It’s 4am and I can’t sleep. My head is full up with doubt and death, my heart remains broken. I don’t think it will ever be fixed. It was herculean, the task of keeping what I thought was worth fighting for.
How long does convalescence take?
There are solutions to deal with this…like prayer…but it’s not always easy to get the path cleared sufficiently.
Yep, after a week of gardening, path clearing…well…the path in my head that leads to clarity and peace of mind is still cluttered.
There’s a great deal to sort out before I leave for France this December. I am trying to organise a house swap. Somewhere for paradise. I want to be in Paris.
I had dinner with Toby on Saturday night and he asked if I had any desire to go to places I hadn’t already been and the answer is no. I don’t want to visit anywhere I don’t already know.
Who isn’t shocked by the angry white man who murdered all those people in Norway? I am not often shocked. Angry white men who can’t bear the way the world is changing. Turning on his own to make a point. What’s the point?
I have a painful bite on the back of my head. Mosquito I hope. Itchy.
The A List airs today. Why did I get involved? I know why. Part of my Jake madness. Making so many bad choices. Then I saw Midnight in Paris, it’s a sweet film. Charming. Going to Paris with a man you think you love only to find out you can’t stand each other.
I wish him well.
I began to have the same feelings for somebody else recently. Banished them. I will not go through anything remotely like the misery of the past year. I can’t.
Then I thought about the film Charlie and I started writing. My idea, he developed it. Neither of us had the stamina to complete it.
It was a beautiful idea.
I am going to write the research this week. Let you know what we saw, who we met.
Gary once introduced me to Mark Ruffalo. Mark wouldn’t remember me, Gary would.
Gary was one of the forward thinking guys who set up the ground breaking film production company InDigEnt. He was a really, really sweet man. No news as to how he died but I think, from what I can remember, he may have had a serious illness that he kept quiet about.
He was very discreet.
Crikey, so many deaths! I just diligently report them. It’s rewarding to find something nice to say about the recently departed like poor Wally in Whitstable.
In Jean’s case, it was quite hard. We hadn’t spoken for ages because we had a money issue that neither of us wanted to resolve. He was a terrible drain on his friends and family. Let’s put it this way: it was very hard for Jean to enjoy his gifted life without endlessly complaining or taking drugs.
People die. I just put on my bombazine shift and write the bleeding obituary.
Perhaps I should try writing my own?
I would entitle it: WEAK TEA or LOUD AND DIM or NOTHING REMARKABLE.
To be run in the Whitstable Times in the event of my death:
Surly Duncan Roy (65) found dead in his Swalecliffebed sitting room. Former Lord of The Lies refused medication for obvious mental illness and made unremarkable films. Campaigned for the Red Spider Cafe. He will not be missed.
I have not written a last will and testament so the fuckers can squabble over what is left. I may leave it all to that little girl or to a bat charity or Jake’s ex-girl friend. That would be funny.
Watched Oscars. Was James Franco stoned? No! He’s been sober for YEARS. He just looked a bit unprepared. I would have preferred if Social Network had won best film. It deserved to. The Kings Speech is constipated TV tosh. Tom Hooper is a director of no importance. Why does Colin Firth KEEP telling the world how important Tom Ford is to him and how he wouldn’t be receiving these awards without having met him? I thought that Firth had a rather long and distinguished career before meeting Ford? Are they or have they been…fucking?
It occurred to me why Portman trumped Benning…Portman has more mileage in her and will generate more cash for CAA. Poor Annette Bening so obviously deserved that Best Actress Academy Award but she’s an old mare and who writes great roles for old mares that Meryl Streep isn’t getting first refusal?
My neighbour, Jean-Maxime Perramon was killed on the 101 yesterday. He got out of his Ferrari at the edge of the freeway and was hit by a Lexus.
According to the CHP report two other vehicles were involved in the accident which happened at approximately 12:25 p.m February 26th 2011.
A silver Chevy van traveling north on the 101, five miles north of Reyes Adobe Road, initiated a lane change. A silver Lexus ES350 swerved to avoid it but collided with the rear of the van.
The Lexus driver lost control of the car and sideswiped Perramon’s Ferrari parked on the right shoulder.
Jean had stepped out of his vehicle because, according to the report, he thought he had hit a piece of metal. As he did so, he was instantly struck by the Lexus.
He was taken to the hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
The driver of the Chevy has been identified by the CHP as James Pershing Flynn, 67, of Thousand Oaks, and the driver of the Lexus as Antonio Castillo, 37, of Montebello.
“Tonya Nicole Toma, 37, of Agoura Hills, was present in Perramon’s Ferrari at the time of the accident.”
Jean introduced me to Malibu. Showed me around. I discovered the house I would end up buying with Jean. We were once very good friends…for many months inseparable. Running up and down that bloody Malibu mountain in his Ferrari, attending AA meetings all over LA.
An unwitting child prodigy, Jean began his career earning money drawing chalk pictures on the streets of Paris. His creative talents did not go unnoticed. After completing art college he was hired as an art director by the important French advertising agency Oscar Mors et Varout. This would lead to his exclusively overseeing the world-wide advertising account for L’Oreal.
He moved to the USA where he became a production designer for the Richard Williams Animation Studio, becoming one of LA’s premier digital directors and designers working with artists and animators to create eyecatching, entertaining projects for clients such as Kellogg’s Froot Loops campaign.
Incredibly successful but mortally wounded by rarely discussed childhood events.
Jean lived with his wife and elderly mother on two lots on Rambla Pacifico. His Mother doesn’t speak perfect English so I would stop the truck and natter with her in French whenever I saw her.
Jean’s Mother remains a charming local character who walks the neighbourhood waving at passing cars. Jean was forever shouting at her.
I called his wife this morning. She sounded understandably exhausted.
Forever remodeling his home. I wonder if he ever finished it? Apparently he did, the house stands as a testament to his creativity and endurance.
His struggle to overcome active addiction was legendary to anyone who knew him. I hope that he died sober.
He was one of the most tormented men I knew.
He will be at peace now.
Very Sad.
P.S. A few months later his frail mother died in her sleep.
You know how much I love Whitstable? That would be one of my ‘weak tea‘ successes: my relationship with Whitstable.
I love it there. I know everyone. We really know each other. For good and for bad.
Well, today I received some very, very sad news. My Mother‘s friend Carol who owns the Tudor Tea Rooms on Harbour Street…well..and this is terrible…her son Tony died.
Known affectionately as Wally to everyone who knew him, he was only 40 years old, tall, gentle, ran his mother’s business with aplomb.
When you order a pot of tea at The Tudor Tea Rooms you get a pot of tea made with loose tea and a strainer. Quality.
We used to say that they served school dinners at the Tudor but we loved going in there. Fire burning in the hearth all winter. Closed on a Wednesday. Real steak and kidney pudding with a thick suet crust.
Wally was killed during the day on the train tracks at the end of Glebe Way. Struck by the coast-bound 11.22am Victoria to Ramsgate train just before 1pm. I have no idea if he committed suicide or not. That’s what people are saying but I really don’t want to believe it.
He was such a nice man. Wally and his sister Sue had run that Tudor Tea Room since they were kids. Since we were all kids. Serving Steak and Kidney Pudding…opening the tea garden. He was the sort of bloke you’d see in Prezzo Pizza Place with his young family.
As every Whitstable pub and every other shop front became yet another super chic gastro pub or seasonal/organic eaterie…the Tudor kept the same decor, the same menu, serving the same Whitstable us who didn’t want the bother of seared scallops or poached samphire.
My Mother and I saw Wally just a few weeks ago when I was home for Christmas. He served us a good old-fashioned English roast. My mother mocked me for drinking tea with my lunch…like ‘some one from a council house‘ she said.
He stood at the till and asked after my life in LA. I felt embarrassed to tell him what my life was like in California. What he didn’t know…what he could never have known…was what I was thinking that cold December day a week before Christmas: that I would have quite easily traded my life in Malibu for a chance at running the Tudor Tea Rooms.
From where I was standing…his life looked perfect.
When I was a kid we would sit in the Tudor Tea Rooms and spy on Peter Cushing eating his poached eggs.
Poached eggs on toast. Every day.
My mother accidentally pushed Peter Cushing off his bike one day when she was getting off the bus from Canterbury.
Anyway, Wally was killed on the railway lines. The third person killed in the same spot in less than two months. What’s happening? What a waste of a good life, a sweet family man. I feel for his wife and children, his sister Sue and his lovely mum Carol.
If you get the chance listen to this Jellybotty’s track, Peter Cushing Lives in Whitstable.
Annoyingly I’ve not been able to write about most or any of it and will not be able to in the foreseeable future.
As I have said before, as life gets really interesting the blog becomes less relevant. Real life interrupts blog life and for that I am very grateful.
Eventually, when I am allowed, I will explode all over the blog and tell all but for the time being I am keeping my BIG MOUTH SHUT.
I am having to be covert.
Presently staying with friends whose main morning preoccupation is to read really bad news out loud off of the internet. The corruption, the greed and the misery we create around the globe gleefully read out loud to their increasingly cynical children.
Frankly, there is no reason for a young child to have the worst possible news read out to them first thing in the morning as they prepare for school. Scares them. Scared me when I was a kid. All that bad news about nuclear weapons. I had a recurring nightmare about the atom bomb exploding. On my own walking home from junior school up Windmill Road, Whitstable just in sight of my family home…when the atom bomb detonates. A blinding light then a fierce, hot wind. All I could think about was that I had to get home. Of course, there was no home to get back to.
Right now my friend is telling her 8-year-old, “Brain damage is linked to cell phone use…”
Like a fairy story.
They had a lunch here on Sunday for two German friends. A well-known actress and her film industry husband. Within two minutes of arriving he announced the death of Perry Moore a man I knew in passing from New York. Perry produced the Narnia films. Years ago Toby Mott, Noreena Hertz and I had lunch with Perry and Tatum O’Neal at Freeman’s on Rivington when it was hot to have lunch there. Perry and Tatum were both very drunk and weirdly abrasive. Terry Richardson joined us for coffee.
Toby Mott, Noreena Hertz and? NYC
I was not shocked to hear about Perry’s death as it was somehow gay inevitable. His father sadly telling the press that his son was on fine form the day before. Well, nobody ever expects the death of a healthy young man, no father ever expects to bury his son.
Unless, of course, their son leads a double life. We live, as gay men, lives away from our loved ones. Compartmentalized, fine one day..dead the next, slumped in the bathroom…oxycotin overdose. It is too familiar to me. So sad.
It would not surprise me if Jake ended up like Perry.
Anyway the German made some flip remark about Perry dying and gay people in general. He didn’t realize that I was gay. He didn’t realize that I was half Iranian so later made equally racist, inappropriate remarks about Iranian films winning the Berlin Film Festival.
Sometimes you just have to take the bullet so…I challenged him. Within minutes he was threatening to punch my fag lights out. His wife apologized for his behaviour.
They left.
Scratch most white Germans and a jackbooted Nazi goose steps out of the wound.
Samia Saouma my Lebanese ex-friend, gallery owner who lives in Berlin and is arguably one of the chicest women in the world was once applying her lipstick in the back of a cab when her white driver told her that she was a rag-head whore who should prepare for her next trick out of his cab.
Nice.
Recently I took down a whole heap of posts from this blog. Blogs about him. Removed until they had no internet traction. Yesterday I reinstated them without his name attached. Self censorship is not a good thing. I also reinstated the Angry Reader blog that obviously came from ‘you know who’.
It amuses and disturbs me in equal measure that he would think that every achievement, everything of which I am proud he considers worthless. This coming from a man who has achieved NOTHING before he was thirty years old (17th May) when I, in comparison, achieved so much! Much more than anyone ever predicted.
By the time I was thirty years old I had written and directed plays, opened a restaurant, renovated houses, travelled the world. Christ! I did all that as well as being mentally ill, making enemies, etc. etc.
Achievement is not to be judged by others but rather owned by oneself.
I know that he gets drunk, stoned and lonely. I know that deep down he would prefer to resolve rather than reload. Time will tell. Time, as I have often quoted, is the greatest distance between two people.
I know that the we he suggests laugh at me has always laughed. They want me imprisoned or dead. They condemn me and they condemn my friends for being my friends.
He, on the other hand, may be surrounded by friends, family and lovers but at the end of the day he has to face himself, as we all do, in the mirror. I saw him wrestle with his conscience.
At that moment when I was most proud of him I should have just walked away.
As for the film? It takes shape before my very eyes. Working with CP in quite a different way than I have before. That’s all I can say. That’s all I want to say.
I still have no interest what so ever to meet, engage or have sex with any man.
Oscar party week. I am not involving myself until Saturday. Kick off festivities with Sharon…we will do the do…the merry dance. Still, if I am honest, I can’t really be bothered.
I want to make my own film now…not celebrate the achievements of others.
P.S. Tatum O’Neal wouldn’t remember me. She and Melanie Griffith once broke down together in an AA meeting. Crying about the relationships they had failed to have with their children. Meg Ryan looks like Melanie Griffith. They must have had work by the same surgeon. Meg Ryan wouldn’t remember me either.
Returning to LA I was recognized on the plane. I felt like saying that I was NOTHING like the man they thought they knew. I felt like telling him that as much as I would like to be the compassionate, helpful man he met on the TV I am not that guy.
I was almost rude.
Instead I smiled sweetly and let him believe in the man who had obviously helped him by sharing my story.
Why should I burst his bubble? I did not take his number. He so obviously wanted to be my friend. I can’t be your friend.
I tried that and now look.
I sat next to a girl who is going to be on a reality show that prems next week. I told her, WARNED her..that under no circumstance date ANYONE who knows her from TV. Avoid!
I told her my sorry story. She looked aghast.
I have been dreaming very vivid dreams.
I dreamt that I was at the back of a church watching Jake get married to a man. He was wearing a white suit. He looked sooo happy. In the dream..I was happy for him. Then I woke up. I wasn’t so happy.
I went to therapy this morning at 7am. It was very helpful. I listened intently to the men in that room and found solace.
There are things I need to do to make it all better. Help others rather than myself for instance. Concentrate on positive thoughts.
I bought a mouse trap.
Wish I hadn’t looked at that picture of Jake. He looked happy. He looked like he was having a blast. I am now merely the wreckage of his past. He plunders my life and just behaves like it’s party time. It galls me so.
Yet, have I treated others like that? I think I might have. That was coy. OF COURSE I HAVE.
Now, all I have to do is pack up remaining items and move out of LA. Then it’s the dog orientated trip home flying via Paris to London.
There I will have my operation and hope that it hasn’t spread.
You know that I like to tell you the truth here on these pages. Well, I want to share that I found being in NYC really miserable. Why? I was anxious that I might bump into him even though I had texted him telling him that I would be there and to avoid where I live and SHNYC.
Even so, I felt terrible and dreaded dread dreaded bumping into him.
I dread the small claims case in October too. I dread seeing him. I wish that these painful feelings would just go away. I wish he had never contacted me. Why did he fucking contact me?
Manhunt date number 3 was good fun.
A giant of a man turned up…it turned out that we had friends in common. We talked about Jake.
It’s funny that even though he had been through a similar experience with a man his immediate response was to chastise me for getting involved with someone who was BLATANTLY unready to be gotten involved with.
Yet, as I have found out..we ALL seem to make really bad choices in love. My straight men friends routinely describe the females they get involved with as insane. The women I know describe the men they get involved with as douche bags. People make mistakes in love.
It is very hard to control a yearning heart.
I am just so angry with myself that, a. I believed him. b. fell in love. c. took him home.
Why the hell didn’t he tell his friends that he was gay rather than me? Why? Somehow my TV confession spurred him on to confess..yet, as I pointed out to manhunt date number 3..I am NOT a TV character..I am a man. I am profoundly UNLIKE the way they edited me on TV.
This is ripping me apart. It is just so unfair that I let some crazy fan into my life who wanted me to be like I was on TV and I…fucking IDIOT..fell in love with him.
I was on Dan’s lap top today checking a friend’s Facebook page and there he was making some Camille Paglia comment. His new profile picture was weird. Mugs and fruit. His hair was all flat and he looked thin.
I know that sooner or later this mess will pass. That I will start to forget.
You may think me mad but really what you are reading is the real and daily trial of being an addict. That I can have all at the same time huge compassion for him and a consummate loathing.
There was a moment is Sanary sur Mer in France where he was sitting at the end of a jetty looking at the sunset. I slipped quietly away. He was thinking about her. He was sad.
Thankfully there is still one sacred place I didn’t take him. It remains mine. Unseen by crazy fan eyes.
I pray every day for the obsession to be lifted but I guess it will vanish in God’s time and not mine.
Therapy, collect cheque, Jennie Ketcham for breakfast.
Jennie and I walked the length of Abbott Kinney, found a new collar for the little dog and chatted about our various relationships. She, of course, has a relationship..I do not. She is in love and making a TV series and I am off to Paris with a friend. A friend, nevertheless, who makes me smile.
Last night we saw some cool live music on the roof of the Standard down town..that would be Ryan, Justin and I..then we ate dinner at Bottega Louie. I ate pork chops. Somebody sent us a Shirley Temple with delicious cherries floating around in it.
I have to be discreet about the location but Prince and Lionel Ritchie played impromptu performance on another roof in another part of town..it seems that Prince is always up for an unexpected gig, I have seen him perform at hotels and bars and in that huge house he rented with purple carpet everywhere.
The night we saw Prince and bumping into Barbra Streisand in the Pacific Design Center are perhaps my most startling close encounters with celebrity..oh, and befriending Roseanne in Starbucks.
From out of the woodwork crawl all sorts of characters from the past and this week an old friend called after he lost his job. It was all the more interesting because we had not had a cordial end to our friendship a year and a half ago but time heals and we said our brief apologies and got on with being friends again.
There is probably more to gain from knowing me than not knowing me.
Time is the greatest distance between two people.Tennessee Williams wrote that. It is time that will end up miraculously mending all the smashed Ming vases that I am surrounded with. Remember what I said about love being like a Ming vase?
Joan brought me a rather splendid Japanese tea-pot for my birthday that arrived in a huge box from Memphis. I felt like a five-year old again. Opening my birthday presents.
This day last year the darling big dog was killed. Ripped apart in front of me under that truck..she kept on trying to live, trying to stay alive for me as we lay together in the back of my truck..in the flat-bed. Jennie drove us to the animal hospital on Ventura Blvd and the nurse put her down with a lethal injection as I sobbed my little heart out.
The next day we collected her from the freezer and I cried all the way to Malibu, apologizing to her, reminding her of all the great time we had, crying and laughing until we buried her in a coyote proof hole in the garden she loved.
Sarah sang a beautiful song. The little dog said his goodbye.
This year has been all about death. The death of friends, the death of my dog and of course the death of love. Tomorrow I want it to be different but I cannot be sure. All I know is that I am trying to be the best man I can be, let go of the past..even the recent past, and forge ahead.
Is it possible to believe in God and still take drugs and drink? Is it possible to believe in God and sleep with hookers? Is any of this possible? Obviously it is.
Sebastian will be buried on Thursday, July 1st 2010. There’ll be a horse-drawn cortege from Meard Street to St James’s Piccadilly where the service will be held. Stephen Fry will be speaking, as are others. Stephen very kindly offered to say a few words on my behalf.
Rachel Campbell-Johnstone wrote to me yesterday inviting me to the funeral, she said, “We are mountaineers roped together heading for the summit of beauty.” She warned us that the funeral will be filmed.
Remember, I was 23 when I met Sebastian. That was 27 years ago. He was still a teenager working for Jimmy Boyle in Edinburgh. Our show, Pornography, a spectacle, invited by the Richard Demarco Gallery would play in Jimmy’s cold performance space where Sebastian and I met for the first time.
I would later work for the Demarco Gallery and meet Joseph Beuys, the greatest conceptual artist of our age. There was a fascinating dialogue between Beuys and Boyle..then styled one of the most dangerous men in the United Kingdom.
The dialogue was initiated by Richard Demarco whilst Jimmy Boyle was serving a sentence of life imprisonment in Barlinnie Prison for murder. Beuys went on hunger strike because of Jimmy Boyle’s removal from the Special Unit, Barlinnie to Edinburgh’s Saughton Prison where he was no longer able to continue making art.
Sebastian claimed in his book Dandy in the Underworld that he was sleeping with Jimmy and I have no reason to doubt him. I would have too if I had had my chance. There was something wildly attractive to me about ex cons and hard men and dangerous criminals. Remember I had been in prison the year before I met Sebastian and developed a nasty habit for sex with brutal straight men.
If anybody was going to fuck me he was going to be a man who deserved me. He was going to be a man who knew what he wanted and how to take it.
My cell mate Tommy Cowling, married with two children from Hoxton, East London was the most beautiful man who ever lived. When the lights went out in our cell he said, “I’m asleep now, you can do what you want to me.” For nine long months we did exactly that, everything we wanted when the lights were out. He could make me cum by just rubbing his stubble over my soft face.
Perhaps this is another reason why I spurned the soppy men that I met in gay bars and gay clubs? Perhaps this is why I would rather have my head buried in a squaddies (soldiers) groin, the smell of wet pussy on his cock than a nice boy from The Abbey. Prison spoiled more than my reputation. It proved, if any proof were needed, that straight men with furious urges, hard and hairy bodies and urgent desires were far more interesting than living in the half-light of shameful, gay London, Paris or New York.
This is all a matter of taste of course. My desires cannot be compared to yours.
Yesterday something a little untoward happened. At Anna’s birthday party she rolled me a fag and it had a few crumbs of weed in it. I was as high as a kite for a good few hours. Everything was totally wonderful. I had that gorgeous feeling of euphoria and masterful abandon. I hadn’t felt that feeling for nigh on 14 years. I demanded to speak to Jake because I wanted to know how the experience of me being high would affect what I thought of him.
He was complaining that it was late and he wanted to go to sleep…he was blithering on about how people might think he was some sort of man whore if I compared his experience of being gay with men who died of AIDS in the 1980’s. Obviously, I didn’t mean that. I was trying to be nice.
Fuck it! Go and be a man whore. All of you! Go and be whores. It doesn’t matter to me. I was sucking squaddie cock and getting fucked in the back of cars by East End builders. LUSH. I didn’t wait around to have a gay life. I emerged from the womb searching for the most perfect penis to suckle on.
Anyway, as I did not deliberately get high I am not going to reset my sobriety time. I still believe in God but I’m not going to be so fucking pious.
7am Friday morning Los Angeles. It’s time to come clean.
This week last year was the last I would spend with my Darling Big Dog who is now buried in Malibu.
I miss her so much.
The occasions when I just breakdown and cry for her are fewer nowadays but it still happens.
If it weren’t for the little dog I don’t know how I would have survived the darker days this year, the dread comes upon me but I have to get up and go on because his needs come first. He is a little dog, he comes from a damaged place and I made a promise to him..
The dread.
There is, I hear, something quite magical about drowning. There is a euphoric moment just before death that could make a long swim quite an attractive prospect.
Up and down, up and down. The trip home will, I know, keep me balanced and sane. So much to do and see. Spoke to my travelling companion last night. He seems well and happy.
Yesterday I woke at dawn and filled my time until I could legitimately start the day. The little dog sleeps as I potter around in my bathrobe and read the news. I am going to climb Runyon this morning.
Over in Malibu I saw another huge snake in the garden but it was hot and angry so I didn’t fetch my shovel. Anyway, I still feel guilty for killing the last one. So may people asked why I didn’t keep the meat and eat it.
The problem with changing your life so completely is that you are left with a huge hole where your life once was. Sex Addiction meetings are not enough to keep me happy or secure or in touch. Gratitude lists look paltry when written down. Even meeting up with my friend and mentor can’t seem to shift the immense longing I have in my heart that periodically casts such a deep shadow over me.
My happiness eclipsed I look to the usual suspects to shine light into the darkness. Sadly their batteries are dead.
Listening to loud and uplifting music can go some way to making life better. My choices may seem suspect, Elton et al. I can’t listen to Joni, her obsession with lost love merely plays into the pessimistic thoughts I am already prone to when the sun stops shining.
Dentist yesterday. The dentist gave me a lecture about flossing and I lectured her about the perils of white flour/sugar/rice etc. I don’t think any kind of doctor here likes being told anything because they are so used to dispensing advice and usually remain unchallenged. She tried to scare me with apocalyptic visions of the bone around my teeth falling away that can only be solved, she said, by spending thousands of dollars and endless hours in the dentist’s office.
I think I will ignore her advice and see my lovely dentist in Sydney when I am there this winter. Oh yes, I am going to Sydney this winter. I decided this morning.
After seeing Sebastian this week I thought a great deal about my father. Dead, maligned, reviled..much like I expect I will be.
Another Sebastian to think about, my friend Sebastian Horsley who has finally become the glittering star he always wanted to be. I knew it. In death he has become the man they wanted him to be. Death becomes him. In death we can acknowledge the fantasy of who he was rather than the stinking reality, the crazed drug addict. I will remember him for twenty-seven years from Edinburgh to London. I will remember him struggling to stay clean, vulnerable, and helpful to other heroin addicts. How can I forget?
I stopped in on Andrew yesterday. He had a square, roughly glazed vase of white hydrangea mixed with other tiny, yellow flowers. The mere act of filling the house with flowers lifts the spirits. They have hung huge photographs and his found chair collection grows weekly. I fell asleep on the sofa and when I woke up he was gone. When did I stop appreciating these tiny gestures of good will? When did I stop buying flowers? How did my house get so full of other stuff? That’s why I like going to the Malibu because I have stripped out all of the mess. I am left with an African seed pod on a porcelain plate.
My Darling Big Dog
When did I start forgetting that aesthetic? The aesthetic that Patrick taught me when I was Andrew’s age?
Meanwhile I am dealing with the birth of a monster. One I can scarcely contain. One I have done my level best to avoid for many years. The goblins hold a cracked mirror to your face and all you can see is the ugliness. Not the age, (because I am sure of my age) but how very ugly one is. My confidence stems from this: that when I look into the mirror I appreciate what I see and hope that others may see me just as I see myself.
OK, off to Runyon with the Little Dog. Time to go now. Time to get on with the day. Busy, busy, busy.
