The 18th Century Man has just peeled beets and the little dog is sleeping on the sofa.
This evening he very kindly bought a huge chunk of white chocolate for me at Wholefoods. In no time at all we seem to have settled into a harmonious domestic routine. We do not challenge each other unnecessarily nor do we expect anything more from each other than this moment where we exist right now.
He is cooking gnocchi. His accent is becoming apparently British and he is threatening to shave his beard revealing just how young he looks without it.
It was a beautiful early morning yesterday above the marine layer when I drove to my meeting in Hollywood, saw my breakfast boys then drove back to Malibu so I could take him to work. Carless because his spunky roommate had borrowed his baby blue Mustang-yes, he has a baby blue Mustang.
I have been on the West Side all week. Seriously thinking about getting a studio in Venice rather than keeping a place in Hollywood. I will have ‘community’ and be able to get to Malibu and my meetings and go to the gym without travelling 60 miles.
The 18th Century Man and me seem to cause some of you consternation. What do you expect? That I settle down into some miserable, suburban co-existence with a man more my own age because it suits your idea of what is ‘best’ for me? The reality is-I have no expectation, we have no expectations. We are having fun. The sex that I should have had for three months with the other I am still not having in abundance because I am not breaking my vow! We are getting to know each other! Getting to know what it feels like so if and when the moment comes-and it seems to be coming..imminently then it will be the right moment with the right man.
He is not a boy. He is a grown up man packaged in a boyish body. Men just like him are presently going down mines, being blown up in wars or designing bridges like the wunderkind Thomas Telford.
I don’t care if you approve of my choices or me. I am obviously not the kind of man the average mother is going to approve of or the best-girl-friend. Women get it so wrong when they imagine what is best for men together. They really have no clue. I am never going to get the best-girl-friend to love me as often the best-girl-friend has carved out a place in her heart for him that is never going to include anyone-ever.
So, for my many detractors:
I think that a lot of you forget that whilst you were out there having sex with multiple partners, or even one partner I was not. I was at home on my own cosseted away from the world of sex looking at the Internet or simply too scared to have sexual relations. Don’t give me a hard time now I have learned how to do it.
You can be a very punitive bunch. Wouldn’t you wish a condemned man a few days of happiness?
You know what I adore about him? He gets it. Night Jasmin, white chocolate, black glazed cotton. But the best thing about this friendship is that we both understand that any narrative will have a beginning, middle and an end. Remember, he isn’t on the rebound, he isn’t new from some sweaty closet, and he hasn’t come to me riddled with self-doubt or jaded by relations with many, many men.
I have looked into the eyes of too many men who were simply not there.
One has a moment in life when the horizon comes into view. Unable to hold onto old ideas we strive to recreate ourselves as perfectly as we can. I am in Malibu looking over the sea and I am not driven to look at porn nor throw a warm wank blanket over the day. My American spell check doesn’t recognize the word wank-but you all know what that means don’t you?
I am listening to Joni, her words either fill me full of hope or throw me into a terrible funk-thankfully I am happy today. There is a cool sea breeze to remind me that the ocean is just there, at the bottom of the hill. Sadly in the Gulf of Mexico avarice is ruining the water. More oil, more goddamned oil from which we refuse to wean ourselves. Sarah Palin has kept remarkably quiet about this environmental disaster that she said could never happen.
I have spent the past few nights with my 18th Century Man and it has been such a delight. Of course it’s hard not to compare what one had with what one has. The most significant difference is the proximity. I will never have a long distance love affair ever again. I am simply too fragile.
I will never again make the mistake of falling in love with a man who is not available. I am not the sort of person who can keep a secret, especially when it is steeped in shame. I have, in the words of my deceased Grandmother, lived a shameless life. She used the word pejoratively but actually she was right, I have been shameless and I am proud to be so. My proximity to the toxic shame of others is just as bad as experiencing ones own.
Even though I was born into shame I was a shameless boy. When I was a shameless boy they tried to tell me that I should be ashamed of who I was, the colour of my skin, my flamboyance, my birth, my teeth, my love, my understandable mistakes.
I hoped that I might meet a beautiful man and I have. It is wonderful to just experience the spontaneity, to drive to a coffee chop in Venice, to reach out and run your fingers through flaxen hair.
Last night we cooked dinner at his house in Venice with his super cool room-mate who incidentally knows Anna and Gwen and my lesbian art contingent. The night before we ate dinner at Axe. Roasted beats, huge chunks of halibut.
Of course I miss talking to that boy in NYC (of course I do) but I am enjoying the simplicity of what I have found here-the eagerness, the delicacy of his touch. The difference between men. I have no idea what I miss about what was. I think it was the rabid intensity that kept me diving into those choppy waters expecting not to be battered by the huge waves.
The moment I have any sort of expectation I am doomed. I feel battered from the last few months. Battered by doomed love. Battered by not knowing. Battered by resentment.
So, here I am-just as I have always been-on my own but with my eyes wide open. I have to read the treatment Ms Turner has sent me. I have to make my peace with writing once again. Writing and reading. I have to make peace with myself.
I am fast approaching a huge birthday and don’t really know how to celebrate it. I dare not ask fifty people for dinner but that’s what I think I would like to do.
On another note I have two sponsees in the 12-step programme I belong to and they give me such joy. Joy. Spent Sunday with one of them trying on hats and celebrating his birthday. The other keeps in touch daily reminding me why I am sober. It is time to keep the door open on recovery and all that means.
My date last night was perhaps the first proper date that I had ever had. We were meeting to see if we could sustain more than a moment of initial attraction. Isn’t that what a date is all about? I had been looking forward to it all week not least because I am so eager to get over the hesitant, unwilling Mr. NYC…should I start using his name rather than some acronym?
Whenever one is transitioning from one relationship to another it is almost impossible not to compare what was with what is on offer. So, in order to beat that particular demon we talked about last loves and expectations. Frankly it was wonderful to just be in the same room as a man who one found attractive rather than the constant yearning of the past 6 months. The more I sat with this strange new boy the more at ease I became and the more attractive he seemed to me. But unlike the last I would have to work a great deal harder to capture this butterfly.
For a start-I am not and will never be his physical type. If we have types…I suppose I may surpass types. I am the charismatic, art collecting, goat rearing, F150 driving, Vivienne Westwood wearing anomaly so getting to have dinner with me is just about me and who I am.
Of course he knew more about me than I him as my life is flayed all over the Internet. He looked at me with curious blue eyes. At times he was deliciously coy. This man/boy is incredibly well-educated with a compelling story and good connections. A bit deaf-or maybe I was mumbling. Our recent experiences with men have confused us. I urged him not to let these last encounters destroy what we love most about men…anyhow it is the very essence of jade that is peculiar to gay men and is as attractive to me as rat poison. It is true to say however that we are both a little bruised by recent loves, a little reticent. I want to meet men unfettered and with abandon. It is my aim.
He is a recent émigré to LA so enjoying all that the city has to offer. Irritatingly, unable to stop myself, I began a tirade against my adopted home and found myself saying things to him that I didn’t even believe anymore-it’s just easier to gripe about Los Angeles rather than take ownership of it.
Of course he is strikingly good looking…a willowy boy, tall, and slim like an 18th century romantic hero. An extraordinary gait. Floppy blond hair and the most beautiful nose. He drank one glass of white wine, which scarcely seemed to affect him at all. We ordered three courses because I knew that today I was going to go on a diet and start my gym training with David at Gold’s in Venice.
Rabbit good. Bratwurst bad. Cakes divine.
I have no idea if I will kiss his neck or sweep the blond hair out of his eyes. I have no idea if we will meet in Paris or drive to San Francisco on a whim but there’s a chance that we may and if we don’t, well…I know I made good choices tonight. Good for my brimming heart.
Eating cheese and pastrami with lashings of piccalilli smeared over the top. The inside of my mouth is burning. My lips are burning with desire. Not really. My lips are just bored. I am waiting for the mail to arrive so I can walk to bank and get on with the day.
I just scaled Mount Runyon with Sherpa Lil Dog, we saw two gorgeous yeti and had to: Alert! Avert! Affirm! It’s simply no good for me to gaze longingly at the perfectly honed abs of my fellow Runyon climbers.
Yesterday I realized, after chatting with a friend of mine with HIV that the average drug company will make over $2, 000, 000 out of a single person with HIV during their life time. Where is the incentive for those drug companies to educategay men about staying negative? Anyway, I am fast realizing that the sexual health education that gay men need is nothing to do with safe sex and everything to do with self-love.
The drug companies have no compassion for gay men, no desire to educate an underclass with no real rights, who are despised by most Christian bigots and have so little respect for themselves that they routinely get infected with HIV and become another $2, 000, 000 meal ticket for big pharma.
Pharmaceutical executives must be rubbing their hands in glee when another gay man converts from positive to negative.
This has to stop. We must start educating the next generation of gay men to love themselves enough to make good sexual health choices.
I got to thinking about my friend Amanda and how we recently hit a bit of a rock. I think deep down, even though she has gay men around her to dress her, she really has no respect for gay men. For many people we are clowns who have no right to complain or behave as anything other than grotesque queens. We are, to her, useless absurdities. Her notion that it is somehow ridiculous for us to have children, for us to have politics, opinions, etc. She’s not alone; I think many people are outraged by all of that and more.
Whatever I may have written about gaybies in the past I now see gay men having children as a delicious act of rebellion. It confronts homophobia head on.
I need something from you. I need closure. Don’t take this the wrong way. Moving at the wrong pace. I love you but…
You told me that you could not give me what I wanted-but I think you misjudged what I wanted. What I wanted more than anything was that we could do all the things we said we wanted to do when we weren’t in a position to do them. We had some really great ideas about what it meant to be together, time together, excitement together, exploration together.
You said you would fly to see me if only you could, then when you could..you couldn’t.
You may have become less free rather than more free, less brave rather than more brave and complain all the time about your lot without ever taking action to improve it. Darling Lamb Head: get a job you love and a place to live and make yourself available. Stop wallowing in self-pity and false promises. How long is this charade going to last where you pretend not to be having a life because you don’t want to be found out?
I am afraid of the huge difference between us. You see, I am not scared of all that life has to offer! When I was your age, at the merest hint of an invitation I would have been on that plane, that boat, that train, I would have been in Paris and London and Rome! You put all the reasons why NOT to before the reasons why you should.
If it had been me I would have come home triumphant! Armed with stories I would have told my grandchildren.
Darling, I need you to not call me when you are lonely and make cooing noises that just makes me love you all over again. I need you to set me free from the hope that we could ever be anything other than friends. If that!
It simply isn’t fair or considerate-in fact it is down right cruel because I cannot call you when I am feeling lonely not least because you are not very good at being compassionate. I don’t think we should see each other at all until we have got ourselves settled with other people.
I am going to meet this guy tomorrow and I am going to take him to dinner and then I am going to ask him if he will come to Paris with me. You had your chance and all you could say like a willful, petulant child is NO!
I think we really did exhaust things this time. We really may have pushed the right button. Please, please lets hope we did.
So, as a delicious post script to the man I loved:
You know, the days we spent in NYC together were some of the best I ever spent with anyone..ever. Lamb Head, you never let me write about that. You kept me silent. I wasn’t allowed to describe the joy, the love and the kindness. Never allowed to describe our tender kisses just in case it hurt other people. Our perfect moments sullied by your fear of what others might think. Like holding hands in the street. I can’t hold your hand in the street because I can’t bear the thought of the disapproving glances. No wonder your mother thinks so badly of me because I never get to write the beautiful things..because you told me not to. So, I want you to know that we had beautiful time. I had a beautiful time with your son. That he is capable of great love. He knows how to love a man. He knows how to make a man happy.
Just as it is meant to be.
The last thing he said this evening was that he didn’t make the huge changes in his life to be with me but that, I’m afraid, is the lie he tells himself. He left the other for a relationship with men, not this man, not me, but with men and we must honour him for that, for it was his bravest hour.
We are tired of the conflict, tired of the unresolved feelings that causes so much distress on this roiling sea of emotion. We must say goodbye now-help me. Help me say goodbye.
Busy, busy, busy! Fled, after my morning meeting, to the bank and Malibu and back again. The misty garden smelling of jasmine and other, sweeter perfumes. I love the way the garden evolves. Wood chip paths and great forests of Euphorbia down where the goats will live.
Meeting with lawyer re. company in Santa Monica-where I also bought English chocolate and piccalilli. Had stove and blender fixed. Kept an eye on Blankstein grilling via NPR. Even if it is just political theatre it’s fun to think that this most ghastly of all men-Blankstein is having to play the villain role for all to see.
Goldman Sachs is just another human empire and it will eventually fail as they all do-eventually. It is the way we do things here on earth.
Human being/Human doing.
The Christian Louboutin party at the Robertson store with the great man in attendance (wearing lilac slacks) was a very friendly, if soulless affair.
‘A’ gays including the poisonous Peter Dunham with his age defying boyfriend the celebrity dermatologist Peter Kopelson-we often take time ignoring one another passing on Runyon Canyon. Peter Dunham, hideously scarred by acne and HIV, making small talk at the edge of the room with similarly scarred reptilians. Peter’s talentless, screeching ‘artist’ friend Konstantine Kakanias arrived bound in a flimsy scarf that did nothing to distract from his unusually fat face. Oh how one loves to loathe. The most amusing line from Konnie’s on-line resume- Second Prize, International Award for blah blah blah…who the fuck boasts about coming second?
As well as the gays, some of whom I liked by the way-none of whom were wearing CL shoes there was a contingent of Iranian women with huge asses squeezed into badly cut denim jeans tottering around on red soled CL hooker heels. These dusky gals baying for their photograph taken with Christian who willingly obeyed as only a man can when he is selling most of these women over a thousand pairs of his shoes-each! It was like a fetish party. I didn’t recognize any of the women other than the ubiquitous Tracy Ross-saw her at Prada party too. Dull.
One woman arrived in McQueen but the ensemble was so badly put together she looked like a Michael Jackson Halloween clone. Sad.
There have been a glut of ‘recessionary chic’ soiree held in small stores across Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, usually with red carpet facilities but there was none last night. Tomorrow will be the shoe-signing event when Christian signs shoes. My friend Jamie is going, one might want to link to her blog to find out how that went.
Dinner with Peter Scarf at the Mercantile before he went off to drink at some hip club somewhere.
Sweet, late night conversations with lamb head made me content and happy before I slept. Oh, if only..
On my way back to the United Kingdom. Even though it is to deal with very bad situation at home. Includes a long journey so I can travel with the little dog: New York, Paris, Calais, Dover, Whitstable! One month before I leave-will arrive there May 30th. I am excited. I will stay there for three months-one of the many benefits of not having a career!
Anyway, a great deal to sort out. Nothing much to write or worry about today.
An odd and contradictory day began with my Saturday morning breakfast buddies. They were all so fractious! I ate a three cheese pizza with prosciutto. It was delicious.
The night before was spent chatting with the other who was drunk and emotional. Today I invited him to come with me to London but the ‘pressure’ was just too much. Apparently it is hard to just be friends when we are still awash with uncharted feelings.
The truth is I am just not as involved as I was. I am ACTIVELY seeking other men to fall in love with. An invitation is an invitation and that’s that. Whereas before I would find his indifference and hesitation devastating asking many times if he would change his mind-this time there will be no repeat invitation.
Jennie moved out of her apartment here in Hollywood and in with her west side boyfriend.
I received some bad, bad news yesterday whilst on my way home from Malibu and it took a whole 24 hours to process what to do next-waiting for the next intuitive thought. Bad news bottom line: the little dog and I will be making our way to London and Paris for longer than I expected. Perhaps for three months. Perhaps it means making my movie there rather than here. Perhaps it’s all for the best. Anyway, I can’t write the detail because the devil is in the detail.
Today, I attended two fundraisers and was asked on two dates. I declined-kindly declined.
I discovered that my heart was still taken by the attentions of folk who live elsewhere and even though I have no intention of rekindling any sort of relationship or entertaining the idea of a relationship ever again with the folk who live elsewhere (and even though I am actively searching to have a relationship with a man who might live on my very street) it would be unfair to anyone who is interested in me to get involved whilst there are unresolved and deeply held complex feelings.
Everyone is a little bit discombobulated at the moment. A li’l bit prone to rudeness. A fat red haired woman trod on the little dog with such force that he screamed and emptied his anal glands all over a very posh shop.
I had a lovely dinner with Jane in WeHo then wandered home, throngs of young people with big smiles on their faces weaving up Sunset Boulevard.
British class shame is nothing a regular gun-toting American would or should know anything about. Whether or not one has an understanding of manners, social hierarchy or top hats is neither here nor there.
I have spent blog time bashing America but really, the Brits are just as bad-if not worse. My friend Pierre in New York, upon moving here at the behest of his company, missed London terribly but after a short while, much less time than I, understood why we come here and why we want to stay. Pierre began to notice a change in himself and those around him. He felt valued, pumped up, fearless. In America he could feel like a man.
Like me, when he meets Brits who stay at home he marvels at their naivety.
It takes a huge amount of self-loathing to ‘know your place’.
In the USA there is no shame about bettering and reinventing ones self. There are rules, of course, but every one of the rules (guiding principles) is designed to be broken.
You may have to pay a disgruntled employee a ton of money for a spurious sexual harassment claim but that’s how the dispossessed get their share of the pie.
Everyone is on the make, everyone! It’s an on the make, nickle and dime affair that I am having with the USA. It’s better than pecan pie and nuclear waste! It’s more thrilling than Guantanamo Bay.
As a Brit I still hanker after public art and healthcare but the rampant small mindedness of my countrymen, their embittered jokes masquerading as irony, their post imperialist arrogance and their total inability to allow anyone to grow beyond the class they were born into keeps me from going back home.
I suppose for all my anti-American sentiment I love the hurly-burly, the hegemony, the extremes, the greed, the excess, the stupidity. I love their terror of art and history. I applaud their dogma and their denial. I love that they think that they are the very best at everything they do when they are patently not. I love that they behave like willful children. I love that they think knowing about nature or food is elitist. I love that an engaging presidential candidate can emerge from nowhere and take the world stage-where as the British produce a bunch of familiar, threadbare politicians like so many provincial repertory actors delivering lackluster performances in what passes for political theatre. Imagine British MP’s sitting in their shared dressing-room waiting for lurid makeup to be applied before performing their ‘great scene’ during Prime Ministers Question Time. Smoking, sinking rummers of whiskey, discussing their expense claims, squabbling over cabinet positions and who’ll wear what at the state opening of parliament.
We don’t cast our parliament terribly well. Here they cast the Whitehouse like a huge movie. No wonder Rahm and Ari Emmanuelle are behind Barrack. They recognized his star potential and like a baby starlet hanging out in the Chateau Marmont plucked him from obscurity and handed him the best role ever in their box office blockbuster political thriller-so whilst the Emmanuells steal the money they got themselves the bestest alibi ever..a black president. They got themselves a well-dressed first lady descended from slaves. They got tears of joy at the inauguration and a divided, blind sided America whilst the spoils of the middle class were being divided up by unscrupulous hedge fund managers and Ponzi schemers betting on the downfall of their own and other nations.
So, there’s Barrack blustering over the war and the economy in his professorial tweeds, his sweet and sexy demeanor softening the hearts of the liberal elite and providing drama and focus for the next lot-the emboldened white Christian right. There he is dithering over healthcare and everything continues just the way it was.
Am I the only one who can’t imagine Tim Geitner having sex with anyone other than himself? He is such a WEED.
If China wasn’t running the world-this could look dangerous!
When British politicians get caught with their hand in the till-what paltry amounts of money they steal! Awarding their friends dodgy $150,000 construction contracts and creaming a few quid and a meat pie for themselves…subsequently getting caught and fired. An American politician wouldn’t waste his time or his position stealing so little. Tony Blair is the only politician to get away with stealing real money. He got away with the money and murder. He understood what few in the UK do-that American politicians are not elected to represent their constituents but to steal as much money as they can within their 4 years in office.
And, you might ask, why shouldn’t he? The Blair’s are just doing what the Royal family and the landed gentry have done for hundreds of years. He just took what he thought he was owed for getting to the top of the pile. It must piss our lowly politicians off to go through all the pain of getting elected to public office and then once there, look around…bleak…lonely…underpaid. Servants of the democracy that we hold dear and never really getting what they deserve-compared with the politicians in the USA who are on the fucking gravy train!
Drill baby drill, bailouts, healthcare, there’s money in them there policies..money for every politician in Washington, TONS OF IT! Politicians accepting donations from whomever and where ever.
Poor old Dennis Kucinich-he’s the congressman President Obama lassoed into helping change the mind of the bold progressives who were holding out for a radical public option during the last few moments before the Healthcare Bill was forced into law.
Well, dear Dennis lives in a one room apartment in Washington…never accepts a dime from anyone..but he lives in a one-bedroom apartment with his wife Elizabeth. If he had played his cards right, abandoned his principles and cut himself free from the people he was sent to represent then he could be living in a huge house in Georgetown-which is what the people expect by the way. To the average American there is something vaguely retarded about a man who is able to steal the money but doesn’t.
That’s why we elected you into office! To steal the money but, mind you, not so much that you piss the other thieves off who have seniority or think you are stealing too much. Of course, once in a while an odd politician needs to be thrown to the lions so that the public think that the other politicians have some sort of morality.
This is America and once you get a handle on it it’s not that bad. As long as you understand that to survive here you have to learn how to steal. You have to learn how to lose. Learn how to pick yourself up. Not get trampled in the stampede.
You must definitely learn to rub belly..pat head..
The Sex Rehab show effect has been cumulative. When it first aired I expected to be immediately recognized. As the weeks and months pass more and more people come up to me in the street and introduce themselves.
Shown daily on VH1, making it easier for old ‘friends’ and acquaintances to reach out to me. Long forgotten, now reminded by Sex Rehab re-acquainted on Facebook, twitter etc.
Reality TV is truly life changing. Opportunities include film projects, book deals, lovers-I am anywhere but where I thought I might be at my age.
Outside, this rainy afternoon, the gardeners are pulling out tons of weeds. It is good to hear them chattering away in Spanish. So, that’s what life will be, a life of chattering Mexican gardeners until Dorset Mary pitches up in her airstream and tends the goats and the chickens.
I have to call the bee man today about getting the bees up here. I know where I want them to go.
I wrote yesterday about crying, a commission for a new magazine. There’s been a great deal of crying during the past few months as my focus shifted from the big picture to just one man. Ones view narrows exponentially when one falls in love and at the same time balloons into something huge. My tears were not often for him but for past traumas and relationships and deaths. My focus became very shallow and as I retreat from love I seem to be more aware of the horizon.
I cried when my Darling Big Dog was killed. I sat in my bed for a week and sobbed like a child. I am still prone to sink into that deep, black well of sadness, tears flooding my eyes and my heart.
If I had not witnessed that terrible moment I would be a lesser man today. In many ways to have suffered like that unleashed all I had been denying myself throughout the years. So many times I should have, could have, would have cried but remained stoic and dry-eyed.
The architects have just been to the house to check out the layout. She was a rather wonderful, practical woman with a great attitude.
My film is taking shape, the garden continues to give pleasure and I am getting into my creative groove. Although I am still mourning the death of love I am looking forward to a brighter, leaner future.
The 18th Century Man has just peeled beets and the little dog is sleeping on the sofa.
