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Gays: In The Age of Consent. Mario Testino and Bruce Weber.

Mario Testino was a friend of ours.  He had a studio in an abandoned hospital on Soho Square.  Scott Crolla, Georgina Godley… and others were frequent guests.  My boy friend in 1981 was Mario’s long time friend and collaborator Patrick Kinmonth.

Patrick lived in a tiny apartment in Holland Park, deliberately disheveled, dusty yet filled with beautiful object.  The place was brutally cold in the winter and a furnace in the summer.  Patrick, according to the artist Craigie Aitchison dobbed me in to the police when they were looking for me to ask questions about my credit card and why I hadn’t paid the bill.  It was Patrick who lent me money to buy my Peter Doig and it was Patrick who encouraged me to make art.  He was a vicious snob, exquisitely beautiful and at that time worked for Vogue magazine.  He amused us all by mimicking Mario’s Peruvian lilt.   Patrick is a deft impersonator.  The problem with Patrick?  Nothing ever came of his own talent.  He lives with the painfully shy food photographer Tessa Traeger in the West Country.  He designs opera sets for out-of-the-way operas but never became the great anything everyone thought he might become.

The last time I saw Mario and Patrick we were in LA at The Chateau Marmont.  I was having dinner in the garden they were having a party in the lounge with a bunch of gorgeous boy/men models.  I sat beside Patrick for a moment but I didn’t stay long.  He scolded me.  I made amends for some indiscretion and I left.  Mario looked at me disdainfully.  Patrick enjoys being on Mario’s winning team.  He wrote the forward to Mario’s book and he styles the most interesting shoots.  Neither of them wanted me hanging around.  You’ve seen pictures of young girls on a yacht wearing bikinis, oggled by old men… this was Mario’s gay equivalent.  I’d already ruined things by talking to him and Patrick, bathed in Mario’s reflected glory, wanted me gone.  He looked down his aquiline nose and told me I could have made so much more of myself.  Yeah, I thought… if you hadn’t worked with the establishment to destroy me.   I probably could.

You know why old men put young girls on yachts?  You’d think… so the girls can’t escape.  No, it’s so their old men friends can’t join the party.  I returned to my dinner in the garden.  Soon I saw Mario, Peter Pan like… screaming and laughing down the stairs with his crew.  Patrick lagging behind like a heavy train on an old dress.

I’ve never blogged about Mario.  Now, within the context of the salacious revelations and accusations leading to his spectacular firing from the Conde Nast creative family I revisit my association with him.  Let me say immediately,  I didn’t know anything untoward was happening.  I had never heard anything.  The towel series he shot with models were obviously designed to get the model naked and to legitimize Mario’s pervy intentions but I never heard from models who worked with him they felt uncomfortable.

Many of those same models who worked with Mario were not so discreet about their working relationship with Bruce Weber.  For over a decade or more I heard story after story from young men who had worked with Bruce and the discomfort they felt being ‘relaxed’ with his hands on their bodies, the ‘breathing exercise’ or asked to take off their shorts when they were alone with Bruce.  I heard again and again about the notorious ‘private archive’ for which Bruce said he wanted their naked picture.  I heard how he tantalized young men with lucrative campaigns and the promise of a life beyond their wildest dreams.  I heard how he set models against each other, how within minutes of the private naked shots… would change his mind about the campaign promise he’d made, playing with them, manipulating them.

Yet, it seems, many models were perfectly happy to have their bodies used by Bruce.  Yesterday I spoke to a male super model I know in NYC.  Last year, after a few drinks, he described in detail how Bruce molested him, removed his underwear and had taken pictures of him naked.  I asked if he was willing to come forward, speak publicly.  He told me I should be ashamed of myself for suggesting he told tales on Bruce.  Thus we understand how Bruce, inspiring loyalty in others, groomed them for sexual molestation.

I’ve had my run ins with Bruce over the years.  I asked him to take the Dorian Gray portrait.  He curtly suggested that I wasn’t the sort of person he could do business with.  Oh… how the tables have turned.

Sunday.  I had a late lunch in Hackney with a young gay artist.  We talked about Mario and Bruce.  He asked the difference between flirtation and harassment.  He was worried his flirtation might be misconstrued.  How would he know?  Of course, one asks ones self: why doesn’t he know?  He’s a bright lad but his white male privilege is so ingrained he cannot differentiate between the two.  He asked if the men now making the complaints were somehow complicit.  Many gay men make excuses for Bruce and Mario habitually devaluing our lives by suggesting the men who agree to work or consort with us are somehow suspect, complicit.  We remain baffled by the notion of consent.  They knew what they were getting themselves into.

“Consent, that’s for straight people?  Women?  Isn’t it?”  He looks confused.

We talk about the abuse of power between men (beyond top and bottom although that too) and how our anti social behaviour and lack of morality has been largely ignored by heterosexual society firstly before equality, because straight people found it distasteful and didn’t really care. Then, after equality straight people were too embarrassed or confused to question how we lived in case they were accused of homophobia or insensitivity.  Recent gay celebrity scandals have shocked many of our straight allies, realizing they don’t know anything much about their gay friends at all.  Like rats we live discreet and cautious lives just a few feet from theirs, scurrying from one assignation to another.

We’ve done a great job blending in. For many years the only evidence we existed was when the police arrested, tried and sent us to jail for being gay. Cottaging. Tricking. Dressing up. Without occasional mention in the newspapers our gay lives would remain completely invisible.  I broke the law simply by being alive and sexually active. Straight acting wasn’t a fetish, it was strategic and could save you from a beating or death. Ironically, this parallel life served many of us very well.  As a young British gay man I enjoyed social mobility, sexual freedom and access to extraordinary financial opportunities my straight peers could only dream of.  Yet, I paid the price for all of those benefits by surrendering my moral imperative.

Paris Hilton is maligned in the press for saying gay men on gay hook up apps are ‘disgusting’.  Which, after being sent 50 or so asshole pics this week… one might be inclined to agree.

With equality comes responsibility.  Some fought hard to enjoy marriage equality.  We fought hard in the UK to have homophobic laws like section 28 overturned.  In the UK these laws were ratified in Parliament and are hard to revoke.  We are tentatively exploring a new moral landscape.  Morals defined by heterosexuals, most gay men are unprepared for these changes and how this shift toward ‘normalcy’ may affect our lives.  Simply, our lifestyle compared with that of the average heterosexual may not bear scrutiny post Weinstein and Mario, Bryan, Bruce and Kevin may just be the very tip of the iceberg.

Entitled, affluent gay white men are especially morally impoverished.  Many still live secret, compartmentalized and shameful lives blighted by addiction, alcoholism and mental illness.  To many straight people we may seem carefree, highly entertaining, a cause to celebrate ‘gay pride’ and drink rainbow cocktails… but, on our own with our second screens we indulge less salubrious, secret lives using hook up apps as the portal, through which many enter a dark and disgusting world of chem sex, lies, cheating and despair.

They say,  everyone lies on-line.  We live in lying times.  Acceptable lies are now morally ring fenced.  The lies most gay men tell before they come out are perfectly… acceptable.  A habit we are loathed to break.  Most gay men are addicted to lying.  Only yesterday I met a closeted 25-year-old gay man.  I asked him why he was in the closet?  He described the same feelings of shame and despair I felt nearly 40 years ago.  Some things never seem to change… however much I am told, ‘it doesn’t matter, nobody cares’.  I explained to him why he needs to come out of the closet.  He needs to stop lying.  The more he lies the less respect he will have for the truth.  As I mentioned in my previous blog gay men get into nasty habits around the truth and the sooner we embrace the truth the less damage is done to our morality and our integrity.

The last time I saw  Mario he was skipping like a teenager down the stairs at The Chateau Marmont surrounded by beautiful teens.  Like Peter Pan, a 60-year-old man unable to face the truth about his failing body and his failing ability to make good decisions.  He could not stop himself grabbing them by the pussy.  He is the same as Trump.  Made of the same stuff.  Gripped by power, fame and entitlement he understood himself to be unassailable.  Nothing would ever bring him down… his legacy would glitter in perpetuity.  The dream maker, the fantasist, the story-teller… the liar.  Conjuring a universe of beauty, Mario forsook a life of loving relationships for an abuse of power.

Anna Wintour, who I confronted publicly about her reticence to stand up to Weber, made this statement last week.

Today, allegations have been made against Bruce Weber and Mario Testino, stories that have been hard to hear and heartbreaking to confront. Both are personal friends of mine who have made extraordinary contributions to Vogue and many other titles at Condé Nast over the years, and both have issued objections or denials to what has emerged. I believe strongly in the value of remorse and forgiveness, but I take the allegations very seriously, and we at Condé Nast have decided to put our working relationship with both photographers on hold for the foreseeable future.

Of course Anna Wintour is torn, it is hard to align what she hears and what she knows of her friends Mario and Bruce.  She is rightfully appalled, but thankfully for her she doesn’t know the half of it… she merely glimpsed, briefly through the portal and into the dark heart of every gay man I know.

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Trans Ambition

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In the jail I was enveloped by the trans community.  They showed me the way.  Black trans women.  They were not entitled white girls, passing themselves off on the street like women born women. They were black trans women subject to everything a black women suffers (and more) on the streets of racist USA.  These women are considered worthless, trash, undignified.  I related to these people.  They taught me more than I had learned for decades.

This winter I will be wearing couture suits.  A jacket and skirt. Based on a Charles James classic.  I found a brilliant couturier to make them, one in dark green tweed and another in aubergine silk velvet.  They are interchangeable.  Deliberately,  I get four outfits for the cost of two.  A lady has to look after her pennies.

My hope?  To look like a lesbian geography teacher from an exclusive private girls school. I rather think I’m going to look like the chef from Two Fat Ladies, Clarissa Dickson-Wright.  I have no desire to look feminine.  Butch lesbians are far more attractive to me than pretty girls.  If I ever had a sex change I am sure to be a lesbian.

Without the power of the penis I am a free man.

I have, these past couple of years since I left the jail, submerged myself in trans culture.  My silly film about Jake became an audacious film about a trans woman and the men who chase her.  My desire to reprimand my ex became a beautiful treatise on my own trans curiosity.  One thing is certain.  If I am true to this path I will never leave the big city.  I will never live in Whitstable.

There is something about rotting pears on the pavement, wasps feeding on the smashed fruit that transports me to my hometown of Whitstable.  There is something about the occasional warm day in October when I hanker for my home.

Last week I had a serious meeting about a play.  I have not written a play or thought about the theatre for years.  This is an exciting  possibility once again.  I have no desire to direct.  NONE.  Write… yes.  Direct… no.

I met a young trans person yesterday.

There is a chasm between gay men and trans people.  My friend Our Lady J disputes this but my other less glamorous, non performing blue-collar trans buddies tell horrible stories of gay people and their rudeness and transphobia.  Bluntly, why should a gay man be interested in a trans woman?  Gay men sleep with men… not women.  However, out of their trans costumes some young working class non theatrical trans m to f are berated and insulted when they tell gay men what they are into.

If you are a young trans person where do you go to meet empathetic straight men?  Many young, transitioning straight men misguidedly think they can meet men through gay dating apps like Grindr.  They make their trans position clear.

He said, “I tell them I want to dress as a woman when I meet them, that it’s only going to work if I am dressed as a girl.  They tell me it’s not ok.  They let me wear panties but won’t tolerate anything else.”

I am taking him on a date this week.  He’s excited to wear a dress and paint his nails.  He says, “There are two of me, straight me wants to meet trans me and fall in love.”  That was very beautiful.

I met another white gay man in NYC, an undergrad at NYU, who condescendingly lectured me about trans culture.  He vehemently posited that any man who wears a skirt is transgender, that make up on a man is transgender, that drag is indisputably transgender.  That the word transvestite was like saying nigger or faggot.   He told me he wants to help his trans brothers and sisters at his university.  What help will he be?   I couldn’t be bothered to fight.  We had sex and I threw him out of my room.

Since I embraced this new path I have come to love my body.  No longer interested in what metropolitan gay men think I should look like to enjoy a full life.   I have been watching endless documentaries.   Paris is Burning versus Candy Darling.  The concerns of the former oblivious to the latter.

I am looking forward to wearing my new suit in the big city.  I’m excited.

Today transvestite (self described) artist, honored by Queen Elizabeth and the British Government, Grayson Perry writes brilliantly in the New Statesman about default man.  Read it here.

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Gay Itay Hod Fucks Straight Aaron Schock (Pictures)

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First, if you’re going to out someone, then out them. Itay Hod did not out Schock in his piece, he outed a “hypothetical” congressman who just happens to fit Schock’s resume. He also presented thin evidence, which consisted of hearsay from an unnamed journalist friend and video footage that he claims TMZ has of Schock “trolling gay bars.” Hod knows a Facebook post is the only place this cuts it; that’s why it appeared there and not at any publication.
Secondly, a group of several gay journalists and activists on Twitter — including Dan Savage, Michelangelo Signorile, John Aravosis and Josh Barro — have decided that mocking Schock for exhibiting stereotypically gay attributes, like caring about his clothes and body, or following Daley on Instagram is the way of dealing with him. This is the same sort of behavior that the same people have said is harmful when it happens to closeted LGBT kids in schools. And, when I look at this happening publicly, I know that those closeted kids could be seeing it too. If it’s harmful for those kids to see athletes say anti-LGBT things, how isn’t it harmful for them to see prominent out people teasing Schock for his pants?

Chris Geidner

Chris Geidner is the sole brave gay journalist who dared criticize the velvet mafia for their inchoate name calling and bullying… aimed at Republican Politician Aaron Schock… the reason for this gay vitriol?   Hunky journalist (we only agree with the good-looking ones) Itay Hod posted some ugly, muddled references on his Facebook page to a man who might hypothetically be Aaron Schock.

I’m not a fan of Aaron, he’s a typical… loathsome republican with typically unpalatable views with an unlikely sartorial edge, an atypical personal aesthetic and a body that most gay men seem to die for.

Most gay men seem to think Aaron has a ‘gay body’ so must be gay.

Rather than homosexual… Aaron Schock looks to me like a right-wing narcissus.  Remember the art of the Third Reich?  Remember Die ParteiArno Breker‘s statue representing the spirit of the Nazi Party, fetishizing male perfection?   Like most young contemporary gays, young nazis were encouraged to aspire to an idealized body as proof of their loyalty to the state (the state of gay) and their undying patriotism.  A common right-wing obsession.

Aaron has embraced the people’s fascination with his perfect abs and pecs whilst extolling the values of racial purity, militarism, and obedience.  Perhaps that’s exactly why the white, elite gays believe Aaron is a homosexual… because he is a full on, 100%, bone fide narcissist.

And, if you are wondering… defending him from the gay mafia does not make me a self loathing homosexual.  It makes my blood boil that hate speak usually reserved for gay people is being used by gay people against a man who may or may not be gay.

Aaron!  If you had only kept your abs to yourself, your (some might say) good looks under wraps… and your Instagram private… the gays wouldn’t have noticed you in the first place.  But all those pics of you with your bronzed pecs and tight white underwear have driven the gays wild.  And, like Tom Cruise before you… all the gays really want… is… to fuck you… convincing themselves and others that if they want you that badly… there’s no chance you’re straight.

You’ve confused the average gay, blindsided him with your million watt smile.

If you had been an ugly troll saying hateful things… the gays wouldn’t care less who you were fucking.  Anyway, they’d have already caught you with your mouth behind a glory hole or paying for boys on rentboy.com and dismissed you with a limp wave and a meh.

But Aaron, much to their consternation, you seem to be sexually abstinent.  Nobody has caught you with your pants down with anyone… male or female. Because you don’t take your pants down?  The gays NEVER understand celibacy or abstinence or how all men are not exactly like them.  It drives them crazy that they can’t catch you, shame you, kill the demon of homophobia within… then fuck you.

Itay Hod and his jacked up supporters are crude, repellent people. Old fashioned bullies… judgmental and prescriptive. If you dare disagree with their group think assessment you will be damned to hell… just like Chris Geidner…

For a bunch of guys who loathe judgement in others the gays sure got judgmental about the rest of the world.  Since the Supreme Court DOMA decision the gays have woken up… emboldened, embracing their power.  Like children, testing their parameters, the boundaries of what can and what can’t be said or done.  Sadly, after a life time of hibernation, they have taken on the attributes of their worst enemies.

Dan Savage, Michelangelo Signorile, John Aravosis, Josh Barro.

They are, after all, just men.  White gay men, looking down their noses at the rest of us.

While the affluent, white gays sink into a sanctimonious swamp the rest of the LGBTQ alliance look on at them with barely concealed embarrassment.

Their treatment of Schlock, their asinine assumption that he is gay based on pics of his bare-chested, manicured body… his trousers, his shoes… says more about them and the type of gays they are… than the kind of straight man Schock is.

Dodgy circumstantial evidence convicts Aaron Schock of homosexuality in the court of the velvet mafia.  Using gossip and here say, bad shoe pics and plaid pants as indisputable proof of his gayness.

This is BULLSHIT!

I thought is was who we were fucking and loving rather than who we were aping that made us gay?

Perhaps Aaron Sch-jock is truly asexual?  Maybe he’s waiting for the right guy… maybe he’s a pedophile practicing abstinence… or suffers erectile dysfunction and hates the gays because they are so obsessed with hard cocks?

What of it?  It’s all conjecture until he tells us what he is if he feels so compelled.

The guy is a republican hater who dresses like a european and loves showing off his abs… have you seen Instagram or Tumblr recently? Based on this proof… this ‘criteria’… the whole world (hopefully) would be gay.  All of my young straight friends are posting pics of their abs and their shoes on Instagram and Tumblr every day.

Haven’t we got past this crap?  That only pansies and girls do that sort of thing?

God forbid, what happens if Aaron comes out? Like Ken Mehlman before… who caused untold harm to fellow gay people.   If indeed Schock is gay and comes out?  There will be a parade.  It will take the baying gays about ten seconds to shamelessly forget his homophobia, objectify his abs… go to his pool parties and drink his vodka whilst he condemns immigrants, destroys women’s rights and turns a blind eye to racist colleagues.

But don’t worry… he’ll be out and proud.

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Tranny Hooker/Model Booker

Sitting in Ground Works coffee spot on Sunset with Kevin and Fielder yesterday.  Eating a cheese Danish after my latest stint on the JVM show.

Alleged ‘Madame’,  Anna Gristina has been locked up in solitary on Rikers Islandcharged with a single count of prostitution.  Held on an absurd $2million bail.

“It’s not about me; it’s bigger than me,”   “They’re trying to sweat me out. They are clearly trying to break me.”

The self-described “hockey mom” and real-estate developer claims to have no idea why prosecutors are so intent on digging up dirt on those men – half of whom she said she knew as friends or business associates.

“I’d bite my tongue off before I’d tell them anything,”

Since my run in with the LAPD I know exactly how they try breaking their victims of choice.  Can you believe that they tried forcing me sign a gagging order?  As part of their ‘deal’ the DA tried to get me to sign a gagging order…

Obviously I won round 1 by getting myself out of jail.

The fight will get a great deal harder, nastier and…as I predicted…the Immigration Department are already trying to discredit me.

They already lied to the Newsweek journalist Christine P (a meticulous journalist with great sources) about my immigration status.

As I pointed out to her, even if I had been here illegally or ‘out of status’ the immigration department and the Sherrif’s Dept. are still obliged to follow rules and protocols.

As it happened, when I was arrested, I was neither here illegally nor was I out of status.

Kevin and I had lunch yesterday at the 101 Coffee Shop on Franklin.  Delicious.  We polished our ‘trans superhero’ idea.

By day Ricky is a model booker at LA Models.  “Hello?  Nordstrom?  Yes, you got it.”  However, by night, after the emergency call on his ‘weave phone’,  he’s Tranny Hooker!  Solving gay crime all over WeHo.  Dressed in his bad wig, gold disco shorts, crop top and size 13 stilettos he flies (fueled by huge amounts of Tina) along Santa Monica Blvd, to The Abbey where he/she solves most of WeHo’s gay crime…

Mostly crimes against style, including badly cut pants, shopping at Vons and old men pawing mid-western model boys at their palatial homes in the hills…

There by the table I leapt up, over the blackened chicken sandwich, acting out Tranny Hooker’s flight through smoggy LA…just as Robby arrived.

Great being back on Jane’s show.  Love CNN.  Love the make up girls.  Love the security guards…

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Fantasy Gay Rant

Obama, WTF?

Sunday morning, Malibu.   You understand don’t you that I have not been to an AA meeting, therapy or spoken with my sponsor…not properly, for a week or so?  It leaves one feeling quite raw.

I should devote myself to healthy choices this week.

Joe left yesterday afternoon.   Back to NYC.  A friend popped over for dinner last night. I made the most delicious Italian feast.  We had a cuddle.  He left.

Totally forgot all about the party I was meant to be going to yesterday.  Instead I hung around in Hollywood.  Met a bunch of cool, young Hollywood types who shared their Obama disillusionment.

How in hells name will he turn this around?

Obama is fucked, the liberals have been fucked over.

How will he turn this around?

He can’t, it’s too late.

If only he would grow some balls, stop goofing around, stop reminding people that he is President.  Tap dancing when he should be banging heads together.   Somebody should remind him that he’s not a contestant on Dancing With The Stars.

Can you imagine what’s going on in the White House?  Obama looks petrified.  Overstretched, isolated, mocked.  When he speaks I can barely listen.  Continually grasping for the flayed notion that consensus politics will save him…us.   Grinning inanely.

When CNN anchor Don Lemons suggested to me at dinner that “Obama was frightened of white people.”  I was shocked.  But, I’ve seen it in Obama’s eyes.  Lemons was right.  He’s frightened of everything.  The most ill-equipped man ever to preside over the free world.

Who is running this country?

If you’re wondering why we are still sending drones into Afghanistan?  Perhaps it’s because Obama has no control over the military.    If you are wondering what happened to his inspiring oratory? Realize that even his speech writers have deserted him.

I wonder what he promised Geitner to stay by his side?  A penis enlargement?

If you are a liberal who is sick of watching Obama partying and quipping when your country is falling into a fascist abyss…demand that he is replaced by Hillary.

The Clintons, after all, have already stolen the money.

What will come next?   I urge you to worry.  Especially my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.  There is a real and present danger that we cannot, must not ignore.  Perry and Bachmann have every chance of being elected.

There will be a time, very soon, when you will start taking this threat seriously.  You will set aside your hook-up sites, your apple martinis, the marriage sop you take for granted, the liberal air that you breath…and remember this:

In the 1920s, homosexual people in Germany, particularly in Berlin, enjoyed a higher level of freedom and acceptance than anywhere else in the world.  

However, upon the rise of Adolf Hitler, gay men and, to a lesser extent, lesbians, were two of the numerous groups targeted by the Nazi Party and were ultimately among the 6 million Holocaust victims.

Beginning in 1933, gay organizations were banned, scholarly books about homosexuality, and sexuality in general, were burned, and homosexuals within the Nazi Party itself were murdered. The Gestapo compiled lists of homosexuals, who were compelled to sexually conform to the “German norm.”

Between 1933–45, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested as homosexuals, of which some 50,000 were officially sentenced.   Most of these men served time in regular prisons, and an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 of those sentenced were incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps.

It is unclear how many of the 5,000 to 15,000 eventually perished in the camps, but leading scholar Ruediger Lautman believes that the death rate of homosexuals in concentration camps may have been as high as 60%. Homosexuals in the camps were treated in an unusually cruel manner by their captors.

After the war, the treatment of homosexuals in concentration camps went unacknowledged by most countries, and some men were even re-arrested and imprisoned based on evidence found during the Nazi years.

It was not until the 1980s that governments began to acknowledge this episode, and not until 2002 that the German government apologized to the gay community.   This period still provokes controversy, however. In 2005, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the Holocaust which included the persecution of homosexuals.

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Fantasy

Questions For A Murderer

OK, this is the first six thousand or so words of the novel I am presently finishing.  It remains unedited, raw.

It is for you to read ahead of time.  I have never written prose before.  All of the authors I mention in this section sit on my shoulder and scold me for trying.

50, 000 words written.  Still have to write the conclusion.

Obviously, for those of you who know me, there are references to the events of the past year but I must remind you:  This is a WORK OF FICTION.  The twins are not lovers.  I do not work in a prison.  I am NOT planning to murder the Penguin.

Most of you will comment on FB but feel free to let me know what you think.

QUESTIONS FOR A MURDERER

by Duncan Roy

1.  Self Pity

Murder, when seriously considered, is as consuming as any other fervent desire.  So it is that I wake in the morning and retire at night thinking of nothing else.

The obsession to kill obscures and softens one’s vision like a veil.  It properly stops me from walking presently in the world.   Others notice that I am not really here.

“It’s like talking to a wall.”  They complain.

I am not now usually where my body is.  If out in the difficult world, away from the safety of the house, I am safely trapped in my head.  Blinded to everyday beauty.  My senses blunted by obsession.  No longer interested in dappled shadows cast on the sidewalk.  Nor orange blossom or night jasmine.  Nor can I taste expensive lunches at elegant restaurants.  I cannot hear the lark ascending.

Meticulous planning has taken the place of fragrant cabbage roses in silver pots.

I sit at my screen with the blinds drawn.  I can hear the neighbors children screaming as they play in their azure pool.  Occasionally the telephone will ring but I ignore it.  I ignore everything.  There is a pile of unopened mail stacked neatly in the hall.  I ignore everything.

The pool boy knocking to be paid.  The gardeners knocking to be paid.  Unless Lucy is here.  She has her own key and knows how to pay the other staff.  Consequently they only ever come knocking when Lucy is in the house.

“Mr. Maguire.”  She says.  “I’m leaving now.”

I am trying not to think about you Lucy.

“Is everything alright?” She inquires.

I am trying to be alright.  I am trying very hard to answer you Lucy but I am lost inside my own body.  Like a man with a severed spine.  I can see you but I cannot answer you.  The effort it takes to reply may drain what I need to execute the plan, this homicide.

I need all my strength to move the mountain.

As much as I want to reassure Lucy, all I can do is blink.

“Try getting out of the house this afternoon Mr Maguire.  Go for a walk.”  She waits momentarily, anxiously standing in the hall.  She doesn’t dare come in.  Her slim frame silhouetted against the fierce Californian sunshine.   She has worked in this house for many years.  Long before I inherited it.  She is my only witness.

“The twins tell me that you never leave the house.”

Why bother going out?  I think.

I am planning his death.  Planning the end of his nebbish life.  Imagining the final words he will hear before he is snuffed out forever.

Imagine what his fear smells like.  Will he defecate?  Will his fetid breath?

Will they write about him when I reveal my atrocity?  He wasn’t particularly engaging.  Would anyone even bother writing his obituary?  Perhaps.  I will make his name mean something.  In death he will become the celebrity he expected me to be.

Pity.  I pity you.  Nameless boy.

“I’ll take the dog, poor thing.  He hasn’t been out all day.”

“Thank you Lucy.” I whisper.

Lucy locks the door behind her.  The twins will be home in an hour.

Imagine his face.  Every time I conjour up his face I remember his wet, sweet mouth.  The mouth I yearned for.

The only fascinating thing that ever came out of his mouth was my cock.  Always hungry for it.  I have a photograph of that.  My thick white cock in his mouth.  Stubble on his chin.  His lips pulling down on the shaft.

Damn you.

Fuck you!

I wish I had been more tenacious tending my own lusty garden, less sensitive, less caring about his.

Sit down, dab at the brow.  My heart is racing.  Prepare a light lunch of home-made pickled beets and cold ham.  Must remember to eat.  Too eager to use a fork, eating with my fingers.  Tastes better that way.  Wipe my fingers on my shirt even though there is a napkin set under the silver ware.

Have I ever wanted anything, anything at all, this badly?

The twins complain that I scream out in my sleep.  I shudder to think what I’m doing in those forgotten nightmares.  Am I trapped or caught or bringing down the knife?  Have I cornered him?  Is he begging for his life?  Have the tables been turned, the police called?  Am I already handcuffed, am I sitting in the electric chair?

No consequence scares me when the lights are on, when dawn has broken.

There is already something so inevitable about this death I am planning.  I will leave it up to my dreams to work out the fear.

The multiple contractions of apprehension.

I have met murderers, many of them. I used to teach prisoners at Fairview Penitentiary.  I taught them English literature, ‘an appreciation’.  Donne, Hemingway, Steinbeck and Joyce.  For ninety minutes I can cast a spell over their unimaginable sentences.  Spinning the beautiful words of all the great writers over them, like a silk web, helping them away from their sparse, miserable lives.  Away from their sweaty cells, their bad choices and the blood on their hands.

Murderers are always so contrite.  They are eager to tell me everything.  I listen politely to their stories.  They were always most terribly sorry.

One young man murdered a little girl with his bare hands.  Buried her in the garden under his chrysanthemums.  Another raped a woman in his taxi then stabbed her in the vagina with a knife.

After meeting them, smiling at them, helping them understand.  I would drive home and google each and every one.   Their stories revealed.  The most terrible among them were often the quietest.  Then, quite cruelly, I would introduce themes from literature that most likely mirrored their own stories, their own pathology.

For those who were cuckolded or who had murdered their wives I would read Ulysses.  Introduce them to Leopold.  How he would prepare chicken livers for her breakfast.  Served to his handsome wife Molly Bloom knowing she would fuck the opera singer in their marital bed.  Hanker after his huge penis.  Yes.

“What would you do?” I ask them innocently.

One of the men starts crying.  Picks up his chair and smashes it against the door.

“Can we forgive Molly Bloom?”  I say, after the man is dragged away screaming by the guards.

The murderers balk.  They couldn’t forgive her, they grunt (rather predictably) that she disrespect her man.  I sit on the edge of my desk and look down at them.  My tweed jacket and crisp white shirt.  I smell of toothpaste and pomade.

“I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents and no one’s fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible punishment for concealed sins.”

I sit amongst them.  Murderers.  Never thinking that I would be one of them until he exited stage left.  I wonder if I will be contrite?  I doubt it. Contrition has never been my friend.  I will stare at his parents in the court room and I will look unrepentant into their faces.   I will never make amends.  Ever.

He’s got it coming, that one.  I should have done it months ago.

My hand on the back of his neck when I loved him.  Running my fingers through his hair.

Do you want to know his name?  Do you want me to describe his body to you?  You’ll be amazed that I ever found him attractive.  But I did.  I fell in love.  I tore down the razor wire and let him come to me.  I paved the moat, held off the dogs.  Lay down your arms!  Let him come.

I laid in his arms, laying down an impression.

At first he was the one pursuing me.  I was amused…flattered.  Isn’t it always the way?  Then, when I wanted him. Well.  He vanished.  At the worst possible moments.   He made himself indispensable.

Just as I was beginning to trust him, he left me.

His cruel, final words biting into my heart.

This is the story of how I will avenge my honor, my name, my dignity.   This is the man who fights back, who will not take it any more.  This is the man.  The one who was stalked becomes the stalker.  The tables have turned.  This is that man.

Loneliness has followed me like a ghost my entire life.  I thought I had crafted a life so secure it seemed impossible that I would be lonely ever again.  When I met that boy I let loneliness back into my life.  Deathly, silent, cold.  Hard as iron.

Do you think this pleases me?  I tried forgiving him, I really did.

God, I pray, please let me forgive him.  God, please let me think less.  I want an eviction order so this boy can no longer rent space in my head.  Please God.  I say it out loud like a black preacher:  Please God!  I send up my prayers.  Clamoring to be heard.  God!

The twins have heard me.  One of them, Ronnie or Mike, knocks at the door.

“Are you alright Mr Maguire?”

“I’m sleeping dear.”  I reply.

I can hear him shuffle away.

Is heaven too far away for you to hear my prayer, me amongst the millions of desperate pleas?

So, I must write the final chapter by myself.  However hard I rewrite the ending, this book of resentments.  There is only one conclusion.  Murder.  Bringing down the knife, the final act.  The curtain call.  Taking his bow to an empty house.

After months of consideration and research I have everything in place.  I know everything I need to know:  Where he lives, what he does and how I can find him.  I have seen recent pictures of him wearing his new hipster beard, trimmed in such a way that I never knew him.

Pictures of him wearing clothes I picked out for him.  Do you know how that amuses me?  Every time he pulls on that beautiful green jacket he has no option but to think of me.

New pictures arrive most days.  Eating lunch at the gourmet food truck on the street outside his office.  Waiting for the subway.  Dinner with a special friend.  Arriving at his parents house.  Photographs.  So many photographs.

I spend $500 a day to keep the pictures coming.   Like a drug addict.  Waiting by the phone.  Waiting for Chris the Private Detective to let me know that more are on the way.  45 attachments today.

I am three thousand miles away from him.  So, there are things that remain unaccomplished.  For instance, I have not yet bought the weapon.   It perplexes me that buying a gun is actually more difficult than I at first imagined.  My man who can is ‘on to it’ so I must trust that he is.

The cast has been chosen, the die has been cast.  The private detective who follows him and sends me the clandestine photographs, my accomplices who will help me drag him off the street and into the car.

The weapon?  Must buy.  Top of the list.

It was easy to find Chris the Private Detective.  Google.  Google reviews, four star private detective.  Very reliable.

Everything about my relationship with the young man I am going to kill was conceived and born on the internet.  It was shaped on web cams, emails, Facebook, Manhunt, Grindr, Adam 4 Adam.

Determined by him.

When and whenever he wanted me.  I gave into him.  Until I didn’t.

2. Resentment

How and why should an affluent, fifty year old man be thinking like this?  Why?  I used to wake every morning like a boy!  Enchanted by all the world has to offer.  Now I see nothing.  At the mercy of nothing.  I used to wake up every morning and thank God for the new day.  Now there is no God, just a black hole that consumes everything in the universe.  Sucking anything of value into the vortex.

The furies are all I am left with.

I have given up wondering why I am so angry at him.   This is all you need to know:

I am determined.  Alone in my bed at night but not isolated.

The house, when the twins are here,  is always full of people.  The dog remains well fed.  The maid cleans.  The gardeners arrive daily to trim and prune and sweep.  There are fragrant hyacinths, white and purple, growing in pots on the dining room table.  Freshly grown garden fruit picked and washed, ready for me to eat.

Is this the life I bargained for?  Sitting in my bedroom plotting like an adolescent.  The twins sunning themselves by the pool.  Glistening in the Californian sunshine.  Their equally beautiful friends wondering aloud who it is that owns the house.  Who stands at the window looking down at them?  Like Mann’s Gustav von Aschenbach in Death in Venice.  Staring out to sea.  Hankering after everything and nothing.

“It was Mann’s intention to write a treatise on the Nietzschean contrast between the God of reason,  Apollo, and the irrational God, Dionysus.”  I tell the murderers.

They look at me blankly.

One thing is for sure, I don’t expect to get away with this.

I have been disconnecting from my darling dog.  He knows it, he paws at me insistently.  He knows that something grave is in the offing.  He, in turn, is learning to trust the kindness of others.

He doesn’t want to be left on his own.

The Little Dog who would once sit so loyally by me, now loses no time trusting strangers and sits with them.  I may have murdered months ago had it not been for the extraordinary relationship between me and my dog.   Now, I am ready to let him go.

Recently, he has seen me angry and hidden under the bed.  He cowers when I shout at dullards or digital voices on the telephone.

He is scared when I cry.  Scared by the smell of imaginary whiskey on my breath.

I am ashamed to tell you that when he first arrived I was quite cruel to him.  He was very angry when I brought him home from the pound.  Barking, barking, barking.  He would pee on everything.  A solid week of cleaning the house, scrubbing the god damned carpet, mopping the tile, the smell of dog pee on everything I owned.  Every time he urinated I shouted at him and he would leak some more.

One quiet Sunday afternoon he defecated in my closet.   I shouted so hard he ran away and hid in the garden.

I wished he would never come back.  I begged God that the coyote would eat him.

For a week he managed to not get eaten by the coyotes.  How?  Packs of coyote stalk my mountain side property.  Screaming for their dinner.  Then, one day, The Little Dog just walked back into the house as if nothing had happened.  He never messes on the carpet again.

I was so happy he came home.  Now I am just about to leave him forever.

He still avoids me when I shout on the telephone.  Shivers on his bed.  Most people do.  People in the room move away if they know me well enough to divine that my temper might be lost.

I used to shout at people.

I’ve been very angry.  Furious.  It has been a problem.  Perhaps I’m ‘well-known’ for flying off the handle.  There’s no question mark.  I am well-known for losing my temper.   At work, in situations where powerlessness grips me and I feel myself sinking.  I have shouted so loudly, my blood pressure so high, I collapsed.

Shifting the liquid in my inner ear.

I thought I was having a stroke.

I lost my temper with him.  I lost my temper when we thought he had been robbed.  I lost my temper in The Departure Hall, Paris Charles De Gaulle.   He looked scared.  Everyone does.  I am a big man who looks docile for the most part.  Docile, until they prod me with their stick.

Docile until the blood drains out of my face and I am left looking like an animal.

He was in my dreams again last night.  Laying on his bed.  Telling me how good his life is.  How much in love he is with the Greek man he has been seeing.   I lay there beside him and told him that I was happy for him.  I could feel that I was.  Happy for him.

Sometimes, I can hear him talking about me during the day.  My ears burning.  He’s doing it right now.

I can hear him laughing at me.  That filthy sneer on his face.  Sharing stories about me with his friends.  Laughing at every choice I have ever made.  As if I am worthless.  I imagine him with my old acquaintances (friends no more) who have contacted him.  Laughing at how old I am.  My erectile dysfunction.  The white in my beard.  My stiff knees.

He is only twenty-nine years old.

I don’t expect him to celebrate his thirtieth birthday.

The last time I was in NYC I called Chris the Private Detective.  The first time we met, we met in public.  We drank coffee at a large table at my private club.   A plump, sanguine, middle-aged man who is not even middle-aged.  He is certainly fifteen years younger than me yet he seems so much older.  There is something peculiarly invisible about him.  He is everyman, dressed as everyman and therefore invisible.

I would be hard pressed to pick him out of a crowd even though I have met him twice.

He had no particular expression, no charisma, no beauty and thankfully no opinion.  Only when pressed did he tell me about his other clients:  a woman from Katonah whose husband she suspected was having an affair.  When he followed her unemployed spouse he took the train into the city and sat in a mid-town coffee shop day after day drinking english tea and reading free newspapers until it was time to go home.

I wondered if I had ever been followed, watched or my movements documented?   Really, who would care enough to do that?  I couldn’t think of anyone other than John.  The thought made me smile.  Not even he would bother.  Not even as we were in the midst of our messy ‘divorce’.

The second time I met Chris the Detective we met at my home in the East Village.  He had, by this time, Googled me.  He was less restrained, obviously knew who I was and who he was dealing with.

He told me about a boy he was looking for, a lost boy.  He thinks the boy is already dead.  Suicide.

“Let’s talk about money.”  Chris pulled a contract out of a black plastic folder and I handed him a cheque for $1, 500.

“Discover where he goes.”  I said.  “With whom…simple.”

“Who was he to you?”  Chris enquires politely.

“He was my lover.”

Yes, I am a homosexual.  I wondered if you could had guessed already?  Had I made it obvious? Was it evident in the way that I write?  The way I see things.  Does it differ from the way you see things?

A homosexual, a teacher and recently  (I don’t know how to write this) a television personality from a reality television show.  That’s how I make my money, odd jobs.  Like the Downs syndrome boy who lives in my home town.  Running errands.  I am a high achieving cripple.  Limping up and down Main Street dragging my club foot behind me.

Odd jobs suit me just fine.

Yet, I earn more money than I ever have.  Using all of my potential.   Even though the worst of me seems to get the better deal every single day and always has.

I can confide in you?

Each night I regret the passing of another day.  I lay in my bed before I fall asleep, knowing that my freedom will be curtailed, my sheets will no longer be pure, white linen.  My houses in NYC and CA will fall into disrepair.  Friends and family will come and take what they want and the lawyers will take the rest.

My dog will never see me again.  Will he die in prison?  Euthanized by strangers?  Is it worth it?   To lose everything because the timid boy that I loved made a fool of me?  Lied to me?  Should I risk everything?

Should I?

I have never been so sure of anything in my whole life.  In lieu of suicide, murder works just fine.

I talk to him, day dreaming imaginary conversations.  I catch hold of his sleeve and I ask him: “Can I tell you how you broke my heart?”  He looks back at me.  His brown eyes and soft mouth.  I say, “Because you trusted me, you encouraged me, you loved me.  Then you saw something you hated and turned your back on me and I was all alone…again and I couldn’t bear being all on my own…again.”

Then I feel sorry for him.  I want to help him get out of this pickle.  I don’t want to kill him.  But the wish to kill is not going anywhere.  Even when I am happy, even when the twins are here bouncing around the house.

Sometimes I want to call you and give you fair warning.  I want to tell you to run and hide so I can’t get you.  But I don’t.  I don’t because the die is cast.

I have already caused him inexorable pain and chaos.  I know that his entire family (Mother, Father and brother) stand beside him whereas I have no one alive anymore.  His Riverville mum and dad who only found out that he was queer when I forced him to tell the truth.  Well, they are still in shock that their son could have made so many bad choices, led such a double life.

That he compartmentalized the life he led with his fiance/family and the life he had with me.

He is not uncommon.  So many gay men learn how to lie, to skirt the existence others think that they lead and the black hole that is their contemporary, immoral gay life.  Only last week a gay acquaintance of mine was found dead in his bathroom from an oxycotin overdose.  He was fine!  His father told everyone that he had only just put down the phone twenty-four hours ago and his son, his only son, his darling son was fine.

I used to tell him that.  The toxic shame that kept him lying to everyone who loved him would end up killing him if he didn’t tell the truth.

3.  New York

My name is Charles Maguire.  I am fifty years old.  I live with my small dog (half jack Russell half chihuahua) in a large, mid-century modern house designed in part by Rudolf Schindler on three acres of verdant, semi-tropical gardens overlooking the sprawling city of Los Angeles.

The gardens are planted with Agave, cactus and other drought loving succulents.  Below the house there is a small grove of olive trees.  Last summer I grew cherimoya, oranges, grapes, lemons, plums, peaches and all kinds of vegetables.  My aim, in those days, was to be self-sufficient.

It is a tranquil place away from the maddening life I had in Hollywood.  I can see the stars at night and listen to the birds all day long.  There is a carp pond and an architecturally significant swimming pool cantilevered over the mountain top.  My neighbours are mostly European.  Americans tend to fear the idea of living up here.  They say when they arrive at the house, “Are you scared of….mudslides, fires, earthquakes?”  And I say, “No..not much scares me up here.”  They tour the gardens and tell me that this is a ‘magical’ place.  Well, they are right, it is.

Ten months ago I let a pair of young male twins move into the guest house but mostly, to my chagrin, they try hanging out with me.  My Mormon twins: tall, perfectly sculpted bodies, polite and inclusive.  Not even they can shift me, distract me from the great task that will inevitably end my life.

They heard about me long before they met me.  They saw me, like millions of others, on the television edited to be somebody I am not.  Like Iago, I tell the murderers. “Unfairly treated.”

Perhaps all I want is the attention?  Craving the attention.  Negative or otherwise?  Am I the sort of person who is so desirous of attention I would kill to get it?  Is that what I grieve?  I have imagined this:  The show trial where I arrive looking svelte and dapper.  My fellow reality star cast members at my side.  The celebrity doctor summoned to give crucial evidence.  I will stand in the witness-box and sob when forced to tell my abusive back story.  I will look over at his distraught parents and ugly brother.

His Mother will cry, his father will be resolute and comforting.

It’s very hard to convict a celebrity.

I know that the reporters in the room will be looking for clues.  The television cameras will stare unblinking at me.  At night I will follow the trial on CNN.  Must pluck my eyebrows.  Must remember to wear louder ties.

New York has not had an execution since 1976.  There is currently a court ordered moratorium in effect.  Perhaps I can single-handedly break this embargo?

I think about him again.  I think about how he may or may not be with someone he loves who is not me.  I think of him having sex with someone he loves who is not me.  Then I think those murderous thoughts that many of us have when ditched.   I console myself in the shadow of that word:  I think about the wounds on his body that I am going to inflict and how they will open in his flesh like cactus flowers.

I ask the murderers to tell me about the very moment they knew they had murdered.  I get them to describe it so that when it happens to me I am prepared.  The clichés they use are best not repeating.  They think they are being poetic.

How did this happen to me?   How is every waking hour dedicated to you?  My darling.

Two years ago I was enjoying my life.  I was perhaps happier than I had ever been.  Every night I would find fascinating people to have dinner in wild and exotic places.  I loved being recognized on the streets even if it was for something that previously I had found contemptible.

They say that if you hang around a barber’s shop long enough you’ll get a hair cut.  If you hang around Hollywood you’ll end up on TV.  It only took ten years.  Somehow the dream I arrived in Hollywood became a nightmare.  Until, one day, a friend called and asked if I would consider being a cast member on a TV show.  A reality TV show.  Of course I said,  “No!”

“No!”  Immediately, without a moment’s pause.

“Absolutely not!”

After some extensive contractual negotiation (I amended my own contract) and a huge cash settlement I said…yes.

As it turned out, the experience proved to be extreamly validating.  It transpires that there is nothing more reassuring than having a camera shoved in your face 24/7.  From the moment you wake in the morning to the moment you go to bed at night.   I felt loved.  The moment they pinned the microphone to my tee-shirt.  The night camera in my room that kept me safe.

Every word I uttered recorded for posterity.

I don’t think anyone will be surprised when they hear that I am arrested.  Most people I know understand that I am the sort of man who would or could be capable of murder.

Just like my father.   He was the same way.

I booked the flight this morning.  On line.  Into the unknown.  I have a meeting set up with the detective.  He will tell me where and how and why.

The route he takes to work everyday.  Even though I know it.  I will discuss the route he takes to work in such detail that nothing can go wrong.

The twins are in their room making love.  I can hear them.  One of them says softly, “Don’t.” and they giggle.

They look at my AA sober coins and say, “These are really cool trinkets.”

They are going to the gym and getting ready to audition.  Actor/Models.

They don’t know my thoughts.  They can’t possibly know what is going on upstairs in the head department.  They are simple Christian boys who make love in the morning and talk about girls all day long.

I can hear them kissing.  I can hear them cooing like doves.  I can hear one of them gasp.

Since he left me I have put on weight.  My jowls are sagging.  The skin around my eyes drooping over my eye lids.  My belly looks permanently full and my skin is dull and grey.  I used to be attractive but that doesn’t matter any more.  Who cares what I look like?

I don’t.

I have not had an erection for months.   Can you imagine that?  Fucking gay boys!  How would you feel about that?  Not to have an erection for six months?  Not to wake up with morning wood because all you can think about twenty-four seven is how you are going to speed a bullet through his brains?

Murderous thoughts destroy ones libido.

I don’t look at pornography.  I don’t show myself on any match-making websites.  I don’t drink alcohol or take drugs.  I drink coffee and smoke strong cigarettes.  I barely brush my teeth unless I have to share a car with someone…and then, only when that person matters.  I stand naked in front of the mirror so the image of who I am burns into my brain.  I am ugly and useless and unlovable.

My limbs increasingly misshapen.

I am old.

I look in the mirror.  Sink to my knees.

Kneeling at the edge of my bed and pray that I can be delivered from this obsession but God long ago fled the scene of this crime.  I have nothing to lose.  My life is worthless.

I can hear the twins in another part of the house film scenes for a film that has no beginning, middle or end.  The dog is with them, he’s barking and running around joyfully.  I know that if I join them they will all sit quietly.  Their joy deferring to my misery.

There is no television in the house.  I threw it out when he sent the cruel note.

I wouldn’t have met him had I not been on the television.   He would never have ambushed me.

Yet, I wouldn’t have met the man who is selling me the gun.  The woman who paid for my flights.  The man who paid for the ‘luxury’ spa.  The pizza guy who gives us huge pizzas for free.  None of them.

The man with the gun stopped me in the street and said, “Hey, are you…” and I smile and say yes and now he is selling me the gun that will murder the crazed fan who lied his way into my life and my heart.

Did you know that I used to have two dogs?  The other one was killed in the road.  I miss her so much.  Somehow her death, her cruel and senseless death introduced me to the idea of death.  Life’s fragility.  I am crying now.  Thinking about her.

Anyway, that’s that.  The plane ticket is booked.  The detective has been appointed.  Rizo from The Bronx called late last night.  He has the gun. It is presently sitting in a box wrapped in a dishcloth.

“I’ll text you a picture.”  He rasped.

He texted me a picture of it.  Applying some Polaroid app to the image which made it look very old-fashioned.  Very old.

Good.  Everything is in place.  What could possibly stop me?  Other than his pleading face.  His begging cries?  His convincing argument that he might live?

Why don’t I just kill myself and spare his young life?  Yeah…right.

The twins drove me to LAX in their old car.  I said goodbye to the dog.  I held his little face in my hands and kissed his forehead.

“I can’t take you this time little buddy.”

I walked with him one last time around the estate.  The paths that cut into the hill-side.  The view over the city.  Who will pick this fruit?  Will it just wither on the vine?  I said goodbye to it all.  Goodbye Southern California.

All the way to the airport I just couldn’t stop talking.  The twins were shocked that I had that many words in me to say.  I made them stop at some ghastly fast food outlet and bought them burgers, french fries and gallons of soda.  They complimented my smile which, they told me, they had never seen before.

“The next time you see me will be on the television.”  I said to The Twins as I unload my luggage.  They looked a little confused but are too polite to pry.

“Don’t forget to pick the peaches.  Don’t waste them.  Lucy will show you what to do.”

The Little Dog thought that he was coming too and looked quite panicked when I did not invite him onto the concourse

I didn’t look back.  I could hear him barking.  I didn’t look back.

Categories
art Fantasy Film Health Hollywood Los Angeles

John Bock

[wpvideo JBz5DIg9]

 

1.

Before I hit the doctor’s office I stepped into Regen Projects on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Owned by Shaun Regen this is by far the most interesting gallery in LA and consistently shows challenging and stimulating work.

Regen Projects is currently showing work by German artist John Bock.

Born 1965, Gribbohm, Germany

Lives and works in Berlin.

The show reminded me (inevitably) of fellow German Martin Kippenberger.

Kippenberger is one of my favorite artists.  His work has been inexcusably and crudely plundered by the YBA (Young British Artists).

Bock influences  include: Paul McCarthy, Otto Muehl, Paul Thek and Maurizio Cattelan.

John Bock is a performance artist and sculptor whose three-dimensional works often serve as props for his performances.

Bock creates entire universes using a wildly eclectic range of materials, described in multiple languages, and presented with an antic energy that is equal parts mad scientist and Buster Keaton.

A dizzying mix of pseudo-scientific, aesthetic, social, and political commentary,  Bock’s works defy logic.

This view of the world has various precedents, notably in the post World War II Theatre of the Absurd, a movement whose goal was to shock audiences into facing up to life “in its ultimate, stark reality.”

Bock believes the pre-conscious associations inherent in words are unavoidable and that only through experience and empathy can we penetrate what he terms the “heavy numb dumb world” of daily life.

Bock’s lectures seduce and confound, simultaneously proving perhaps, the inexplicability of the interrelationship of man and his universe.

2.

When I let God take the reigns of the humble buggy I drive down the promised path of happy destiny I am sure of one thing: things are going to turn out just the way they are meant to.  Good and bad.

When I angrily push him out-of-the-way and drive myself I am sure of nothing.

I used to think that if I let God take control of my life, my life might be ever so slightly boring but that simply isn’t the case.  God and I can still go on a wild ride, we can still have excitement and ambition.   We just do it the right way.

I get to have all that life has on offer without paying the terrible price I seem to pay when I wilfully drive the buggy myself.

I used to think (convinced myself) that doing the right thing meant that I had to live a pious life.

This simply isn’t true.  God doesn’t want me kneeling at his feet all day praying that his will be done.  He knows that I believe in his will being done, but what I have come to understand of late is that his will needn’t be dull.

Everyday things get better in my head.  Everyday without the grip of obsession, compulsion and the like I am calmer, more centered, more and more in my own skin.

Getting back to work and in touch with my God-given desire to create (and a means to do so) I feel more like the man I was meant to be rather than the man I have been lately.

Yesterday I went back to the doctor, had more scans and lo and behold there are yet more problems to deal with.  The difference between this time and the last is that I now have a skill set to deal immediately and healthily with these problems rather than the last time when I associated the problem with him.

It is remarkable to me that for nearly a year I let somebody else rule my head and my heart.  By so doing I allowed the deep shadow cast by another to blot out the sunlight of the spirit.

When I talk about God I don’t mean a christian…organised religious God.  I mean a God of my understanding, a higher power to whom I must defer at all times if I am going to live a healthy life.