Category: Gay

Categories
Gay

10 Affectations

1.  Phil bought me a string of Baroque pearls for my 26th birthday.  They vanished.  As Coco Chanel lay dying on the Rue Cambon in 1971, her friends stole the jewelery she was wearing from her fingers and from around her neck.  The same happened to Barbara Hutton the Woolworth heiress.

2. What does it feel like when one assumes that someone they loved is dead and gone and then they reappear?  What changes, adjustments have to me made?  When one has already grieved.  The shock of the living far outweighs the shock of the dead.

3.  I did not sleep last night.   The demons were upon me.  Yet, I would describe myself as happy.

4.  I wear dark glasses.  I am reading the Martin Kippenberger biography.

5. It is so cold at night I fear the succulents will die.

6.  I found the Lanvin straw hat I bought in Paris.  It was crushed in the back of the car.  I took the remnants and had them framed.

7.  I am optimistic.

8.  Stringing together the visual DNA on my blog.  I find myself abruptly halted.  How can one leap from a formal portrait of a disgraced Duchess to snowy Stonehenge?  What is the connection?  Either the Duchess goes or I’m stuck.

9. The final act of my film needs rewriting.  Truth is stranger than fiction.

10.  Not sleeping has a powerful effect on my libido.  I have unwanted erections.

 

 

 

Categories
Fashion Gay Love

Your Life Now

IMG_2797

New York. May 2012

There you are. Finally. For all to see.  Like bumping into you in the street. That’s how it felt.  But you were where we met…virtually…on the internet.

Peony, the rain, the winsome songs.

If we had bumped into each other in the street, I think I would have felt the same. I left the page with a sweet smile on my face. I felt proud of you. I know how exciting life must be for you.  And if I had bumped into you in the street and you had told me that you were in love…inevitably you wanted me to know that you were in love and inevitably I crumbled.

I am indeed that cliché you despised so badly. 😉

I called Robby and he listened. I called Joan and we looked into your life and we all agreed that it was swell.

So…

The end of the film needs rewriting.  All the world can see your love. Ironic huh? Now you know how I felt when I wanted to publicly celebrate what we once had, when I wrote about us.

There you are, together…pressed together. In love.  You looked great. Your hair well cut, your pants the right length.  Your boy friend looks extraordinary and familiar. Celine is a great brand.  I know you didn’t put that Tumblr page up for me but you knew I would see it. You knew I’d have an opinion.

It was a perfect way to let me know.

If we hadn’t ended things so badly and we’d met in the street…I would have hugged you. I would have thanked you. I would have smiled gently. I may have shed a tear.  I loved you very much…you know that. But, we knew what we had was fleeting…needed to happen for you to set yourself free, free for this relationship that you celebrate so publicly today.

The metamorphosis is complete and you have emerged fully into the world…a beautiful young man capable of great love and glamor…and your underwear was chic as all hell.

I know that you will make something amazing one day…something I would have never guessed.  A film or a book or a room or a garden. You are capable of all those things.

Of course I still love you. But not like that.  This is all I ever wanted, to know you are happy and to share your happiness

By publishing your life so publicly I am relieved…even though I cried, I cried because you were there on the street telling me what I needed to know.

That you are happy and in love and…of course…beautifully dressed.

PS I bought the book.

Categories
Gay Rant

Andy Gipson Kills Gays for Jesus

Dear Andy Gipson Mississippi state Rep. (R),

Apparently, on Facebook recently, you posted a note advocating the murder, slaughter, deaths of homosexuals after (black) President Obama had some personal feelings about gay marriage.

Well, I wholeheartedly support your ‘put homosexuals to death’ position…you know…kill a gay for Jesus. Yay. You’ve got my support.

However, I support you on one condition. You can kill any one of us..as long as you can look us in the eye and kill us with your bare hands. Your hands around our throats. For Jesus.

You know, like vegetarians who urge carnivores to try killing their own meat before they eat another burger.

I mean, it’s one thing to say something terrible like that Andy but it’s another doing it…isn’t it?

I’ve posted some pictures of some gay people and their friends below for you to imagine shooting or gassing.

I saw you with your kids. You’re obviously a good dad. I mean…apart from wanting to commit genocide.

Have you seen pictures of the gestapo on their days off? Holding their kids in their arms?

I noticed too that you dress your kids in army uniforms. Are you training them to kill gays?

I was in a pub once called the Admiral Duncan in London that was bombed by a man like you who wanted to kill gays. He killed as many heterosexuals as he killed homosexuals. He went to prison for a very long time.

Will it make you happy or sad when you squeeze the life out of your first gay?

Andy!!! God forbid! Have you ever thought your children might be homosexual? What will you do when your children want to come out? When your children ‘come out’ will you enjoy killing them?

How will you feel? Taking their lives for Jesus? I thought you people were pro-life?

Apparently, at the concentration camps in Germany (during the last great state sanctioned homocleansing) where large numbers of gays and lesbians were murdered…the guards tortured us before butchering us.

Could you imagine doing that?

Do you ever have thoughts like that?

How exactly do you want to kill us? I mean, there are millions of us…in God’s great plan…he sure fucked things up.

Disposing of all that gay meat and bones may very well increase the deficit you despise so much.

I’ve given your problem of eradicating us gays a great deal of thought.

It occurs to a simple-minded man like me that however many of us you kill we will return.

Every generation you straight people manage to make more gay people.

If, for instance, you could determine when we were fetus that we might be gay…would you offer free abortions to women…NOOOO!!!! No abortions. Nothing FREE!!! The deficit!!

OH…yes…we’re probably evidence of the devil’s work? Is that right? But, I can eat garlic and sprinkle holy water on my forehead without turning to dust or the water burning my skin.

I must admit that I’ve thought about murdering some of my exes and if you could start…when the day comes…and you get permission to murder us…can you murder my ex first? I mean, before me. So I can see it happen maybe? Then you can turn the gun on me.

Have you ever considered just murdering gay people for fun? You seem like you might enjoy it.

Thank God Jesus has people like you to help him at difficult times like this.

I thought ‘thou shalt not kill‘ was a commandment but you people seem to make this bible stuff up as you go along.

Do you think you could help me go straight, stop hankering after a mouthful of cock?

I may renounce my gayness and come join your congregation. Come and live at your house. Ex gay. I’m too old to be gay anyway.

No. I’m not doing that. I’m a butt fucking gay. Too old to be ashamed of who I am. Too old.

I live in California. If you are ever here and feel like killing me for being gay…or any other reason…just let me know.

Facebook me.

And just in case you didn’t think it could get any worse:

The charming words of Charlie Worley, another gay killing pastor.

 

Categories
Gay Love

Red Medicine

Woke up early. Wanted to get the daub onto the stove. It’d been marinating all night.

Then, something about the process, the action of stirring the pot, as it began to simmer…broke something in me. Like I was having a rare moment of clarity, sanity…and I felt a terrible guilt for the way I had treated…not him…but his parents…drawing them into our drama. Collateral damage.

I wanted to write to them and tell them how sorry I was.

They were innocent.

Then I found that Avadon picture of Ginsberg and his long-term lover Orlovsky. And I thought about them ‘long-term’ and what they were thinking, or not thinking when they kissed for the camera.

I thought about the way they, we…I…describe what we have as long term.

Long term insists that we take what they had seriously. Ginsberg had not just met some man on the street and taken him into the studio. He had made some sort of commitment. Long term.

And I thought that marriage would be just that…long term. That our beards would grow long together. That I would never ever tire of looking at you. Kissing you.

Then I remember that I am here in LA. You send me a picture of Washington Square. It’s all I need right now. A picture.

The whole house smells of beef in red wine, fresh herbs, fresh garlic.

I had lunch with Robby on Monday. We ate a lamb burger at Gjelina. I drank ginger and mint italian soda.

He has been having a wonderful time. Earning masses of cash, loving his man and roaming with his homies. Yes, I wrote that.

On Wednesday I met a friend for lunch, a lunch that didn’t end until 3am. He is 23, he lied about his age. He told me he was older. A masculine dilettante.

We had lunch in Venice, tea in Beverly Hills, an odd party at The Sunset Tower (gays and girls), then dinner at Red Medicine on Wilshire.

Have you heard of Red Medicine? It’s that restaurant, Jordan Kahn’s place…that everyone is talking about.

We ordered far too much. Each baffling plate arrived covered in flowers or Dadaist condiment.

We ate: DUNGENESS CRAB / passion fruit, brown butter, black garlic, Vietnamese crepe, hearts of palm $32

We ate: HEIRLOOM RICE PORRIDGE / egg yolk, hazelnuts, ginseng, echire butter $17 and added Santa Barbara uni for a further $20.

We ate: BEEF TARTARE / water lettuce, water chestnut, nuoc leo, chlorophyll, peanut $15

We ate: AMBERJACK / red seaweed, buttermilk, lotus root, tapioca, succulents $16

Then, after dinner, we lay in the back of his SUV by the beach and kissed each other until my face was raw, my heart was racing, my legs were trembling. I was so completely overwhelmed that I could not drive for ne’er a mile before I had to stop and beg a cigarette from a passer-by.

He is beautiful. He gnawed at my neck until I could not bear it any more.

So, that’s what love looks like in a warm climate. For a moment. Not long-term. Not to be taken seriously. Just a moment. I have trained myself not to yearn for more.

So, the daub will cook for four more hours until it is tender. We will eat it with home-made noodles.

20120518-100652.jpg

Categories
Gay Rant

Marriage Equality

Yasmin Nair: Gay marriage, as framed in the United States, is the ultimate neoliberal fantasy, in that it allows for a politics of the personal to masquerade as a necessity for policy change. In the process, it serves to distract us from the very real issues facing millions of U.S. citizens and residents.

Yesterday the President of the United States, leader of the free and democratic world let a middle-aged black woman from network TV know his personal opinion of…what they call here in the USA (divisively call) same-sex or gay marriage.

Languorous platitudes.

For many gays just listening to the President say gay and lesbian and marriage and agree in the same sentence was enough to have them wildly screaming with joy. Heading to their local bar and ordering martinis and Brazilian wax jobs…

You know, I’m an old fart, I’ve heard many politicians from all manner of countries embrace their gay electorate. The ones I remember best are Paul Keating in Australia who gave an impassioned speech about anti-vilification and inclusivity (made me cry) and of course Tony Blair who charged Waheed (Ali) with his far-reaching UK gay equality bill. (did not make me cry)

It seemed to us, during the grim Thatcher years, that gay rights would never materialize…that we were not welcome in our own country…but I put my faith in activists like Peter Tatchell who steadfastly turned up outside the homes of homophobes, the offices of homophobic organizations, held incendiary Outrage! placards, got arrested and generally caused trouble where ever he could so that our enemy never felt like they could get away with discriminatory behavior.

The gay elite sneered at Peter. They hated him for his trouble making, they called him insane, they denigrated his direct action. Recently, Elton John famously said that he was scared of Peter Tatchell but now (decades later) understands how important people like Peter are.

Peter is a national treasure, brain-damaged from repeated police beatings, poor from dedicating himself to our equality…thankfully he has been embraced by the same elite who once scoffed at his anarchic antics.

He taught me: never accept anything a politician says at face value.

So, when President Obama, flagging in popularity amongst his own, wants a boost? There we are…the convenient truth.

Today, I managed to incite the ire of my friends and foes alike by sneering at President Obama’s ill-judged and badly timed personal opinion about marriage equality.

The day after the 39th state in the union denounced same sex marriage and civil unions…North Carolina…he decides to ‘bravely’ come out for the gays.

Not everyone bought the president’s evolution.

“Waiting until AFTER the vote that divested NC’s gays of their constitutional /civil rights to speak for marriage equality is cowardly NOT heroic.” Roseanne Barr

Either POTUS had been forced into sharing his opinion by VP Joe Biden who declared his support for marriage equality a day or so earlier…or the entire fiasco had been manufactured by David Axelrod so President Obama could finally reclaim and re-energize his base.
“The president sets the policy. I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly, I don’t see much of a distinction– beyond that.” Joe Biden

Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if the scenario had been planned.

The President merely said what any intelligent, liberal, modern man in his position must have thought for some time. I doubt whether his position had ‘evolved’. All that had ‘evolved’ was the moment his pro gay position could be revealed for maximum impact.

He was described as ‘brave’ his decision as ‘risky’ and his few words as ‘historical’. The interview applauded by gay groups and liberal straights alike.

Today, yesterday, I engaged in heated debates on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, famously pissing off Jesse Tyler Fergusonwho appeared last night on Piers Morgan gushing over the president like a Thai hooker.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson ‏ @jessetyler

@duncaninla change takes time. It’s impossible to please everyone. Especially those who make it impossible to please.

Within minutes of the president’s pronouncement his liberal apotheosis began.

I was bombarded with fund raising requests from organizations like the HRC who shamelessly picked over the bones of the ‘unexpected’ Presidential LGBT patronage. The Obama ‘evolution’ will net millions for his campaign from traditionally very generous LGBT donors.

The gays reacted with unbridled and unquestioning enthusiasm, as a community we seem addicted to good news and paternalistic validation.

Upon hearing the Obamamessiah’s announcement Andrew Sullivan, the gay pundit had ‘tears in his eyes’. President Obama, according to Sullivan, has ‘let go of fear’. In Sullivan’s sentimental one issue world he succumbs, finally to the President’s change he could believe in.

Sullivan guesses that Obama has owned his blackness is the same way we must own our gayness. (I had tears in my eyes when I read that)

Andrew Sullivan gushes along side our friend Jesse Ferguson: The President’s endorsement will make young gays feel better about themselves, gay parents will know their kids have a place in the USA. In Sullivan’s exciting new world of Presidential fearlessness there’s a great deal of…expectation…I hope he isn’t disappointed.

Unless…of course, you’re the parents of children killed in drone attacks in northern Afghanistan…or find yourself out of a home or a job because the President is still fearful of the banks and his own military.

I found myself wondering what young straight people were thinking. Those who have supported the abstract notion of marriage equality but now peer at it cautiously…startled by the Presidential candor…like it’s a real issue and not something they have patiently listened to their gay friends bang on about.

Straight people might agree in principle with marriage equality but when ever we find this issue on the ballot…we lose.

Black voters, led by black churches, have played key roles in blocking same-sex marriage in states like California, where 2008 exit polls indicated about 70 percent black opposition, and Maryland, where black Democrats were part of a statehouse coalition that stalled a gay marriage bill in 2011.

Which brings me to this: The nub, the thorny question of style.

I have never liked the word marriage. It is steeped in heterosexual tradition.

I have never felt like I wanted to own this non secular word. It has nothing to do with me or the language and traditions of the gay life I evolved along side other men and women if the UK.

Yasmin Nair: “The fight for gay marriage, in granting that institution so much importance, is slowly eroding the possibility that the rest of the population might get rights and benefits without marrying each other. The fight over gay marriage has emerged as a progressive cause that all progressive straights should join when, in fact, it’s a deeply conservative movement that strips our movement of any imagination. Instead of asking for one way to grant rights and benefits, we ought to be advocating for a multiplicity of options.”

It is my understanding that when Waheed Ali was given the choice…he chose (after consultation) civil union as the way forward for British Gays and Lesbians. Now, 15 years later, those words are once again being re-evaluated. British gays are demanding the word marriage. Not my choice but, thankfully, they are fighting from a position of power.

Their equal rights already assured the word marriage is merely the icing on the equality cake…nor thankfully are the LGBT community in the UK hankering for the Queen to validate their position.

Once upon a time Civil Unions were mooted then tentatively offered to the LGBT community here in the USA but…they turned them down flat.

Even George W Bush thought Civil Unions a good idea. The LGBT community said they were not prepared to be separate but equal yet in the same breath tried convincing the skeptical that incremental baby steps toward marriage equality was the only way.

Civil Union might have been a great baby step…no?

Now, even Civil Unions are being outlawed for gay people. Since Bush left office the right wing has become insanely entrenched, enraged, intractable….and unbelievably…more right wing.

Later, in the ‘historic’ interview President Obama made it clear what he considered important elements of a marriage: Commitment and monogamy. I nearly choked. So many of my gay friends do not rate monogamy highly on their list of per-requisites for a good gay marriage.

We are entering uncharted moral territory.

Yesterday, my educated American friends were baffled and confused when I said: Capitalism discovered that the LGBT community was generally well educated and affluent…and could be bought.

It is indeed a very interesting time to be gay in the USA. However, I’d like to see less simpering, fewer baby steps and more activism. Less cowardice and ass bleaching and more brave souls willing to be arrested and stand up for the rights they expect others to win for them.

What we do with this presidential approval is up to us.

The only time I have ever felt proud of American gays in my life time was when prop 8 was ratified. The people took to the streets, they ensnared the traffic of Los Angeles, stormed Mormon churches and caused mayhem in the city.

It was a night to be proud to be gay and I urge you all to remember the anger you felt that night because you must feel that anger every night until you are equal in every way.

Jeanne Cordova: “At the time, selling out our radical underpinnings made me very sad. We egg-throwers had to morph into omelet makers. Unhappily, I was left with the realization that all social movements start with radical ideology, but unless they progress to a blood and guts revolution, like a socialist overthrow, movements must inevitably adopt a civil rights and assimilationist stance or die out.”

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/23083867]

Related articles
Categories
Gay Hollywood Money

New Naked Boy

20120426-100939.jpg

In the world of nice…this blog isn’t going to go down terribly well.

I was in court yesterday.

Anne-Marie the DA…jeeze. I felt sorry for her. The super-cool judge told her that he would (without using the colorful language) have (in my circumstances) done the same.

He said this…on the record.

He said anyone presented with the same problem would have written a similar letter. Giving someone (who has so blatantly ripped him off) the opportunity of making things better.

He continued that he was trying to ‘get his head around’ the case.

Anne Marie sat at her desk gasping and pouting like a spurned little girl. Noisily shuffling her papers, comparing me with Michael Flatley.

So…Sean McFarlane, perhaps your ‘jumping for joy’ was a little premature. Allegedly Sean (the sex therapist) screamed with unbridled delight, when he heard I had been arrested, “He’s going down!” The crazy cult therapist…to his equally insane clients…to the assembled SAA meeting.

He’s going down? Let’s see shall we?

If the judge thinks what I did was reasonable…what will a jury think?

My favorite line from yesterday’s proceedings? “So, Mr Roy should have just published the blog?” It was my first amendment right.

I saw Jonathan A yesterday. He was a friend of mine once. He’s the kind of gay guy who overly cleans his room (it is spotless) so nobody would suspect how grimy his interior world is.

He heard me at a recent SAA meeting tell them I wouldn’t be back any time soon. Of course, I can change my mind. Any time I want. I can step right back into AA or SAA. That’s the way it works.

Try stopping me. I’m laughing out loud.

The tramps and the hookers and the thieves. All the filth comes out at night…

Jonathan’s head looks like it has been carved from the flesh of a rotton pear. If you bit into it: pappy, bitter…spit it out immediately.

Gay life.

1.

So, this beautiful teenager arrives at a party I’m at last week in the Hollywood Hills.

Fresh off the boat. He’s beautiful. He has a fresh, open face…his pale skin is flawless.

He hadn’t been in Hollywood for longer than a month but already he’s on the arm (unwittingly) of a so called LA ‘producer‘ who, it seems, has immediately pimped the boy out to the head of programming for a popular network.

The no name, no hope LA producer pimping the boy out…so that he might curry favor with the TV grandee.

(just to be clear…the same LA producer hires young boys to ‘read scripts’ so he has access to their young boy world)

The whores and the pimps and the fairies…

The network head ain’t no beauty. He looks like Dobby from Harry Potter.

So the good looking kid arrives and he tells me that he’s working in NYC with an equally scummy NYC ‘producer’ who always has some starstruck kid on his arm.

The NYC producer looks like he has downs syndrome, he looks like his teeth are too big for his fat, useless head. He looks like he’s wearing a wig but the fringe ain’t deep enough to cover the alcohol bloat, the never was visage.

He was a bullied kid at the expensive school his mother sent him to…signed him up the moment she heard the sperm had hit the egg.

Both of these producers have one thing in common: they have loads of inherited money and never produced anything.

They might have their names attached to invisible projects, they might have inveigled their way into the production meeting of some meaningless movie, thrown a little cash behind an artless indi. But, they ain’t never winning no awards, they ain’t never been invited to no Sundance, Berlin or Cannes.

They’ll go anyway, keeping their mouths shut to those who matter and lying to those who don’t.

Should I tell you who they are?

No.

So I’m keeping my head down. I’m not saying a word. I’m instagramming the bar man, I’m already elsewhere…waiting for something real to happen.

Dobby, the network head shows the man I’m standing with his very smart, smart phone. He’s so excited. There are hi def pictures and video of the same wide eyed teenager at Dobby’s huge house wearing just…a towel.

Yes. The kid is wearing a towel around his waist, his perfectly sculpted body on full view and standing beside him is another, equally cut young teen.

Two young boys.

The inference? You don’t need me to explain this to you do you?

So I take this kid to one side and I ask him if he’s gay? He’s not. I ask him what he thinks of the network head showing everybody his new naked body to anyone the network head needs to impress.

‘They are good guys.’ he reassures me.

No, I say…they are anything but good guys.

You know, all he wants (this kid) is a job, a chance, an opportunity, the dream of celebrity…freedom. He can almost taste it. He knows that these men make all the difference.

His desire for a better life is palpable.

He’ll drink the drinks. Undress, get into the hot tub.

You know, I love beauty. I love it. Look, I’m surrounded with beauty.

My ex-friend might say, oh your just jealous. You’re just jaded because you want what they’ve got,

Believe me, I do just fine. But on terms that do not compromise my integrity.

Would I show random strangers the body of some boy who stands feet from me? Knowing that those artless, semi pornographic images suggest that we are more than just…innocent friends?

The network head winks, smiling…dribbing over the screen on the smart phone. Dobby’s nose is dripping from undisclosed snorting.

He says, without saying anything: That teen boy…the boy with the perfect abs. He’ll do anything..because he thinks I’m going to get him a role, find him an agent…make him the next teen sensation. LOL.

LAUGHING OUT LOUD!

He lets seasoned Hollywood gays believe that this boy will do just about anything to get on.

Dobby wants you to believe he fucked the boy. Dobby is powerful. Dobby can get whatever he wants. Even the virgin ass of a young boy fresh off the boat. Particularly…the young ass of the boy standing feet away from us, oblivious that he is now the victim of rank objectification and intrigue.

Proud to be gay? Not today.

So I wrote a short email to the NYC ‘producer’ guy. I told him what was going on with his protege. He wrote back immediately…he thought it was hilarious. I reminded the fat, vodka marinated, creep…that the boy…has parents.

Today Bradley Manning is in court again…his fate predetermined…the rest of his life in jail assured…for being a hero. Nobody I know in the gay community gives a damn. Of course, if he looked like the beautiful teen age boy at the gay hollywood party…things might be a whole heap different.

I saw Jonathan yesterday and he reminded me why I am alive. What living is all about.

He has a job in marketing and a spotless room but he has a filthy, miserable interior world. A world that shames him. A world from which he cannot escape, a world that will never include anything of which he dreams.

Categories
Gay

Sheriff Pat Sullivan

So, yesterday, I’m on HLN‘s Jane Velez Mitchell show courtesy of CNN ostensibly to put the boot into a 67-year-old Colorado Sheriff called Pat Sullivan who paid young boys for sex with meth.

I started the show by acknowledging Pat’s sex addiction but then, halfway through, listening to the comments of the other ‘outraged’ guests I suddenly felt an overwhelming pity for Pat Sullivan.

Before being caught in an undercover sting he had been described as a hero…as a crusader against drug use.

During his 18 years as elected Arapahoe County Sheriff he had inspired the local population to trust him with their safety.

They re-elected him time after time.

The local jail was named after him.

What became of this man and his reputation? Arrested by young deputies, in the most desperate of situations.

67 years old, a walking stick, taking meth, living a double life, having sex with degenerate addicts and homeless people. Described as a ‘dirty old man’.

The closet can be a terrible place. A terrible dark place.

As Jake found out. The people you meet, the lies you tell. A double life can take a toll on you and those around you.

Unlike Jake, who stayed in the closet because he was a coward, Pat…50 years ago in rural Colorado had no choice.

He didn’t want to move to the big city and follow his sexual condition, he didn’t want to go be a criminal in another city (homosexuality was outlawed 50 years ago) so, he married, had kids and became the town hero.

Having a career as a hero in rural Colorado for a gay man in the 1960’s was not an option.

Pat looked after the people of Arapahoe but didn’t look after himself.

Now, revealed for all to see. As sick as his secrets.

I’m sorry Pat didn’t, couldn’t get help.

Perhaps he will now.

Categories
Film Gay Hollywood Los Angeles politics Queer

Wrinkles

I am downtown. Downtown LA. We are drinking coffee in a chic coffee shop.

It is reassuringly sophisticated.  It feels like NYC. It feels like a city.  Spring Street. Coffee bar.  The people who pass by are dressed well and don’t have that Hollywood vibe. The women are not showing off their chests and legs, the boys are wearing well cut pants and have covetable accessories.

Having the car makes life more interesting. I am scarcely at home.  I am writing this on my phone.

I had dinner with an old friend on Saturday night. We ate at Bossa Nova then we saw Clash of the Titans 2 at the Chinese Theatre.  There were less than 10 of us in the theatre.  The film was terrible, Olivia was terrible. Everything about that terrible film that could be said…was said.  He brought two young men. They didn’t say much. One was gay, the other ‘in training’.  Outside the theatre there was a costume exhibition. We poured over the ormolu costume jewelry Elizabeth Taylor wore in Cleopatra.

We explained to the boys the history of Century City.  You know that story don’t you?  How Cleopatra bankrupted 20th Century Fox? How the back lot was sold and Century City was built?  Everybody should know that story, if they live in LA.

It was pouring rain.  Under the theatre, in the parking lot, valley girls were vomiting out of SUVs onto their fake Louboutins.  We drove west, we sat together at my club and they drank cocktails. I drank coffee.  The boys remained mute.

Not feeling at all combative, I found myself passionately discussing racism and gay equality which quickly disintegrated into a nasty UK v USA argument.  At one point my friend told me that if he could press a button and eradicate all Muslims he would.  I pointed out that my father was a Persian Muslim and technically so were the majority of my 11 brothers and sisters. That he would have to kill my young sister Rebecca.

How did he feel about that?  His genocidal zeal was not diminished.

How come it’s become ok for reasonable men to become so islamaphobic?  The conversation further disintegrated into how retarded the Brits were for accepting equality without the word marriage in the equation.  It made my blood boil that he would rather have nothing if he couldn’t have the word marriage. Civil unions in the UK seem, to those who have them…just like being married and my friends who have civil unions think of themselves, describe themselves, as married.  Anyway, the m word is now being fought for in the UK but more as a nice after thought attached to the equality that we already enjoy.  You know how I felt, and people like me felt about that word. Archaic, patriarchal bull shit…antiquated in the secular UK.

Then, this morning, I found myself listening to Democracy Now on the radio as I drove the 101 Freeway.

Van Jones being interviewed.

He pointed out that in the civil rights game played out in the USA…if you are prepared to be arrested for what you believe…and there are enough of you, change happens quickly.

Be seen to fight for what you believe rather than playing the faceless gay equality/marriage ‘incremental’ tactic…employing expensive lawyers and fighting state by state…  He mentioned the names of 5 or 6 black civil rights leaders. I got to wondering where our civil rights leaders were? Who are they? Why can’t I name them?

I suppose Lance Black has become a recognizable leader/voice of the gay community but this seems accidental rather than deliberate.  It has always been my dream for the gay men and women of the USA that they get the human rights they deserve.  But…what are they prepared to risk when demanding those rights? How many windows do they need to break?

There is something weedy and unfocused about the movement.  Worse, by articulating this frustration I risk people like my friend telling me that I am letting down the cause.  We need leaders, we need direct action. It is the only way the unelected justices (who get the final say) at the Supreme Court will truly understand how important equality is to us.

The system has failed us.

Meanwhile, Justin Bond shared on Facebook a piece from the NY Times about the suicide of a gay man struggling with the notion of old age…amongst other things.

Read it here: gay suicide

Some of Justin’s friends dismissed the piece as worthless. Some of them understood how important it was.  Some of them, quite rightly, wondered why the piece was in the style section. Our community wrestles with all sorts of problems peculiar to our people. It is absurd, at moments like this, to pretend that we are just like everyone else.  Our generation of gay men, used to unlimited sex, sexual validation, Peter Panism at its worst…has to wake up and acknowledge the wrinkles.

So, it’s been quite a week. A date last night that went really well. Passionate discussions and…well the dogs.

What more could I want?

20120403-120523.jpg

Categories
Gay

Retweeted

The weeks and the months pass by.

Since my release from the county jail, life has become…tranquil…passes effortlessly…with relative ease.

I imagine this is what Percocet feels like?

I have settled back into my life but scarcely write about it.

The twins are living here with their friend Kevin. They move out on the 26th. We cook, we prepare good food. We eat at the table, we use the linen napkins before they are packed up or sold.

They drink red wine from crystal glasses they have no idea are as valuable as they are.

I know that these formal dinners are at odds not just with these youth but with all youth.

I am trapped in another universe, insensitive to their discomfort. They have no use for anything I know.

I am not sad. All I have to do is re-imagine life in jail and I am delivered from self-pity.

I have tried going back to AA but I’ve no stomach for it, nor the people. I am done with AA in LA. It’s over. Over.

Occasionally I have to go back to court and they hand me more papers to add to the huge stack I already have on my desk.

You can feel that neither the judge nor the DA has the enthusiasm for the case now I am not incarcerated.

Certainly, with the serious press and the ACLU in pursuit of answers re. my illegal incarceration and with a huge law suit in the offing…I can’t imagine that it’s party time at the DA’s office when they mention my name.

Anne Marie the special DA looked positively miserable when we saw her yesterday. Her hair looked good tho. Nicely quaffed and bouncy.

She was wearing a very chic black, cashmere coat belted at the waist with dramatic lapels and long hem line.

I was a bit hard on her in earlier blogs. She is prettier than Michelle Bachman.

I am most eager to go to court. To clear my name. To start the law suit against the realtor who started all this mess.

I am not allowed to sue him whilst we are in this criminal tangle. That’s the law…apparently.

Yet, even that may be taken out of my hands by HSBC, my lender.

The twins birthday on Monday. They will be 22 years old. Remember last year? How they bounced down stairs in the morning and sang Dave Mathews songs?

I met Miles when he was 19.

Robby has fallen for someone and my surrogate child spends nights on end away from the house with his new love.

I want him to be safe, he looks at me like I’m an idiot when I remind him to be true to himself.

Watching Robby grow into a fully formed young man, the young man he wants to be…not who I want him to be.

He reminds me of another young man who liberated himself from the closet not so long ago. Before my very eyes.

There are so many similarities. Robby and Jake. But the outcomes are so different.

Again, I play over those past events. The events of that doomed love affair. Wishing I had done things differently. Wishing I could have helped rather than hindered.

The death of love.

Mostly, as Robby reveals who he is, I have the same feeling I had when Jake came out. That he shouldn’t be betrayed, that they wouldn’t make the same mistakes I made.

It was so hard to let him go.

Now I can’t even remember that he was beside me in Paris or London or New York…because, I suppose…he was a ghost or I was never truly allowed to enjoy our time together.

He was tortured by self doubt. Guilt.

Sometime, I wish I could call him and listen to his voice, listen to his loves and losses. How he has evolved.

Then, seconds later, I know that I don’t want to hear anything. That it would still be too painful. Isn’t that absurd?

We are strangers. We are strangers. We will remain forever…strangers.

If I had lived in NYC when I was seeing him things would have been different. We both needed continuity. The goodbyes destroyed me. Every time he said goodbye. I was bereft.

Well, that was then…but even so, just writing about him again…my whole body ached. He was consuming and passionate and never mine to have.

Meanwhile on twitter Roseanne and I have been publicly sharing our philosophies and mutual revulsion of the way things are. Two old people meeting in the virtual town square putting the world back together the way we think it should be.

I like Roseanne.

20120320-133056.jpg

Categories
Gay Malibu

Death Threat

Doctor’s office yesterday.  He wasn’t there.

The  receptionist told me with ersatz compassion that they had tried calling me.  They had tried cancelling.

She showed me the number they had for me.  She let me see the evidence.  The right digits, the wrong order.

I remembered telling the young woman who initially took my details.  I remembered her thick accent.  I knew that she didn’t understand what I was saying whilst I was saying it.

She’s not the only one.  I get things so muddled.  I can’t spell.

I mean, some words elude me…like the word ersatz.  It baffles me.

Hot coffee, very hot microwaved coffee.  It’s raining.  The dogs are staying in bed.

The boys stayed out last night.   I had a friend over.  Lit a fire.

Yesterday this mad kid (Turkish origin)  from Bel Air in Maryland left violent, racist messages on this blog.  He used to call and text.  He stopped texting and calling months ago after I threatened the police…so he sets up false Facebook accounts and tells me how he is going to kill me etc.

In his head he is best friends with Peres Hilton.

In his head he thinks he can leave anonymous notes…telling me that I am a disgusting negro lover…and not get caught.

Again, what this idiot, these morons don’t get?  They leave their IP addresses , they leave crucial evidence.  This is his:  68.55.180.249  It is linked to every email he ever sent, every message he ever wrote.

The kid is a tragic mess who needs help…but I ain’t the one to give it to him.

Robby said yesterday, after I texted some sweet note…’till death do us part’.  So I reminded him that death was probably not so far off, (more deaths of contemporaries reported in London) that he would one day organize my funeral.

“Did you get a death threat?”  he asked…

No.  Not today.

Rain forecast for the next three days.

The kid who shot all those Afghans in their own homes last week…well, he is getting a media makeover.

They say he ‘snapped’,  he was ‘drinking’,  it was his ‘third tour’.  Meanwhile whole families are dead.

Can you imagine the same excuses being made if an Afghan slaughtered an American family.  Well, he snapped, he was drinking…he couldn’t take it any more.

Could you imagine those excuses being made?

More details are ’emerging’, more details are being manufactured so we can let this guy off the hook.

Meanwhile the tenant I had downstairs, Matty O’Neil…he has gone…leaving a disgusting mess behind him.  The boys took a whole day cleaning up after him.

You know, this kid Matty spent time in jail because of his Arab origins?  He was held in a jail after 9/11, probably held illegally by the US government…with his father when he was a young boy…yet when I suggested that his story and mine had similarities he told me imperiously, “I am an American!  There are no similarities.”

He moved out, brought a motley crew with him.  His sister, her girlfriend….his boyfriend.

The girlfriend was Chinese, the only one there with ancient Mayflower/American credentials was Matty’s boyfriend the acutely fay boy who works in the veterinary office in Malibu who Matty met on Grindr.

Deluded, the week before he left he asked me for a membership to the private club I belong to.

It made me smile.  How the American children of immigrants quickly forget the struggles of their fathers.

“I pity you.”  He said, as he was leaving.

Along with his pity he left two huge stains on the carpet, refused to pay his rent or accept responsibility for the mess…I pity his next landlord.

WP Twitter Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com