Categories
Queer Whitstable

Georgina Jenkins

Life sure has changed these past few years. The Little Dog, after a wonderful life, born on the streets of LA, travelling the world… a little dog who loved Paris and knew we were there whenever we arrived… caught his last breath in a veterinary surgery in Canterbury four weeks ago. He was done.

The day before he died he staggered into the garden and lay in the cold and dark under a garden chair. It was the sign I needed. The following day we said our goodbyes to our friends in Whitstable. Marilyn and Johnny held him one last time. He had been with me for longer than any human. Now he is a small tube of ashes, his coat, collar and passport.

There are days when I want to be where he is. But I know the Little Dog is waiting for me and whatever death God has planned for me and it gives me solace to know this.

We have been living in Portugal. Trapped by covid and inertia. We had our routine. We walked the little park every day. Occasionally, but not nearly enough, walked the beach. He loved the sand. That’s where I will scatter his ashes. Forever running on the sand.

My own brush with death in 2020 started on the morning of December 17th and ended four months later. Gripped by Covid. Hospitalised, plagued by demons, holding onto life. Covid 19 changed everything. My semi lifeless body washed from head to toe by gentle nurses. Learning to walk again. I agreed to take antidepressants.

To be honest, from the hit of the first pill… I haven’t looked back. I wish I had taken them when they’d been offered years before. Everything changed. Everything. I take my pill and fear falls away. Finally I love everything I own, I enjoy the colours and the form but my self esteem is not tied up in my possessions or what I may have or have not achieved. Settled in my own body I finally have the peace of mind I thought would elude me til my deathbed.

Life is not without difficulties but my faith is simple: if I own my part, everything will be ok no matter what.

Fearlessness has its downsides. Recently I was queer baited in a supermarket in the small Algarve town where I live. Instead of ignoring the assailant I stood up to him. He was violent and I fought back. I thought ‘Duncan, you are 60 years old, it’s now or never’. By the time the brawl was over the supermarket was trashed, the police arrived. We were taken in separate ambulances to separate hospitals. My feet lacerated, glass shards are still making their way out of my toes. The gay paramedic in the ambulance advised me to contact a gay helpline who organised a lawyer gratis. They have been handling the situation ever since. It was time to fight back. It was time.

I let professionals deal with problems I cannot. Doctors, dentists, the gay lawyer. The Spanish lawyers: I am still suing Ana for the money she owes me. The property in Herefordshire is gently unfolding in the right direction. We won three major planning successes (one at appeal) and I love, more and more, being there. I realised I had never experienced my property in the summer so made my way there last July. It was such a treat. So quiet and beautiful.

Georgina, now it’s your turn. I have to write about you.

As I flew home from London to Portugal late last night in the rowdy Ryanair airbus, trying to ignore the menacing, drunk racists laughing around us I looked out of the window over the villages below me. Lit up like galaxies. Some strong and bright and highly coloured. Some weak and small swallowed up in the black, moonless landscape. Constellations above me, constellations below.

I had spent just one day of the planned 10 in Whitstable. Whitstable. How happy you and Georgina have made me these past 7 months. My mother and I have reconnected and made our peace. Richard, my best friend during my twenties is now married, children grown, a grandchild on the way. We sat by the fire in the Oyster Company drinking tea and catching up. Strangely, or not so strangely, our life trajectories had unknowingly intersected those three decades. Holidays in Montauk when I would have been there. Driving the Pacific Coast Highway past my house. He has a great deal to be proud of. The business thrives after thirty years. His son is strong and handsome, intelligent and humble.

I met Georgina Jenkins shortly after she moved to Whitstable 22 years ago.

Georgina bought the Copeland House bed and breakfast on Island Wall from John and Jill. John and Jill were fat when nobody was fat. Their obesity was a shameless part of their character as much as their gold chains and fancy set gold sovereigns. Jill had huge, baggy arms and voluminous breasts that swallowed you up when she hugged you. They owned the green grocer on the corner of Terry’s Lane before the council knocked it down, replacing the tatty nissen hut, the public toilets and the assembly rooms with rows of ship lapped faux fishermans cottages with ugly dormers and triangular windows that point into the eaves, never properly blinded.

Jill and John wanted a bed and breakfast thinking it less taxing than lugging boxes of spuds and brussels from Covent Garden every day. They bought the abandoned coastguard cottage by Keam’s Yard, Copeland House. They cleared out Nobby and other assorted drunks squatting there. Johnny put up terrible partitioning and equally bad wallpaper and voila: Jill and Johnny had Whitstable’s first seaside bed and breakfast.

A decade later, time to retire… Jill and John bought a bungalow in Yorkletts. Moving from Essex, a leap of faith, Georgina bought the B&B and set about poncifying her gold mine the day after she bought it. Out came Jill’s ghastly nick knacks replaced with a life time collection of Clarice Cliff. Out went Johnny’s pale yellow winceyette, brushed nylon and fire hazzard bedding replaced with white linen and interlined curtains.

George, divorced from famed book maker John Jenkins, has two children: Sophie Kay and Patrick Jenkins. After 15 years making the best full English in Kent Georgina retired and her daughter Sophie and son in law Michael Kay bought the bed and breakfast. They closed it abruptly and applied to the local council for change of use.

Like so many Essex woman of a certain genre, Sophie is instagram ready the moment she leaves the house. Alternately gurning or pouting in every filtered picture taken. Fake tits, fake tan, no conversation her ex boyfriend sent to prison for fraud, stealing credit cards. When I met her she had recently stabbed her boyfriend Adam Wright in the chest, he was hospitalised. She boasts she has many friends, a multi million pound property portfolio, that her daughter Poppy is top of the class. Is any of it true?

Patrick, Georgina’s son who I detested for years, has learned from both British and American prisons there is more to life.

I always have time for an addict who owns his shit, Patrick is not one of them. Understandably, the rest of his family are less willing to forgive his unmanageability than his adoring Mother. Patrick’s children Henry and fiance Brooke, his daughter Grace and her boyfriend Billy no longer speak with him.

This family run in a pack. His aunt Gay Briggs and her daughter Chloe Coates also ignore Patrick. Chloe has a dim, posh husband called Jack Coates. Patrick calls Jack, Pussyhole. However, Jack is bright enough to know how uncomfortable Sophie and Michael Kay’s casual racism/homophobia made him. The Spanton/Jenkins are heavy drinkers. Gay drinks red wine and nods off at the end of dinner. They all think far too much of their moderate success and limited achievements.

I knew Georgina’s chain smoking sister Gay Briggs years before I met Georgina, she never really interested me. Gay is a show off who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. A fog horn boasting into the wind.

Lately, the pack has shrunk. Gay’s charming husband Bruce recently died of a massive stroke ‘he farted three times and I knew he was dead‘ and their hugely popular sister Maxine died of a rare leukemia. The best of the family died with them.

Georgina is my friend. I love her very much. An unlikely friendship. 14 years older than me, those who saw us together were bemused. When I lived in Whitstable I would leave her to deal with visitors from London when I couldn’t. We would cook, garden and travel. We fantasised owning a hotel. We wanted the Dolphin Hotel in Herne Bay but when push came to shove, it was a scary prospect. Wherever we went we would pretend we were looking to buy property and make time-wasting appointments with realtors. It was our hobby. We spent three months in Australia. Gallery owner Oscar Humphries was astounded we shared a room. Not a bed. We jogged from Bronte to Bondi and every day worked out at the City Gym. We drove from Sydney to Melbourne. We drove with Oscar into the outback and photographed a Bachelor and Spinster’s ball for the Sydney Morning Herald.

I wanted her to see everything I loved. I took her to Fire Island, we stayed at the Mercer Hotel in New York City, we travelled to film festivals. When I made the Elizabeth Hurley movie she pretended to be my mum when I had to entertain the producers. When I brought Jake B to London it was George I wanted him to meet.

Even though she had an occasional romantic love for me (mocked by her daughter) she knew her romantic love could never be fulfilled. And even though I continued to have intimacy with men I didn’t flash my various affairs or one night stands in her face because I knew it would hurt her. Most gay men I know have a very close woman friend in lieu of a mother. As my mother and I became closer, leaving decades of resentment behind, my relationship with George changed too.

George and I were fractious on occasions but never bored. We had a few, huge dramatic fights. Fantastically frugal she knew to the last penny how much money was owed at a restaurant. How many sweets we shared on a road trip. Every penny profit was a ‘touch’. Her family never approved of me even though, when I lived in LA, I was forced to accommodate and entertain them. I invited Georgina many times to Los Angeles but she never came. She would have loved it. The garden. The space. Malibu.

So, it was with great sadness I learned she had Parkinson’s Disease. She deteriorated quickly.

I would occasionally pop in to see her whenever I was in Whitstable, avoiding Patrick. She was often on her own and would ask me to help out with little tasks as her mobility was impaired. She never forgot my birthday and I would keep up with her on social media. Last year she told me her family were travelling to Cyprus for two weeks… without her.

So, needing to be in Whitstable, Georgina invited me to stay. It was lovely to be with her but what I subsequently discovered was extremely disturbing. Stories of casual abuse from her unemployed daughter Sophie. The evidence of neglect was clear to see. The formerly beautiful beach house George moved into after she sold the B&B to Sophie was such a mess! My Mary Poppins gayness got the better of me: Piles of old papers sorted. A huge, unused treadmill sold. The 18th century Indian bed she used as a coffee table returned to its correct place, loose covers freshly laundered.

The previous year, left alone in the house she had fallen badly and broken her hip. When the ambulance arrived her family came to kiss her goodbye. Each one of them solemnly climbing into the ambulance. They didn’t expect George to survive a covid hospital and rehab. The youngest grandchildren were told they wouldn’t see their grandmother again.

The family extended their stay in Cyprus from two to five weeks. I stayed on in Whitstable to keep her company. We established a nice routine. Working with her carers and Emma the cleaning lady we restored order where there was none and a good routine for her safety. I took her to hospital appointments, food shopping and Tescos to buy loungewear. Tiny things to do but apparently a bridge too far for her daughter the gurning Sophie who had rarely taken her out. George admitted she didn’t like the way they pushed her around, in and out of the car. She felt unsafe. ‘They treated me like meat.’

When it was my time to leave she would shake uncontrollably. On her own she was useless. I knew it.

“Protect me from my family.” she asked. I came back. For six months.

During these past few months we have laughed so hard, we’ve eaten at restaurants which is no small feat considering her disability. I wash and blow dry her hair and she calls me Nicky. (Until Sophie ‘borrowed’ the hairdryer.) We unpack the past. I have a notoriously bad memory after my spinal leak. George remembers all the detail my brain erased. She says, ‘do you remember…?’ I often don’t remember, even when she tells the story.

We got into very bad habits, watching bad TV. Game shows in the afternoon. We cooked three meals a day and put on weight. We experimented with Parkinson’s approved diets. I fed her black chocolate and bananas as it was meant to help. We loved eating home made curry and slow cooked shoulder of lamb. We braised oxtail. Porridge every morning unless we fancied greek yogurt and granola.

Parkinson’s doesn’t just affect the body, it affects the brain. A quick google search and a chat with her doctor confirmed the worse: Georgina has stage 4/5 Parkinson’s. Paranoia and terrible anxiety are as much a part of the disease as the uncontrollable shakes. People with Parkinson’s shouldn’t be left on their own. Loneliness is corrosive. When she was certain I wasn’t leaving, even for a short while, she would settle and calm and the less the terrible shaking would grip her. Yet, I also saw her focused and determined when she really wanted something and I was there to facilitate.

At night we kept the door between us open so she could hear me breathing and she would settle into a deep sleep. Sometimes she would panic. Screaming out. A deep roar from a place I did not recognise. Left on her own the unreasonable fears and thoughts would overcome her and she would imagine people breaking into the house, stealing from her cupboards. Occasionally, even when I was with her she couldn’t get comfortable, getting in and out of bed dozens of times. Pulling on the only shoes she trusts. Removing them. Pulling them on again. Frightened she would fall. I would put her back to bed, cover her feet, hold the jug so she could pee, soothe her wet brow. Sometimes at 3 or 4am we would get her off to sleep. I wasn’t always patient at 3am. She would apologise telling me her daughter would accuse her of attention seeking, unable to understand the profuse sweating was her broken internal thermometer, another Parkinson’s horror symptom.

A month or so after I arrived she told me she was worried about money. Knowing how frugal she was I asked how that could possibly be. She said she was totally broke. I didn’t believe her. She owns her house on the beach, had sold the B&B for £600,000 which gave her at least £300,000 to live on after paying the mortgage.

Elders are incredibly vulnerable. Elders with a debilitating disease are more vulnerable. Elders with money and a debilitating disease and greedy children? After a quick look at her bank statements it turned out during the past 5 years of the worst of her Parkinson’s her daughter and son in law Michael Kay had persuaded with her to part with over £350,000 in cash and still owed her £85,000 from the purchase of the B&B. They had defaulted on the promissory notes they had signed. They had made her take out a £50,0000 government bounce back loan. Predicated on a fantasy Covid would get her, that she would die, they thought these interest free loans would vanish, the 1.2 million pound house she lives in would be theirs. Job done.

However, things went tits up for Sophie and Michael Kay.

Georgina didn’t die.

Nor did the gurning, pouting Sophie expect an old friend to turn up in a moment of need. They did not expect the friend to call a lawyer, Age Concern and the elder abuse unit at Maidstone Police Station. They did not expect to get caught.

It latterly turned out a shrewd property investment made by Georgina had also been intercepted and overwhelmed by Michael Kay.

I spent more and more time with George. I was frightened for her life. I wanted her to have a life. More than sitting in her reclining chair looking out of the window. When we weren’t together we would chat for hours on the phone. An hour’s chat before bedtime. Often those conversation were about her children. Sophie ‘had a turn’, Patrick was a terrible son.

For spurious reasons guilty Sophie would storm into George’s house, screaming. A 50 year old woman screaming relentlessly at her frail mother. Even when we locked the door she kicked the door so hard it splintered. Whilst I was there Sophie barricaded her mother into her own bedroom screaming. Always screaming. Blaming anyone/everyone other than herself for her problems.

A violent household on Christmas Day 2021 I saw Michael Kay hit their tiny dog, a big man punching a small dog. Michael Kay was officially warned by Canterbury Police for threatening me.

Yet, whatever Sophie owes Georgina, however they treat her… she forgives them. I suppose that’s what mothers do? Georgina loves her daughter and her granddaughter. Stockholm syndrome.

Alone at the house, George placates herself in the early hours on-line shopping, cardboard boxes and packages arrive from Ebay and Amazon. She lives on a meagre state pension. Rather than returning an unsuitable item she always offers the item to Sophie, who never said no. Nibbling at the very little Georgina has. They never offer to help out with the important things. Only when Patrick demands they pay for a new wheelchair or the security cameras set against the loan repayment. Never did I hear Sophie say, hey… I know you don’t have much I’ll return this gift, you should have the money.

Living in constant fear of her overdraft. This is not how life should be. She worked her ass off. She always had a job. Expected nothing, gave everything. She made excellent business choices, George should be luxuriating in her dotage rather than worrying about every last penny.

Anxiety exacerbates Parkinson’s disease.

If she ever gets the money she is owed by Sophie and Mickey she is determined to send Poppy to a public school but I’m afraid you can’t polish a turd. This may seem harsh but read until the end, dear reader.

For seven months I saw Georgina decline. Paranoia, when anxious. would twist her mind, she was convinced the carers were stealing her makeup. Convinced they were poisoning her food. She would fret a specific bowl or jug had been thrown away. She thought she saw a person stealing a television. She was particularly anxious about my relationship with other women. She was convinced I was having an affair with Patrick’s girlfriend, Caroline. She said, ‘Caroline is my achilles heel.’ Convinced my female friends were not just friends. Most worrying of all she could hear people lingering in the garden. We had security cameras fitted to alleviate her worry. I found the bowl, the jug and the missing ribbons, we found her purse she was sure Sophie had stolen. We located her missing wedding ring.

Eventually I found her a more suitable walker for the home and a new wheelchair powered by a lithium battery for trips into town. Sadly, she only felt safe with me taking her out.

Occasionally she would ask me to marry her. “If anything happens to me, marry me .” I must admit, if it protected her I would have married her but I knew in my heart it was an impossible dream, a dream like the hotels and homes we saw together all those years ago. It would have been a marriage of convenience to suit her immediate needs. I couldn’t do it.

The pressure from her daughter was getting worse. Knowing my service was coming to an end I booked a ticket to Portugal. Promising to come back in a month. A week into my return Georgina called me, she was distraught. Her adored grandchild Poppy had slapped her so hard in the face she saw stars.

I was furious. Georgina said the slap reminded her of when Mickey hit their tiny dog. I called Patrick but Georgina, trying to protect Poppy denied it had happened. Then she admitted it was true. Frankly, I didn’t know what to believe until Poppy relented and confirmed it had happened.

She begged me to come back. The following day from Stansted I called to see how she was doing. She told me she had seen compelling evidence from her daughter Sophie I was planning to murder her. Knowing the jig was up, Sophie had persuaded her poor mother her best friend and greatest support was out to kill her. It was enough. I knew I had to get out. I arrived in Whitstable, Patrick picked me up from the station. There is nothing anyone can say or do when dementia sets in. The person you knew is no longer there. I packed up my things and Richard organised a room in the hotel.

When I arrived at George’s house she was sitting in her new wheelchair. She looked terrible. Georgina’s ‘friend’ Pauline Hendy was there. Her friend who wouldn’t believe Sophie and Mickey had taken her money. An ex barrister who in 1993 had worked infamously on the consensual sado-masochistic acts case for the appellants. Her face looks like a disinterred, freshly unwrapped Egyptian mummy, one colour, no lips, holes where eyes should be. Pauline was determined to defend Sophie. Her smile, a crude slit in old leather.

It was not Pauline Hendy helping her friend at night. Clearing up the pee. Feeding her. Holding George until the shakes stop. Towelling off her night sweats. Where is Pauline for her friend?

Georgina called at midnight. She was crying. She said, ‘I was praying. Asking God for one normal day, then I would die.’ She misses walking the dog. Ironing. She misses what life used to be like. Normal.

Yesterday, returning to Faro I felt for my friend, Georgina. It’s hard to reconcile the things people are saying and the disease they have. The disease is speaking. This is not the person I knew.

It is not my responsibility. I will remember the fun we had. I will miss the laughter.

Elder abuse is real. It is silent. It is happening to a person you know. It is happening right now.

Categories
Queer

Covid: My Moral Failing

Portugal. January, 2021

Here I am. Struck down by covid. In bed most days. Discharged from the hospital two weeks ago. Shovelling Xanax down my throat. The panic was real. I can’t breath! At my worst I couldn’t escape convincing thoughts of suicide. Drawn again and again into a black hole. I must have called out to God a thousand times: Take it! Take these thoughts away from me. I am calling out, literally screaming. People who give me so much joy now haunt me like demons. They are demons.

The intensive Care is on the forth floor. If I jump, it will kill me. I am hallucinating the road half a mile away is in my room. Motor bikes are roaring past. The traffic roaring just beyond the window. I am sitting in the central reservation. The nurse cleans my ass and feeds me. I can’t move.

The doctor insists I take antidepressants. They work. I sleep. I am wearing a cashmere cardigan. But I’m not. I am wearing green cotton hospital pyjamas. I feel good. Even though I can’t walk to the bathroom. Even though my oxygen levels are crashing. Taking antidepressants is like wearing cashmere.

They put me into an ambulance and send me home. The dog is rooming with a friend of a friend. I can’t look after anything except myself. I am plagued with shame because I am convinced illness equals weakness, a moral failing… I am beset with an unshakable humility. I hallucinate balloon animals as real as my bedside table. I speak to my mother for the first time in years and it makes me happy. I am at peace with her. If the worst comes to the worst.

I have lost a great deal of weight even though I gobble up everything I am given. I eat toast all day. I eat huge, local oranges brought to me by my kind Romanian neighbours. I ransack the freezer. I eat everything.

At first I can’t walk to the river. 40 feet from my front door without scuttling back to bed, exhausted. Not breathing killed my maternal grandfather. I sleep with the window open. The cold air in my lungs reassures me. 20 days later I can walk further but the village is locked down so I can’t go far. Most days I don’t pay a price for walking but some days I do. I have to go back to bed for the rest of the day.

I promised myself I would write whatever I could write and publish what ever I wrote. However long. Unedited. As it spewed out of me.

I joined a long covid group as it became apparent amongst my friends who have had this disease, they had it milder and have fewer residual symptoms. They were tired for a couple of weeks and some lost their taste. Now they are up and running.

I was in London to have my brain scan and speak to the surgeon who would have performed the surgery I need in my stomach. London wasn’t locked. I was staying with the assistant of Monet X Change, a drag superstar from Rupaul’s drag race in a swanky residence off Tottenham Court Road. I retraced my steps: I went to the theatre to see Monet’s terrible show in the West End. I walked in the cold rain through Spitalfields with Juliette. Walking to Liverpool Street Station a man ran around the corner and crashed into me. It felt like an act of violence. Avoidable. I wondered if he had infected me. He didn’t look back. He didn’t apologise.

In Barnes I stayed with the parents of a friend of mine. They had covid last month. They were free and clear. I stayed a few days. My friend and I were going to Hereford to see the land. The weather was terrible so we decided not to go. I spent two days in a hotel.

I sat on the back seat of the plane and slept. In the taxi home it hit me. Hit me like the man barrelling around the corner. Total exhaustion and an inability to breath. He carried my suitcase. I slept as best I could. The ambulance took me immediately to the hospital, where I’d stay for ten days.

Since discharge I’ve been medicated. Drugs in my body. Calm and focused. Every day I get stronger but the moment I try too hard I spend the following day in bed.

It is Valentine’s Day 2021. I am mostly normal. Gruff. Thank you for everything. You know who you are.

Categories
Hereford Queer Ross on Wye Walford

Rat King

The Empty Beehive

1.

The IHRA definition of anti-semitism has been weaponised. Adopted by those who scream any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. However, there is no IHRA definition for homophobia. Until there is an official definition… those of us who experience homophobia, casual or direct cannot call out the perpetrators with any assurance.

The reason there is no official definition of homophobia? Because if we ring fenced homophobia like some have ring fenced anti semitism most people would have to address their homophobia… making for a very uncomfortable time. If the definition of homophobia was as stringent as anti-semitism most everybody I know would qualify as a homophobe.

The reality is: There is no escaping from the stain of anti semitism in the Labour Party because the definition is inescapable.

I remain a non-compliant homosexual. Most gay men keep themselves to themselves. They have learned not to complain, they have coupled up in loveless mergers and they tell me I’m making an unnecessary fuss when I warn about the rise of the right and how our lives will be impacted. Tommy Robinson is not our friend. Religious people are not our friends. After the marriage equality win in the USA I cautioned lgbt people not to take their new freedoms for granted. They sneered at my pessimism. 6 years later I am proved sadly correct. Across the USA our rights are being eroded, even marriage equality has been challenged in some states.

I am the ‘other’. The one who will not back down, the one who may lose everything rather than bow to the wishes of the many. The man who would not take it any more. For years I ignored the homophobia I experienced until it became too violent or extreme. Some would say, ‘this isn’t about homophobia, this is about you’. Yet, the two are inextricable. I have been shaped by homophobia and those who attempt to shame me for being gay.

As a small boy I saw those around me hate gay men and I thought to myself: If they hate me for something I cannot change… I’ll give them every reason to hate me. So, I started a war against homophobes at first to protect myself, but as the years past and attitudes changed, I played those bastards for sport. Now, I habitually call out homophobia because it is my duty.

If I had been a gay man who towed the heterosexual line I may not have driven myself insane with casual homophobia. The nasty aside, the glaring look, the guys who violently demanded if I was looking at them, ‘what are you looking at?’ I wouldn’t have bothered reminding straight people at gay clubs how lucky they were to experience the sexual freedom they enjoyed in our lgbt spaces, a freedom I could never enjoy in straight clubs/bars etc. without risking my life

Quentin Crisp perfectly articulated how most gay men learn not to engage with strangers because they are frighted by the prospect of physical violence. Quentin told me in The Naked Civil Servant I should not directly look at anyone. I should not speak unless I am spoken to. Because he knew he risked certain death if he did. However, I refused to obey the rules. I looked at anyone. I told men they were beautiful when they deserved it. I refused to be bowed. I behaved like any other working class men behaved with woman… with men.

Straight people don’t get to tell me what is homophobic. Straight people need to check their privilege and think twice before they speak to me about homophobia. So, it is with some curiosity I now unfold before you a continuing drama at the land in Walford, Herefordshire where we are attempting to get planning permission to park the car. When I first went to Walford I knocked on the doors of the neighbours attempting to introduce myself, some were very friendly, others less so. It didn’t take long for them to google me and decide I wasn’t neighbour material. My gay story of contentious opposition did not suit them.

The man left… I lay in the flickering light of the mute television. I thought about rats, their tails entwined in some gruesome death. A rat king.

A rat king is a mischief of rats whose tails are bound together by one of several possibilities. Entangling material like hair or sticky substances. The number of rats joined together varies from a few to very many. They remain intertwined until death parts them.

The residents of Cherry Tree Lane, Walford came marching as one into the Parish Council meeting at Walford Church last Wednesday. Crippled by resentment these sour hill-dwelling homeowners, their tails entwined like rats, gummed together, furious, emotional. Whipped into a frenzy of hate by our neighbour at Foxwood House, Fran Blackwell. Dragging her gormless husband Andrew behind her. The same husband we threatened a ‘cease and desist’ for haranguing and insulting anyone we employ to work on our land.

Cherry Tree Lane

Andrew, who rather than enjoying the last of his foggy years, has to act as gate keeper at the end of the lane, defending what little they have. His onerous duty, his frail figure poorly wrapped in the bitter cold. Angular, tall and oblivious as only dementia can render a full grown man.

When we applied for planning… threats followed. I’m used to threats. I’m used to facing the angry mob. The police at early gay pride marches. The demonstration outside the theatre at the gay play. They hate you for speaking up for yourself. They expect you to bow to their heterosexual will. Some of the neighbours on Cherry Tree Lane are no different. So, when they threatened me with a gun… I’m not bowed. When they tie laminated notices on our fence… I laugh. When they put empty bee hives on the land I simply remove them. It’s like being on a tweedy episode of the Jeremy Kyle show.

Now the slut shaming neighbours sit behind me at the council meeting. John Lewis from the ugly 80’s house (ironically called Halcyon Days) his fat red face and waxed jacket fixing me with his best impression of an intimidating stare. He looks like a demented alcoholic. You know the ones… with huge noses. John owns John Lewis Fine Foods, his wife called her neighbours telling them she had no objection to our development, just an objection to me. I am going to report John Lewis to Companies House as unfit to run a company. Andrew Williams from Starry Way, Cherry Tree Lane (before I arrived in Walford) had an appalling reputation on the Hill. Well known as a nasty piece of work… he glances at me but cannot bring himself to look me in the eye. I’m told Andrew works as a state sponsored thug for some governmental GCHQ type organisation. Obviously a candidate for an asbergers diagnosis,  Andrew arrives at the meeting looking like a cartoon undertaker. He sits in his over tight black suit and tie, his neck bulging over a soiled white collar. He is accompanied by his smug wife.

Sitting beside pouting Andrew frail, ex-lawyer Phil Watters shakes with rage. His delicate wrists folded into his flaccid lap like an elderly dowager Duchess. Emaciated Phil and his plump, much older wife Pam live in The Rocks which they run as a dank bed and breakfast. You can see the interior of their dreary house on line. It looks like it might be a themed experience? For those who want to stay at a palliative care home. Maybe they keep a priest in their converted pig shed for guests who come to die slowly from either the Watter’s killer decor or their stultifying conversation? Receiving the last rights rather than a full english. Oh… the pig shed. Did the Watter’s get planning approval for their pig shed conversion into holiday accommodation? Or didn’t they?

Then there’s amazonian Janet Shaw-Crabtree (an affected double barrelled name), the red headed wife of Steve Crabtree, who works at the BBC and live in Greystone House, the local ‘big house’. My friend’s aunt once lived in Greystone House when it was called The Eyrie. Janet, really should know better, sitting at the back of the Parish Council meeting recording everything on her pink, rubber comedy phone.

Janet and Steve invited me into their home when I first visited Walford two years ago. Janet, after three large glasses of gin, asked, “Why can’t you live somewhere else?” We left the party prematurely on account of Janet’s halitosis. The kind of halitosis one can smell a yard from her rancid mouth. Maybe she has rotten gums from excessive gin drinking and hair dye?

At the Parish Council meeting angry Fran and Andrew are lost in the melee at the back of the narthex. Smelly Janet and cunty Fran are perfectly happy to have their phone and electricity cables on our land but could not bring themselves to have it re-routed onto theirs. Jan, Fran and Pam: tonight they look like women who are sure they’ve won the war. Knitting gleefully by the guillotine.

Pam Watters is a respected Airbnb super host, tonight with her rat gang she looks less than a gracious doyenne as described in her many Trip Adviser 4 star reviews, instead she sits pinched and puckered by her anorexic husband. My neighbour David Astwood from dreary Killara House is a slim, mouse man who may or may not be gay… sandwiched between Phil and Andrew, his glasses slipping off his tiny snout. I can hear him behind me grooming his whiskers. Like a Beatrix Potter rodent I’ve seen him pottering up the lane on his electric bicycle. Whenever David sees my representatives on the hill he demands to know who they are, tells them lies about me, advises them they shouldn’t work for me and then demands they google me. Well… Google this, David Astwood mouse man.

I look back at their pale, white faces patinated by veins of fury as it dawns upon them their trip to the beautiful medieval Walford church isn’t going to plan. Rather than putting a little effort into researching how the Parish Council meeting actually works or listening to Frank, the leader of the Parish Council, who explains carefully and in detail how the public get to speak at the beginning of the meeting about anything on the agenda. When the time came for public representation the hurd sat mute and incapable.

When it is my turn to speak (I am invited to present the reasons for our planning application) the rats at the back squirm and squawk realising they’d lost their opportunity to have their say. John Lewis… the entitled, fat faced man from Halcyon Days angrily told the leader of the meeting the rules needed changing after he was told to shut up.

“I’ve lived here for 38 years.” John Lewis screams.

“Yes, and my friends have owned this land for 60 years”, I parry.

“Change the rules!” John Lewis demands.

Of course, that’s what entitled people like him…. do. The white middle class change the rules to suit themselves when they are too stupid to do a little basic research. Overcome with white privilege and false courage David Astwood the trembling mouse man timidly calls me a liar. Squeaking from the back, raising his skinny fist.

I am used to dealing with the mob. During the meeting I speak confidently and directly to the council members. Most of them are local land owners, fully aware of the trials of gaining planning permission and more significantly… nibyism. The land owners looked piteously at the serried ranks of home owners come to bully me with their thinly disguised homophobia. The application passed without objection. I looked back at Phil Watters the ex solicitor whose lips had now turned blue with rage and… I smiled. I smiled a big, gay smile.

Scott Low is one of the planning enforcement officers from Hereford County Council. Sadly, he has not remained impartial or correctly informed during his investigation of this simple matter. He has allowed himself to be bullied by forces beyond his control. He has confused and muddied what he himself described when we first met as a simple ‘permitted development’.

Last September I called Hereford Council letting them know I intended stabilising our barn on Cherry Tree Lane and reinstate access. Preempting complaints from the neighbours I wanted written confirmation from the council before I started work. I left several messages and emailed the planning department many times but had no luck reaching the duty planning officer. I left one final message before the contractor turned up, making clear I had tried making contact and I would start work on the barn that afternoon. I let them know I would interpret their silence as a tacit agreement: I would stabilise the barn and reinstate access to the land.

Finally, Adam Lewis the duty planning officer called me and agreed I could get on with what I wanted without any planning approval. I asked him to write to me which he did, giving me permission and making clear what I could and couldn’t do. At no time did he say I needed planning permission to reinstate access to the land. He did not mention ‘permitted development’ nor did he mention I would require planning permission to get onto our land or stabilise the barn.

After work began on Cherry Tree Lane Fran Blackwell and others called Scott Low demanding he stop us from working on our land. Scott appeared on site with a big scowl on his face. He told us to stop work which we did immediately. I was advised to apply for retrospective planning permission so employed planning consultant Bernard Eacock to draw up the appropriate plans and make the appropriate application.

Then it became apparent Scott Low was pressured to make my life as difficult as he could. Scott Low insisted we get an ecological survey then retracted his demand. Scott Low demanded our tree surgeon stop work at the site then admitted he did not have the power to request this. I met with Balfour Beatty whose predecessors had resurfaced Cherry Tree Lane six years ago and begrudgingly accepted responsibility for a step up to our land. Balfour Beatty let me know they had no objection to the work I’d carried out yet somehow Scott Low managed to find a highway objection.

We received 19 objections to our proposed access to the land at Cherry Tree Lane from local residents. All of whom have had at least one planning application passed without any objection and some… like Phil and Pam Watters may not have bothered with a planning application at all and just built what they wanted. In their whiney objections the neighbours complained about traffic… yet the Watters are allowed to run a very busy bed and breakfast increasing traffic on the lane by 50% a week.

Standing on our hardcore with Kevin, the Balfour Beatty site manager, one of the neighbours (he looked like I always imagined Eddy Grundy from The Archers) stopped his filthy car and told me I wasn’t welcome on the lane and I should bugger off. We laughed. “God,” Kevin said, “what do they put in the water up here?”

Hereford Council, colluding with the hysterical residents, did not redact personal or inappropriate remarks from the posted online objections. In effect Hereford Council are colluding with gun toting homophobes.

I left Walford Church and drove back to the hotel in Ross. After a short while in the bar with my friends I lay on a huge white bed. I checked the gay dating apps on my phone and soon had a local man riding me like an eager yearling. Enjoying the sweat and rough kisses of yet another closeted brick layer. I didn’t ask his name, his thick arms and thighs burying me in this new flesh I found, burying me enough to erase the faces of those nimby fools at the Walford Parish Council meeting. Enough to transport me far, far away.

The following day Phil Watters, the frail ex solicitor told his next door neighbour he risked getting hurt if he continued supporting my planning application. The same neigbour was forced off the road by Andrew Williams, made to scramble for his life. He was frightened Andrew would kill his dog. The neighbour lodged a complaint with the police. PC Ashley North from West Mercia Police advised the neighbour, ‘things get heated’ when there are planning disagreements. PC North also investigated the homophobic invective and the threats of gun violence.

2.

I returned last year from the USA with a renewed passion for equality. I was interested to know what it was like for gay people in Whitstable. The town of my birth and formative years. There are plenty of out gay couples and singles in Whitstable, Ed and Scott for instance. The guys who own Fred and Ginger builders who seem single handedly responsible for architect lite additions to ugly semis all over town. Their taste is lamentable and obvious… anyone who owns ubiquitous Tom Dixon lighting needs to think twice about their taste level. I think you know what I mean.

Like many gay men they do ok, because they ‘don’t want trouble’ they want others to challenge the status quo and merely enjoy the consequence of difficult people like me making it better for people like them. So, I started looking for examples of homophobia as and when I experienced them.

a) A young man made an appointment with me who wants to go into the film industry. He cancelled at the last moment. He was warned off because I was gay.

That is homophobia.

b) Zana Gradus, the rich owner of systems technology, is a remarkable women but let’s face it… when she tells me I am the kind of man she wants to meet then looks annoyed and tells me that being gay… is a waste.

That is homophobia.

c) When Nikki Billington the owner of JoJo’s Restaurant (arrested for people smuggling) tells her friends she doesn’t believe I am gay and adds a whole cache of equally vile invective from her homophobic canon including a list of resentments she has carried around for twenty years.

That is homophobia.

d) When Nick Batchelor screams he doesn’t ‘give a fuck’ what people do in bed… when I share my experience of being gay adding, ‘you can fuck animals for all I care.’

That is homophobia.

They ask about my work in the film industry, they ask if if they have ever heard of my films? I tell them I made LGBTQ films for niche audiences. They ask me if I ever make normal films.

That is homophobia.

But of course, Nikki and Zana, Nick and the Bulls Hill neighbours can’t be homophobic because they know gays. Ha! That tired old trope wheeled out to pink-wash ingrained homophobia.

My gay history is their homophobic playground and because I, like all lgbt… have had to construct my own definition of homophobia rather than have the IHRA do it for me… all of the above can get away with what they want. I have called the police but the police are really incapable of doing anything.

White heterosexual privilege is beyond question. Most people don’t mean to be stupid or homophobic, they don’t consider themselves cruel. The majority aren’t… they are simply careless, thoughtless, inconsiderate. Yet, some know exactly what they are doing, they expect to shame, malign and diminish me and get away with it. Don’t get me wrong, people like Ed and Scott the gay builders are just as liable as anyone else. In an environment when people like me pull up people like them, fragile white people have everything to lose. Consequently they coalesce around extreme politics and rise up against anyone not like them.

I can’t imagine things getting any better on Cherry Tree Lane, not any time soon. Perhaps I will indeed end up with a bullet in my head. Let’s see how far they’ll go to protect themselves from the other.

Categories
Dogs Gay Health Margate Queer Tivoli NY

Appendix

Last Monday, adding to my general health woes, I woke at 2am with a strange and persistent pain in my upper belly.  Pains I assumed were something to do with the polyps they removed from my colon during a colonoscopy the previous week or maybe the MRI the day before establishing the size of a tumour on my remaining adrenal gland.

On Monday at 9am I had a meeting in Canterbury with a mental health professional.  I left the house in Whitstable at 7.30am.  I couldn’t find a way of alleviating the discomfort.  I sat on the loo.  I sat in the car an hour early for my appointment, pain overwhelming me.  I called the NHS help line.  I was advised to take paracetamol and call my doctor in a day if things hadn’t improved.

An hour later I was on my back in an ambulance, a morphine drip in my arm.  A mid line, not a cannula, they couldn’t find a vein.  My blood pressure slumped.  Three hours later, after vomiting a pint of yellow bile, I was taken into theatre, the anaesthetic a welcome relief.  Not just for the immediate pain but all the pain, anguish and discomfort I had suffered this past year.  I sank into the big black and just before I drifted away I thought to myself, perhaps for the first time ever, I wouldn’t mind if I never woke up.

I did not care about anything I previously cared about.  I did not care about the welfare of the Little Dog.  I did not care about my property.  I wanted at that moment to slip away on a gurney in a grim Margate hospital.   Margate on my death certificate.  That was that.

I woke up in the Cheerful Sparrow, a ward of six men.  All of them dishevelled, jaundiced, overweight.   The man to my left entertaining a family of obese relatives.  His eleven year old daughter the size of a small car.  Her young face perched on a ledge of processed lard.  To my right, a packet of ochre liquid stapled to his huge belly, a gruff male antagonized an ancient desiccated traveller laying opposite us.  Confused by vascular dementia he called out in the night.  Calling for long dead relatives.  Calling for his dog.

At 5pm the following day Robin arrived in his Range Rover, driving me home to Whitstable.  I slipped into his gracious car, black leather and reclining seats, protected from the smell of rotting cabbage Thanet seems unable to shake.  Wearing imaginary dark glasses and a velvet wrap, feeling like Grace Kelly after the horrors of the Cheerful Sparrow Ward at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Margate.

Three days later my possessions arrived from the USA by hauler Bishop’s Move.  As one might imagine… this was neither as simple nor as stress free as I wanted.  However, it was one step further away from Tivoli NY and for that I am truly grateful.  Bishop’s Move have a lot to answer for but we are just beginning to literally and figuratively unpack their disaster.

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This past week, since my body waged war on me, I’ve been shown such kindness from friends I’ve known all my life.  Cared for, fed by, driven to, held.  I don’t need to remind you but if this had happened in the USA I would have been presented with a huge bill when I left the hospital and then my kindly Tivoli neighbours would have picked the pearls off my decaying body.

Which reminds me of the day my forty-something Tivoli neighbour Christopher Murphy (Village of Tivoli Trustee) fell off his bike directly in front of my house whilst performing stunts for his adolescent sons.  Falling badly onto boiling hot tarmac where he lay until I found him.  His hatred of gay people (or me) so profound he would not let me help him off the hot street. Schadenfreude prevailed.  I looked down at him squirming like an injured possum until his equally sour wife arrived to help his sorry ass.

Categories
Fashion Gay Queer

Lucy Ferry

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Lucy Ferry killed herself.  A shot-gun in an Irish village.  Her ‘beloved’ dogs present.  Her death opening the door to a whole world of grief.  In drawing rooms all over London, Palladian homes in the West Country, cottages in Norfolk… pearls were clutched, brows furrowed.

The moment I heard the terrible news I called Simon Finch. We gasped in horror.  Oh no.  No.  There was nothing more to say.  Lucy Ferry/Birley née Helmore was dead.

I met Lucy with Isabella Blow.  Mischievous Isabella, she’d say, “Lucy only married Bryan to save the Helmore family house.”  By the time I met Lucy she was already separated from Bryan.  We had tea often at that saved Kensington home.  A short walk from where I lived on Adam and Eve Mews. “Oh, hello.”  She looked a little confused.  As if my visit had slipped her mind, as if life were happening to her rather than being fully present.  That sweet smile.

Sometimes the younger of her four boys were in the house, rattling around upstairs, but we sat on our own.  She didn’t have to be Lucy Ferry with me.  She was just another addict talking it through.  Another bozo on the bus… as they used to say at AA/NA meetings in Hudson NY.  Just one addict helping another, working the steps.  Even so, she was never a great believer in God… but I bet she called out for him just before she pulled the trigger.

We had dinner at Floriana on Beauchamp Place, pretending to be a couple, mainly her idea to annoy Bryan.  Hosted by Tatler, 19 Mar 2003.  The Evening Standard wrote a vile and libellous take down of yours truly after the prank.  Gratifyingly, the writer of the piece (Deborah Orr told me) died painfully and suddenly a few months later.   I wasn’t moved by his death, nobody remembers his name… as people remember and are moved by Lucy.

Isabella read the piece in the Standard, refusing to understand the humour.  She summoned me to Prada on Bond St. I met her in the dressing room, pulling a jewelled frock over flesh-colored, boned underwear.  She screamed, “What were you thinking? Lucy would never have a relationship with someone like YOU!”

“Issy! You were there. You knew it was a prank!”

“It wasn’t very funny.” She gasped as the sales associate zipped her into the gown.

The dinner at Floriana was thrown for Lee McQueen.  Michael Portillo and Isabella Blow sat either side of me.  Prince Michael of Greece opposite.  Lucy was setting me up with Lee but we weren’t interested.  We were interested in Lucy.  If only gay boys had Lucy’s charm and spunk.  4 years later Isabella would drink poison and die, a year after that… Lee would hang himself.

This week Bella Freud, Jasper Conran, Patrick Kinmonth amongst so many others posted sad obituaries on Instagram.  Conran, a picture of Lucy from his wedding.  Kinmonth, a tiny dead bird by Craigie Aitchison.  All of them wailing plaintively about their friend Lucy.

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Why didn’t she call?  Why was she on her own?  Where were her friends?  Her husband and children?  Was she going to meetings?  Did she have people who could help her live, make the decision to live?  Obviously not.

Every addict wants to die sooner than God planned.  It is a decision none want taking from us.  The needle in the arm, the bottom of the glass, the cold gun.

Hamish Bowles’ piece in Vogue was mawkish and badly written. Painting pretty Lucy shaped pictures of a woman Hamish scarcely understood other than her frocks, hats and shoes.  Of course, he didn’t ask why?  Nobody is asking why.  Is that too impertinent when you expect someone you know well to grow old?  She would have made a very, very grand old lady.  Rasping, funny and chic.

It’s a bit late,  posting pretty black and white pictures of her on social media, Hamish.

Two weeks ago I managed to track her down.  She was a little frosty, we hadn’t spoken for years.  She asked if I was sober.  We giggled about her brother Ed living it large at The Chateau Marmont in LA where I last saw him.  We recalled the Floriana scam and the subsequent outrage.  She wanted to know if I was in love.  I told her about Jake and our disastrous relationship… I told her how overwhelming love can be.  Crippling.  I asked about her husband.  There was a long, painful silence.  She suddenly seemed wistful and bored.  We made tentative plans to meet when she returned from her doomed vacation.

She wondered if I had ever received the green fur hat.  Of course I had.  Apparently, she had never received my written thanks.

Did she stop believing?  Run out of dreams?  Her children, dogs and husband could not convince her life was worth living.  Did she stop loving dressing up, entertaining, preparing lavish dinners, being center of attention?  Perhaps she saw the folly of her ways?  Couldn’t align her feelings with the facts?  Maybe she was drinking and convinced herself suicide a glamorous conclusion?  God only knows.

I have lost more friends/acquaintances to suicide than any other disease these past 50 years.  Suicide.  Touching the lives of almost everyone I know.  He lay on the tracks, he loaded the syringe, he hung himself from the banister, she jumped from the bridge, she blew her brains out in Ireland.   They found him dead in the car park, Boxing Day.  He was badly decomposed.  He stole pills from the hospital.  I knew all these people.

Bye bye Lucy.

Categories
politics Queer Whitstable

Rosie Duffield MP

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Yesterday I met Rosie Duffield, the MP for Canterbury and Whitstable.  She was half an hour late for our appointment.  Her train was late.  The taxi wasn’t where they expected it to be.  She runs into the meeting berating the train and the tube.  Rosie is a slight, blond woman who, against all the odds beat long time conservative MP Julian Brazier with a slim 186 majority in a constituency that never had a Labour MP since voting began.

I congratulated her, “You must be very grateful to Jeremy Corbyn,” I said.

Rosie smiled, she seemed baffled when people told her on the stump they were voting for Jeremy and not her.  “I heard that all the time,”  she said.  I pressed her to admit it was Jeremy who had energised the Labour vote in a traditionally conservative area but she was reluctant to agree Jeremy Corbyn was the reason she had her seat in parliament.  I asked her if she was a ‘blairite’, she replied candidly, “I owe everything to Tony Blair.”

She whispered conspiratorially, “Jeremy’s nearly 70, you know.”  As if telling a 58-year-old it’s all over for someone who is 69,  all over for Jeremy Corbyn.  I was beginning to understand who Rosie Duffield is and where her allegiances lay.  I looked carefully into her eyes.  “We need someone younger.”  she says.

I wanted to meet Rosie Duffield to find out if she was adequately representing her LGBT constituents.  So, I started our meeting by asking Rosie if she had ever heard of Rudolf Brazda.  She hadn’t.  Rudolf, the last holocaust survivor to wear a pink triangle, held at Buchenwald.  I asked if she knew what a pink triangle signified.  She nodded her head cautiously as if she were searching for a memory.  I explained who Rudolf was and how his and other LGBT inmates were remembered in oral histories archived at the New York Holocaust museum.

Their stories are desperate,  they tell how badly they were treated by both inmates and guards.  Beaten, murdered by guards and inmates.  Treated like pedophiles are treated in prisons today.  I told her how, when the camps were liberated, the gay men were not set free but taken to prison by British and American liberators.  These gay men, I reminded her, are my family of origin.  Murdered in the concentration camps by both nazis and fellow inmates.

Rosie shifts in her seat uncomfortably.

I let her know my own history of dealing with homophobia in Whitstable, the daubing of homophobic slurs on my house, bricks through the windows and more recently being verbally assaulted by a homophobic public house land lady.   Rosie seemed genuinely pained by my description.  Rosie and her manager offered to speak to Jonathan Neame about the homophobia in his pubs.  I accepted their offer graciously.

I wondered what Rosie Duffield’s definition of homophobia was?  She mumbled she didn’t have one.  I wondered why?  Why hadn’t The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) defined homophobia like they defined anti-Semitism?  After all, we were there too.  We… the LGBT community stood behind those terrible chain link fences walking with the dead and dying.  Where was our definition of homophobia?  A definition the party could work with?

Religion is a choice, sexuality is not.

I asked her if she thought Jeremy Corbyn was anti semitic and a racist.

Rosie wanted me to know her fiancé is black, that she couldn’t possibly understand what it is like to be black, gay or jewish.  She had to accept as the truth from her jewish friends if they were convinced Jeremy was anti-Semitic… she had no option but to believe them.  I asked if she was ’empathetically challenged’?  She became angry and told me she would ask me to leave if I spoke to her like that.  She told me I was being rude.

“You mean… rude like Margaret Hodge was to Jeremy Corbyn?”  Rosie told me she was a ‘Very good friend of Margaret Hodge’.  I asked Rosie if I had called her a fucking homophobe would she ask me to leave the office.  She told me Margaret Hodge had every right to shout at Jeremy because she was a jewish woman who had lost family in the holocaust.

I reminded her again.  My family of origin also perished in the holocaust.  Gay men without children, abandoned by their family for being gay.  Who could possibly claim these men (sex perverts) as their relatives?  It is incumbent upon men like me, willing to claim men like Rudolf as my own family, wrought from the history of lgbt oppression.

I asked again, “Where is the IHRA definition of homophobia?”

The definition of Anti Semitism has become the stick by which people like Margaret Hodge and her friend Rosie Duffield beat Jeremy Corbyn.  Yet, as a gay man, when I want answers about her understanding of homophobia Rosie tells me her definition of homophobia is ‘common sense’.

Religion is a choice. Sexuality is not.

Rosie stumbled into admitting she was Roman Catholic.  “A church riven by homophobia,” I say.  “Religious people are not my friends Rosie, they have delivered a history of violent rebuke against LGBT people.  Refusing to recognise our most basic human rights.”  What are you going to do about the pockets of homophobia in the Anglican Church?   You are, after all, the MP who represents the Archbishop of Canterbury?

Religious people are not our friends.  Jews.  Christians.  Muslims.  There are still passages in the Torah, Bible and Koran demanding death for practicing gay men.  Why haven’t these passages been removed?  When will Jews, Christians and Muslims remove passages from the Torah Bible and Koran that incite violence toward LGBT people? Legitimizing LGBT intolerance? When would she call for homophobia to be erased in all religions.

Rosie looked aghast.

The problem with Rosie?  She’s a delightful, simple person.  Her politics are scarcely evolved.  Rosie isn’t ‘woke’.  She probably didn’t expect to win her seat.  Her understanding of her LGBT constituents is scant.  It’s not her fault, she doesn’t ‘get’ how important historically the Labour Party was to LGBT people during the hostile 1960’s – 1980’s because she can’t imagine walking a mile in our shoes.

The meeting ended.  A nervous looking latino man waiting in the lobby wanted to talk about Brexit.  He was sitting with his daughter.  I set off into the searing heat.

On the way home to Whitstable I felt shaken and slightly bullied.  I’d experienced only a fraction of what is currently tearing at the heart of the Parliamentary Labour Party.  Rosie is our existential threat.  She exemplifies how Tony Blair snatched control from working people and handed power to a few entitled white folk.

Rosie has an agenda shared by many of her Blairite colleagues: to unseat Jeremy Corbyn.  For those of us who believe passionately in Corbyn’s inclusive vision for our country it was inconsiderate of her to say she had no clue what the lives of gay, black or jewish people could be because she wasn’t black, jewish or gay.

I wondered how Rosie could possibly see past her white, christian heterosexuality to represent any minority?  Me?  The anxious latino man?  The truth is, Rosie is not motivated to represent her constituents.  Rosie is not interested in the lives of her constituents.  Rosie is obsessed with regime change.  She spends her time berating and bullying Jeremy Corbyn.  She has no interest in me or indeed real instances of homophobia she is instead obsessed with politicised examples of anti-Semitism.

In 40 years I had never bothered to meet my Member of Parliament, then Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of The Labour Party.  Even though I voted for Thatcher in ’78 and Blair in 1997 I never joined a political party.  I have since joined the Labour Party because of Jeremy Corbyn.  The Labour Party is the biggest political party in Europe because of Jeremy Corbyn.

The Labour Party needs MP’s who represent not only its 800,000 voting members but the millions of disaffected Britons who believe in radical change… sadly, for the constituents of Whitstable and Canterbury Rosie Duffield isn’t one of them.

Categories
Gay Queer Whitstable

Margate

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Another morning at the hospital.  Another biopsy on another lump. I’m quite sweaty today.  My arms hurt.  The arthritis in my neck makes my arms painful, numb and tingling.  The pain increases when I cough, sneeze or strain.

After the consultant I drove to Margate where I met Jonathan Viner who has famously bought the huge Margate Print Works, partially selling to Tracey Emin and others.  We ate a light lunch at David Liddicot‘s cafe on Union Row.  Jonathan rather sweetly paid for lunch, (£20).  Of course we discussed both projects.  He is unsurprisingly proprietorial about Margate.  Viner, I suppose, rediscovered it and put his money where his mouth is.

He very kindly walked me around the last remaining part of the huge building still unsold.  The cavernous concrete space ripe for something magnificent.  We discussed Brexit, we discussed moving to Kent, we chatted briefly about Jay.  He is obviously quite competitive but not in an overwhelming, American way.  I told Jonathan I’d met the ghastly Margate based architect Sam Causer who has all the charm of untreated sewage.

We discussed terrible Margate landlords who want too much for their properties and he was eager to remind me I didn’t own anything in Margate… yet.  I replied gently that if my idea fell through it wouldn’t be the end of the world.  I learned from buying at auction… there’s always something else, next time.  It’s not healthy to obsess about things.  It can get you into trouble.  God has a plan.  I just have to listen out for it.

I’ve been going to London meetings.  NA meetings.  It baffles me how people stay clean.  But of course… they don’t.  The real addicts die.  NA, divorced from Bill’s radical idea of a spiritual solution, is utterly worthless.  I am irritated by NA in the UK, the group therapy, feelings laid bare.  I was sharing step solution in a Chelsea meeting last week and a young woman in the meeting told me I shouldn’t talk about the steps because she found it ‘triggering’.

Meanwhile Chip, my friend in NYC, who worked a solid NA programme overdoses and dies.  He was a splendid, handsome father of one.  Divorced from God there was no other destiny for him.  Jail.  Institutions.  Death.

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The Whitstable Biennial opened this week.  Consequently there is ‘art’ everywhere: in beech huts, coffee shops, fishmongers, gardens, St Alphage church on the high street.  The art is pretty dull but the buzz around town is great.  I found two gorgeous bronze figures tucked away in a shed by sculptor Mark Fuller who is without doubt a bloody genius.  £80.

If my arms work I may go to Canterbury Pride this evening.

Ivan Cartwright visited me last weekend.  We had lunch at Dave Brown’s then drove to Margate.  He had never been.  He was very impressed.  Lunch with M&J at well reviewed Angela’s in Margate on Wednesday.  I ate Turbot and some odd tasting greens.

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Met in Soho last week with a gentleman who wants to buy my art collection, then a brief but good catch up with my producer.  I bumped into Johnny and Julian outside Maison Bertaux.  We drank a little coffee and I scoffed a large Mont Blanc, you know the one… with mashed up marrons glacés, meringue and cream.

I travelled from Whitstable to London on the train.  It was exactly the same time to get up there as it was 40 years ago.  It’s perfectly fine.  The bus from Victoria to Piccadilly Circus was wonderful. Swinging past the Wellington Arch, on the upper deck, very little traffic.  The trees around Green Park and Park Lane have matured beautifully.  Apsley house now looks like it’s sitting in the countryside rather than a concrete island.  I fell in love with London all over again.  Who wouldn’t?

After lunch I took the Piccadilly line to Gloucester Place and had tea with Christophe. He looks wonderfully relaxed after his hip operation.  Pain shows in the face, you know.  Without the pain he looks marvellous.  “Everybody says the same,” he smiled.

There was a coach from Faversham to Whitstable after 11pm but so what?  A drunk man on the bus was recounting his recent arrest for knocking someone out.  I had no problem with the railway.  I had no problem with the buses and the tube.  I’ve had no problems with the NHS.  I just wish the pins and needles would stop.

Categories
Dogs Gay Health Queer

Fake Woke

2018

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I have found writing this blog almost impossible these past few months.  Impossible to write the first line.  I could say,  ‘Margate, I’m obsessed with you.’ Or, ‘The lilacs fill the air with a sweet and heavy scent.’  I could tell you some unrelated facts, like I reported some fool to the police for a vile hate crime.   Or, I have my own cup at the deli or… I’m so tired I can scarcely get through the day.  My body failing, spinning out of control, my voice slurring, my head aching, my memory shot to pieces.

I wrote my will.  I left everything to one person.  I’m glad it’s done.

The Little Dog shivers then ravenously eats.  He has a chewable heart pill at morning and dusk. He sleeps close to my leg.  I spend too much time looking at my phone.  Dude smells pungent… sweet and sour.  I bathed him today.  The water was cold.  It wasn’t Malibu grooming.  Even though we have hot, sunny days it hardly compares to California.  He looks forlornly up at me.  His perky ears all bent and fragile.

The Ross on Wye project is frustrating yet rewarding.  I should have ignored the neighbours and just gotten on with the project.  An exercise in Little England.  Foolishly thought I should reach out to them, reach out to the fearful white people who live on the hill.  The sort of people who believe everything they read on the internet.   The sort of people who believe Jeremy Corbyn can’t win an election.

I’m living in a country where the press has all but given up telling the truth.  Lies splashed over the broadsheets.  The BBC, once believed unquestionably, now feeds off the rotting carcass of what was its esteemed impartiality.  The stench is difficult to ignore.

Fake anti-Semitism and other cruel lies beset the leader of the Labour Party.  Right wing jews weaponizing anti-Semitism before the local elections now gone quiet.  And all the while I wonder why so many hate telling the truth about LGBT people in the concentration camps.  It’s a most cruel kind of holocaust denial.  They deny our truth.

Rudolf Brazda died in 2011.  We was the last man alive to have worn the pink triangle.  The pink triangle was the crude badge gay men were forced to wear in the concentration camps differentiating us from other inmates.  Visible from long distances the pink triangle was used as target practice by the Nazis.  LGBT inmates, considered sex criminals, were also murdered by their fellow jewish inmates.  LGBT people experienced terrible persecution from the jews in the camps.

Why?

Remember these two facts (seldom admitted by Zionists) about our LGBT history.

Firstly, when we arrived at the concentration camps, LGBT people were considered nonces, disgusting sex offenders and treated as pedophiles are treated today in jails all over the world… like useless scum.  Secondly, when the camps were liberated by the American and the British armed forces LGBT, inmates were not allowed to leave.  They were taken from the camps directly to jail.  

According to German LGBT scholar Rüdiger Lautmann gay prisoners in the camp were abused and tormented not only by guards but also by other prisoners. “There was a hierarchy, from strongest to weakest,” Pierre explains. “There was no doubt that the weakest in the camps were the homosexuals, all the way on the bottom.”

When I mentioned these facts last Holocaust Memorial Day my jewish friends were outraged.  They hate being reminded of these pertinent truths.  They are deeply offended when gay people remind the world of our history of persecution.

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Another month has passed since I last wrote.

Since then part of The Goods Shed in Canterbury burned down, my friend Susanna valiantly opening the doors and serving food the day after.  M and B have gone to France leaving me alone in their house.  I have filled the fridge with food.  My trips to the hospital are frequent but manageable.  The Margate project inches toward completion, the Ross house stalls then splutters into gear.

My routine is unshakable.  I sit with the others outside the Deli on Harbour Street but only when the bitter tradesman have gone to toil.  I walk the dogs on West Beech then feed them raw chicken and a little kibble.  I spend a lot of time with PG and her grown up children.  Last weekend we explored the magnificent gardens at Great Dixter then ate ice cream in Hastings.   Every so often I drive on my own to Ross and look at the land, the undergrowth is relentless and desperate to once again consume the old stone threshing barn even the neighbours didn’t know existed.

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Occasionally I dip into my old LA life and endure meetings in London with producers.  Rather surprisingly I’ve been asked to direct a movie in January.  We will see how that pans out.  My mind is open to failure and success… if they support me I might very well make a good job of it.   We sit on the roof of that club in Shoreditch and watch trim 30 something male executives dip in and out of the swimming pool.  Their bodies glistening, perfectly groomed.

After a few weeks of being home in Whitstable my relations with old friends, grown frail by distance and insecurity, have strengthened and renewed.  Yet, I was recently forced to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth.   Even though I lived and worked in the USA for well over a decade and made friends with those immediately in my orbit… I never cared for any of them. Most of them were simply there.  I didn’t care for their well-being.  Nobody really cares for their neighbour in the USA.  Not like we do for the folk I have known nearly 60 years.  I really care about Sue at The Tea Rooms and Ronnie saving me from a parking ticket.  I love walking to The Battery and drinking tea with Marilyn and John.  I am passionate about Marianne, Bob and their children.  We sat beside the cherry tree remembering their son Richard who vanished from the Dover/Calais ferry and is presumed dead.

Whoever it is, however fractious they are… whatever they may have said in the past, I feel a love for them that was absent from my life in the USA.   I am so grateful for all of them.  I am grateful for their love and their hate because that’s what LIFE is all about… a life lived fully and squarely on life’s terms.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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London Fields

Undetectable: A Gay Poem 2012/2018

by Duncan Roy

Don’t let climate change ruin your gay wedding.

Nor fear of deportation or student loans.  Don’t let the government shut down beleaguer your special day.

Nor think of drones killing gay men on foreign shores. Not in my name.

Dream my dear, of the $160,000 surrogate baby you really can’t afford. White eggs and spermatozoa Amex paid for.

Grown in a poor brown woman whose name attorneys erased.  She’ll never be known to the unborn child.

Goldman bonus spent on more Botox. Calm your troubled brow with restylane.  Fill the lines they put there with relentless bullying and casual homophobia.

You weren’t looking for love.  A painted finger nail emoji on your Tinder profile, hoping for a merger and acquisition.  Perfect in the Pines.  Helping him fuck another guy. Guiding him into the gaping hole like a stallion. Prepped and raw. Bare back monkey.

Hung?

Fun?

Can Accom.

Marrying a fellow American now, you need not stress, ICE officers will not be your groomsman.  Not today.

Thank Jesus Christ Almighty,

Clinton’s Defense of Marriage Act is no more.

They can not stop you, nor turn you from the hospital as your husband lays dying from a lethal Fentanyl overdose. Undetectable. No longer woke.

Found in the sauna, wearing his combat boots, multiply penetrated, cream pied, still bound and dripping, eyes open, calling out another man’s name, swaying gently in the black polyester sling.

Enjoying your honeymoon in the leather bars of Berlin.

1.

They are deporting thousands of undocumented workers in the USA. Friends and family disappear. The cranberry bogs remain un-harvested. The schools stricken by grieving children. Police officers didn’t think it would be this way.  They couldn’t put a face to the men and women Trump wanted to deport. Simple, honest people caught up in the merciless trawl. They didn’t realise their friends were breaking the law. They didn’t understand the depth of hatred their fellow citizens harboured for brown and black people.

2.

Hackney.  East London finally puts paid to the ridiculous notion I can leave my car unlocked without being burgled.  Yes.  I am that man.  Regardless of the stolen cash, life in East London is inspiring. Like the first time you visit deep Brooklyn, you understand who millennials are and what they prioritize. Bushwick, going there with Paris McGarry and her boyfriend Tom. The streets were buzzin, the restaurants overflowing, the music bursting out of every window over the cobbled streets. Huge lofts once filed with machinery now house tech aspirants and what, I think, is the difference? Intellectual rather than mechanical industry.

Hackney has exactly the same energy.  Fit, bearded men cycling through the park discussing crypto currency on their cell phones.  They look insane, talking to themselves, eyes fixed on the road, avoiding my dogs who are inexplicably drawn to cycle paths. I feel alive here, which is odd as I am facing death head on right now.  I am optimistic even though I feel the curtain closing about me, taking my final bow.  I sit in Shorditch House all day drinking water and coffee and eating sour jelly candy.  I buy boots in APC and wonder why.  I mean, I don’t need anything.  I am rootless, I am free.

3.

Going to NA meetings all over the East End.  I am drawn to the drama I suppose.  I meet cool people and when they read about me are less eager to judge my life, my exploits whilst American addicts damn you forever.  You lose your grip once and Americans watch with glee as you fall from the side of the building.  Falling like a crazy base jumper.  You took a risk… it didn’t pay off.  Your fingers slip from the polished marble. The English addict is less determined to make you pay.

However, NA is not very productive in London.  The people may be kind but the programme stinks. Swimming around in their own shit. NA isn’t group therapy.  Nobody cares about your feelings. Addicts repeat their using tragedies again and again day after day.  They have no solution, grasping hold of their pain, reliving the insanity, indulgently spewing over anyone who will listen. They attend endless meetings 90/90 but will not work the 12 steps.  Of course, after a few months, they relapse then after another spectacular ‘rock-bottom’ claw their way back into the rooms… continuing the cycle of despair.  I keep reminding myself not to slip back into bad habits.  No catastrophic thinking, no indulgence.  No. No. No.

4.

I’m in Climpson’s the local coffee shop trying to write a treatment.  Broadway Market. I know the fishmonger and the book seller. The baristas know my name. I’m writing a gay Fatal Attraction. Crazy older lady meets younger gay guy at AA meeting, she’s a hoarder, he takes pity on her, cleans her house, helps her with her life, she lends him money and falls in love with him… then tries to destroy him when he refuses her advances.  It’s waiting to be written. This story, this slice of life upstate.  Donna, you crazy witch! I took Donna to a gay party, she wasn’t impressed when I talked to the other guys.  I took her to Abby Rockefeller’s farm.  She wasn’t impressed when I talked to other women.  I felt her eyes boring into me. We left.

5.

The dull thud returns, at the base of my sternum.  The pain wraps around my body from my stomach to the base of my back.  The acid reflux, overwhelming tiredness and irritability.  I had more tests.  There are problems that need resolved but the doctors are too damn eager to slice into me.  I already had my gall bladder and an isolated tumor on my adrenal gland removed.

The doctor is thorough and uncompromising.  I revisit all the horrors of pancreatic cancer.  I look at potential remedies, of which there are few.  The very worst scenario is called the Whipple procedure which is also known as a pancreaticoduodenectomy, a complex operation to remove the head of the pancreas, the first part of the small intestine (duodenum), the gallbladder and the bile duct.

They say to me: these symptoms are found in women. They say, it may be malignant, it may be benign, it may be somewhere in between.  The diagnosis isn’t good enough.  It’s too damn vague.  I lay on my bed after our long walk and fall into a deep sleep.  I breathe deeply, clearing my mind of everything I think I know.  I remind myself of the solution, the literature.  I say, what will be will be.  Divorcing myself from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.

During the day I face indecision. I may not correctly determine which course of action to take. I ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or decision.  I relax, I don’t struggle. I’m surprised by how often the right answer comes after practicing these principles in all my affairs.

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