Categories
Category: Gay
1.
It is dawn again. Dawn in the desert. The smell of the earth and the dew. The sounds of the chirruping birds.
The pervasive silence of the long black night coming to an end.
My night blindness is getting worse. I sat on my spectacles so am guessing, largely… where the keys are.
The days get hotter and hotter. The sun beating down relentlessly. The lawn toasting, the dogs roasting, the mountain tightens around us as it bakes.
Hot days in Dorset/ hot days in Malibu. Hot days on the sleepy ocean, lapping around me.
Coffee, editing, read the daily news. It sure looks bad in Syria.
We cruise down to the beach and play in the surf. We are tangled at night in the white linen sheets. We read side by side in silence. A familiar smell, a beating heart, the man I want but do not need.
He asks what we are. Nothing. We are nothing, I say. He struggles with ‘what it means’ to love another man.
My struggle is over. I am too old to give love a second chance.
He sees me thinking. He will read this and tell me to talk to him as if talking will solve everything. Just shut up and make love to me. Stop asking me what it means. Don’t expect me to know anything. Work it out yourself.
I don’t really care.
For all the terrible, meaningless cruelty I am still besotted with him. And, like the parent of a missing child, I wonder daily about his safety. Even though he is undeserving of my worry and considers my concern an intrusion..
I continue to fret about him, however violently I have tried to expunge the memory.
2.
I am mostly happy. I know you don’t believe me. I know that you think I am lying to you about my happiness.
Well, if you could see me… if you were the one laying beside me… you would understand.
Island Wall. The tiny cottage there. It was enough. It was perfect.
Now I lay my head down and it is enough.
Perhaps, you say, you could be happier? How much happier?
Facelifts, apparently, make women happier.
Then I realize that you are confusing your own thoughts about getting older with what you think happiness is. How can anyone be that old and be happy? How can anyone have so little and be happy?
Then, you try convincing me that I should want to be young again. Forgetting, of course, that I was never young. Always old. Always.
I have a spectacular ability to get on with what I have and be happy with it.
I don’t want more. Even in the jail. I found comfort. I found solace.
So, you think I am unhappy because you do not know what happiness is.
Could you imagine a happy person killing themselves? I could.
Come death.
3.
I had another dream about the DA. This time my thumb was in her mouth. She was sucking my thumb. Pressed down on her tongue. Like a calf. Her big brown eyes looking up at me.
Whenever I dream about her, her cheap gold jewelry tinkles like ice cubes in a crystal glass.
4.
I am writing my screenplay. Finishing it. I am enjoying a social life. I let the man beside me massage my neck.
I understand that I am in love with struggle. Struggle is sustenance. It feeds me everything I need to live. I am alive when I fight to survive. I am alive when I feel myself emerge victorious. Even though you could not imagine what I experience as victory.
I dream that I am walking by my primary school in Whitstable. The black, tarmac playground is always empty. The lawn is green. The classrooms, I assume, are full.
I remember the boy who ate coal, the butcher’s son. He looked like a pink pig. Fat, pink, bespectacled. He drowned you know. You knew that… didn’t you? When he couldn’t take it anymore.
5.
Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives.
Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrogered sea.
And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.
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Lady Gaga and The Trust Act
My days are split between the remarkable and the absurd. Bloated with new experiences, extraordinary adventures and, of course, passion.
Every day unfolds like a new napkin.
From dawn I write and rewrite. I am determined and hungry, inspired by the 75-year-old man who won the Palme D’Or in Cannes this year.
Contradictions:
On Thursday I stood in front of the Men’s County Jail with a disparate bunch of men and women denouncing the secure communities protocol, the very same protocol that illegally incarcerated me. A press conference for the Spanish press.
The only Anglo Saxon, the only non spanish speaker.
They hailed me and the other people called to testify. ‘Viva Duncan!’ they shout together. I am moved to tears.
Nobody I know cares about these people. Not least my gay ‘friends’ who savage me publicly for standing shoulder to shoulder with day workers, maids and gardeners who face daily threats of deportation and police harassment.
Later that same day I sat with Lady Gaga and Lindsay Lohan at dinner eating spaghetti. My date was overwhelmed. It was wholly unexpected.
The writing and photography give my life meaning and hope. The immigrants, of whom I am one, better shape my understanding of the world.
I am not interested in what I wear. I’m sure I look like a hobo. My beautiful tailored shirts are shredded. I have no interest in replacing them.
All the vintage Helmut Lang has been sold.
I can cobble together an ensemble for dinner. I look respectable enough.
Last week a young gay man told me I was lonely and sad. I feel neither. In fact, I have never felt so complete.
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Lanvin Hat
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4th July Party 2012
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Last Weekend, June 2012
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Return To County Jail
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6OYGEDO2mw&feature=youtu.be]
1.
No. Not what you ‘re thinking…hoping?
I set out at 6am for the Men’s County Jail to see my friend Jeremy who is presently residing in dorm 5200. Jeremy is a good-looking white man in his mid-thirties. A meth head with a penchant for transsexuals. He has two kids in Utah. He used to manage an ihop. He is the kind of character I couldn’t invent from a movie I couldn’t write. A charming man with anger issues. Like most inmates he is pre-occupied with his own case, another miserable drug dealer hauled off the streets. We spoke for thirty minutes, I left $50 for him to eat well and I drove home.
The deputies who processed us into the jail were very pleasant, polite.
2.
Yesterday we drove to Redondo Beach where we met with Democratic State Senator Lieu. The second State Senator I have met this month. He has a strange constituency, ranging from progressive liberals in the Venice area to hard-core Odinists in Orange County. We sat in the sparse office with his Harvard educated interns. They were polite but they didn’t offer us water or coffee.
Our successful visit last month to Senator Calderon lead to his decision to co-sponsor the Trust Act. The bill then passed the Senate Public Safety Committee and is now headed towards the Senate Floor . The Trust Act will make what happened to me less likely to happen to others. It may liberate the 3000 un-convicted men and women currently held on ICE holds in California. The Trust Act will demand that ICE follows its own guidelines, its own rules.
It is essential that Senator Lieu support this bill.
Lieu is an interesting man. In his Redondo office there is a huge studio photograph of Lieu and his family lounging on a white, fluffy rug. He is wearing a dress shirt but no tie. He has been a vociferous supporter of the LGBT community, especially the transsexual population for whom he reserves special respect.
I sat with Kristine Chong from The Californian Immigrants Policy Center and three other Immigrant rights specialists… including a day labourer from Mexico in the Senator’s dingy ‘conference’ room. Lieu’s people wore badly cut suits. We all began to sweat in the un air-conditioned office.
Antonio, the day laborer, spoke very movingly about the catastrophic effect ICE and the Secure Communities protocol are having on the immigrant population. Families broken apart, 5000 American children made orphans, their mothers and fathers deported. Immigrants are routinely forced to sign deportation papers or threatened with months held in privately owned immigration camps, camps that are currently costing the people of California 6 million dollars a year
The situation is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
This state has enjoyed, for many years, low-cost manual labour on which their false economy was based. Now, these undocumented migrants are being rounded up like animals. Targeted on the streets, in their cars, in their homes.
ICE have to deport 400, 000 people a year to fulfill a federal government quota. Even President Obama’s announcement last week supporting The Dream Act didn’t stop three ‘Dreamers’ being deported yesterday.
I told my story. I told them what they must have heard many times out of Latino mouths. Spanish speakers, their accents somehow devaluing what they have to say. Listen to me. Listen to my clipped British accent. Listen to me eloquently tell my story. Pay attention to the dramatic pauses.
It is always very shocking for them (especially the starched, ivy league interns) that an affluent white person could have got caught up in the immigration net. They bowed their heads in shame. After 45 minutes our meeting is over.
They tell us that Lieu’s support on the Senate floor cannot be assured, he has to pamper to the right-wing element of his constituency. They say: Lieu, in the past, has been threatened physically for supporting immigrants rights. He received death threats. Pampering to the right? I ask incredulously. Pampering to the right will keep this state poor, our children uneducated, the prisons full and gay men like me… unmarried and childless.
Be brave, I urge him, and do the right thing.
As we are leaving we pass another group of men and women patiently waiting their turn to be heard. They could have been Odinists for all I know, demanding that Lieu hunt down every illegal immigrant in California and throw away the key.
1.
I taught the inmates at MCJ the meaning of the word nonce.
It was funny. Didn’t sound like it does when people use it at home.
It really is the worst word you could imagine calling someone. Much worse than the word cunt.
Mind you, an insult is all in the delivery.
2.
A young man wrote to me yesterday.
He told me that he was gay, lived in Arkansas. An Iranian Jew. His mother tells him that gays are sick, should be in mental hospitals.
He sits there watching her. He knows that he will never ever tell her the truth.
Perhaps, he said, he should trick a girl into being with him. So…he won’t end up alone.
Sound familiar?
Now, that’s a closet.
3.
I am struck by how many young men I meet are fascinated by English men with beards.
So, I asked him. He said, “Have you seen the film The Weekend?”
I smiled and quietly thanked Andrew Haigh under my breath.
4.
God and the devil. In league with both of them…to make art.
5.
Read the Hollywood Reporter. “I was crazy for many years.” says Oliver Stone.
Which artist isn’t?
6.
I am happy. Not blissfully…but at ease with myself.
Categories
Yikes
I love this picture. Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud in Wheelers.
1.
Waking up at Robby’s apartment. West Hollywood. Feeling like I have a hangover. I haven’t. I’m still not drinking. Waiting for the right moment…but it never comes. The sanctity of sobriety.
It’s hard after nearly 16 years to think about the right time to start drinking.
A woman I know from the programme called yesterday. I told her that I had renounced AA. “How’s that working out for you?” She pried condescendingly.
I faked a dropped call.
2.
Saturday pre pride party. Good fun. The über gays. The fake NYC producer I mentioned in an earlier post sitting at his table wondering how I manage to surround myself with such beauty. He looked exasperated. Staring over at us.
Pride was a great deal of fun. On the streets. The floats have not changed for 30 years: muscle boys and drag queens. Not very inventive.
I stayed at the London Hotel courtesy of my Kuwaiti friends. They pitched up at 8am. We ate smoked fish and Quiche for breakfast.
3.
Nothing is obvious. Just when you thought you’d never kiss anyone meaningfully ever again.
I saw you in the bar and knew you were the one. A brief conversation. Kisses, glances, then you pissed on me. That was new to both of us but so damned exciting. A mouth full of piss. Then we spent the afternoon talking. Eating. Each other.
You left an impression. Creases in the bed sheets.
4.
Without me even noticing it LA is full of gay men with beards.
Does this mean that they/we are growing up? That men are trumping boys? The aesthetic is not only very pleasing but means I get looked at all over again. I have some currency…if you know what I mean.
5.
I don’t have time to write this very often. There’s a great deal to do.
I’m helping those boys in the jail, even though they don’t know it. Meeting lawyers down town who are investigating conditions in the jail. They seem shocked. Young lawyers. Fresh faced. Idealists.
I try balancing my complaints with a broader understanding of the jail dynamic. The deputies are not just cruel…they are frightened. They do not treat the trans population with contempt because they hate gays, they are confused by the feelings the girls bring up in them.
Ernest lawyers ask how I would change things in the jail. I am always prepared for those questions.
Last week I sat with Senator Ron S.Calderon who is co-sponsoring a bill in the State of California that would basically abolish the situation in which I found myself. Protocols would have to be adhered to. States right to decide trumping the draconian Immigration Department.
I drive for hours to get to the meeting and speak clearly and concisely. I know that I am speaking on behalf of thousands of wrongly incarcerated immigrants.
I go to cities I would never usually visit. I am introduced to people I would never usually meet. Immigrant rights advocates, Methodist ministers. I am familiar with Secure Communities. I hear terrible stories. They tell me that ICE operate like the Gestapo. They spread fear in the immigrant communities, wrecking homes, lives, marriages, separating families, sending children into foster care.
6.
Then, there is the other work. Kevin, my incredible new assistant, and I…running all over town. Putting this show together. Holding things together.
Today I see the doctor. No good news all over again. I’m sure.
Wish me luck.