Up at 7am. Corpus Christi. The Little Dog is delighted. The streets of Carmona are strewn with rosemary. There are black and white nuns taking selfies in front of the lavish shrines, there are choir boys with billowing red cassocks and freshly bleached surplice and starched ruffs running to the cathedral. Young men and women carry a ton of Jesus or Mary on raised platforms through the fragrant streets. They crush the herb beneath them. The men wrap long black bandages around their waist to support their backs. Parents and grandparents are dressed in their Sunday finery. The men wear religious medals, dark silk suits, brightly coloured ties and shirts. Incense billows from the thurible. Outside each church magnificent shrines are decorated with candles, brocade and lilies. I acknowledge the tears of the virgin… glass beads on her painted cheeks. I catch myself luxuriating in the ritual, the procession, I am moved by the costumes, the smell of myrrh, the belief. I love religiosity.
This week I took communion for the first time in years.
The corpse is resting. David Roy, my adopted father, died on Friday after months long battle with cancer. I received a short text message from my mother. I called but she was her usual rancorous self. Brexit loving, unhelpful and full of misguided disdain. She said, the last time we spoke, she wanted Brexit to take back her power. Repeating like an autistic child what she reads in The Sun and The Daily Mail rather than THINKING for herself. What power? She never had any power. She has been cheated of power. Now she wants to hand the few (who are still squabbling over the ashes of the dead at Grenfell Tower) more of everything. Including our power.
Get to it Jeremy Corbyn.
Families have been riven over Brexit. Ours included.
David Roy. What of you? All through my childhood I wished you dead.
I am 8 years old. There is a poster on the wall of my Stanley Road bedroom and on the back of the poster I wrote: I wish you were dead. Now he is. For all the abuse, cruelty and misery of our childhood… he suffered a few short weeks of excruciating pain.
My mother was sad because at the end he was so weak and demented. She remembered him strong and active. She said she was, ‘sad’. She chooses not to remember him as the violent, vicious abuser he was. She chooses to forget how he tried to run her down when she attempted to leave their vile marriage. Her boyfriend remembers, surely the beating David Roy delivered leaving him broken and bloody? My friend Ana said, good riddance.
The end of such a potent chapter in my life. I am unusually confused about his death. I am elated and strangely moved. I owe him something… I have waited for this moment my entire life. I remember how he refused to let Billy Childish stay at our house one winters night after he and Rachel missed the last train home to Rochester. I remember, he hated the miners and loved Margaret Thatcher. I wore my Solidarity With The Miners badge. He was furious. He voted Tory. The most vicious, self-serving kind. He took me to watch football every weekend. He took me to the garage where he worked and I snorted petrol fumes to get by. My childhood, in that house… was excruciatingly dull and filled with fear. That family, those people, those limited, strangled ideas.
Now, of course, they embrace Brexit.
My brother Stuart had children his own father was loathed to see. My brother Stuart was also beaten. He said to me once, “He would have gone to prison for doing what he did to us… if he had done that today.” Bloody right he would. And then I remember just how much effort it took to forgive him. And when I went to see him and told him that he had been cruel but I forgave him and he tried to hug me but I stood as stiff as a board. He was working in the arcade on Herne Bay promenade. He was wearing latex surgical gloves. He worked hard to ignore his crimes against us and we in turn colluded with him by not calling the police… like so many families held hostage by men like that.
I told my mother I forgave him, she said, “Why did you do that? You let him off the hook.”
“No”, I replied, “I let ME off the hook.”
I have never forgiven my mother. I have never attempted to forgive her. I have only tried to make things better for her by persuading her to take what was hers. She refused my advice. She left with nothing. I’m sure this blog is just the tip of the iceberg. I will write more tomorrow. Good bye David William Roy. I have your name and the scars you left on me, both physical and emotional. It looks like I am stuck with both.
I stayed at the compound last night. The sheets are edged with delicate lace. I left the dogs at home so I could sleep without disturbance. I slept solidly and woke at 6am. A light mist covered the immediate landscape. The gardeners were hosing the paths, the foal was feeding. A large flock of geese keep a watchful eye over me. I drove home to two ecstatic dogs. We walked beyond the Cordoba gate. A rough, dusty path.
They went to the vet yesterday. The little dog needed his anal glands expressed and Dude has an ear infection. Total for visit and medication: $40.
After walking them both, The Little Dog and I (punctuated by a brief and violent encounter with a mini pincer) walked to the forum and drank the most bitter espresso. Early mornings in Carmona are cool and busy. Spanish friends and neighbours chatter, the din echoes from the marble floor up to the roman arches. Hundreds of equally noisy swallows dive in and out of the Ficus.
I don’t understand a word. I order my coffee and sit quietly enjoying the breeze. I am invisible. On the way home I speak to no one. I nod if they speak to me. I am invisible. I linger outside the house I like on Dolores Quintanilla. My phone only works with wifi. I am invisible.
The gardener harvested huge baskets of figs, tomatoes and aubergine. The kitchen staff washed the red earth away from the purple and cream vegetables and delighted over the bounty. The larder is full.
Last night we took Lily for one of our late night promenade around the city. We talk to old ladies about houses: empty, abandoned, for sale. We find a cobbled lane and see an ancient house with weeds growing on the roof. The windows are un-renovated, the bars have been fashioned by a blacksmith and not a machine. The door has large mental studs hammered all over it. Opposite there is an elderly widow sitting outside her house in a deck chair. We ask her what’s for sale, is the house we like for sale? She stows the chair, fetches her crutch and takes us to meet her neighbours. She raps on their windows and whispers secrets about them to us.
“You can buy my house,” her friend laughs, “But it comes with my husband, I’ll pack my bags now.”
90% of the ancient alley is for sale. A man from Madrid bought three of them, bricked up the windows and doors and they never saw him again. Behind every door in the ancient part of the city there are endless surprises. Courtyards, roman tiles, arches of marble or hand-made brick. The best properties have been lived in but left untouched for 100 years… and there are plenty like that.
In our local restaurant, a few steps from the house, a young and handsome Spaniard practices passing a muleta they keep for decoration behind the bar. A muleta is the stiff, pink taffeta cape used by the bullfighter to conceal the sword. There are many styles of pass, each with its own name. The verónica is a pass in which the matador slowly swings the cape away from the charging bull while keeping his feet in the same position. The faena is the final series of passes before the kill, in which the matador uses the muleta to manoeuvre the bull into a position to stab it between the shoulders, cutting the aorta. If this fails he must then cut the bull’s spinal cord with a second sword, killing it instantly. The task of killing the bull is given to the matador alone; his title means “killer”.
The young man in the restaurant had such grace. He was impossibly beautiful. His friend wraps an arm around him as they leave. There are bull fights on the TV in the bar. It’s hard to watch but god… it’s honest. Killing the bull. Eating beef. Sport, entertainment… luxury… death.
Back in the USA I am preparing for my own fight. I am preparing. I am holding the cape. I am concealing the sword.
The heat is overwhelming. A blanket of scorching air thrown over the city. The dogs wilt, I pretend it’s just like Malibu but… it’s not. Southern Spain. I’m driving to Nice this week, then on to Paris and Chamonix to pick up my stuff. I managed to leave things all over the place. Ditching supurflous stuff along the way. Lightening the load. Occasionally I look at Dude and wonder if I should ditch him… poor crippled Dude. His back legs giving in, he wants to catch up but he just can’t. I can’t. I can’t leave him behind.
At 5am, I took my coffee cup and the Little Dog. We sat quietly looking out at the wide open plain, great fields of sunflowers, traffic snaking here and there. Sitting outside the Cordoba Gate. What dramas happened here? Who was allowed in and who was kept out? The two large fortified towers flanking a Roman arch were built around the 1st century A.D., with Renaissance and Neoclassical renovations. It was designed to protect and reflect the great wealth Carmona enjoyed for hundreds of years.
A man arrives with his chestnut gelding. As the horse drinks from the stone trough he drenches the beast with a plastic bucket. How welcome that trough must have been to those who arrived (for hundreds of years) on horseback over this arid plain. Waiting for the great doors to swing open, waiting outside the Cordoba gate, waiting to be let in or not.
I am going to stay the weekend in Italy with Rachel. Near Pisa. She has a donkey and two beloved cats. At night Carmona is over run with scavenging cats. Hundreds of them, like rats in New York. They are too confident to be scared by me or the Little Dog even though he makes an occasional and pathetic attempt at charging them. Their backs arch, they hiss and show their claws. He stops a couple of feet away and makes his strange whimper.
Last night my friend Jose and I explored the ancient part of the city. At 10.30 it was still very hot. Then suddenly the wind comes from Cadiz, from the ocean… 60 miles away. You can taste the salt. We turn a corner and the welcome breeze fills our shirts and closes our eyes.
We were chronicling abandoned houses, with or with out se vende signs written on them. Taking note of the location of each. “Everything is for sale in Spain.” The realtor says. There are palaces and broken shacks, old towers and ancient islamic, crenelated walls formerly part of the old city fortification that crash into very ordinary houses and quite by accident these medieval battlements, parapets and mouldings are consumed and preserved.
Everything in Spain is for sale. They see me coming: the friend of the rich celebrity. The price of everything jumps $40k. They show me the same houses they showed other friends two years ago. Unlocking ancient doors, we wander through huge homes once occupied by many families. There are slim balconies, stone steps leading to terraces looking down on secret courtyards. There is pigeon shit and kittens mewing in every room in every house we saw. Abandoned lives: a simple chair, a faience pot, a richly embroidered matador’s jacket hanging on the wall. Left behind, like my luggage in Paris and Chamonix.
Jose asks me why I want to live in Carmona. They asked me about Tivoli and Malibu before. Why does anyone want to live anywhere? I don’t know. I could live anywhere and nowhere. I am transient. I am free of possession or need for possessions. I go where I am safe. It is safe here. I lived in so much fear in the USA. Fear of being caught without my papers. Fear of the state. I was not rich or powerful enough not to live in fear.
We wake at 4.30am. We siesta after lunch. The streets fill, the shops and bars open after 9pm. During the day Dude will not leave my friend, he hides under their garden furniture. I keep the dogs out of the heat as much as I can. The Little Dog is gradually (slowly) recovering from his facial paralysis. He’s still very droopy but he’s coping. He’s doing the best he can. I’m doing the best I can. I am covered with sweat and dust. My nose is crusty, my eyes exhausted. I am recovering my optimism.
Since leaving the USA I am not plagued with ideas of death, with dark thoughts, with hopelessness. I am not hurting myself by investing in old traumas. Not here. I don’t want to die. Not where there has been so much life for hundreds of thousands of years. I am a smear soon to be forgotten. My unpopular views on social media but dust. It’s incumbent on me to stay alive. To rejoice. America makes a man vulnerable. It destroys ones trust in humanity. I came to loathe so many people in the USA but I hated gay white men more than any other. They are vile and crude. They espouse ideas of love and acceptance but practiced hate and exclusivity.
Today we are having lunch in Seville with Spanish gays. I am excited. The gay men I meet here are so generous. They touch my shoulder, they embrace me warmly. At first I shrank from their kindness. I learned not to trust white gay men. But, I’ve warmed to them here. They understand. They understand what horrors I endured in the USA.
One thousand 800 miles. Driving. I began this adventure a little ways outside of Turin in a drowsy hamlet called Cinaglio, an ancient place clinging to the side of a steep hill. During this haphazard journey I planned to revisit old friends. Old friends and familiar locations.
I’ve already written how I left the USA, visiting my sister in Canada. I’ve written about arriving in Paris and staying with Mary in Sevres, I touched upon my time in Chamonix and driving under Mont Blanc but I haven’t published any of that. I’m sure it answers questions some want answering. I’ll publish when I feel comfortable.
Cinaglio, I stayed in a magnificent 17th Century farm-house set in the glorious Piedmont countryside. The house belongs to my friend Maria. We are all about the same age. We have lines on our faces and odd blemishes. I met Maria 20 years ago with her cousin Xavier. I was on the jury of the Turin film festival. They invited the jurors to her house and even though we spent only a few hours there, both Maria and her house stayed vibrant in my memory. She latterly visited my home in Whitstable and ate crab.
We arrived… nothing had changed. Not in 20 years. It was just as I had remembered it. The unused, dusty chapel, the tumbledown brick barn. The views over vineyards and sweeping lawns. It was formerly Maria’s mother’s house and really hasn’t been touched for 50 or so years. There is no internet or little else to prove the 21st Century was 17 years in. The Little Dog and Dude immediately set to exploring the gardens, digging under fallen trees and hunting lizards. Maria left the house for us and stayed else where, she filled the fridge with local delicacies. Ham and apricots, hazelnut cake and coffee. The night we arrived Maria and her fiance very kindly treated us to dinner. We ate in the waiting room of an abandoned railway station. There were endless courses, pasta, raw meat with truffles and braised donkey. I looked at them enviously drinking red wine and wanted to join in… but didn’t. Yet, I’ve never been more curious.
Did I mention I stopped going to AA meetings? Several months ago? The problem with AA? AA claims all your successes and blames you for all your failings. ‘I stopped going to meetings,’ is the number one excuse people give who start drinking after long-term sobriety. But why did they stop going to meetings? After 20 years I can tell you. I was bored. Bored with the same stories, the same faces, the 12 steps, the bumptious newcomers and… the ghastly old timers trapped between their arrogance and their low self-esteem. Of course not all of them were like that. But mostly they were. And what’s more? I hated who I was becoming. I loathed the fights and the resentment only AA afforded me.
Leaving a cult after so many years is bloody hard. A good cult will own your life then blame you for turning your back on it.
I stayed with Maria in Cinaglio for 4 wonderful nights. The second night she threw a lavish dinner at the house for 12 of her friends. They drank desert wine. It smelled delicious. We ate chicken and pork.
The following day we had lunch in Turin. Turin is a magical city and scores high on the list of places I would consider for my next home. I’m sure if the Romans who planned the city of Turin returned at any time they would still recognize it. The snowy alps in the distance, the River Po and the Beverly type hills overlooking Turin’s orderly grid would have perfectly oriented a time traveling Roman. The apartments I saw for sale on-line are lavish and well priced. The streets are crammed with interesting people and after lunch we were entertained with a boisterous ‘decriminalize cannabis’ march headed by a charismatic drum major who filled the street with a vibrant drum display that cracked through us like thunder.
I discovered Zara Home. My dirty little secret. I love this store.
The little dog is less wobbly but not as confident. He thinks twice before jumping into the car or onto the bed. His face is still squiffy. He can’t close his eye, he has solutions… ingeniously wedging his face between two pillows forcing the droopy lid to cover his exposed eye. The week before last he was a young dog and today he is an old dog. It comes on quite suddenly… old age. I suppose I thought he would be the same until the end. Just himself. But he’s not himself. That’s a painful thing to see. We seem just one step ahead of death.
My US phone ceased functioning after my first few days in France. Rather than call AT&T I decided not to have a phone… or rather I would wait for text messages and emails whenever I could log onto the internet. It forced me to look at the landscape, I listened to music. Massive Attack reminded me of Gulshan and Bournemouth Film School and the beach. It reminded me that I hadn’t smoked weed for nearly 21 years.
The road from Turin to Monaco was empty and the tolls were expensive. The Italian Riviera looked very interesting and certainly worth a closer inspection.
In Monaco I struggled onto a train with my luggage and two dogs. The train to Nice was easy. I found a delightful hotel in the old quarter where I spent the next four nights. From Nice it was convenient to catch up with old friends and revisit the Cannes film festival. The last train from Cannes to Nice leaves at 10.41pm so I had no option but to leave the festivities and do dog duties. In Nice I had lunch with Tim Fountain and saw Cassian Elwes, meeting his new girlfriend. I hung out with a bunch or errant Brits and Irishmen. We found a comfortable lounge and drank grapefruit cocktails and I met actor Laurie Calvert who is very sexy indeed.
The final day was a little frustrating as the credit card company decided to block my credit card. I had failed to tell them I was going to France. It took 8 hours to unblock. I finally picked up my rental car a day later than expected and started my drive to Carmona.
A few miles outside of Cannes I stopped at a service station and standing outside were M and S, a pair of German engineering students hitch hiking from Munich to Barcelona for charity. They had to perform certain stunts along the way for which they were compensated.
I’m sure we all remember the moment Aschenbach lays eyes on Tadsio in the film Death in Venice and is immediately consumed by the young man’s beauty. Well, I have to tell you when I first saw M and they asked for a lift and I said yes… I rather hoped they might have found a better ride whilst I was in the service station buying provisions. I knew having him sitting beside me for 4 hours was going to be excruciating. What’s more… one of their stunts was to drive without pants in the car. So, I had a semi naked German god sitting next to me pantless in the car. He was very well aware of his exquisite beauty and how he was affecting his driver… me.
Then, at his behest, we started telling each other our stories. I told mine. Then he started his. His father had recently committed suicide… his father was my age. A theme was emerging. My sister and I had discussed our enigmatic dead father. The boy’s story… and I was on my way to see a friend whose father had recently died. I was overwhelmed not only with his beauty but his wit, sincerity and strength.
I left the boys in Barcelona. They had to swim and dance and take picture. There was a moment when he was totally naked in front of me, shamelessly changing out of his swim costume. Looking at me, his piercing green eyes. He was gifting me a lifetime of memories. A beautiful 24-year-old with golden hair and heart… a thousand tears he needs to cry.
That night I found a small hotel in Valencia. I lay thinking about the boy and how fathers can deliberately and cruelly leave their loving sons. “Nobody expected it,” he said. I was exhausted. I slept soundly with the dogs and woke refreshed, I ate a hearty breakfast, chiros and thick dark chocolate. Spain lay before me. Soon the industrial North gave way to red earth and olive trees, vineyards and moorish architecture. I sped toward Madrid, Cordoba and Seville.
I am sitting in the hot sun, drinking espresso on the terrace of a perfect beaux-arts terrace. The French alps tower around me. Specifically, Mont Blanc glistening like a fancy frosted desert, a choppy blue glacier advancing to its right, over our heads tiny humans paragliding, spin and plunge.
Sadly, there is trouble in paradise, my serenity smashed to pieces whenever I open Facebook. I am not forced to open Facebook, my fingers with their virtual muscle memory… like billions of others, slide over the smooth face of my smart phone and hit the pale blue F. Instantly I am plunged into transatlantic, liberal hand wringing and chest beating.
They scream, ‘Impeach Trump!’ Facebook posts from disillusioned liberals/hillarybots. ‘Impeach him now!’ Their unrealistic expectations give me daily pleasure. These are not, on the whole, dumb folk spewing liberal dogma. I’m concerned they genuinely believe impeachment is possible. I’m sad these highly intelligent, motivated folk can’t put their energy into the search for a credible and charismatic democratic alternative to fight Trump in 2020.
Am I alone when I ask: Is Trump good for the USA?
He behaves like a deranged, megalomaniac… a south american despot you say. Yet, Americans might remind themselves that there are those of us who live outside the USA in countries the USA has royally fucked over or whose elections and way of life America has meddled. To those who have endured the chaos of American intervention Trump is the last of a long line of equally despicable Americans presidents… including the holy cow, ‘No Drama Obama’. Unlike the others, Trump is merely treating the USA as the USA has treated the rest of the world. He is crude and greedy, he intends to take what ever he wants and will share the spoils with those prepared to cut him in on the deal.
Trump is good for America if Americans are willing to take a good hard look at their behaviors these past few decades. Their collective racism, their xenophobia, their greed.
To impeach a president takes a huge amount of effort and determination, it requires consensus in both houses. My British friends fail to understand if Trump were to be impeached/removed/assassinated… there will be no snap election, no variation on Theresa May’s rig the vote. The four years the American people voted for must be played out and there is an order of succession if anything were to happen to Trump.
The succession: Trump, Pence the vice President and then Paul Ryan, leader of the house. Each more terrible than the last.
Most of my ‘friends’ on social media are fully engaged with the trump drama, the trump conflict, and desire nothing more that the easy resolution of a mini series. They are looking for a perfect denouement, a canny plot twist that will somehow give them the President they desire, the happy ending proving they were right all along.
Crazy liberals cannot bring themselves to admit what is happening all over the world: the people are tired of the status quo. They are bored with democracy, they are addicted to intensity. They are focused on their smart phone, the television and the endless news cycle that feeds them divorce, terrorism, murder and larceny.
Let me say that again: the people are addicted en mass to intensity… however it can be served by whomever can deliver the strongest dose and Trump delivers, day after day.
All Americans treat vulnerability as a opportunity. If you are sick or find yourself on the wrong side of the law… Americans will fully exploit you. Trump’s Attorney General is filling his own private jails with black and brown men guilty of possessing small amounts of weed, their sentences are non negotiable. Trump is sacrificing the land, the resources therein, from sea to shining sea… he will let you foul the water and the air. By slashing and burning he is making everyone fight for what they believe knowing most will not fight but simply retreat. He is the Goth, the Visigoth, the Vandal. He is well-known in history… he is the black cloud hanging over the advent of the dark age.
Trump is the most American of Americans. He lingers within the psyche of the nation. He is born out of Manifest Destiny, slavery and mass incarceration. Until Trump was president only the few challenged America’s despicable countenance. Liberals, democrats and progressive were cautious critics of the very same USA Trump now fairly represents.
Those who say they hate Trump refuse to challenge the systems and institutions that put him into power and keep him in power. They blindly accept the dominance of their military industrial complex, they accept the word of law. They rarely challenge their own ingrained prejudices interpersonally they criticize internationally.
Trump’s supporters will not turn on him. They blame the establishment for interrupting him, they blame the FBI. They think little of the police and the rule of law. They watch Trump battle dark forces and his fight (absurd to the rest of us) confirms their worst fears about the USA. A president who can’t speak freely without every newspaper misreporting, who can’t hire and fire without scrutiny, a leader they wanted to lead them away from modernity, back to mythical greatness.
If anything happens to Donald Trump… and it will eventually. His people will take up arms and start gunning for those they see as hindering their dream. Some dream of wax fruit and paper leaves, their garden of Eden. Their Eden will not include uppity black people demanding apologies, trans toilets or gay marriage. Women will earn less than men and keep their mouths shut when their husbands need to beat or rape them.
It is, of course, the lie of simplicity they crave, the unprompted simplicity the people of this tiny French village understand. Uncoupled from their second screen, planting black currents, walking their dogs down verdant mountain paths. I don’t know how Americans will ever find their way back, back home. To a place where they can live without fear. Fear of sickness or another taking what they have. How will they get back to something honest and kind. I don’t know. How will they ever live without their crippling addiction to intensity, shame and resentment.
The further I get from the USA the more I am inclined to believe civil war is inevitable.
1.
I want to write about The Little Dog. Perhaps that’s all I’ll write about today.
Anyone who met me this past decade… will have met The Little Dog. A slim, muscular, tan and white Jack Russell/chihuahua mix formerly known as Ziggy. You’ll remember how he is: inquisitive and grumpy in equal measure. You’ll remember the heart-shaped patch above his tail.
I found him on an unseasonably hot Californian Sunday morning at the Palisades farmer’s market after my 7.30am AA stag meeting. He was forlornly caged with a collection of yappy dogs and puppies, all up for adoption. He wanted to bite me the moment I met him and I could tell by the look in his eye that he trusted no one. He was my kind of dog. I was warned not to take him, he had been adopted twice before and ended up being returned to the shelter. I took him anyway and we battled each other for the next two weeks until he realized he had run out of options. He put up quite a fight. He ran away and hid under the house for three days, he pooed on the carpet, he peed over everything. He stared at me growling for hours then without warning, when he felt like it he would jump up beside me, his whole body pressed against mine, quivering with anticipation… but he still wouldn’t let me touch him.
The Little Dog is 12 years old. Perhaps he isn’t Jack Russell old (they can live until they are 19) but he’s maybe older than I was told when I got him. He has travelled all over the world. Travelled to London with Jake on that ill feted trip, driven the French Riviera. He has run off leash in Battersea Park, Central Park and the Jardins des Tuileries. I was not the best or most responsible owner, I let him off whenever I could, wherever I could. He has wandered in awe around the redwoods in Northern California, he has swum in the sea in Provincetown and the Mattole River. He rolled around snowy Whitstable beaches. He chased coyote with The Big Dog in Malibu, he dug holes in the sand on their private Malibu beaches and slumped into them… he enjoyed the love, lifestyle and freedom most dogs could only dream about.
There were times he paid for his independence: he was bitten by a clever coyote late one night as he was peeing in Malibu. That night I broke my ankle trying to defend him and Robby had to call the vet and the hospital and generally do what he did best. There was the time I left him with Jennifer and he went exploring. The Little Dog limped home with a paw as big as my fist because a rattle snake bit him. I rushed back to the Malibu vet from Long Beach in my F150 and there he was in his cage looking very sorry for himself. But after everything… he survived another day.
As I sat in the LA county jail this Little Dog’s safety was the only thing I really worried or cared about. Jason looked after him as I languished down town and given the opportunity I whistled down the phone so The Little Dog might hear I was not dead or gone or had deliberately abandoned him. When I returned after 3 months he looked at me askance. I could see him thinking, ‘I moved on from you. I thought you were dead’.
Last week The Little Dog began to show all the signs of facial nerveparesis. FNP is a dysfunction of the seventh cranial nerve, the facial nerve. This condition is evidenced by paralysis or weakness of the muscles of the ears, eyelids, lips, and nostrils. The cause of this disease is impairment of the facial nerve, or of the place where the nerves come together, and it affects the electrical impulses of the nerves involved. Sometimes the ophthalmic system is affected as well, interfering with the function of the tear glands. Most often these symptoms are evidence of brain cancer.
His droopy face, like he had a stroke, his wobbling gait. It was very distressing. I spoke to every American vet I knew had treated him and they prepared me for the worst. The long weekend in France meant I couldn’t get to a vet until last Tuesday which turned into Wednesday. Each day his symptoms got worse. He sneezed and fell over. He cocked his leg and fell over. He drools and his left eye looks dead. He was lethargic and miserable.
Finally, I took him to the veterinary hospital near Annecy and a wonderful vet called Dr. Gay. She scanned his brian and found no cancer. No infection. Nothing. They suggested a head trauma he sustained in Toronto at the nail clippers might be the reason for his condition. Or… a violent pull on the leash. They told me it would take three months or so for him to get better, or maybe he would never look like he used to. They told me to massage his face, irrigate his eye, and clean food remnants from his gums.
My friend Donna very kindly took care of the vet bills. It’s amazing just how kind people can be when there is a sick animal who needs immediate assistance.
The Little Dog no longer jumps up onto the bed and waits to be lifted, he is uncharacteristically fearful, he defers to Dude acknowledging his frailty. The change in his personality is most disturbing. I didn’t mind his change of physical circumstance but I really miss his exuberance, his tenacity… I miss my little dog. Even though he lays peacefully beside me.
2.
Homeland Security visiting my house in Tivoli was the final straw. They demanded my papers. They didn’t have a warrant so I didn’t let them in. I knew when they returned they would have what they needed to take me away. It was time to leave the USA. I had months ago transferred my property into a LLC, I signed a power of attorney. I packed a bag, I organized the dogs with their appropriate travelling papers and I called my sister in Toronto. Many rallied, they knew it was a dire situation. I had lived on the outside of American society for a long time and the pressure was getting to me.
We heard they were picking up illegals on the subway. They were racially profiling. They were demanding papers. I didn’t know if it was fake news or not. I didn’t want to find out. I took an Uber.
The Trump presidency unleashed a wave of domestic fear and terror. Those who feel it most keenly: Americans who voted Clinton, black Americans and specifically aliens living in the USA illegally. However, it needs stating: Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, are used to unleashing terror on others all over the globe, naively unaware they were just as vulnerable at home. How many military coups has the U.S. directly aided… in direct contravention to U.S. law, if not orchestrated? Under freedom-loving Obama, there were at least three — in Honduras, Egypt and The Maldives, all against elected governments.
The media screams impeach, the Democrats run from pillar to post like a plague of mice looking for safety. One day FBI Comey is their enemy and the very next day… their best friend. The most absurd argument, the most convoluted Democratic explanation for Hillary’s spectacular loss? Hillary won the popular vote but the Russians lost her the election. At no time do the these self-righteous Democrats ever take time to understand their part in this devastating turn of events. Trump is the most american of americans, he is greedy, vindictive and narcissistic, he is the very essence of almost every american… perfectly distilled, taking his rightful place as their president. And why will there be no impeachment? Because that would require congress be interested in the rule of law.
As President Trump becomes more isolated and embattled, so he will become more extreme. His friends will be the worst of them, those already isolated by public opinion and the liberal elite. No one wants to work with this president, his staff and sphere of influence shrinks daily. He is often described as a south american despot. Yet, if he were deposed, impeached or crudely removed from office there will be unimaginable violence unleashed upon the USA, a civil war one hundred years in the brewing. The liberal elite think if this happens their safety will be assured, but those to whome they entrust their safety are the very men and women who put Trump in power and watch with continuing glee as he strangles the establishment.
From the foothills of the French alps I look back at my time in the USA asking myself: why did I stay so long? Holding onto a dream that things could be different… if only I held on a little tighter.
I knew if I left the USA I would be banned for a decade. The U visa I had been promised when I sued LA County had not materialized. Dark forces needed to be addressed. I know how Americans exploit the weak. An ‘opportunity’ in the USA is merely code for a vulnerability. As millions became vulnerable after the 2008 crash so the rich luxuriated in taking whatever they wanted at bargain basement prices.
Unwilling to be subject to removal proceedings and the prospect of rotting in a private jail reserved for illegals I began my retreat. I stayed for a week on a beautiful farm overlooking the Catskills. Well equipped, comfortable but excruciatingly lonely. I visited my Tivoli house a few times but only to pack a bag and oversee a renovation I knew I would never enjoy.
People said, your opinions on that blog will get you into trouble.
As I left the USA I felt a huge weight lift off of me. Anyone who escaped tyranny and oppression will relate to this. Americans don’t care who leaves the country, they only care who comes in. The Niagara Falls border has a concrete conduit along which one leaves. As we exited that fascist gutter I began to quake. I could feel freedom opening up before me. An unexplained joy… a joy I hadn’t felt even as I left the LA County Jail.
I came to understand the day I left LA County I merely exchanged one jail… for another.
I’ll write more these coming days about my flight, the day the police raided my house and the long-term implications.
3.
3 weeks ago Mary and I walked the dogs through the ancient royal hunting grounds that wraps around Paris, near Sevres. The view over the city: just as I wanted it to be. The Little Dog was curious and nimble, Dude’s back legs gave him problems but he keeps up valiantly. Mary knows every house in Sevres, the history and occupant of each. At the end of her street there is a huge verdigris statue of Leon Gambetta. He died here. He had one eye, like my father.
My father. My father was the focus of so much last week and the week before that.
I arrived in Paris early Sunday morning from Toronto where I had been staying with my sister, Natalie. We met for the first time last week. How many different feelings one has when one meets ones long-lost siblings. I stayed at her house for 10 days. She was kind and helpful. I met her daughters and fell in love with my niece Kathleen, Natalie’s eldest who has a marvelous boyfriend with a superb art collection.
When we were on our own in my sister’s car we talked a lot about my father. Her relationship with him. How disappointing, violent and cruel he was. Like his other wives, Natalie’s mother ran away from her abusive husband. She secretly had passports made, she found money for flights to Canada and when she landed changed her identity and the identity of her children. She abandoned a relationship with her own parents to save her kids from being abused by my father. As teenagers she finally told them the truth about our dad. Despite protests and dire warnings both Natalie and her brother Mickey wanted to meet him.
They didn’t have to wait long, our cousin Keyvan always searching for family members chanced upon Mickey who had reverted to his birth name of Khazaei.
When Natalie and Mickey contacted my father he was overjoyed, Natalie had always been his favorite he said. Natalie and Mickey travelled to Europe to meet him. Our father pretty much ignored Mickey and overwhelmed Natalie with gifts. When they were on their own he asked Natalie to choose between her mother and him. He offered her a luxurious life, endless travel and shopping… on the condition she never saw her mother again.
Natalie’s mother had bravely escaped the prison my father called a marriage. Of course, Natalie said no… she wouldn’t make any such choice. This infuriated my father. They were staying in a hotel in the South of France. He became violently rageful and smashed every piece of furniture in his hotel room. He had the mother of all tantrums because his daughter said no. Natalie told him she was leaving and never saw him again. She confirmed what I had heard from others but it was still very difficult to hear. Why is it so difficult? Because I feel as if he is in me. The dark soul. The complication. The anger.
As my father lay dying he wanted to punish his children for not dying. Thankfully he was too weak to beat them. Days from his death of pancreatic cancer my sister Rebecca refused to do his bidding, as she left the hospital room he tried to throw something at her but was too weak, she looked into his pathetic face and smiled. He could no longer punish her when she dissented.
Enough. It was hard to look at my sister eye to eye because of him. I felt embarrassed by him. Like I was him. She is a strong and beautiful woman. She had a wide smile and long black hair. When we talked about him (our father) it was easy to ask a million questions but I often didn’t want to hear or acknowledge the answers.
My father’s story is part myth and part psychological horror. Kuros Khazaei existed in a netherworld of violent gangsters and naive girls. He opened clubs, coffee bars and shopping malls. He sold fake antiques to Saudi princes… he wore beautiful clothes and drove expensive cars. If he hadn’t been so utterly vile his story would be worth repeating. If he hadn’t been Persian he would be as famous as the Kray twins. At the end he could not lift his gold lighter to throw at his youngest daughter in a final act of violence against the children he claimed to love.
Dear gay app user, unless Bruce Weber or Robert Mapplethorpe took your dick or ass pic… please don’t send unsolicited x rated pics to me.
It’s annoying enough having to lie about my age or endure a world of gays judge my acceptability based on the one pic I have that conceals my identity, gives me a masculine edge, attracts the right kind of guy and presents a youthful visage.
I live mostly upstate, I’ve met lovely people here using apps. I spent three delicious days last week luxuriating in the arms of some traveling gay man. The time limitation only adding to the sexual delight. We packed a ten year relationship into three days. Perfect.
I am constantly reminded that any app where gay men meet should only be considered for sex. Fuck. I’m exhausted by the sexual unmanageability of others. Another flaccid, blurry, cut or uncut pic of yet another penis. The skanky ass pic… misguidedly sent with the intention to allure.
2.
Last year I wrote:
Reading how my informed, affluent friends get the average Trump supporter so wrong. Fascist? Maybe. Hitler didn’t steal Germany on the promise of killing Jews, he promised a fairer society. He inspired the downtrodden. He wanted to make Germany great again, he wanted to improve the self esteem of the German people. It’s easy to make these bland comparisons. Trump and Hitler. But I ask you, what’s YOUR part in this? We are all responsible for creating the kind of voter who supports trump. Were you ever interested in equal pay, for the end of illegal wars or the demise of the American Dream? As long as you could indulge in the worst excesses of capitalism. Your idea of equality is not shared by those millions of people left behind after the banking crisis. You didn’t give a damn about those whose homes Obama could have saved but didn’t. You couldn’t care less about a living wage for the most hard working among us. Your desire for Clinton’s more of the same… has a shelf life. It is coming to an end. Chaos is nigh.
Like many people I think a lot about Trump, how right I was about his rise to power and how I foresee a bloody rebellion in our future. At present his followers seem quite demure but given the opportunity, the motivation or goaded by Fox News this can change in a second.
However much I may loathe Trump I am continually reminded and want to remind you: Donald Trump is uniquely American. He comes as no surprise to the rest of the world. For many he merely confirms what the rest of the world already knows about the USA: that profit, ignorance and selfishness… the essence of zombie capitalism are valued beyond humanity.
When Americans complain about their elections being rigged they forget just how often they stayed silent as they rigged the elections of other sovereign nations or simply overthrew hostile governments. When Americans complain about trump they forget that most of the world has been treated as trump treats the USA. We got used to it, so will you.
I put the shelves on the wrong wall. It’s going to bother me until I move them. My friend, who had them made for his house upstate, practically gave them to me. I have two sets, made of gun-metal. One is loaded with an absurd number of dishes/bowls/glasses the other, I’ve filled with books. I haven’t had the books out of boxes since they were brought from Malibu. They look very fine.
Instead of moving the shelves, I re-balanced the room. It looks huge.
I’m sitting in Murray’s, our local coffee shop… there are a couple of buff gays sitting beside me, they are wearing tight t-shirts, their eye brows plucked, their lips plumped. They are describing a straight friend of theirs who is getting married. They are coming to terms with his fiancée. They don’t approve of her. Without a hint of irony one of them damns her,
“She’s a little too attached to her appearance.”
As his friend nods in agreement, I nearly choke on my ‘Eggs Your Way’.
MEANWHILE. The trump clown car is circling the reservation. He’s tooting his horn, his over sized, yellow daisy flopping around in the cold night air. His make up is perfect, his grin supreme, his flintstone legs going ten to the dozen. Like Victorian ladies the Dems are outraged by everything he does, they are addicted to indignation. Every so often they get a case of the vapours and faint quite away. Critique, however refined, of any democrat cheerleader’s outrage condemns the critic to accusations of treason. To disagree means that you too… are a stupid trump supporter. Celebrities, unsurprisingly, are particularly egregious anti trump twitterers. Depending, of course, on the blind devotion of their fans. Occasionally I waste an hour or so battling Democratic celebrities, Don Cheadle is perhaps the worst at assuming anyone who disagrees with him is a Trump supporter and marshalls his fans accordingly.
Yesterday Don is all up in his grill about Donald and the Russians. His fans are equally furious, echoing back Don’s inchoate decrees. The Russians.
Hey! Don! Get this: nobody cares about Russia more than you do. Whipping yourself into a frenzy. This is what you did during the election. Got yourself into a tizzy and then you thought Trump wouldn’t get elected and then he did, and now you think he’s going to be impeached because you are ‘fighting every day’. Well… I’ve got some very bad news for you. Donald Trump is not going to be impeached… because nobody gives a shit about Russia and everybody’s trained to hate Isis now. I don’t even get the Russian thing. So? Maybe somebody from the Trump team were talking to the ambassador. Isn’t that what politicians are meant to do?
Then Obama gets involved. Fuck off Barrack. Obama should butt out of this. He should just vanish before we remember how ineffective he was… unless he was on Jimmy Kimmel making everybody laugh whilst he was secretly bombing Yemen with drones killing innocent children. Let’s remember… AGAIN, Obama opted not to help the working poor after the financial crash by letting the banks throw defaulters out of their homes. He sided with the banks against the people. But hey ho… he’s so funny and he stayed married to Michelle. Blah blah blah.
Surprise surprise: today’s polls show Dems’ hyper-focus on Russia has corresponded with a decline in their favorability ratings. Tra la la la la… fetch the smelling salts.
Finally, a few weeks ago I started chatting with some guy on Grindr. Why? Are you asking me why? I ask myself that too. The guy was handsome, a bit short… and I quickly identified him as one of the suburban ‘pink belt’ gays I’ve tried very hard to tolerate. Listen, you may not believe me but I tried very hard tolerating them. God help me I tried. Sitting with these man/children at dinner, drinking too much, eager to climb into their leather drag (unconvincingly) then out of it again and into which ever hot tub or pool they can locate within the locale. On the whole (other than one other tall Brit) these upstate gay men are very short, very white and very put together. They discuss their schedules, they discuss their summer plans or next autumn or where they will all ski next winter. They travel in packs. They echo whatever anti trump chat will get them the most likes in a continual game of ‘like me’.
So… I chat with this guy who sends me pictures (as we do) of his cock and ass… butt naked. He must be desperate because I ain’t no catch. Of course, it was short-lived… like every transitory gay experience. Packing a whole life into a couple of hours and a few text messages. Unless happily ‘married’ or ‘partnered’ these men are desperate to get hitched. He’s single for a reason, he lies about his height. Not that being married MEANS anything in a traditional sence to these gay men… other than a merger and acquisition. We meet, he scarcely reaches my hip. I thought he was sitting down. He’s a snooty suburban, Hillary loving gay. When the inevitable falling out happens he starts threatening me with my friendship with a mutual friend. He threatens to show my friend our text exchange. He tells me he is out to make sure we never see each other again. He tells me his pink belt friends disapprove of our friendship. He knows our friend is special to me, and he suggests membership to THAT club is worth a lot of pink gold. Let’s face it, he and his friends want continued access to the big house, the 1% lifestyle and the fabulous toys. They want a spare bed when they airbnb their homes… they want fancy vacations. He assumes I want the same and he’s in no mood to share what’s his.
We block each other. We move on, My friend doesn’t mention it but I know the dwarf has done the dirty. So, what happened to the dwarf? He’s doing what they all do… chasing his gay tail. He’s probably squealing right now about the Russians… at some drunken brunch.
Finally, had a long and helpful chat with a DP genius who helped me tremendously sort out the big idea behind my new film and how we shoot it. Being a film maker is exhausting. Homemaking… not so much.
Jeremy Zimmer reprises his role as Beverly Hills community activist. Yesterday afternoon Zimmer hosted a demonstration, an invite only demonstration (demonstrators were required to RSVP) in Beverly Hills. Recruiting a host of Hollywood stars, their star makers and heavy hitting Californian politicians to speak for ‘our creative community’. For his detractors, Jeremy flexed his Hollywood muscle. At the demonstration Jeremy Zimmer ostentatiously spoke out against President Trump and his immigration crack down.
This isn’t the first time Jeremy has thrown himself into the socially active stew. Jeremy and UTA have a highly publicised yearly event where his staff are required to donate a day or so to help others in… the ‘community’. Of course, a less fortunate community than the arts community to which Jeremy often refers. Jeremy Zimmer has his photograph taken with black faces in the other… ‘community’. Photographs that consequently appear in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter.
Jeremy held yesterdays demonstration in lieu of the UTA annual Oscar party. Was scrapping the UTA Oscar party a HUGE sacrifice for Zimmer? Um… no.
United Talent Agency is scrapping its annual Oscar party in favor of hosting a rally at its L.A. office and donating to the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been on the frontlines of fighting the President’s executive order targeting travel from Muslim-majority countries.
They made a donation of $250,000 to the ACLU, Peter Eliasberg must be THRILLED. Think about this. Zimmer would usually think nothing of spending $250,000 on an Oscar party for his billion dollar clients. That’s just the tip of the UTA hospitality expenditure iceberg. Next time you see Jeremy’s grinning face in the Hollywood Reporter holding a basket ball next to a photo-op black boy ask yourself who is really benefiting from this public donation.
“This is a moment that demands our generosity, awareness and restlessness,” wrote UTA CEO Jeremy Zimmer to staff. “Our world is a better place for the free exchange of artists, ideas and creative expression. If our nation ceases to be the place where artists the world over can come to express themselves freely, then we cease, in my opinion, to be America.”
As I’ve written before I sat most mornings with Jeremy for the best part of a decade at AA meetings all over Los Angeles. At those AA meetings I saw the true face of Jeremy Zimmer. The last time I sat with him at AA… the Palisades Bank 7am meeting, he told me never to come back to AA. I wasn’t the only one. I saw him bully many men of whom he didn’t approve… out of AA meetings. He treats AA like his own personal cult. Understand how terrible that is… those men he made to feel unwelcome (less resilient than me) had no chances left to them. At AA I heard Jeremy share misogynistic epithets and when things soured between us he was openly homophobic, casually racist. When non famous black men came to our meeting out of rehab… from west end meetings, Jeremy did not sound like the man we saw yesterday embracing the rhetoric of inclusivity. He would talk damningly about his wife and fat shame his daughter, his colleagues, his fellow agents. When Lisa Hallerman left UTA he described her as a cancer… then wished she would die of cancer.
Zimmer joined agents, execs, assistants and other staffers from the Beverly Hills office to spend three hours at Heart of Los Angeles, an organization that provides programs in academics, arts and athletics to underserved youth. UTA has partnered with them in the past for holiday campaigns, employee volunteering and other charitable initiatives.
For all of Jeremy’s community out reach… how many black agents are there at UTA? How many black execs are there at UTA? How diverse is UTA? Do his agents get diversity training or is sending them into the ‘community’ enough?
“As the Oscars draw the world’s attention to our country and our community, we must raise our voices loud and clear: The politics of fear and division do not reflect who we are as a nation, and united we can do better,” said Jeremy Zimmer, CEO of United Talent Agency.
A friend of mine, crewing a new feature asked UTA’s below the line for an inclusive (woman and poc) list for hiring consideration. The assistant sneered, “Good luck with that.”
It’s ironic to those who know him that he has taken against Trump so badly. For those who know both of them… they are almost identical. Jeremy is thin-skinned and vindictive, a spiteful bully riven by alcoholic resentment. Trump is a dry drunk. Jeremy is like Trump and vice versa. As for Jeremy’s nascent activism? As thrilled as the ACLU must be, why didn’t Zimmer step up to the plate sooner? Why wasn’t he demonstrating and making dramatic flourishes whist Obama was busily deporting millions? Why didn’t he confront Obama about his silencing of truth tellers? Why didn’t he say anything about for profit prisons or the lamentable ACA?
At his heart Jeremy can’t stand that somebody like Trump has gotten to be president, someone so incredibly similar to Jeremy Zimmer.
Milo Yiannopoulos is a loathsome proto fascist. A disruptor, a camp agitator. To the gays, he is our familiar. We all know men like Milo. When gay men are together… in private, competing for attention, without the prying female gaze, without the heterosexual male laughing like a hyena at things he can only guess are funny, men like Milo reveal themselves.
Milo is the club bitch, the bar cunt, the gym queen… who, without introduction or provocation will dismember you with a single word. He will not hesitate to identify and mercilessly herald to anyone who will listen your most tender vulnerability what ever it may be. He is the gay guy who unrelentingly critiques your clothes, your teeth, your abs… and worst of all? He is every gay man I know. He is inexorably cruel. Straight people think caustic homosexuals, diluted for mass consumption, are funny and unique.
Successful gay male entertainers like Dan Savage, Graham Norton and Alan Carr delight heterosexuals with their cutting jibes, a crippling aside masked with a cheeky grin… and the genesis of their humor? Self-defense. Ironically, these skills are honed to protect ourselves from each other, from other gays, the queens, from men like Milo. From you and me.
Do you remember the first queen you ever met? How exotic and frightening they were? Sitting at the bar. How they crossed their legs, sipped their cocktail, do you remember how they looked at you?
Milo, Hamish Bowles and I are all from the same cathedral city (and there about) of Canterbury in Kent, England. Until Milo pitched his tent in the USA I never expected a gay man like him to get any traction. I mean, have you heard him? How could anyone take him seriously? He’s a fool… but his campy insurrection and anti politically correct message were enthusiastically embraced by the Alt Right. Now, like some swishy Pines faggot bowling down Fire Island Boulevard high on meth, talking loudly to himself… he has leapt from the gay swamp into our consciousness.
Yesterday, however, an old radio interview surfaced in which Milo was accused, by his liberal detractors, of condoning child rape. Listening to the interview it became obvious to me that he was describing, albeit in his usual flamboyant, incendiary way, a very common experience for many gay teens. Overwhelmed with hormones and hornyness, unable to have sexual contact with our peers… he confessed as a boy he had consensual sex with men.
Milo perfectly described my experience as a gay teen and I’m sure we share this formative experience with many thousands of other gay men. I was sexually voracious, just like most teen boys but without any kind of outlet. Comforting myself with a cocktail of shame and confusion. Remember, when I was born… homosexuality was illegal. Like millions of others I was… born a criminal. I came out at 13. Making criminal sex choices as a young boy seemed perfectly understandable. What choice did I have? Only recently have people like me been pardoned by our government for being gay, and those who suffered in prison their records expunged.
Since Milo’s implosion the gay liberal media have kept extraordinarily quiet. It was easy to condemn Milo for hating on the trans, not so easy to shame him for his first time. What will happen if they tell their story of the older man who showed them the way? They might end up like Milo.
On Facebook, defending my own experience as a gay teen fucking men in their 30’s I was attacked by a straight women radio commentator and several straight men who refused to acknowledge that my sexperience is vastly difference from theirs. They insisted I had been preyed upon by pedophiles. They felt ‘sad’ that I didn’t understand I was a ‘victim’. They implied that unless I condemned the men I had sex with I colluded with all pedophiles. They were looking for an angle to bring me down. One of them called me a ‘narcissistic fag’. “If you are not a victim then you are a perpetrator,” they said. When I defended myself they told me how angry I was and how I should get help. Yeah, I thought… I’ve been seeking help for years to get over the trauma of being mercilessly bullied by straight people and their stringent anti gay laws. Who wouldn’t be angry if every time they held their lover’s hand in the street they risked a fatal blow?
I fought with ‘film maker’ Alexandra Billington and some dick called Ed Jones. I said:
You would like to conflate the experience of heterosexuals with homosexuals but you are wrong and the moment you understand you are dead wrong you can get off your high horse and apologize to the thousands of gay people you’ve just insulted.
As I said, me seeking out and fucking a 30-year-old when I was 13 because I was sexually isolated is not the same as a 30-year-old man grooming and fucking a 13-year-old girl. As much as you want it to be.
I’ll tell you the help I need. I need men like you to stop telling me what my experience of being gay is like. If I need help with my anger then it’s because people like you have tortured me all my life with your heteronormativity.
Alexandra Billington I suppose only characters in movies are rageful? Don’t you understand… you’re surrounded by people who are full of rage which is why we have Brexit and Trump. I don’t understand why you are not full of rage? You should be on the streets fighting austerity but you’re at home criticizing other people’s sexual history on Facebook. I can’t imagine how dull your films must be.
Hasan Piker from The Young Turks seemed overjoyed that Milo had lost his book contract, his speaking engagements and his credibility. Yet Milo lost everything for the least incendiary of any of his bitchy comments. Of all the dumb things Milo has said, of all the cruel and meaningless attacks on trans, women and people of color… he loses his book deal describing an experience he possibly shares with millions of other gay men.
