Chunky Black Swan makes her debut in LA. Catch up with her on Monday night In West Hollywood.
Category: Gay
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I still feel…incredible.
OK, quick update. Returned California Monday night. Michael picked me up from the airport.
Ate dinner at Sauce on Hampton. Home by 9.30.
Couldn’t stop myself from compulsively watering pots, checking the apparently broken (wasn’t) irrigation system. Nipping downstairs to the newly vacated rental apartment…the mess was dealable with.
Nothing a few hours on my knees scrubbing couldn’t handle.
Much to Michael’s amusement I found a pair of shears and, at midnight, hacked at the month’s worth of hedge growth I just couldn’t go to bed thinking about.
On the plane home I had a terrible revelation about my novel. It was written from the wrong point of view.
To my tremendous relief, this morning, everyone agrees with me.
So, I immediately began work rewriting the entire thing.
The gardeners came and restored order. Swept the paths and stowed the trash. Robby came by and we had lunch at the Malibu Country market. Robby is soooo adorable.
Took dog to vet..he has a hot spot. No idea what that is. Anyway, the gorgeous Dr Victor tended to him. Gorgeous and recently married. He gave me a powder I have to squirt on his wound. Don’t you just love the word squirt?
After my reference yesterday to ‘activist’ Dan Savage…who did I chanced upon being interviewed by Keith Obelman?
Our great friend and apologist: ‘Activist’ Dan Savage.
He was raving about critically acclaimed musical The Book of Mormon. That was OK. It’s good. Then he started in on Christian America and how everyone who critiques/damns the gays is either in the closet or jealous of our freedom.
As you know by now…I believe that our so-called freedom seems to enslave most of us.
I am not convinced that Dan Savage is radical or dangerous. He seems mediocre and conformist. He is married and has a kid. He wears boring clothes. He has a predictable hair cut. He probably lives in a gay ghetto.
Benoit introduced me to Dan Savage after I was on Sex Rehab. ‘Activist’ Dan Savage refuses to believe that sex addiction (any addiction?) exists. Why? Because it doesn’t suit his view that we should be able to do anything, whenever we want…without censure.
He can’t believe that something he enjoys so much should ever be labeled as addictive.
Yesterday, there he was on Obleman’s Coutdown tearing into bi-sexual folk who had ‘chosen’ to be straight rather than gay.
Pompous Dan apparently…damning their choices. The arbiter of your sex conduct.
Dan calls those who believe in choice, the ‘choicers’. Dan continues, revealing his limited (Judeo-Christian) understanding of contemporary sex and sexuality…you are either one thing or the other.
People like Activist Dan keep bi-people/people who experiment sexually away from being honest and open about the sexual choices they make. A straight man will rarely, if ever, admit to having sex with another man…because people like Dan Savage will claim him for the cause.
He suggested that bi-sexual people have made a ‘choice to stay in the closet’. Bi-sexual people fuck with Activist Dan’s head.
Is Dan pro-choice? Well…if it suits him. Choose to be gay or straight, choose to fuck out of your gay marriage, choose to live by Dan’s rules. Choose sexual liberation! As long as you choose the gay way.
I mean…I’m just asking. Don’t take it the wrong way…If you have a choice…why not chose a straight lifestyle? If Dan is so damned opened minded and sexually liberated…why shouldn’t that same hetero choosing bi-man also choose to see men on the side? I mean…what’s so different from that and the gay men I know who see other people outside of their relationships?
It’s their choice!
Bisexuality, sexual fluidity, acknowledging our right to choose an evolving sexual continuum.
Why not?
Dan may very well find those sort of bi-choices personally threatening.
Yet, in my experience, those bi-men who fuck other men outside of their straight marriage..are perfectly happy, not conflicted, secular…and of course…EUROPEAN.
If, ultimately, these men choose to ‘come out’…so be it. People leave each other all the time!
Many bi-men have a community of like-minded men and women around them. These men and women are often more closeted than the gays…not because they live in Christian shame but because those who live at either end of the sexual spectrum make it impossible for them to speak freely and honestly about who they are, what they want and the experiences they have had.
The choice to express themselves has been stunted by people like Activist Dan.
Dan’Bi Now, Gay Later‘ Savage.
Dan’s limited and sophomoric opinions about sex are frankly…dangerous. He does as much damage as Tony Perkins the Family Research Council president who denounces the idea that kids suffering from “abnormal” homosexuality kill themselves because they are bullied.
Dan is the equal and opposite of Tony Perkins. His passive aggressive, liberal, sexual free-for-all is as damaging to us as the hate spewing from the Christian right.
Whether we like it or not…Christians have the right to disagree with our lifestyle…why? Because they can. Because sometimes they are right.
Sometime they say things that I agree with.
Am I a self loathing homo? Am I jealous that you are young and getting some? Am I just bitter?
Is this how I can agree with SOME of the things our enemies say about us? Because I am jealous?
As for Dan’s notion that the moment we step out of the closet and embrace gay life we suddenly ‘live with integrity’.
Bull shit Dan.
Obelman asks a reasonable question about men and women trapped in the closet for 50 years. Savage, yet again, blames Jesus.
I have met men who didn’t come out of the closet because of what the gay community had on offer, couldn’t imagining themselves fitting in. The lifestyle simply wasn’t for them.
Can some of us believe that what we have isn’t everyone’s cup of tea? Jesus wasn’t keeping those guys in the closet..we were.
I have no experience of the closet…but I do have experiences as a gay man which include choosing to sleep with and have emotional bonds with women. I presented myself as a gay man to those women and choices were made. Get used to it.
There is something mithering about Dan’s tone. He believes as surely as Tony Perkins that he is right about everything. He is as sure as the preacher who damns us all. The gays here in the USA love Activist Dan. He is their saviour, their dog in the manger, he is their apologist, their very own MMA fighter prepared to get down and dirty defending the gays.
Sometimes I agree with him. Mostly I don’t.
Compared with a true activist like Peter Tatchell this buff hack is just another money spinner, whipping up the gays to buy his stuff so he can live the dream. He is as bad those in the GOP who hate us in public so they can run for office.
Have any of you read Right Wing Women by Andrea Dworkin? It’s worth the read. She doesn’t go after the clan leaders, she goes after their wives. It reveals the experience and motivation of women like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Anne Coulter.
Right wing women who attack feminism even while they are the beneficiaries of its work.
I am not interested if Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has, as he claims, gay friends or a gay head of staff. I am interested, however, in those gay friends and head of staff who have subordinated themselves to Rick’s cause…are willing to overlook his hateful rhetoric, set aside their integrity (magically bestowed upon anyone who steps out of the closet in Activist Dan’s world) and make a pact with the devil.
Dan has made a great deal of money out of being our gay saviour. Many in the gay community are devoted to his unquestioning beliefs, his naive rhetoric, his easy answers (blame the Christians) and his dashing good looks.
Straight liberals like Obelman love him because he’s just the kind of gay friend they would like to have.
He makes me puke.
See the interview with activist Dan here.
Related articles
- It Gets Better founder Dan Savage: Gay boy’s suicide after making video ‘utterly heartbreaking’ (miamiherald.typepad.com)
Yesterday a pair of young film makers turned up at the apartment to work with me on their well written but unfocused script.
The man was leaving as they arrived.
They said, “Wow, he’s gorgeous. Where do you meet men like that?”
Not in clubs or bars, not grindr or Manhunt. I meet men like that as we pass in the street. He said, “You looked mean.” I am…I suppose. I do. Keep the fuck away from me.
Anyway, the film makers sat down and we talked about their script. It was revealed, during our conversation, that one of these young men had recently found out that he was HIV+.
This is the third time I have heard this story, or one like it this past month. His sex partner had not told him the truth about his HIV status before he agreed to have unsafe sex.
He had been lied to.
I was shaking with rage.
Like J risked J’s life when he was fucking HIV+ artist Pal S behind her back, like X had been lied to…these innocent folk had made bad decisions based on the lies they were told.
On each occasion the liar had tried to make it the victim’s fault.
” You shouldn’t have believed me.”
“You must have realized.”
“I can’t talk about this right now, you are complicating my life.”
“What kind of straight man doesn’t play sports?”
He is 25 years old. A young man dealing with a huge problem. He told me that he feels like he has ‘gone back into the closet’, that ‘no one could possibly love him’, that he is ‘damaged goods’.
“How do you feel about the guy who infected you?” I asked.
“He’s evil.” he replied.
“Misguided?” I suggested.
No, I told myself, not misguided. I knew he was right. Deliberately infecting or risking the lives of others…is simply evil.
My phone rang, I made a plan to see a friend the following morning.
The boys looked at me askance. What? I said. “I’ve never seen anyone make an arrangement like that on the phone. We text each other.” I felt suddenly dislocated from life. How come I didn’t know?
The kid with HIV is now at the mercy of the pharmaceutical companies who stand to take millions of dollars from him as he tries to stay healthy.
The same companies who promote their products in our gay publications… paying top dollar to do so.
Look at the pictures. Strapping, healthy boys living with HIV.
Big Pharma shaping this generations attitude toward HIV as a manageable/livable with disease… just like diabetes!
Turn your back on health education, embrace ignorance and a life shackled to Big Pharma. Enslaved at 25. My heart bled.
“I never knew anyone who died of AIDS.” he said.
When this young man was being bullied at school for being gay he may very well have been reassured by the biggest deception of all: It Gets Better. Dan Savage‘s message of false hope.
It is another gay lie.
We don’t treat each other very well. We don’t talk about not treating each other very well.
They stop bullying us…we start where they left off.
If they don’t damage you…we will…with my lies and infected sperm.
It’s not getting better for the young man I met yesterday. It’s getting a whole heap worse. Straight bullies didn’t lie and infect him with HIV. Gay men did.
Gay men lied to three of my friends…confirming that it is not just an HIV epidemic, it is an epidemic of lies, betrayal and life threatening denial.
Uneducated, shamed, arrogant, drug fucked gay men with no principles.
Just like Jake.
The only reason I have to come back to NYC so frequently is to meet Jake in court. Prolonging the inevitable.
Forced, yet again, to indulge his tantrums, his ego, his selfishness.
Without me in his life to define him as the victim…what is he left with? Without me and his appearances in court…he returns to the mundane fixtures and fittings of the life that was…if one can call it a life?
Yet, when I am here in NYC, I make the most of it. Happily wiling away the days, finishing my novel, seeing movies, hanging with my buddies, walking the dog, enjoying the humid nights tangled in your arms.
When he left this morning we both said, almost in unison, ‘I don’t do goodbyes’. I don’t. He had his bicycle over one shoulder, he didn’t look back. I can still smell him on my fingers.
I will have a shower when I get back to LA.
Categories
Province Town
Oh how beautiful it was….
Categories
The Weekend by Andrew Haigh
The small screening room on Greenwich Street in Tribeca was packed with worthy NYC based gays. Sweaty, moustached Gawker hacks. Vanity Fair worthies. Fledgling, GQ wet mouthed boys.
A fairly obvious NYC taste making, career determining gay crowd skillfully imported for the screening by Adam Kersh, the eager beaver publicist.
I arrived with Benoit Denizet-Lewis and the Little Dog stuffed into his traveling bag.
I had heard ahead of time that The Weekend by Andrew Haigh was ‘severely flawed’, so not to expect much.
Immediately it started I was drawn (homesick) into the spare, urban, British landscape. Set in the east Midland town of Nottingham. The neo-brutalist, ex-council estate provides a gritty working class back drop for this very British film.
The concrete tower blocks and congested ring roads determining the drama as much as the delicious dialogue.
It’s Friday night and Glen and Russell have met for the first time. They do what so many of us do…pack an entire relationship into one weekend.
Russell, late twenties, is a charming, meticulous man who likes ‘old things’. He never came out to his parents because, as a foster kid, he never knew them. Glen, a more experienced, angry man (also in his late twenties) has been severely hurt by a lying, cheating ex lover and is unwilling to let himself believe that he can love again.
They burn through the weekend with passion, drugs and frantic conversation. They fuck and suck and talk and snort and smoke and gaze. Like so many gay men they are just trying to work it all out, what it means, where they are going…who they are. In less adept hands these long, rambling conversations might have seemed pretentious, stilted or boring but Andrew Haigh is a skilled film maker and there is a palpable tension throughout the film that made it compelling and at times…glorious.
Americans have exalted the performances which are indeed pitch perfect but as a Brit I really wouldn’t expect anything less. These actors are trained at what they do. It never amazes me when I see a good British actor do his thing. I expect it.
Americans slaver over the ‘realism’.
When the film ended Benoit introduced me to the nay sayer.
“You thought the film was bad?’ I asked him. He nodded. “You’re an idiot.” I snapped.
The Weekend is an elegant, charming portrait of something many of us do and few of us bother remembering let alone shaping into a work of art. The film could be defined by the small amount of money that made it. Static shots, minimal coverage etc. but it shouldn’t.
If you have the inclination, please see this film.
We headed to Spring Street where the after party took place at ex pat Nick Denton‘s (owns Gawker) large Soho loft.
The gays settled into their cocktails. They talked about the film, were amused by the differences. “Nobody ever made me a cup of coffee and brought it to me in bed.” one sneered.
I thought to myself, how sad, I love a cup of tea or coffee in bed after a long night of passion.
The gays noticed the instant coffee. I noticed the saucers.
They didn’t understand British drug nuance. Bowl verses rolled joint. They were a little taken aback by the real bodies of two ordinary men who obviously don’t spend hours in the gym.
Nobody really talked about the conversations these men were having.
I met the director Andrew Haigh who knew my films and was very sweet to me.
We talked about The Film Council, BAFTA etc. It is a delight to see him doing so well. Being so well received. We talked about how they gush over you when you first arrive in America. Their compliments seem disingenuous.
We laughed that at home in Britain both of us were told that our work wouldn’t ‘mean anything’ to anyone other than ourselves. That’s what they say at home…then suddenly you’re at Sundance and they change their minds.
We both won the Outfest audience award.
I was proud of him. I know what it feels like to make that first film. To have it well received.
There is a moment when the two men, in bed facing one another, role-play a ‘coming out’ for Russell who doesn’t have parents. It is touching and beautiful.
After the after party I took the Little Dog home and then uncharacteristically decided to go out again.
I hung at The Standard with Benoit’s gorgeous friends and drank expensive diet coke. It was total freak night at The Bain. Like a Nina Hagen tribute party. I flirted with the beautiful blond, met a photographer I thought I knew. Two black boys came up to me and asked if I was ‘Duncan from the ‘A’ List New York’.
The view over Manhattan from that roof top is sublime.
I took a cab home at 2am.
I was glad that I had met Russell and Glen.
I had identified with both of them and had healed for doing so.
Categories
Family Court
So, I went to court today.
If you want to know what happened email me and I will let you know.
I am not going to stop telling you how it feels to be me.
Arrived in NYC two nights ago.
Fashion week! Fashion’s Night Out tonight.
Yesterday, I had dinner with Dan at Prune. We had been to the Patagonia party at the Bowery Hotel and then ended up with new friends at Rogan. Met Greg Long.
I had a great time even though my foot aches like hell! Met Alex on the street. He said, “Are you crying?” I wasn’t crying…but I was distressed and there were huge rain drops on my cheeks that looked like tears. I was thinking about the following day. I just kept thinking how I had no desire to look at that man ever again and I knew that I had to.
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Alex and I walked back up The Bowery to the Bowery Hotel, ended up at B Bar for new French label Surface to Air party. Super cool.
I love the rain. I love the streets. If my foot wasn’t so painful I would have walked home in the rain.
Breakfast today with Jenny A and Robby at the Mercer. That woman is a dream…such a dream.
You know that I got sober because of Jenny. 15 years at the end of this month. After breakfast we went to an AA meeting and I felt the love. Thank God for AA!
Spent afternoon with the most beautiful Russian at the totally revamped, gorgeous private club.
I love being here.
Jenny sat at the back of the court and was dumbfounded at the ego in the room…mine included.
She said, “Did you see that man’s suit? Even his wedding ring is cheap.”
Exactly.
I am here all month.
I want to tell you that it is hard work hating someone, anyone. It was hard hating my step-father. He was a bad man. He deserved what he got.
Categories
The Way We Were
If gay marriage had been an option when I was young would I have made different sorts of decisions?
Would I have behaved differently?
Would I have looked for a serious relationship with another man to whom I would have proposed, married and had children..rather than leaping from one man to another…exhausting each and every one of them?
If that narrative had been on offer, as it is now, would I have married Joe or Matt or the beautiful Dane?
Joe and I were as good as married but it was a marriage of convenience.
If I had believed that a commitment between men was possible or respected or had some kind of future, perhaps I wouldn’t have wasted other opportunities. I may have stuck around.
Did I even trust the love that dare not speak its name? The legitimacy of love between men?
When I hear a man say, ‘I love you’ it turns me on.
Tell me that you love me.
I will make love to you. Be part of you.
When I was a young man I felt hopeless, convinced that this strange love was simply…pointless. That to say ‘I love you’ to another man…meant nothing, could never mean what it meant when I loved a woman.
But you’re gay! Did she know? This woman.
One woman in particular.
When I fell in love with PH, it was a surprise to everyone…me included. She was so beautiful. She was so beautiful and she wanted me. There are very few things I do not write about here. She is one of them. Our relationship that spanned half a decade.
After years of enjoying a gay life I saw the world renewed. I looked into her eyes and I never wanted to forget her face. Every time I left the house I would memorize an indelible snapshot of her.
When we were in love every record played on the radio meant something. Holding hands in the street and never once a strangers savage glance…my love blossomed. Without the withering contempt of strangers my love blossomed.
Do you know what I mean? Whenever I held a man in my arms in a public place I felt the withering contempt of others. Have you ever felt that? It soured me. What other people thought.
Biracial couples know what I mean.
The artist, Marc Quinn said to me when he saw me and Phil together, “I knew you weren’t gay.”
That was then. This is now.
Before he and I stopped speaking he told me that he had met a man in Central Park and kissed them. They held him in their arms. He told so many lies yet somehow this lie was forgivable. He told me that it had happened before I met him…but I knew from the look on his face how new and exhilarating it had been.
An experience that he wanted to share but was too afraid of hurting me.
Well, we may never know how it might have been if I had the luxury of marrying a man.
Time has past, now I am too old to fall in love and make a man my husband.
Darling PH, even though we are estranged at the moment because of what happened last summer with him. I want you to know that had you not been in my life I would never have experienced a brimming heart.
You trusted me and nurtured me and protected me and loved me unconditionally.
Watching my young gay friends emerge into the light, they have a different sort of gay life on offer.
During the past 50 years life for gay men has changed radically. When I was born homosexuality was still a criminal offence. So, I was lucky to have grown up without my sexuality outlawed.
This generation of gay men are freer than any generation before them. I salute the work we did to make a more equitable life for them.
Occasionally I am pissed that the young don’t recognise the sacrifices we made..but I am also aware that I seldom give a thought to those who fought for me to live a free and abundant gay life.
As much as I hate to remind you, these rights and freedoms could be taken away just as easily as they were given. We must not take our good fortune for granted. There are dark forces at work against us.
It’s election time! Here they go again, debating my future, my expendable rights. Using their disdain for our lives to get votes. Championing gay hate to ‘motivate their base’.
Listen to what they say about us. The cruel rhetoric they use.
I am tired of being the liberal hot potato thrown around at times of national debate/election.
Gay marriage, gays in the military, hate crimes, equality.
And finally mr/mrs republican candidate…what do you think of the gays? Is this the kind of America we want to call our home? We want our country back from the niggers and the faggots!
We are once again the devil’s proof of an evil, liberal America, a decadent America, a democratic America that Jesus would never sanction.
Apparently, like abortion, we must be outlawed.
I am sick of having my nature, my rights, my existence used by others in some heartless polemic.
Read my lips: My rights are non-negotiable, un-repealable….mine to keep.
If you vote Democrat I am not proof positive of a better America. If you are Republican I am not responsible for every natural disaster. I am just what I always was…alive. Doing what I always did…living. Hoping like I always will…that you leave me and my sexuality alone.
Some woman on FB reassured me that Jesus loved me but hated my sin. The sin of homosexuality. The Jesus I was taught about on Sunday mornings in St Alphage church Whitstable never really hated anyone.
All he wanted was a fair and equitable life for us all.
Writer Michael Gastor collected me and the injured Little Dog from the Malibu house at midday and we drove east.
He has been in Berlin writing a script for a German director about Julian Assange. I am toying with moving to Berlin in December. He had a great time there. I’m sure I would too.
We stopped at American Rag and bought wrapping paper and a birthday card for Transformers Producer Tom Desanto. Tom’s birthday pool party thrown by his friend Adam Press. He seemed pleased with the gifts. Books from my personal collection that he had admired last week.
We arrived early…before the beautiful, half-naked boys began playing beer pong.
I was dressed for the next event so looked like a total freak. I wore the hat I bought for Jake at Lanvin last summer. My futuristic Helmut Lang shirt was commented on but not, I think, admired. Everyone else in board shorts and…and nothing much else. Chatted to a couple of really cool kids. Managed, of course, to locate the only straight boy and settled into a long, fruitless conversation.
Michael played pool and drank whiskey. The host was charming and sweet. Dane arrived. Huh? How did that happen?
Our birthday parties couldn’t have been more different. Somebody bought him a 6 foot inflatable penis.
Really glad I made the effort and hauled my ass over there. Good God! Who knew that there were so many beautiful, young actor boys with perfect bodies? Toby arrived with his new squeeze.
Apparently Bryan Singer turned up just after we left.
At 3pm (in the blazing sun) we drove to another pool party. John and Valoree Papsidera’s ‘Paws‘ fundraiser at his office ‘compound’ downtown. The offices are an ex-swimming club that he has beautifully renovated. This man has exquisite taste. His art collection…to die for. Some great names: Clemente, Judd, Pettibon and the most gorgeous George Condo. I am newly converted to Condo.
John Papsidera is king.
Of course, John can attract a glittering Young Hollywood crowd. Jason Ritter (super sexy), Zach Quinto (super cool), Drew Barrymore, Olivia Wilde, Molly Sims, Malin Akerman, Gavin Polone (owns The Waffle with John), Amber Heard , Alicia Silverstone, Olivia Munn, Jules Daly, Rainn Wilson, Ali Larter, Hayes MacArthur, Talulah Riley, Elon Musk, Dwight Yoakam.
Chatted recovery and Dr Drew with Drew Pinsky‘s Love Line side kick, the devilishly handsome Psycho Mike (Michael Catherwood). He was in Dancing with the Stars….Valoree produces that show.
Is Psycho Mike Gay?
Olivia Munn joined Psycho Mike and I.
He said, “You are the hardest working woman in Hollywood.” (unfortunate choice of words)
I said, “Oh, that sounds good, what are you doing?”
Olivia snapped, “If you don’t know who I am, you don’t need to know who I am.”
I smiled wryly.
Her mouth twisted into a sneer and she gracelessly recited her IMDB credits. I thought, the problem with you dear Olivia…you have no poise.
Chatted with a woman called Suzanne from Hidden Hills whose daughter was dating the most delicious boy. A singer and guitar player. A feast for the eyes.
I hadn’t realized that my great friend Manu is married to the gorgeous Kim Raver.
Totally adored Zach Quinto who, of course, we saw in Angels in America. We talked AIDS, his new film, his producing. That boy is a fucking star.
Fell in ‘boy love’ with Jason Ritter. Those eyes…those beautiful blue eyes.
I flirted with boys. Michael chased girls…we had a blast.
We left at 7ish for a fish and chip dinner with Henri then home to the coyote infested garden.
Robby booked his first big commercial this weekend so am dying to hear all about it.
Tracy Emin, the crazy talentless British ‘artist’ has been adopted by the Tory party and has dinner with Prime Minister Cameron. WTF? Her work installed at 10 Downing Street. Her ugly mug pressed onto Cameron’s flacid pink cheek.
Excuse me for rambling. This may have something to do with the painkillers. I don’t usually take pills but a mashed ankle and a severely strained leg…I gave in to the ibuprofen.
The news looks bad. More unemployment misery, few jobs, double dip, creationism, President takes a vacation, stock market tanks, texting in church…etc. That’s the news.
Some people are telling me that the only way the USA is going to save itself is when the American people accept third world wages. The plan: the people will become so desperate they will work any job at any wage anywhere and the corporations will abandon India and China and return to America.
If this is true…and I suspect that it is, we are in for a long and desperate time.
There were journalists in helicopters filming black people lining up for a ‘Jobs Fair’ in Atlanta. Well presented, educated black people. The usual people who suffer when the economy slows. Apparently some employers don’t want to interview the unemployed. I have no idea why. Can someone tell me?
The images from the helicopter reminded me of the Hurricane Katrina footage. Desperate black people. Waiting in badly organized lines.
“I’m a single mother and I am looking for a job.”
I’m not writing what’s been bugging me..apart from my aching foot.
I want to write about being gay, being a gay film maker/artist. I have not written enough about my recent brush with the ‘gay community’. I have been having the same multiple contractions of apprehension that I had years ago.
The same anxiety. The same question plagues me…even after years of therapy and insight.
What kind of gay am I?
Is this the same question as what kind of man am I? Is this a question I need answering? I just don’t know who my tribe is. The community that has sprung up around me on WordPress is as good as it gets. I like that you write to me. Some of you disapprove but you can’t get everybody to love you all the time.
Those of you who wanted the coyote to rip my throat out…well, it didn’t.
I called my friend Zach and I said, what kind of gay are you? By the time he replied I had lost interest.
I don’t want to know what sort of gay he is. I want to know who I am.
I tried to make gay films for a gay male audience…specifically, unapologetically. We need to see ourselves as we really are. We need to champion the language and locations of our lives as well as be critical of our bad choices, challenge our culture…reveal it, understand our politics..the differences as well as the similarities.
I loved making gay films, I loved travelling the world…meeting you in cinemas on every continent, in every major city. I like meeting you, eating with you, sleeping with you.
You were very accommodating!
Recently, I have been tempted by the mass market.
I had a meeting with a well-known, important producer about my Surrogacy film. Even though he was moved by the story he said that the story would be much improved if I could somehow incorporate a straight man’s perspective. He thought a latino character would complicate the story.
He was part of the problem…not the solution.
His ‘take’ was woefully un-evolved. Shame based.
At first I was irritated then it nagged at me: the suggestion that a regular audience could only identify with us if we sympathised with them.
I have sympathised with straight characters in movies all my life. I have gone out of my way to understand their lives and loves. I have walked in their shoes.
We all do.
I don’t think my producer friend is very interested in me. He wasn’t interested in the film or the rare books he came to see. I think he was interested in the twins. Why shouldn’t he be? It amuses me that he would have made so much effort to accommodate me when all he had to do was take Robby’s number.
Of course he has more to offer Robby than I ever could. Robby would be a fool not to capitalize on that friendship.
I felt the same way when ever Jay Jopling visited me. He would take what ever he felt he wanted..or was valuable from me. He took a beaver lined Edwardian driving coat, he took books by Aubrey Beardsley and Djuna Barnes and Dorothy Parker.
He wasn’t the only one.
Korda Marshall borrowed and broke the rare and valuable Venini vase that The Duchess of Argyll had given me. Now he is rich I wrote to him asking him to replace it. He did not reply to my email.
Robby is very special, he has a quality that may not get him modeling jobs but…and I rarely say this, may make him a star.
I felt that about Tom Hardy. He used to be such a brat. I had a very ‘loud chat’ with Tom in Soho House, London years ago about his excessive drinking. He heeded my advice and gave up. Then, a year or so later, he thanked me for telling him the truth. A truth few dared to tell him.
In actuality I just repeated what Anthony Hopkins told me Lawrence Olivier had said to him about his drinking when he was a young actor at The National Theatre.
It seemed to work.
Pink (Alecia Moore) told me that the hardest thing she ever had to do was ditch her band. The label wanted her and not the band. They were her best friends. She had to tell them as if it were own choice.
We all abandon those who helped us at the beginning. We have to make hard decisions in life if we are going to get on. Leaving our best friends behind so that we might succeed. It is the secret story behind every Hollywood success. Those that got left behind.
Lastly, from one of my personal heroes British gay activist Peter Tatchell:
“The UK establishment is quick to condemn rioters. Yet, the police took bribes & failed to investigate phone hacking. No officers jailed. Cash for knighthoods & peerages. No one jailed. MPs abused expenses system. Only a few jailed. Editors bribed police. None jailed. Priests raped kids. No jail for most. Army killed & tortured civilians in Iraq. Soldiers not jailed. British elite = hypocrites. No right to moralize.”