him.  It’s so important for gay men to own their history, not as prescribed by straight people as they have written us in the pages of their newspapers…but the oral history that may get lost as another generation of gay men grow up.   We have such a rich history, such joy and tragedy…but we are loathed to own it.

There was a superb Somerset Maugham quote used in the movie:

“What do we any of us have but our illusions and what do we ask of others that we be allowed to keep them?”

When I was a young boy Maugham’s childhood home still stood on Canterbury Road in Whitstable.  It was a beautiful Victorian rectory that savage developers later pulled down and replaced with five vile, mock Georgian horrors.  Anyway, before it was demolished, I made friends with the owners and every Sunday after church I would sit in the huge conservatory, feed their chickens and look at the goldfish in their pond.  They gave me a small piece of amethyst that I still own.

When I went to bed last night I found a poisonous spider folded into the linen.  I didn’t kill it.  It’s nice to share your bed with something living even if it’s only a spider or a little dog.

As I look back over the past months I understand that one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.

In the time that it has taken me to write this blog the mist has magically retreated revealing the ocean.  I am going for a long walk.

Categories
Gay

Overcoming Obsession

This morning I lay in bed battling the resentments.  I made coffee and called the Katonah small claims court and had the forms faxed over to start my proceedings against him.  Quite without knowing why I called Joan and she told me that she had heard from him and he was hurt.  So, my heart melted and I threw away the forms.  By doing so I kinda threw in the towel.  Threw away the resentment and let him go.

I really don’t want to hurt him.  I really don’t.

I sent him a short letter and that was that.

All I wanted from the very beginning was to let him go like a mouse that you find in the house.  You don’t worry what happens to the mouse..you hope it survives but it’s really up to the mouse.

It’s going to take time to stop thinking about him.  I’m realistic about it.

So I wrote this:

Jake,

Listen. I know I have hurt you. I know that you will probably never forgive me.

I am not going to try getting the money. I want you to enjoy the friends I introduced you to and I hope that you can profit from those contacts from which you were meant to profit.

I hope you will one day understand why I couldn’t continue with our friendship. That I really loved you.

I am truly sorry for everything. For my part in this disaster.

I don’t know if I can stop writing about this on my blog. I will try.

Of course I want you to be happy, to find love. You will, as I have said a million times, make someone a wonderful husband.

The reason that I am writing this is because you told Joan how hurt you were and I hate that. In the abstract you can be hurt badly but in reality I don’t want you to suffer any more than you already are.

The fantasy and the reality of Jake.

You will be pleased to hear that during my last CNN appearance all I could see on the other side of the camera was your face.

It ruined it. I’m not doing that again.

I hope you understand better now why i decided why we can’t be friends or have contact.

You reacted so badly to my thoughtful note. I wasn’t trying to be cruel but I just don’t want half measures in my life.

So, now I have dropped a bomb on you in my blog and I don’t know how to make it right. You can find solace in the fact that you are weekly in the top ten most read blogs subjects on my page.

Remember, in the words of The Bard:

“love is not love that alters when alteration finds nor bends to the remover to remove”

This has been hard for both of us.

Let’s see if we can both forgive and forget.

Duncan

Categories
Gay Rant

trying to forgive

OK, it’s really time to forgive.  It’s so fucking hard to forgive someone you have loved. I don’t know if it’s the right thing?  We had such an intense time together.

I dealt with the unresolved financial aspect today but it gave me zero pleasure.

I think..why the fuck should he get away with anything.  Here it comes again..the wave of resentment.

I wish on more occasions that I care to admit that I could remove every single mention of him on my blog just like he wanted but now look..the pages are covered with him.   Mentions and pictures and insults.  I know that it must have hurt him terribly.  For what?

Because I loved him.  Because I don’t want to love him. Because I want to let him go..forever and this seemed like the only way.

I broke my promise to celebrate every moment of his new gay life.

Two people come together for what ever reason and try to make something happen.  The moment the heart is engaged it becomes treacherous.

Toby and I went out last night to WeHo where I thought I wanted to be happily surrounded by own kind.  It was GHASTLY!  I LOATH mediocrity!  Jake wasn’t mediocre.  He wasn’t deliberately cruel.  He was just confused.  I should have known better..but why should I?  Why should I know just because I am older?  I keep thinking about The Velvet Rage.  How we become who we are shaped in a hostile world.  Having to invent ourselves as we go along.

I don’t know the answers…why should I?

I tried to be there for him, to help him but I couldn’t help myself..I fell in love.  So, every time I eat a tomato I think of him because we bought those beautiful tomatoes in the market in Sanary and ate them like peaches.

Every time I sit opposite another man on a ‘date’ I compare them to him.   Every time something good or bad happens I want to share it with him..yet I have no right.  I never had any right.  You see, he always made it perfectly clear after he left her that he wasn’t leaving her for me.   The damage was already done.  I was already in love, I believed him when he wrote to me telling me how much he loved me.

Even though I urged him to get honest I think it suited me that he wasn’t.  When he finally told her I was in SHOCK.  It seemed like the most brave yet foolhardy thing to do.  There were other ways of telling the truth.  But that’s just my fucked up head getting in the way.  He did the right thing.

When I told John the Saturday morning he told her he was gay we both looked at each other in SHOCK.

As we became more involved I couldn’t just continue with things the way they were.  I couldn’t bear listening to him tell me about other men and not be profoundly hurt however generous I wanted to be.

I didn’t want it to end but it had no future and if it had no future I couldn’t continue.

I need either to be on my own or to share my life with a man who gives equally, kindly, compassionately.

This will make you laugh:  I met a man (my age) at dinner the other night who wanted a date but cancelled after reading my blog.  So, it’s just me and my blog.

As for the money? I don’t care about the money, I just care that he’s not getting away with anything.  Then of course..I do care.  When I am feeling angry or resentful I care so much about the fucking money.

It’s 110 degrees in LA.  At the end of the week we return to sultry days and chilly evenings.

Where are the grand romantic gestures?  Should I have moved to NYC ?  I simply couldn’t.  I couldn’t shift my life east because I loved him so much.  I always knew that I would eventually have to let him go.

Now look, these pages are littered with every mean thing I could have written about him.  But inside my crazy head every mean thing I think about him is balanced with a good thought, a lovely memory, a kind gesture.

I just don’t want you to think I am weak, laying in bed this morning and trying to conjour up good thoughts of Jake, wanting to remember all that was sweet and let the loathing go.

Toby and I went into Weho last night.  It was a cluster fuck.  The Abbey was throwing a birthday party for its owner.  We left a few minutes after arriving.   It was shirtless night there.  Just more flesh.  More male bodies, shaved chests, cropped hair..like walking onto the set of an endless porno shoot.  Aspirations reduced to one thing: cock.

When I craved, in the 1980’s, more openness for our gay culture so we were not hidden from those who might harshly judge us..did I ever imagine this:

From the sidewalk we could see into Mickey’s where half-naked men gyrated on podiums with dollar bills stuffed in their knickers.  At East West more half-naked men on podiums wearing cowboy hats trying to dance unsuccessfully to country and western music. In Fiesta Cantina karaoke boys sang moody songs very badly and worst of all, just a few doors away in Rage a man was being bound and gagged in the entrance of the bar and hoisted above the audience by a vile, tattooed queen in leather.

I, like the dumfounded straight people around me,  looked in at this horrible spectacle.  I felt sick that this carnage was the public face of our ‘culture’.  The freaks, the mediocre, the wet brains, the fools..and (however beautiful they were) all so ugly..so inauthentic.

That we had all fought so hard to be taken seriously…and crave marriage and equality.

I let the little dog out of the car and he ran like a lunatic around the West Hollywood park and I felt as if in some small way my faith could be restored in the world.