Category: Gay

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Manifest Destiny

As I was stacking boxes for my move I found a whole heap of diaries from the 1980’s.   The first day to day diary I kept was in 1982 and that was primarily because life had become so exciting.

We open the first book on this day September 5th, 1982.  I am 22 years old.

I am in Greece, on the island of Spetses staying with Sir John and Lady Russell.   I am still, at this time, Lord Rendlesham and have flown from Paris to Athens with an older nobleman called Guy de la Bedoyere of whom I had tired.

It was Guy’s Turner that I had marveled in Paris a few days earlier and whose butler, much to my horror, had washed in a washing machine my new Crolla ties.

The magazine Harper’s Bazzar had published the pictures of my infamous birthday party thrown for me by Scott Crolla at the Almeida Theatre.  Word was just reaching me in Greece that people were not at all happy.  Not at all.

If you click on the diary pages you can read the original entries.

I am in love with a beautiful Swiss boy called Robert and it is he that I wave goodbye to at the beginning of the entry.

The following year September 1983 there is no diary entry until I am released from prison on the 18th November.

September 1984 I am in rehearsal for Pornography: a Spectacle at the ICA in London.   There are huge articles about us all in Time Out, The Face and a now defunct London mag called City Limits.  I am living in Balham with a girl called Victoria.  By day I am in a play about gay pornography and by night I sleep with what was effectively my girlfriend.   So was the complexity of my life.  “Every gesture must be full and complete.” says Neil.  Neil Bartlett, director of the show.   During these days he and I began to fall out.  Irrevocably as it turned out.  When we left each other in Toronto months later after our North American tour we would never speak again.

September 1985 I am writing whilst stuck in a tunnel under the alps on a train from Paris to Venice.  My and Ivan Cratwright’s great adventure to Venice.  Staying, en route with Fred Hughes in Paris.

The diary for 1986 was missing but now found.  I will transcribe the entry.  I am yet again in another heterosexual relationship with a woman called Louise.  Why?

“Oh dear, I am in The General Trading Company off Sloan Square – Louise by my side.  Firstly I did not expect the Bahamian bombshell to come back to Whitstable to see me.  I rather thought that she might have given me a miss.

Yesterday before Louise arrived my pinks from Kingstone (?) Cottage arrived, they came to me in a brown cardboard box wrapped in local newspaper.  I planted them carefully, laying a foundation of stones for good drainage and surrounded the root system with peat. Maria helped out the best she could but spent the best part of yesterday drawing on the beach.   The day before that too she had worked hard on minimalist drawings incorporating the seascape – noticeably the foreshore and the horizon, terribly witty references to dead fish – (?) a family with prawn.

Ivan (Cartwright), we collected him from Whitstable station – Korda (Marshall) and I, he was in such a good frame of mind .  He prattled on about being arrested for car thieving and told a remarkable story about having been picked up on Park Lane (London) dressed only in a full length pink, synthetic fur coat, cowboy boots and a micro polka dot bikini!  He was picked up by a vast black men in a Buick.

Korda was completely freaked out by Ivan and as soon as he had the opportunity – left.  However, Ivan enchanted both Rachel (Whiteread) and (?) with his wit and intelligence.  We left for the pub far too late.  Ivan was wearing a pair of black cotton stockings, a black tee-shirt and short black sweat pants all topped off with this platinum blond hair and that face which as you know contorts like nobodies business.

We all slept late and woke early, that’s why when big bertha arrived (Louise) I was knackered.  We took off for a long adventurous but utterly fruitless journey to a closed park.  We did go to Beech House (Hospital School in Chartham)  I remembered yet again the horror of being taken there when I was a child – I remember that it was in that place that my life changed direction and I began to fight, so it was rather apt that I went there – my life again on the edge of a potential nightmare.  India,  8th October 10.15 – 9 months.   It rings in my ears.

As we drove to London yesterday Louise and (?) wrote that evening’s narrative.  For she as an eye for the ironic.  Firstly we locked ourselves out of Louise’s car and house then we saw the corpse of a man freshly killed, his legs crossed at the ankles, in the road.  His clothing partially hidden under a green waterproof police modesty blanket.  All of us knew that ambulances take only the living to be mended as best they can.  Death has no care.  I wondered about his family.  The pulse stopped and the narrative ending for him.  We drove slowly.  Later the image of the corpse quietened me and made me listen.

Louise is my strength whom I do not deserve.  Late last night I felt truly happy and secure.  That’s enough isn’t it?  Enough for a man who rarely lives safely, who is destined to become a lonely old man with personality problems.”

September 1987 I am a patient in the Henderson Hospital in Sutton Surrey where I spent the majority of that year.   I had a breakdown after a particularly bad bout of Hep B.  The Jay who would be fetching me from hospital is, of course, Jay Jopling.

For some odd reason I did not keep a complete diary in 1988.   I am not fully well from my breakdown but have decided to go to New York to see Ana Corbero and Colin Cawdor.  Paul Benny the artist was also staying in the huge apartment.  An entire floor of a converted girls school just over the Williamsburg Bridge.

There is no entry for these dates in 1989.

1990, my thirtieth year.  Living in Chelsea with Phillipa having what looks like a rather glamorous time.

1991 Coppers Bottom has opened at Sadler’s Wells.  Karen, the lead actress is threatening to walk.  I am now living with Anthony H. in South London.

1992 Tim and I are laughing about Damien Hirst not winning the Turner Prize that he seemed so certain to win.  I rather cruelly called Jay and told him how sorry I was whilst sniggering with Tim.

Not long before I get sober.  Just another 5 years.

After 1992 I kept a journal less and less.  I began every year enthusiastically writing everyday like I do now in the blog but by July had lost interest or life was simply too overwhelming.

Anyway, that was fun?

Categories
Gay Hollywood Malibu

malibu calling

The days pass with alarming speed.  The renters arrived yesterday and seem very pleasant.  I drive dolefully back to Hollywood.

Nothing seems to shake the occasional yet profound moments of self-doubt I experience since he was despatched.  I can only hope that these moments become fewer and fewer.  I have therapy this morning so will sup at the recovery table with my peers.

I woke at 4.30.   Made coffee, checked emails and tried to find some peace from my jumbled mind.  Walked the lil dog over the terrazzo and brass stars on Hollywood Boulevard.  Only me and the vagrants out so early.  A young, black drug fucked girl came up to me and grabbed my sweater.  Her eyes blank, her face unwashed and greasy.  I told her to leave me alone.

Since knowing that I am leaving Hollywood and deconstructing my home here I am eager to get going, to get the hell out of this place.

Another date last night.  His idea.  Still disinterested in everything.  Listless.  He texted me later and told me he wanted to make me a leather necklace.  Good God.  He wanted me to assess whether he had made a good impression or not.  In better times I might have thought more positively about him.  He had seven dogs.

I shaved my head yesterday.  My hair was long because he liked it that way.

Meeting Jake was an emotional disaster for me.   He lingers like the smell of raw sewage.

Polaxed by dubious longing for what could never be.

Categories
Gay Love Rant

You’ll Never Really Know..

After Joan Didion‘s husband John Gregory Dunne died she wrote perhaps the best book of her entire career A Year of Magical Thinking.

I have been told that there is something incredibly liberating after the death of a loved one…as there definitely is after the end of a relationship.   One can suddenly see everything so very clearly.

The only thing I miss about being in a loving relationship with another person is to check in, to share, to make sense of a troubled world.

Someone who is committed to listening as I am committed to listen.

Since last weeks end of relationship prose I have not only felt creative again but quite by chance have found what I was looking for..to be at peace.  It was without doubt the answer to the most nagging of all my prayers.  Was I, could I…am I even capable of making a relationship work.

The answer has to be a resounding NO.

I am not sad about this conclusion, in fact I have found much peace from finally answering this most perplexing of questions.

You will have your own ideas about this but for the time being I tell you I have found my equilibrium.  It has been a very bumpy ride.  Not just the past eight months but the past 50 years.

You see, he thought I was like the man he met on the TV…but I had been edited that way.  Compassion and kindness are only a small part of who I am.

I want to write this blog entry just feeling the breeze on my face.  Listening to music.  There were days when I could not feel a thing I was so distrusting of him and full of fear.  Within weeks of meeting Jake I found it hard to trust.  Looking over our long email correspondence it is obvious that I become toxicly paranoid with those I say I love.  I have felt the same with others..this is nothing new.  You have said that he was too young.  Well, I am not the sort of man who worries about age appropriateness.  But I am the sort of man who frets about appropriateness.

I am blighted with the most gayest of disabilities: always wanting something better then..when something better comes along..strangling it to death.

There is a stigma attached to those of us who finally throw in the towel and accept singularity.  Yet, my grandmother was a widow for 40 years.  She owned her aloneness and for that I am very grateful.  She was not a particularly loving human being, prone to complaint and curmudgeonly conversation yet she taught me that she would rather be alone than have someone in her life who would not compliment it.

I am sick of feeling guilty for the crime of being single.

My mother’s greatest fear for me was that I would die single.  Well, baby, most people do.  There are retirement homes crammed with human husks who will die today alone.  They are unlikely to be missed, there is no hope of an obituary.  They will die oblivious that they have been processed (three score years and 10) through the mill of modern humanity.  Born, worked, reproduced, ate, died.

I stayed with Jason and Jennifer last night.  Their marriage is tight but they bitch and complain like any couple.   I watched this morning as Jason was thrown out of the piano room.  He moped around for a little while then seemed to forget all about his gripe.  I know from recent experience that this is no easy task. When I look back at the time I spent with Jake we seemed more often than not to be locked into some kind of squabble.

So, where have I found this peace and acceptance?  Well, knowing, owning, accepting that I will be single for the rest of my life dovetails beautifully into the work I have been doing in therapy.  The search for sex or relationships, the intrigue and flirtation and unrequited love has all been set aside. In doing so I have a clear head, clear enough to begin writing the chapter of my last years.

I am not and never have been lonely when alone.  I have only ever felt lonely when I am in a relationship with another and they are not there.

Some people have few or no friends, are not connected to community, do not believe in God (I remain nondenominational) and most crippling of all:  they are not creative.  Without doubt I am most excited about how creative these years will be.  If it is only me and my writing then I may as well marry my pen as soon as possible.

To say out loud that one has accepted absolutely ones destiny as God intends it is indeed the first hurdle to making sense of the rest of ones life.

Without Jake constantly in my head, without the fantasy of the great dark man, without the perpetual search for sex or sexual complication I can avail myself of some peace.   I am more than middle-aged.  I used to sneer at my Grandmother because it seemed to me that she had given up but the truth is:  she had only just begun.  A healthy relationship with one’s self takes as much time and energy as a healthy relationship with anyone else.

I have given up so much, things that others take for granted to get them through every day: drugs (prescription and recreational), alcohol, television, white flour, career, and now..romance.    You’d think life would shrink..but quite the opposite seems to be happening.

The house in Malibu is set above the glorious ocean.  The land around begs my attention.  Sometimes I do not get further than the first step outside the house.  Some days I cannot leave my bed.  This is not the sort of life I want.  If I am going to be single forever then I must start engaging with the land as I planned many months ago before I met Jake.

I am sure that some of you will think that I am just giving up for no good reason.  Well, I am very sorry, I don’t buy your dream  that there are ‘plenty more fish in the sea’, that there is ‘someone for every one’ etc.   That is your dream.  My dream is that I can be alone without resort to catastrophic thinking.  I have lived on borrowed time for as long as I can remember.  Everyday should be a delight!  By cluttering my life with suspect romances I have only served to degrade the quality of the one thing I truly own.

I am grateful that I met Jake because in 8 months he has done more for me than almost anyone could have.  Without realizing it he held a mirror to my face for long enough so I could see in startling detail just how ravaged I had become.

Relationships make me so unhappy.  They bring out the very worst in me.  I don’t like sharing my bed or my head with anyone.  If I don’t like me when I am in a relationship how could anyone else?

In the night I think of him but as I have said many times before it is not him. It is the ghost of what never was.

Categories
Gay Hollywood Malibu

Jane Fonda

I’m in Malibu.  It ‘s 7.30am.

A veil of mist has enveloped the house.

The fierce sunlight refracting through the pure white cloud is exactly the same light as if it had been snowing.

Yesterday, after making peace with the memory of JB, I met Michael at Solar and discussed scripts.  He is a delightful man.  I told him that I’d read his script but was loathed to say anything.

People ask for criticism but they only want praise.

I dashed off to see Danielle and she worked through her slate, her list of projects.

We sat opposite Jane Fonda who looked a little frail but still radiant.  I was briefly introduced and told her how much I adored Klute.   She shared a few anecdotal memories about the making of the film.

Bumped into Degan who is moving in with his younger boyfriend.  I didn’t balk.  I thought to myself (as the ghost of what could have been passed through me) well, that was then this is now.  As I’ve said before it’s quite obvious that I’m never going to have that moving in thing happen to me so I may as well just accept things as they are and get on with it.

There is no room in my life for melancholy.  I have devoted too much time to drama, misery and bad choices.

It’s an illusion that the young are happy, an illusion for those who have lost it.  The young know they are wretched, for they are full of truthless ideal and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.

My meeting with the accountant was fruitful.  Apparently life is not quite as fraught as I thought it was.

I met Hillary in Venice and walked the entire length of Abbot Kinney gossiping and laughing.

We ate a light supper at Wholefoods.  I’m sorry but eating food outside a grimy supermarket is just too much.  I bought a grilled chicken that I shared with the Lil Dog.

Fantabulosa is the bio pic of actor and British TV personality Kenneth Williams starring Michael Sheen.

BAFTA organized a screening for the members in a small Santa Monica cinema.

It’s a sad film.  I identified very much with Kenneth’s sexual anorexia, his inability to form loving relationships with other men and the mask he wore to get through a life he considered useless.

Met the boy who played Joe Orton in Fantabulosa.  Kenny Doughty and his wife seem very pleasant.

“It is difficult to know people and I don’t think one can ever really know any but one’s own countrymen.

For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the county in which they are born, the city or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives’ tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they played, the poets they read, and the God they believed in.

It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can’t come to know by hearsay, you can only know them if you have lived them.”

It seems so easy, helping my friend in London put his film together without any thought of directing it myself.  It has given me a great deal of pleasure.  Of course I know how to negotiate the making of a film.  A big film or a small film.  Films naturally find their own scale.

I’ve no idea yet what sort of film we will make.  We are currently looking for a great script.

It was lovely listening to Michael Sheen talk about Kenneth Williams.  He obviously developed a profound affection for Kenneth by simply walking in his shoes.   I wondered what the similarities were between these two very different men.

Michael talked amusingly at dinner about meeting Tony Blair at Rupert Murdoch’s house.  He talked about Polari, the 17th Century gay slang, I introduced to Jake B.  He described his friendship with Barbra Windsor.

I hope I helped JB understand the culture and history that precedes him.  It’s so important for gay men to own their history, not as prescribed by straight people as they have written us in the pages of their newspapers…but the oral history that may get lost as another generation of gay men grow up.   We have such a rich history, such joy and tragedy…but we are loathed to own it.

There was a superb Somerset Maugham quote used in the movie:

“What do we any of us have but our illusions and what do we ask of others that we be allowed to keep them?”

When I was a young boy Maugham’s childhood home still stood on Canterbury Road in Whitstable.  It was a beautiful Victorian rectory that savage developers later pulled down and replaced with five vile, mock Georgian horrors.  Anyway, before it was demolished, I made friends with the owners and every Sunday after church I would sit in the huge conservatory, feed their chickens and look at the goldfish in their pond.  They gave me a small piece of amethyst that I still own.

When I went to bed last night I found a poisonous spider folded into the linen.  I didn’t kill it.  It’s nice to share your bed with something living even if it’s only a spider or a little dog.

As I look back over the past months I understand that one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.

In the time that it has taken me to write this blog the mist has magically retreated revealing the ocean.  I am going for a long walk.

Categories
Gay

Overcoming Obsession

This morning I lay in bed battling the resentments.  I made coffee and called the Katonah small claims court and had the forms faxed over to start my proceedings against him.  Quite without knowing why I called Joan and she told me that she had heard from him and he was hurt.  So, my heart melted and I threw away the forms.  By doing so I kinda threw in the towel.  Threw away the resentment and let him go.

I really don’t want to hurt him.  I really don’t.

I sent him a short letter and that was that.

All I wanted from the very beginning was to let him go like a mouse that you find in the house.  You don’t worry what happens to the mouse..you hope it survives but it’s really up to the mouse.

It’s going to take time to stop thinking about him.  I’m realistic about it.

So I wrote this:

Jake,

Listen. I know I have hurt you. I know that you will probably never forgive me.

I am not going to try getting the money. I want you to enjoy the friends I introduced you to and I hope that you can profit from those contacts from which you were meant to profit.

I hope you will one day understand why I couldn’t continue with our friendship. That I really loved you.

I am truly sorry for everything. For my part in this disaster.

I don’t know if I can stop writing about this on my blog. I will try.

Of course I want you to be happy, to find love. You will, as I have said a million times, make someone a wonderful husband.

The reason that I am writing this is because you told Joan how hurt you were and I hate that. In the abstract you can be hurt badly but in reality I don’t want you to suffer any more than you already are.

The fantasy and the reality of Jake.

You will be pleased to hear that during my last CNN appearance all I could see on the other side of the camera was your face.

It ruined it. I’m not doing that again.

I hope you understand better now why i decided why we can’t be friends or have contact.

You reacted so badly to my thoughtful note. I wasn’t trying to be cruel but I just don’t want half measures in my life.

So, now I have dropped a bomb on you in my blog and I don’t know how to make it right. You can find solace in the fact that you are weekly in the top ten most read blogs subjects on my page.

Remember, in the words of The Bard:

“love is not love that alters when alteration finds nor bends to the remover to remove”

This has been hard for both of us.

Let’s see if we can both forgive and forget.

Duncan

Categories
Gay Rant

trying to forgive

OK, it’s really time to forgive.  It’s so fucking hard to forgive someone you have loved. I don’t know if it’s the right thing?  We had such an intense time together.

I dealt with the unresolved financial aspect today but it gave me zero pleasure.

I think..why the fuck should he get away with anything.  Here it comes again..the wave of resentment.

I wish on more occasions that I care to admit that I could remove every single mention of him on my blog just like he wanted but now look..the pages are covered with him.   Mentions and pictures and insults.  I know that it must have hurt him terribly.  For what?

Because I loved him.  Because I don’t want to love him. Because I want to let him go..forever and this seemed like the only way.

I broke my promise to celebrate every moment of his new gay life.

Two people come together for what ever reason and try to make something happen.  The moment the heart is engaged it becomes treacherous.

Toby and I went out last night to WeHo where I thought I wanted to be happily surrounded by own kind.  It was GHASTLY!  I LOATH mediocrity!  Jake wasn’t mediocre.  He wasn’t deliberately cruel.  He was just confused.  I should have known better..but why should I?  Why should I know just because I am older?  I keep thinking about The Velvet Rage.  How we become who we are shaped in a hostile world.  Having to invent ourselves as we go along.

I don’t know the answers…why should I?

I tried to be there for him, to help him but I couldn’t help myself..I fell in love.  So, every time I eat a tomato I think of him because we bought those beautiful tomatoes in the market in Sanary and ate them like peaches.

Every time I sit opposite another man on a ‘date’ I compare them to him.   Every time something good or bad happens I want to share it with him..yet I have no right.  I never had any right.  You see, he always made it perfectly clear after he left her that he wasn’t leaving her for me.   The damage was already done.  I was already in love, I believed him when he wrote to me telling me how much he loved me.

Even though I urged him to get honest I think it suited me that he wasn’t.  When he finally told her I was in SHOCK.  It seemed like the most brave yet foolhardy thing to do.  There were other ways of telling the truth.  But that’s just my fucked up head getting in the way.  He did the right thing.

When I told John the Saturday morning he told her he was gay we both looked at each other in SHOCK.

As we became more involved I couldn’t just continue with things the way they were.  I couldn’t bear listening to him tell me about other men and not be profoundly hurt however generous I wanted to be.

I didn’t want it to end but it had no future and if it had no future I couldn’t continue.

I need either to be on my own or to share my life with a man who gives equally, kindly, compassionately.

This will make you laugh:  I met a man (my age) at dinner the other night who wanted a date but cancelled after reading my blog.  So, it’s just me and my blog.

As for the money? I don’t care about the money, I just care that he’s not getting away with anything.  Then of course..I do care.  When I am feeling angry or resentful I care so much about the fucking money.

It’s 110 degrees in LA.  At the end of the week we return to sultry days and chilly evenings.

Where are the grand romantic gestures?  Should I have moved to NYC ?  I simply couldn’t.  I couldn’t shift my life east because I loved him so much.  I always knew that I would eventually have to let him go.

Now look, these pages are littered with every mean thing I could have written about him.  But inside my crazy head every mean thing I think about him is balanced with a good thought, a lovely memory, a kind gesture.

I just don’t want you to think I am weak, laying in bed this morning and trying to conjour up good thoughts of Jake, wanting to remember all that was sweet and let the loathing go.

Toby and I went into Weho last night.  It was a cluster fuck.  The Abbey was throwing a birthday party for its owner.  We left a few minutes after arriving.   It was shirtless night there.  Just more flesh.  More male bodies, shaved chests, cropped hair..like walking onto the set of an endless porno shoot.  Aspirations reduced to one thing: cock.

When I craved, in the 1980’s, more openness for our gay culture so we were not hidden from those who might harshly judge us..did I ever imagine this:

From the sidewalk we could see into Mickey’s where half-naked men gyrated on podiums with dollar bills stuffed in their knickers.  At East West more half-naked men on podiums wearing cowboy hats trying to dance unsuccessfully to country and western music. In Fiesta Cantina karaoke boys sang moody songs very badly and worst of all, just a few doors away in Rage a man was being bound and gagged in the entrance of the bar and hoisted above the audience by a vile, tattooed queen in leather.

I, like the dumfounded straight people around me,  looked in at this horrible spectacle.  I felt sick that this carnage was the public face of our ‘culture’.  The freaks, the mediocre, the wet brains, the fools..and (however beautiful they were) all so ugly..so inauthentic.

That we had all fought so hard to be taken seriously…and crave marriage and equality.

I let the little dog out of the car and he ran like a lunatic around the West Hollywood park and I felt as if in some small way my faith could be restored in the world.

Categories
Gay

Anomaly

HLN again tonight.  4pm my time.  Fantasia follow-up and more sex tape discussion, this time about Heidi and Spencer Pratt and my FAVE topic..Tiger Woods.  I love going into CNN with my button down and coat to trash talk celebrity.  It’s so much fun.

Let me know if you watch it.

Everyday I see who and why people are visiting this blog.  Not individually of course but how many people and what they typed into the search engine to get to my blog.  Every day people look for Kristian Digby, hundreds of people.   It’s lovely that people come to this blog to find the facts about his funeral and where he is buried etc.  I feel as if, in some small way, I am being of service.

Which brings me to my next topic.  Being of service.  One of my commentators very rightly pointed out that I have been less than kind recently on these pages.  Very unforgiving.  This was an accurate criticism and one that I am going to take care of addressing.

Of course I have forgiven Irene and Jake.  Irene because she is so like me and Jake because, poor little lamb, he didn’t have a clue what he was getting involved with.  Mostly I have forgiven myself.  I loathe being angry Duncan.

I am having a great time NOT having to worry about Jake.   He’s going to be just fine.  He’ll meet a lovely man (one day) and settle down and do whatever he has to do to make life exciting.  He’s good-looking, intelligent,  funny..a perfect combination.  The other gays seem to get where he is coming from so he’ll get on with his gay life with aplomb.

So, I am sorry for being a knob about you JB but you kinda deserved it.

I have a great deal to be happy about. I forget regularly this very important fact.  I don’t have to think about all the shitty times I can remember the good times.  The sweet times.  What I learned.

Relationships are very confusing.  It’s best that I don’t have them or think about them.  I lose my balance when I am in a relationship.  As for sex?  Well, this weekend I am invited to a ‘sex party’ in Long Beach…hahhahaha..yeah right…that sounds like HELL.   I would rather have Saudi’s gauge out my eyes.

Spent a lovely evening with a bunch of gay men last night.  I have always wanted a group of gay men around me who I like and trust and am inspired by.  Last night I kinda found that rather than hanker after a bunch of cool gay friends..I already had them.  After dinner we watched The Graduate and then a two-hour long Q&A with Dustin Hoffman.  It really was a magical evening.

Read in the Observer yesterday that the Editor of Attitude magazine, a British gay glossy, had written a lively piece about gay men’s mental health and how toxic shame can destroy our lives.

He quoted Alan Downs The Velvet Rage which any self-respecting gay has read a million times since it was published 5 years ago.   The editor was concerned that his readers would consider it controversial.  It’s about bloody time that we looked at how shame has shaped our lives.

“Yes, we have more sexual partners in a lifetime than other groups of people,” Downs writes. “At the same time, we also have among the highest rates of depression and suicide, not to mention sexually transmitted diseases. As a group, we tend to be more emotionally expressive than other men, yet our relationships are far shorter on average than those of straight men.

“We have more expendable income, more expensive houses, more fashionable cars, clothes, furniture than just about any other cultural group. But are we truly happier?”

Exactly, why bother taking ourselves seriously when there’s stuff to buy?

The reason why so few editors of Gay magazines write about gay mental health is that they are all BONKERS and terrible drinkers and drug takers.  A sober gay man is still an anomaly.

Cancer update:  Toby Mott just suggested that I ebay my balls.

Categories
Gay Health Hollywood Love

You Don’t Know What I Fear

You know what I’m doing?  I’m going out!  Started the evening feeling sorry myself.  Fuck that.

I sent an SOS to Amanda that I may or may not need.  But most of all, I am not going to be beaten by 5mm of something black on my balls.  It’s not a death sentence.  It’s black on the scan.  I wonder what color it is in real life?

I’m listening to very loud music.

Old fashioned shit.  I know.  But I’m allowed to.  I don’t have to answer to anybody.

I bought Jasper Conran‘s beautiful book Country.   Packed with so many beautiful images.  Try looking at THAT on a fucking kindle.

I cleaned the apartment.  I sorted my papers.  I totally forgot that I had to call the police station in London to deal with the iPod incident.  Never mind.  I would rather be in a cell than have this maggot growing inside me.  It’s all relative.  I read Michael’s brilliant script.  After I finish writing this I will take the little dog to see the cats on Cherokee so he can squeal like a pig with excitement.   Cat!  Cat!

I have to submit my HLN idea.  I received a lovely text message from an old lover in NYC who is eager to get together..balls or no balls.

Meeting Seb at SHLA at 11pm.  Fuck this sitting around shit.  I need solution!  have I LEARNED nothing from all those years sitting in church halls and masonic lodges reading the recipe of the 12 steps?

Take action my friends!  Get out of that shit relationship.  Don’t be bowed by illness!  Eat!  If you feel lonely get out onto the streets!   Don’t give in to the furies.  TAKE ACTION.

December 21st, 2009-August 12th, 2010

Jake has been in my life..for months…for most of it was an acting out dream come true.

Oh I WILLINGLY gave up my sexual sober time.

We talked almost every day.  Why trash those precious few months?  For the time being I will celebrate the time we spent together.  Although, sooner or later it will just feel…embarrassing.

In the long run it will mean far more to him than it will to me,  Try as he might he will never be able to unstitch me from his story.  I am, after all, the one who tore him out of the closet and in so doing rescued that poor girl from just one more day of deceit and lies.

I said to him on February 9th:

All I know is as the years pass this will weigh heavier on your mind and every time you look at J your girlfriend/wife/mother of your child you will know that there is a fundamental deceit.

If it is not me or the Hungarian it will be another man..and another and the outcome will always be the same.

One day you will meet a perfect man and then you will resent her, begin to hate her because it is not him…

I am the FUCKING HERO.  Beautifully written…don’t you think?

And for all you guys and gals who have been shat on..here is a shitty, campy song for you to remind yourself that we can all laugh at how stupid we have been:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxxwNuTpdd8]

Categories
Gay

Red Suitcase

I wrote this just before I left for NYC to meet Jake prior to going to Europe.

Packed my big red suitcase. Trying to take clothes that I will actually wear rather than clothes that simply look good. We are going to be tourists in London and Paris rather than me just visiting friends. Getting away, making sense of everything. There is a great deal to make sense of. I am a little apprehensive.

Incredibly busy day yesterday. In Malibu winding things down. Lunch with a friend, back up to the house, meetings and more decisions. Dinner with a bunch of people at Soho House. Long chat with Sharon S. We are both fucking idiots when it comes to our respective love lives.

So, this is what I am flying into: the traveling companion says that he will make dinner but is going to buy Chinese food instead. He is such a selfish prick. Spends all night fucking some guy but can’t be bothered to stick to promise of making dinner for the man who is taking him to Europe.

I am so determined to walk into this situation with an open heart, with no expectations. It is going to be really hard as I am so pissed off that he didn’t make time for me.

Every night he is in town meeting new men. Tells me he is going to read my script but doesn’t. Tell’s me is going to cook dinner but doesn’t. Feeling very angry about this.

Funny eh? There are lots of posts I never bothered posting.

Categories
Gay Rant Rehab

Doc Day Afternoon

Cooking for eight this evening.  I’ve not cooked properly for months.  I have cooked like an American..thrown things together but not cooked properly..like I am want to do.

I am going to find a huge shoulder of lamb somewhere and stuff it with rosemary and garlic.  It has been so chilly here that a good gigot and roasted root vegetables makes perfect sense.   Perhaps a summer pudding?  I wish I could find gooseberries for a summer crumble.  I am going to make custard.

Lunch with Joel at SHLA.  I paid.  Why?  Bumped into Drew Pinsky and Tom Arnold.  Lovely to see Drew.  I mentioned the CNN thing, Tom said that Montana Fishburne has no money from her father and Drew concluded that her decision to do porn was probably based on her giving her father the finger.  Montana on the next rehab show?  Perhaps.

After lunch I had a lump on my testicle checked out by a very nice doctor in Beverly Hills.  I must have an ultrasound tomorrow.  I could be castrated by the weekend if things don’t work out.  Hmmm…then I could become a transsexual.  My secret desire for so many years.

This morning was, of course, Wednesday therapy at 7.30.   I shared that the companion had referred to us as we yesterday in relation to my doctor’s appointment..as in, ‘we’ll get through it’ rather than, ‘you’ll get through it’.   I felt a tear welling up in my wizened eye.  When I mentioned that to Jon he said, ” A smidgen of compassion?  Is that all it takes?”

Strangely it was the companion who mentioned just how cynical, bitter and washed up most of the gay men he met were.    He should try hanging out with addicts.

I read a Newsweek article by Howard Fineman that made me so sad.  Sad because I agreed with his miserable assessment of America’s standing in the rest of the world.  I’m not an idiot, I can see the rich tearing down anything they can lay their hands on, plundering this country while the poor cling to their huge cars and wars and patriotism.  Clinging to their tatty bill of rights, their eviscerated constitution.

I was sad because I have never felt more like an American as I do now and wish it wasn’t so that the roads are fucked, that the Christians are in charge, that the gays get infected with HIV because they think it’s like living with diabetes.

I was sad because my miserable and oft mocked USA is a Third World Country prophecy is coming true.  That my pessimistic assessment of the American Economy coming back from the brink is even worst than I expected.   Please say it ain’t true.

Even my rich middle class manufacturing friends are limping from one foreign order to another, limping but believing (as they have always believed) that the unregulated free market and not government will make everything better.

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