Duncan Roy's Blog
My apple and blackberry crumble served with vanilla flavoured french style yogurt.
Vanilla pods and brown sugar. All locally produced. The apple and brown sugar caramelized on the dish.
The twins return from their long weekend away. I am lusting for the mountains, for fresh faced farmers.
You know who you are.
So it was, in the beginning…forever and ever amen. Don’t cry for me Argentina.
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 Island, charged 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…
For some reason best known to WordPress my entire private collection of blogs (over 350) suddenly became readable. Past blogs that had been hidden from view.
I am now undoing what was done. Annoying.
Yesterday was altogether the most satisfying day I have had for a long, long time.
Early mornings with the boys, lunch in Hollywood, afternoon with lawyers (more will be revealed at a later date) and finally a spectacular party in the hills. A gay party, you know the kind…the sort that usually terrifies me…but on this occasion was great fun.
It was a cold night in LA and I was the only one wearing a coat. The first time I have been appropriately dressed at that house.
I felt, yet again, as if I had left that judgmental Duncan back in the jail so was free to enjoy the party. This has been a long time coming, this freedom. A delightful French actor to sit with. Many people told me how sorry they were that I had been in jail, that it seemed so wrong.
I was surprised by the reaction. Part of my fear of going there was the fantasy I had that people disapproved…in fact, the opposite was true.
I hadn’t realized that people cared as much as they do. Why is that so hard for me to believe?
Let me get back to privatizing my blog.
Sat at home with the twins watching the Oscar coverage. It was wonderful to see The Artist grab all of the best awards. It was wonderful watching Plummer accept his Oscar with such elegance and dignity.
It was even more moving to see that little Producer of The Artist grab the Oscar for the best film. That lone French Producer fit himself into the history of Motion Pictures, nodding to his predecessors…his heroes.
Of course I sat there and wondered if I would ever make another movie. There is nothing stopping me…except me. The script I sent out just before I was arrested had some great feed back. I reread it yesterday afternoon. It has to be sharpened…but it’s good. The stage play comes first, and the documentary…and the trial.
Life is filling up! It’s not ending! It’s just beginning.
I’ve been watching Robby grow up. Watching him inhabit his new skin. I’ve been thinking about him and you know who…but not obsessively. Trying to work out what went wrong, why I reacted so badly and for so long. You know, it’s obvious that I am a very bad gay. I don’t fit it. I don’t like them and they don’t like me. God, I really tried. I tried being gay here in LA, in NYC, I tried being in gay AA. What a waste of time.
So, I wondered what it was that JB had that I didn’t have, that Robby has that I don’t have. Well, they just seemed to fit in effortlessly. JB met people and had dinner with them, sex with them, he is a likable fellow, largely uncomplicated (on the surface), doesn’t want to cause trouble. I am none of those things. He fitted in immediately, he just did. And when he fitted in I had no place in his life, there was no room for a misfit like me.
So it is with Robby as he makes his way, meeting people this unwitting Malibu dad doesn’t think appropriate for him…but that boy has to make his own mistakes and I am not his dad. I am here to help, not to judge.
Perhaps I am indeed how JB described me. Perhaps his assessment was just too accurate. He will make some man so incredibly happy! They both will.
Hey! I’ve seen you smiling, it’s a lovely picture. You look so happy, happier than when I knew you darling. Of course, you were tormented then. Tormented by guilt, by indecision…now look at you, staring into the camera. Do you love him? I hope you do.
You know, don’t you, that we would never have met as out gay men. I would have passed you by and you would have thought me absurd. Just like they do. I know that I’m not meant to think about you…but I do! I think hopeful thoughts. I know that you’ll be happy. Forever. I am so relieved that the fury is over.
You don’t need to be scared of me darling. I am fighting bigger battles. Fighting for others.
Did I ever tell you that I was sorry? Perhaps I didn’t mean it back then. Just hollow words.
It must have been very scary for you all. It was scary for me. Well, it’s all over now. All over.
“Between August 2010 and March 2011 Roy wrote a 50,000-word blog to Bauman.
Roy coldly examines his career to date, how he had been a colourful agent provocateur, his art, like his paradoxes, seeking to subvert as well as sparkle. His own estimation of himself was of one who “stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age”.
It was from these heights that his life with Bauman began, and Roy examines that particularly closely, repudiating him for what he finally sees as his arrogance and vanity: he had not forgotten Bauman’s remark, when he was ill, “When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting.”
Roy blamed himself, though, for the ethical degradation of character that he allowed Bauman to bring about on him and took responsibility for his own fall.
The first few months of the blog concludes with Roy’s forgiving Bauman, for his own sake as much as Baumans’.
The second half of the blog traces Roy’s spiritual journey of redemption and fulfilment. He realised that his ordeal had filled the soul with the fruit of experience, however bitter it tasted at the time.”
…I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world… And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom.
Thank you Oscar Wilde, thank you Bosie.
Unusual and wholly unexpected events witnessed at the Men’s County Jail included two weddings held in the gay dorm.
The first within days of my arriving at dorm 5300.
Madeleine and Oscar were married before first count one Saturday evening. A popular couple. There was a great deal of excitement in the dorm from both the incarcerated and the deputies.
Madeleine, trans, 23 years old, white skinned, full-lipped, long dark hair, sexy voice marrying Oscar, a madly jealous, beefy Mexican boy with a huge bull-dog under bite.
Hedi Slimane…this is the sort of thing you should be photographing.
Madeleine wore a long white dress and veil made for her that week by a gaggle of excited trannies. It was fashioned from two shredded tee-shirts. It looked like a Vivienne Westwood gown. Madeleine held a bouquet of toilet paper flowers as she walked between the bunks toward her nervous groom. The rings were woven for them, their names inscribed on both. Oscar had re-purposed his pale blue jail uniform to look like a prom outfit from the 1970’s…complete with bow tie.
The ceremony was very moving, the deputies videoed it and then took pictures of the happy couple through the bars of the observation booth.
The House Mouse officiated.
Later, I discovered that Oscar had married 4 other boys whilst he had been in dorm 5300. On the streets he’d also married two real girls and had several real children none of whom he was allowed to see. This was Madeleine’s first time.
After they married they fought all the time. Domestic violence. “We fight hard and we love hard.” Madeleine told me. They sure loved hard…you could hear them all over the dorm huffing and panting.
The second wedding, held a month or so later in dorm 5200, was very different. A double wedding for 4 black boys, Juan and ‘Baby Boy’, Reggie and Steve. The service was very moving. Ex Marine Juan and ‘Baby Boy’ really loved each other. Reggie and Steve…not so much.
Juan and ‘Baby Boy’ made their vows and cried. Juan read an extravagant love poem. “Baby Boy’ cried some more. A huge cheer erupted as they were pronounced husband and husband.
After the short ceremony we ate a huge nacho spread on an abandoned top bunk. I was the only white guest.
That night bunks are pushed together creating comfortable double beds, illegal ‘tents’ made of old sheets are hung around the bottom bunk for privacy and voila, the happy home is complete.
Reggie and Steve separated after a violent clash. Bleeding noses, being torn apart by opposing groups of friends, then separated for ever into different dorms.
‘Baby Boy’ was released, leaving poor Juan to mope about the dorm until he found another boy to bunk with.
As I mentioned before, the bond that exists between these jail house gay boys/trannies can lead to unexpected consequences. Unable to leave their loved ones behind couples reunite by forcing an unnecessary arrest. Occasionally, however, by the time the released returns…their boy friend, the love of their life, has found someone else.
There sure was a great deal of fucking in the dorm. The craziest couple, Kenyatta and Andrew, could not keep their hands off each other. They fucked all day and all night. She was a fun, feminine black trans accused of hit and run, he was a masculine latino boy with no personality. She fucked him. He couldn’t say no.
Coffee in Venice yesterday. Lunch with lawyer. Cooked dinner, boiled brisket, Brussels sprouts, snap peas and quinoa.
Ate a cup cake at midnight…bad mistake…up all night vomiting. Can’t eat rich food yet.
Every dorm in the Men’s County Jail is represented by one elected inmate, that inmate is the dorm’s House Mouse.
Originally called the House Mouth his role is to liaise between the dorm and the police. He fixes problems, discovers when holds are lifted, dates of release, learns when the police are likely to come into the dorm for unusual reasons and generally makes life easier.
If there is a fight in the dorm it is up to him to get the truth of the fight and make appropriate punishment decisions.
A fight may result in the loss of ‘Programme’: TV, vending machine, late night privileges, even access to the commissary or when things really get out of hand…and the police raid the dorm and rip everything up…we end up without blankets or mats sleeping on ‘steel’ which never happened when I was there but we sure came close.
The House Mouse is a tough job, he has to command total respect from both the inmates and the police. He needs to understand who he can ask for favours and who he needs to leave alone.
The first dorm I lived in was a mess. The 5300 Mouse was disrespected. When he called for silence during the time set aside for dorm business nobody took a blind bit of notice. When silence in the dorm is required he would call ‘Radio!’ I’ve no idea why but that’s what they do in jail. It means, shut the fuck up.
In the second dorm 5200 our House Mouse Carlton, a young, great looking black man. An ex gang member, all he needed to do was call ‘Radio!’ once and there was silence in the dorm.
I made friends with Carlton when he learned how good I was at playing Spades. After a couple of weeks he moved me into the bunk next to him. Intelligent, wise and stylish he really shouldn’t have been in jail. If he’d been white he wouldn’t have been.
The language of jail has to be learned quickly. If, for instance, we were walking outside the dorm and found ourselves approaching a deputy we would be obliged to call out, ‘Walking!’ which alerted the deputy that an inmate was behind him. Once, I was being escorted to the attorney room and told that I should always be more than five foot from a deputy.
Many of the the younger deputies came to California to pursue other dreams but those dreams had to be set aside because of the recession…here they were marshaling men who simply hated them. Marshaling the disenfranchised, feeble-minded, surly, mental patients…I mean…there were so many people in the jail with severe mental health issues. They needed nursing…not policing.
Many inmates were just nuisances rather than criminals. It’s an expensive way to look after the mental health of the state of California.
Some of the cops, of course, are unapologetic sadists. Yet, even though I witnessed unsavory behaviour I had sympathy for those men and women. They are, after all, in jail too.
We were allowed out of dorm 5200 a great deal. School of course, outside on the roof once a week for three hours, church on Sundays and AA. The AA meetings were not like any AA meetings I had ever been to in my life. Imagine 300 trannies from 4 gay dorms catching up on gossip, not giving a damn about the ‘experience, strength and hope’ of who ever was brave enough to come into the jail and share it.
Some of those tranny hookers were really convincing. Like really high-end chicks with dicks. Some of them were just really ugly men with make up and long hair and over weight, crafting some sort of cleavage out of their fat pecs.
The tranny hooker market is so huge that most of them put very little effort into looking like real girls.
When Rosemary walked into the dorm the less attractive, more masculine tranny hookers looked very perplexed.
Rosemary was 5 foot tall, well cut hair, perfect tits, hips…a really pretty girl. Even the deputies looked at her askance. Obviously intrigued. She commanded a huge amount of attention. Good and bad. She was caught telling another tranny in Spanish what she thought of a particularly fine-looking deputy. Unfortunately he understood her, pulled her off the line, bawled at her, frisked her and threw her against a wall.
A big man throwing a small, delicate girl against a wall is not a very heartening sight.
The gay dorm in the County jail is unique, I have no idea if beyond California these dorms exist. I know that they don’t exist in prison. Which, by the way, was where everyone wanted to be. Prison rather than jail. Prison condition are a million times better. Nobody wanted to do their time in jail. There are three kinds of prison, the jail (run by the police) the state prison (greater freedoms) and the federal prison which by all accounts is like a country club.
The problem with the Los Angeles County Jail is that is it falling apart, it is over crowded and technically condemned. There is no money to replace it and no political inclination. During the boom time the jails were a luxury used to lure voters to vote for those who promised to fill them. Now the prisons and jails are a huge financial burden and nobody has the guts or political gall to face this crippling problem head on.
The two biggest unions in California are the police officers and the gaolers. Even if crime numbers fall the police make sure that the jails remains filled. Consequently, There are a huge number of parole violators and drug offenders inside the jail squandering precious tax dollars.
Even more galling? Whilst the police arrest and the judiciary hand down custodial sentences the LA schools are falling apart.
There is a correlation between these two facts.
A fearful tax payer would rather pay for more police and prisons rather than educate their kids.
Just look at the draconian Californian three strike law that keeps many, many men inside who really shouldn’t be there.
It is a totally broken system with too many vested interests.
The twins are living here with me in Malibu once again. They are dancing downstairs. Their friend Kevin has moved in too. It’s raining. I have to see my lawyer today. Blah, blah, blah.
Sunday morning, children all over the bed. Asking questions. They want to know everything. Inquisitive little things. The sun is bright and warm. My hostess is making blueberry pancakes and coffee.
Lily, their youngest, had dreams about heaven and hell. Hell had something to do with a supermarket. She said, “There were people in hell who shouldn’t have been there.” Which was a very astute observation for a 9 year old girl.
She’s Jewish, Jews don’t believe in heaven or hell.
The Little Dog is confused. He’s a one man dog. He’s been with J and J these past few months so his loyalty, understandably, shifted. We are re-orientating him. He slept with me last night. Hung out at the house yesterday. He lay on his bed as we toiled in the garden.
Robby and I spent the day doing errands. I have my phone! The garden is tidy! The house is returned to normal! The art is back on the walls! Lost things have been found! There is food in the fridge! The dog is happy!
Saw Safe House at the Malibu cinema with Robby, bumped into AA folk. The film was ok but had one huge and unforgivable plot flaw.
Before the film we wandered down Cross Creek. Wondering at the night. The cold, damp breeze on my face.
Robby is the only person I tell everything. He has seen me vulnerable and survived. Not like Jennie and the others. No room! No room!
Last night we watched September Issue. Anna Wintour really is an extraordinary woman. She is also incredibly generous. You know, don’t you, that she lent us her NYC house when we made Dorian Gray. Hamish, I wish we had seen more of him. I remember meeting Grace with Patrick Kinmonth when they worked at Vogue in London and again, rather obscurely at a house in North Wales years later. She stole the show.
God, Andre Leon Talley is such a twat. The least interesting character in the film…just because he tries so hard to be fabulous. Inauthentic. I knew him when I lived in Paris, we met at Karl Lagerfeld‘s house when Karl lived on the Rue de la Universite in the early 80’s. Gerard Falconetti and I stopped by unannounced.
Falconetti’s brilliant grandmother Maria played Jean d’Arc in The Passion when she was 19 years old.
For some reason I remember touching Andre’s face, his skin was cold and soft. Like an old handbag.
Gerard was 11 years older than me, so incredibly handsome. A wonderful lover. In 1981 Gerard played Meryl Streep‘s boyfriend in The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
In 1984 Gerard found out that he had AIDS and threw himself off the Tour Montparnasse.
Gerard was a generous, extraordinary friend. He played Montserrat Caballe singing Tosca when I was sick with flu, he lifted my spirits with delicate macaroons from Carette. He showed me the Paris I would later show those who have never been. The secret places we all need to know when we discover a city for the first time.
I have, somewhere, a note Karl sent Gerard referencing his grandmother.
That was then this is now…
I have a million things to do. A great deal of catching up and making good.
I promised to write about being arrested. Well, I will…but after conversations yesterday with my journalist brethren I’ll let them do the reporting and I’ll take a rest. There’s still so much to tell you.
As you may know this entire being arrested thang was to do with this very blog. What can or cannot be said.
Meanwhile on another part of the internet…you simply have to check out what is being said about me by identifiable enemies: an ex-employee calling me a sadist, a gross individual from Province Town who attempted to malign me last summer, some cretin accusing me of killing my own dog…these people are wrought with life affecting, overwhelming resentment. It is so extreme it makes me laugh.
Baying for blood. Send him back to jail! Throw away the key! If only, in some way, they could find a way of getting me locked up for ever…the death sentence even?
I am chuckling to myself.
Chris Lewis of Sydney Australia thinks I want your sympathy. If I looked like Chris Lewis I would want your sympathy. Even when he was young he was ugly. You know very well that I report as I see…as truthfully as I am able. It is my unalienable right to do so. I don’t want sympathy. I need your support. Those of you who have stood by me, my God! I never expected such amazing gifts.
Marilyn Monroe, of all people, said that for every fan excited to see her there were 10 enemies waiting to bring her down. Being hated is an occupational hazard for those of us who do not live in the shadows. If you think what people write about me is outrageous…try being Rachal Maddow.
Somebody called from the jail yesterday, he is as well as can be expected. How quickly one forgets. Yet…you know me. The lure of the uniform…the smell of ruminating men…ransacked sexual fantasies.
Do you know what a Nonce is? It’s a slang word for a child molester. I taught the men in my dorm at Men’s County Jail this very English word. By the time I left they were calling each other Nonce, it was quite inappropriate…but very funny.
By the way, I didn’t get any Christmas cards whilst I was at the jail, I thought you didn’t care! I now know that many of you sent cards and letters of support. Apparently, they were all returned as having inappropriate content. What were you sending me?
One’s body is weakened by three months of inactivity. Working in the garden was exhausting yesterday.
Thank God for Robby.
As I lay here, at what ever time during that constant night…the ghosts of Wilde and Cocteau, Rimbaud and Verlaine come to me. The fragrant, aromatic smoke he blows to me through the tiny hove carved between cells. The great poet cries, “Hard labour!” And all…for love.
A famous passage from the Ballad of Reading Gaol:
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard.
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
The line is a nod to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, when Bassanio asks, “Do all men kill the things they do not love?”
A passage from the poem was chosen as the epitaph on Wilde’s tomb.
And alien tears will fill for him,
Pity’s long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.
What a frustrating night!
Of course, as time passes and I know that I have to see Jake again…I get more agitated, start protecting myself. Arm myself. Perhaps I am not myself? I just can’t bear the idea of being in the same room as that lying scum bag.
So, yesterday I waited for the storm but none came. It was so hot in Venice that I shed almost everything I was wearing. Robby and I drank coffee in Intelligentsia.
Chanced upon a great art show by an amazing young British artist Paul Insect. Strong graphics, good colours.
Apparently I was not alone…the previous show had been bought entirely by Damien Hirst.
I think I am frustrated because I met someone last week with whom I have a connection but do not trust myself to see again. Will not risk involvement.
So, I spent the day with Robby. He dropped me off in Beverly Hills. Met Matt ostensibly to go see Shame and Q&A with Steve McQueen. Didn’t go. Went, instead to see the Hedi Slimane installation at MOCA. Good crowd. HUGE crowd. Jonathon Brown, Miggy Hood, Gus Van Sant, Jeffrey Deitch..others.
Met cute, well dressed boys. Was not the only man with facial hair.
Boys wore Comme kilts. Girls wore red lispstick. Lots of black and velvet. NYC type crowd. Met ‘going to be huge’ photographer Aaron Stern and the kid who won the last survivor Judson Birza.
The show was hideously derivative. Reminded one of Larry Clark but without the compelling obsession. Black and white pictures of pretty, full lipped boys and girls, urban landscapes projected onto a huge cube whilst a shaggy haired band played discordant music.
Gagosian Gallery showing graphite work by Adam McEwan.
Particularly loved the ‘shutter’ that divided the main space but caused major anxiety for the gallery assistants who had to stop people mushing their heads into this low slung sculpture.
Loved all most all of the show except the work in the upper gallery which was very dull and badly conceived.
Off to shla to meet Nick Compton my South African cricketer friend.
He was co-opted by the most awful drunk in the room. We left.
Then…bad, bad mistake followed Matt to gay party in North Hollywood at some writers house where I bumped into Robby, Miles, Tom, Toby, Fielder and Bryan Singer.
I was the only man there with a beard. Most of them knew who I was and had an opinion.
God help me.
One particularly vile but pretty 21 year old started telling me how to dress.
This rancid, dreary waiter from Utah wearing a ubiquitous plaid shirt…ill fitting jeans telling ME how to dress. I was outraged.
He wouldn’t stop talking.
I said, “When I was your age I kept my mouth shut because I learned so much more.”
Adam Press looked on at me in horror, I know what he was thinking, “You blown your chances with that one.”
Which was true. Nothing he had to say for himself was either interesting or original.
Unlike Fielder Jewett (same age) who is a true original and worth listening to. We left, drove home up the 101 in the pouring rain.
The storm had arrived.