Categories
Love Rant

My Father

On my knees today.  Waiting to be delivered from the worst.  God, you must understand, never lets me down.   Never has.  Thank you for that.   Everything is just the way it is meant to be in God’s perfect world.

Fuck.  It’s been so hard recently to feel as if life was worth living.  But I just threw myself into the love from those around me.  It’s hard to trust that they will catch you when you fall..but they did.  All day.   Thank you, thank you, thank you.

What, you may be thinking is the worst?   Well, this birthday palava is getting to me.  Was getting to be.  It’s hard to be in acceptance when all around you feels that what was available seems unavailable.

I don’t mean a person..no one person is bringing me down.

I don’t want anyone to think I’m writing about them.  This funk is more about my inability to pull myself out of alcoholic swill and back into the creative life I’ve had for so long.

Today, I prayed that the phone would ring and then the phone rang and I was commissioned to write a piece for a mag.  Then tonight a producer gave me a huge boost, telling me to call when I got back from Europe, that it was time for me to direct something.

Bumped into Sebastian whose father was my father’s best friend.  He said, “Your father was such a cool guy.”  And told me all about my brothers and sisters and what they were up to.

It made me feel very proud.  I do wish that I had had a relationship with him.  I really do.

I am going to sleep well tonight.

PS  The online dating site is yielding interesting possibilities after all.  Not sex but connections.  I was just really honest and said what I wanted.  A relationship.  I want a relationship.

Categories
Rant

Hooters

Anna

Grateful for:  a beautiful day, my little dog, healthy food, my sobriety, a bountiful God, feeling settled.

A beautiful, bright day in LA.  Sitting at home after therapy not wishing the days away until I get to Paris.  Just enjoying the time I have left here.  It goes without saying that I am excited to be in Europe.  Excited to be at home.  Excited to see my family and friends.  The travelling part is a bit of a dreary prospect but we’ll get through it.

The finance issue has been dealt with, I am excited to see what happens next.  I am doing the right thing.  It’s all in all the most grown up thing I have ever done.

I found a huge bronze lamp in someone’s trash.

Last night I had dinner at the 101 with friends.  Spent most of the day with Jenny.

Anna is on her way over with her new film for me to see.

We just saw Anna’s film.  It is called Hooters and is a really funny documentary about the making of The Owls.  If you live in LA please check it out at Outfest.

Dinner tonight with John and Valerie.

Categories
Rant

Gratitude..

Grateful for the little dog, grateful for my truck, grateful for money in the bank, food on the table, a safe house, a holiday to look forward to, my birthday and most of all I am grateful for a higher power that, when I bother to listen, never lets me down.

Dinner with Justin at a deserted Soho House.  He paid.

An old friend called and I was startled and flattered.   Spoke briefly with traveling companion who was feeling yesterday like I was the day before.   Had a long walk with Eric.  Most of all I was just enjoying being here, here being..in my own body, looking out of my own eyes..no interruption on the horizon.

Note from Stephen Fry about Sebastian.   Had a quick coffee with some lad who wanted advice about the film industry but I cannot help him.  I saw Kate Rigg at the 101 Diner.

When the panic comes I refuse to fight it.   I let it wash over me and then I look out of the window and check that I can still see the view, that it isn’t being mired with any unwanted thought.

I am going to overcome this fucking malaise by doing what we do..by taking action and not giving in.  Remind yourself: I didn’t get sober to be unhappy, feel less than or fear that life isn’t worth living.

Off to Ikea with Jenny.

Categories
Love

Jenny A

Lunch with Jenny A at Joan’s on Third.

I tend to avoid anything flavored with Tarragon because it is most often over used.  Used correctly it is the most delicate and fragrant of all the herbs providing a backdrop for other flavors to make themselves heard.

I ate the three-salad combination plate..chicken with Tarragon salad, butter bean and mozzarella salad and snap pea salad.  Gorgeous.  But what was more gorgeous was hanging with the perennially elegant, devilishly witty and endlessly talented Jenny.

I am still off all food made with anything bleached, processed or enriched so am shrinking daily.  I wore McQueen pants, a black tee and Maison Margiella sandals.  The first time this year I have felt confident to do so.  I knew that I looked fucking great and that, my friends, is all your favorite ‘uncle’ requires of the new day.   Elegance.  Who better to dress to impress than darling Jenny.

As you may have divined I am well and truly out of my funereal dirge and feeling very happy, resolute, fearless.  This is all it takes?  Lunch with Jenny to slough off the past few months of misery?  Well no, it was Jenny plus some really good advice, some incisive questioning and hey presto I can deal with anything..including this bloody city.  Jenny left LA a few years ago to set up shop in Todos Santos, Mexico as the purveyor of the most magical B&B in the whole goddamned world.

Incidentally, it was Jenny who I called the day I took my last drink more than a decade ago.  A drink I shared, rather ironically, with Sebastian Horsley and his then girlfriend Rachel.  It was actually a little more than a drink.   Excuse my coyness.

That last night of debauchery in Kensington included falling in and out of black taxies, vomit on the streets, blazing eyes, insulting the host of a very dull party.  The next morning waking up under that cloud.  I called Jenny.  I had been to her home on many occasions where she graciously served alcohol but never drank a drop herself.

She asked if I was ready to stop, that it was about time.

I had a wrap of something in my wallet and knew that I wanted it.  She told me to call when I was ready to get sober, to renounce drugs and alcohol.   It was October 1st 1997.  I was ready.  I put the wrap into the trash and like nuclear waste held it at arm’s length as I threw the trash bag into the street.

After chucking out the last of the alcohol and drugs I set about cleaning the filthy multi million dollar house, fixing the dent in my car, changing my telephone number and putting my life back together.  I slept in clean sheets.  I went to bed when I was tired.  I ate delicious food that I could taste.  In order to escape those whose best interests it was to keep me drunk I booked a ticket to Sydney Australia where I went every day to 12 step meetings for the next six months.

It was magical.   Sobriety is like magic.  That New Years Eve I was three months without a drink,  I did the unthinkable I sat in the Sydney Opera House enjoying The Magic Flute sober.

I have never had a dud New Year’s Eve in sobriety.

Jenny and I share many of the same personality traits..both good and bad and during the past twenty years have helped each other emotionally, practically and spiritually.   In fact, it was she who very generously lent me her beautiful home in Notting Hill when I made my film Clancy’s Kitchen.   Black finger prints not withstanding our friendship remains as strong today as it ever was.

A truly glamorous Brit with red hair and high cheekbones she wanted to know who and what and when..processed it and spat out wonderful advice.

Just for the record: this is what I am grateful for this sunny LA day in 2010:

My health, my life, my little dog, my great friends, my sobriety, food on the table, my trip to Paris, my upcoming birthday, my view, the new road to the house..

Actually, I am grateful for rather a lot.  Now, that’s the way to start the day?  I think so.  With a gratitude list.  Perhaps that’s how I need to start my blog rather than the list of all that is wrong in my life.

For a while I forgot why I got sober!  I didn’t get sober to mope around, to complain about shit or live in fear.   Good God!   Dr Jenny laid me on her couch and reminded me of what I needed to hear.

As a result I challenge those thoughts of obsession to come to me.  Every time my head is clouded with unwanted thoughts I say, bring it on.   There is only so much pain I can endure.  Rather than fight the thoughts or submerge them in drugs, alcohol or orgasm I let them consume me for a few moments and they vanish a few seconds later.

It’s odd that when one is obsessed with anything by simply trying to marshal those thoughts one merely feeds them.   By letting them wash over me like heavy rain the storm passes.

This too will pass.

Joan of Joan’s on Third sat with us for a few minutes and told us about an armoire that she had seen in Paris three years ago that she thought was going to be perfect for keeping her linens.  Sadly, the shopkeeper told her that the beautiful piece was already sold.  For three solid years Joan lusted after that armoire, looking at pictures of it on her phone.

When she finally returned to Paris a short while ago Joan popped back into the store to find that miraculously the armoire had not been sold after all, delighted she opened the door and upon closer inspection saw that it was full of safes and totally inappropriate for linens.

Of course she didn’t buy it.  She said, “I was obsessed with it because it was unavailable and I hadn’t looked inside.”  Which is exactly how I get obsessed…with that that is unavailable and because often..I haven’t looked inside.

I dreampt that I drank a pint of amber-colored beer.  It was cold and sparkling just like I remember it.   It was delicious.  In my dream I noted that it had no effect.  That I was as sober at the end of the pint as I was when I took the first sip.  Oh, if only that were true!

I am determined that nothing will get in the way of the good time I am planning to have in the UK during this next few weeks.  I am going home to celebrate with old friends who expect me to return from this stinking hole triumphant!  I am triumphant.

I have been weakened of late and it does not suit me.   Who says that happiness depends on me being loved, being rich, being anything else than what I am?  Who wrote that bullshit?  I really have no right to anything other than this very moment.

For fuck sake I have survived on my own for nearly five decades.  Why the hell am I so inclined to believe that I can’t do that anymore is a totally mystery.  Who the hell is running this insane asylum?

I have an adventure, life’s adventure to complete here and nothing is going to get in my way.

I think some of you were rather hoping that at this point I might do what my other less determined friends have done..and kill myself.   No such luck!  If the fags don’t get me,  the pancreatic cancer might but never, never expect me to do myself in.

There’s too much to look forward to!

Categories
art Gay Hollywood Love Rant

Nancy Rubins

Nancy Rubins

The Nancy Rubins show at Gagosian is the real deal.  Not one wasted wall nor expectation disappointed.  Spread over four galleries on two floors this energetic show needs to seen.  The huge newer gallery to the south of the original space has never been used so successfully.  It is devoted to an ambitious, spectacular forest of kayaks that delight and inspire!   Pewter colored boats strung together with high tensile wires exploding thirty feet into the air.

We were shown smaller bronze editions that somehow don’t lose their magnificence even though they seem like maquettes for the larger works.

The art was violent and beautiful just as one would expect.   Huge, crumpled graphite on paper pieces bearing down like storm clouds.  The whimsical collages..covetable.    A most enjoyable experience.

Nancy Rubin lives in Topanga, Los Angeles.

My day began with breakfast at Cecconi’s with John.   We talked about an art project for his store.

I called TW but he is in the midst of an obsession so cannot be relied upon to carry me away from mine.  My obsession to get out of dodge, to leave these filthy streets.

There was a rat that had to be dealt with in Malibu.

Chatted with travelling companion.  Listen, every day that passes until I get onto that plane to Paris is absolute torture.  I CANNOT wait.  He thought I sounded pensive.  Not really pensive, just bored, uninspired.  Bored of LA.  I need an enriching, invigorating, salubrious experience.

I am glad that I am taking a friend.  It is always so delightful to see things through new eyes.  I think we both need to run away.  What we don’t need is more drama, prying eyes or complicated love affairs.

Even my more evenhanded friends seem haunted at the moment.  Haunted by the prospect of no prospect.  The economy, the war, the oil spill..the groggy, ineffective Obama administration.

I remember moving here.  I thought, back then, that anything was possible in LA.  I was wrong.

I am tired of the interminable struggle of living.   Every day is a monstrous challenge. Every fucking day.   Driving, parking, dealing with half-wits.  Driving, parking, dealing with half-wits.

Nancy Rubins

Although I woke up this bright Sunday morning feeling a little less pessimistic I swerve from irritable and discontent to the inner peace of absolute acceptance..then it’s back to the dark side.  Malcontent, that’s what I am.  Even looking at art yesterday, as inspirational as it was, could not stop me yearning for Europe.

I wondered what steps I could take to not be on my own.

I thought about joining a dating site.  I tapped in the name of the site.  As soon as the site popped up I was reminded of a time when all I wanted was to hear the reassuring buzz of new messages.  Looking at that site was incredibly depressing.  Page after page of cock pics, ass pics and naked men.   On either side of the multiple cock pics were ads for porn sites.  Mountains of white, heaving flesh.

I have no currency on sites like that.  I am invisible and rightly so, I have no reason to be there.   No reason to be judged simply by my age, weight and the size of my penis.

I know that this plan works very well for many men.  I have heard from friends how relationships form and prosper.    Many things work for other people that have never worked for me.  The ease with which I see my friend become a fully fledged and engaged gay man has shocked me into knowing just how stunted my own experience has been.

The prospect of never being touched or kissed again fills me with fear.  Is it so unreasonable to want a man who loves me as much as I love him?

If I have learned anything these past few months it is this:  my heart sings when I am in love.  Not when I have sex that is disconnected from my feelings.   I wish I could!  I wish that I had been made that way.  But, the truth is..if I had been made that way I would have been killed by AIDS years ago.  Before we knew what AIDS was.  My reticence saved me though ultimately kept me on my own.

Nancy Rubin

I have never been so eager to meet someone yet so disconnected from the possibility.  I am resigned to the fact that it is totally unlikely to happen.

Friends, I suppose, are just as good.

I will be travelling with a great friend.  I am grateful for that.  Grateful to have a friend with whom I can laugh and although I once wanted more it is with the same resignation that I understand that what I have is just as good.

Some people will always be there.  Until the very end.  I hope that by sharing this journey he remains my friend.   Seldom have I experienced such ease with another and have, on occasions, confused that with being in love.

I spent almost the entire day with Dom.  We saw the show at Gagosian, ate lunch in Beverly Hills then I came home had a nap and cooked dinner for the both of us.  Carrot and ginger soup, pork chops and peas then cups of British tea.  It’s a quarter after 12 and he just left.  Shooting the shit, putting the world to rights.

As for sex addiction?  What of that?  Well, I have been really well-behaved.  Not acting out, not objectifying, intriguing, not making inappropriate comments, not looking at porn, not…well, not doing anything that might compromise my sobriety.

Dom Nancy Rubins

I think my friends here worry about me.  Think that I might be depressed.  They might have a point.  It has been a very, very hard six months.  Not with people, but with banks and aspirations and an inability to make art.

The trouble with LA is the lengths one has to go to make sense of every day.  I have been here for five years now.

Five long years in purgatory.

On Friday night I had dinner at Soho House with a new friend.  It was like dining with a ghost.   A beautiful man with no soul.   A beautiful man who referred to me as an uncle.  Again.  That fucking word.  Asexual uncle.   I didn’t pay for dinner.   Uncles pay for dinner.

Categories
Love

A Prayer

Some people come into your life and teach you just what you need to know just when you need it.

Some people take what they need and leave like thieves in the night and one must be willing to sacrifice all that one has for those who have very little.

They would not steal unless they really needed it.

Friends come and go.  Those you have loved with such great passion eventually fade away.  Old friends die, but remain eternally in one’s heart.

I am grateful that I have had a life enriched by so many.   Each and every one of you, whether you like me or not continue to add new dimension and colour to a life less ordinary.

I tread water so that others may not drown.

Can you help me please?  Can you show me the way?  Can you be wise for me?

Occasionally my Wikipedia page is vandalized.  They always do the same thing.  They take down all my achievements leaving only the acts for which I am notorious.  They underline every cruel adjective ever tossed my way.  They remove every kind word or deed.

They want you to believe that I am only bad.  That I am only capable of cruelty, vileness and loathing.

I wonder what sort of fool does that?    I know some of you have found it very hard to forgive me for merely surviving against the odds.  I know that you would like me to end up like Sebastian Horsley: alone and dead and cold.  Frankly, when the time comes..who cares?

Chatting with Toby Mott yesterday we concluded that Sebastian maybe more interesting dead than alive. We agreed that the British art establishment ignored his life but will embrace his death.

However I may be rewritten on the pages of Wikipedia the truth is I am all the things I have been described, good and bad.  Yet, in my eyes, neither as good or bad as the next man.  Why is it so impossible for those who seek to devalue me to own that this might be true?

We are all made of devil and angel.

I may have made errors of judgement, lost my temper occasionally, owed some people some money but I have never raped or murdered anyone.  I have never committed treason, nor have I been part of any radical conspiracy.

I have been a bit of a cunt but who the fuck isn’t?

I have no desire for legacy.  When I am dead and gone the sand will cover the place where my footprints once were.  The tide will wash away any evidence that I even existed.

God save me from mediocrity, from suburban thinking.  God help me stay curious about everything forever and sensitive to those I love.

You know, I have never understood why people treat love so casually.   When I first feel a connection with someone, when I feel that love is in the offing I am not only inspired but convinced that new love must be treated like a precious thing, as fragile as a Ming vase.  If we are truly capable of romantic love then we must treat it with respect.  As relationships grow the vase morphs into an old leather football that can be tossed around if needs be.

Time, familiarity, endurance, perseverance all serve to strengthen love.

I have prayed these past few months to be delivered from the worst that love has caused in me.

Have my words far outweighed my actions?  It is easy to say that you love someone but maybe the word should never be spoken.  Love should be like a silent film.   If I truly love you, if my love is pure then you will know it and honor it.

Long chat with my mother yesterday.  She sounded happy.  The Women’s Institute keeping her busy.  My brother’s baby will be christened on August 1st.

Categories
Fashion

Sebastian Horsley RIP (though unlikely)

Not sad about Sebastian.  Not sad about anything.  Loads of messages from friends re. Sebastian.  I had long chat with PH this morning about the trip home and how amazing it is that we survived at all.

I have been miserable about turning 50 in three weeks but better to be turning 50 than turning in my grave.

It was such a tonic chatting with my darling PH, she has always been there for me.  Always.  Anyway, that’s just the way I need to start my day with a bit of loving validation.  Suddenly I feel like I can cope with ANYTHING.

Held here in sunny LA aspic.   Suspended in solid jelly.  I can see out and they can see in but I’m waiting for the jelly to melt around me.

Last night’s dinner with friends was delicious.  We played a few games of backgammon after.  When John realized he wasn’t going to beat me he ran off leaving his wife to try her luck.  Nope, she didn’t win.

My diet means that I can wear clothes I have not worn for a few years.  Last night I wore a pair of crisply pressed silk Prada pants and my Comme cardi.  Lovely.

From the 26th floor I stared out over LA as dusk fell.  The car lights on Sunset Blvd snaking for miles East, white and red.   A huge black cloud from the west hastening the night.

Really making an effort to get out of the house.   I am not sitting indoors for 12 days.   Interminably long days.  Perhaps I should just take the car and drive across the USA?   Actually, that isn’t such a bad idea.

I could stop off in Nashville and see Joan!  How about it Joan?

Very exciting European prospects ahead.  I am particularly looking forward to seeing my friends and walking the streets.  July is always such a glorious month in London.  Did I tell you that I ran into Orlando Bloom at breakfast the other day?  Now, he is a sweetheart.  Sat next to Alanis Morrisette at Cholada on PCH.  That’s the extent of my starry life here in LA.

I am so happy she called.  So happy.

Categories
Death

Cancer of The Heart

Sebastian Horsley my dear friend this past twenty five years has been found dead in his Soho apartment.  Heroin overdose.  Good God.  How many more friends will I lose this year to the disease of addiction?

He struggled so hard to stay clean and sober.  Endlessly failing, endlessly trying again.  He had the sweetest soul.

Hopefully I will be in London for the funeral.

Too many friends found dead on their own.  A ghastly yet familiar story.

The truth is, he should have died years ago.  He cheated death a million times.  I will miss him but somehow this particular ending for Sebastian was inevitable.

From an earlier post:

Sebastian lives on Meard Street in Soho. On his front door are the words, THIS IS NOT A BROTHAL, THERE ARE NO PROSTITUTES HERE which is total lie. There are always prostitutes there..in Sebastian’s bed.

Recently, I took a genuinely normal boy to meet Sebastian-my very sweet friend Chris Parker the TV actor from Eastenders. Chris is utterly charming. Previously I had taken him to The Colony in an attempt to delight him with a glimpse of an alternative London. My experiment failed. Chris thought that the Colony, the great beating bohemian heart of London was horrible. He didn’t like it. He looked scared. He was not interested in the art or the characters dressed in huge jewels or zoot suits. Those people in that tiny room shocked him, he was unaware of the history of that room. In that room the greatest art dramas had been played out, that Francis Bacon held court there, destroyed the confidence of his boyfriend publicly in that room. Go see the film: Love is the Devil if you want to know more about The Colony.

So, Chris and I are shopping in John Pearse on Meard Street. I bought a pink linen shirt. You know who John is? He made The Sargent Pepper uniforms for the Beatles. John owned a shop on the Kings Road called Granny Takes a Trip in the 1960′s. As we were on the same street, on the spur of the moment I wickedly decided to introduce cautious Chris to Sebastian. Chris is 5’10″. When Chris met Sebastian, 6’5″ tall wearing a lurid cerise tie, his raven black hair swept into a huge bouffant in his rooms in Soho, he was struck dumb.

Chris looked at the pictures of the crucifixion, the limbless woman and the sharks. He was visibly distressed when he saw the nails that been nailed into Sebastian’s hands during the crucifixion. He was appalled when I told him that Sebastian had fallen off the cross. Chris noticed the gun by Sebastian’s bed. “What is that for? Is it real? Why do you have it by your bed?” Sebastian, picking it up to show us the real bullets said, “I don’t believe in unprotected sex.”

In his own words:

“When I was young I thought the recipe for happiness was devastating good looks, a blazing talent and a colossal income. I was right. As for love? The rich think that the most important thing in life is love. The poor know it is money. It is the only thing poor people do know. Given that money is the root of all evil, they should be very virtuous. But they’re not. No, they just moan, groan and drone, looking for a loan. Why don’t they just get rid of such luxuries as food, clothing and shelter, and give us all some peace? Give me the luxuries of life and I will dispense with the necessities.  Fancy a fuck?”

Categories
art Dogs Gay Love Money

A Message from Kristian

I found a book of photography called Chaos by Josef Koudelka at my house in Malibu that Kristian gave me for my birthday some years ago.  In it he wrote:

“I thought this book was very apt.  Life is never black and white yet always flowing with chaos.  I feel this book goes some small way to prove that even in chaos there is beauty.”

It was lovely to find his note.   A message from Kristian, from the past.  The past, where we must leave him.

I had to make some huge and grown up decisions today.   Decisions and about romance and finance.  The two are unconnected yet have been hideously intertwined as I grappled with one or the other for the past few months.

As my fear of financial ruin overwhelmed me I turned to him to deliver me from the truth.   Today, I just had to face my unfortunate situation head on.

My financial insecurity is undoubtedly connected to uncomfortable feelings of self-worth, prestige and power.  The romance I want but cannot have.   Some things are just not meant to be.  It is challenging to come to terms with these sorts of truths but as I have written here in this blog on many occasions when I do make decisions they are swift and sure.  Something, actually, Drew Pinsky taught me whilst I was on the sex rehab show.

I have deliberately avoided talking about either the romance or the finance on this blog but more importantly I have kept it secret to those who love me best.  Fuck, it is exhausting keeping secrets.  I really hate it.  I have no intention of going into any specific detail about the romance or the finance right now.  All you need to know is that I sat with John after the cake was cut and the presents were opened and told him everything I had been hiding for the past few months.  Phew.

As we all know: the truth will set you free.

I let go of a secret I was determined to keep.  Everything I have ever let go of has been relinquished unwillingly.  With claw marks all over what ever was finally gone.

Deep down I am as sure as I ever was that everything will turn out just the way it was meant to be.   I believe in my fate.

My relationships burn like super novae in the cosmos then shrink and die.  I have an opportunity right now to make a different set of choices: taking contrary action, living in acceptance and handing over what ever gives me pain to my higher power.

Just a few days away from my trip to Europe where I will celebrate a hefty milestone.   I have chosen to travel with a close friend.  Someone I love but not a lover.   We (and The Little Dog) will explore London and Paris.  For the sake of The Little Dog we will once again visit the wallabies in the Jardin des Plantes that my darling, loyal pet found utterly spell binding when we visited Paris last Autumn.   I am sure he must have thought that they were the biggest squirrels he had ever seen.

Am I prepared to walk away with dignity?  From people, places and things?

What I own is not who I am.  Who I love cannot define me.  Of course I would love to be in love with a man who loved me as much as I loved him.

I have come a very long way this past year.  The road to serenity, self-love, sexual sobriety is littered with the corpses of those who could not.

I must have buried 30 people during the last 12 years, killed by addiction.  Overdose, suicide, etc.  Every one my hero for keeping me sober.   Each and every one.

This evening I celebrated my friend’s daughter’s 5th birthday.  I sat with his family and watched his happy little girl blow out the candles on her cake.   After supper I wandered into Soho House on my own and found people I knew to take my mind off of the grueling aloneness.  I am not lonely, I just can’t be bothered to make the effort to accept the invitation nor get in the car and drive to people who genuinely love me.

On my way home, as if by magic, friends called me.  Emails arrived, text messages appeared on the screen of the iPhone and I was wrenched away from the promise of a night of self-pity.  I can be such a pig at that particular trough.

I said to him the other night that what I found so hard to let go of was the promise of enduring love.  The door had been opened then slammed shut.  I am the wise uncle, asexual, decrepit yet ultimately willing to be of service to those who need me.

Without the crutches of objectification, intrigue and seduction I can some times flounder.  I can sometimes fall.  Late at night, when all hope is gone I wonder who will catch me?  Who will catch me when I fall?

For a moment back then, I thought it might be you. I thought, foolishly, that it might be YOU.  I thought it was you when I was 20, 30, 40 and now.   Being in love with Richard in my twenties.  I was heartbroken when he would flirt with girls.  At my birthday party on Island Wall, Whitstable my Mother saw the pain I was in and tried to reach out to me but shame got in the way.

The legacy of shame.

Love has always been my goal.  To be loved.  I crave love the way most men crave sex.

I told him:  I’m really scared that I will never love again.   That I will never be loved.  How could I have got this so wrong?    To believe that love was possible, enduring and could be one day mine?

From out of the chaos comes beauty.  It will give me succour when all else fails.  I am going to Europe to fill my heart and soul with art and architecture.  To walk the streets and parks of two great cities.  To explore what it might have been like to be loved.   I know that when I get back he will be gone.  It is our swan song, our last hurrah.  But before I write the end I must enjoy the journey.  I must not fear the future nor have unrealistic expectations, I must set aside my shame and feel the sun on my face, in my heart.

Categories
Gay Hollywood Rant

Gay Pride?

Today the sea in the Gulf of Mexico is burning. Added to the slick of heavy crude oil toxic, jet-black smoke polluting the air we breathe.   The azure, pristine water marred with acrid plumes of shit colored oil.  The marshlands and beaches painted brown, the life there dying because we refuse to doubt our dependence on oil.  It is officially one of the worst man-made environmental disasters ever.

Yet, the massed people of the United States, indeed the world, politely ignored it.  Until now.  Blame is being apportioned, asses are being kicked yet today I will fill my truck with gas and think nothing of it.  I am complicit; I am responsible yet I do nothing.   Nothing.

It is maybe just the analogy I need to explain the human disaster caused by religious based homophobia that causes pain and suffering to those who live in it’s shadow.

Frankly, I don’t give daily thought to the fact that I am part of a community that is routinely demonized just as I choose to forget that hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil spew into the sea.  I have learned to live side by side a huge number of people encouraged to hate me and people just like me because of the way we were born and the sexual preferences we have.

Politically I have sat motionless on the sidelines whilst living in the USA.  I have not demonstrated like I did in London, I have not written to my representative in Congress expressing my outrage at how my rights are diminished or devalued.   I put up with things just the way they are because I feel powerless, that I am just one man with one lone voice against the angry mob.

Nowadays I am resigned, whenever I am with men who do not know that I am gay and say things that are blatantly offensive, to keep my mouth shut.    I do not blame myself for their views but as I grow older I am less likely to defend my community or myself.  It simply isn’t worth it.  I am tired of being the uppity gay.

I am exhausted by confronting inequity and hate in my life and I am scared.  Scared that I will not be able to fully defend myself against their physical abuse.

My entire career as an artist has been to serve the gay community.  My plays and films aimed at men like me.  I have been hugely admired (and reviled) as a filmmaker but even my gay friends do not respect that I describe myself as a ‘gay filmmaker’ a gay man who makes films for and about our community.  They muse that I could have done so much better for myself if I had abandoned my principles.  If I had gone ‘mainstream’.

All I ever wanted to be was a gay artist who uses the language and locations of our gay lives.  I am proud to have done so.  I am proud to have served my community thus.

I wonder how much damage we do ourselves in the way that we choose to be seen?  How can we expect those who loathe us to accept us when we do so little to let them know who we are?

What is my part in the public relation disaster that still prevents fellow citizens from owning and celebrating my existence?  What am I doing in my community to help those angry people understand who I am?   How can I expect the mainstream to accept my demands for equality when I essentially live in a hermetically sealed ghetto?

How can I expect my gay fellow travelers to start reaching into their pockets and paying for a PR campaign that somehow celebrates our diversity when all we are seen to want is the right to fuck?

Call me old-fashioned but the love I have for another man always felt far more subversive than the act of fucking.

How do you say ‘I love you’ to another man?  What does it mean when two men say that they love each other?  Having sex with a man is easy-isn’t it?   That’s why we all do it as often as we do..don’t we?  But to say ‘I love you’ to another man is perhaps the most shameful phrase I ever uttered.   My tongue, swelling in my mouth, choking me..rather than say those three tiny words to another man.

I love you.  I love you.  I love you.

What I know for sure about love between men is that others condemn the sanctity of that love.  That I still feel a vague embarrassment when I am seen to hold another man’s hand in the street.

We, as a community, do not promote ourselves as hopeless romantics but as half-naked sex maniacs.  By doing so we have become unwitting witnesses for the prosecution.   By publicly sexualizing everything we do we devalue what we have.  On Facebook the majority of my gay friends are shirtless in their profile pictures.  When questioned why he was bearing his chest in his Facebook profile picture one erudite gay friend said that he was ‘proud’ of his body and wanted to show it off.  It seems like a simple enough answer but is this what gay pride has boiled down to, our very own hard-fought perestroika reduced to this?

It seems so..undignified.

In West Hollywood there is a large poster on Santa Monica Blvd for a gay removal company; two half-naked men carry a small box grinning broadly.  At the premiere LA gay bar The Abbey there is another huge poster celebrating it’s twentieth year.  Three massively built and tattooed men, one of them mixing a martini on the rock hard abs of another; their naked truncated bodies engaged in what may be fellatio.

It was past this very poster out walking one evening last week when I had a full beer can thrown at me that very narrowly missed my head and landed squarely on my chest.  The accompanying homophobic insults are not worth repeating.

I hated the smell of beer on my clothes and the pain in my heart but I hated that poster far more.  It’s as useful as a picture of happy, smiling Jews counting dollar bills outside the Jewish Community Center.

The way we choose to be seen is the way we will be perceived.  I am told constantly that there are thousands of gay men who do not go to gay bars, who live happy lives in monogamous relationships who work quietly and steadfastly beyond the glitz of the gay ghetto but, amazingly, I have never met those men.  I don’t know what they look like.  I have never seen them, been introduced to them.  If I have never met those men then those who misunderstand us certainly never have.

The acrid smoke and crude oil are coming ashore; it destroys almost everything in its path.   If we do nothing perhaps nature will deal with it, break it up over thousands of years so I don’t have to think about it.  But, irritatingly, I am not that kind of man.   I worry about the herons and the oysters and the dolphins.   I am outraged by the incompetence and greed, just like I am every time my community is attacked because we do so little to let them know who we are, what we are, how we are.