Categories
Category: Health
1.
It is dawn again. Dawn in the desert. The smell of the earth and the dew. The sounds of the chirruping birds.
The pervasive silence of the long black night coming to an end.
My night blindness is getting worse. I sat on my spectacles so am guessing, largely… where the keys are.
The days get hotter and hotter. The sun beating down relentlessly. The lawn toasting, the dogs roasting, the mountain tightens around us as it bakes.
Hot days in Dorset/ hot days in Malibu. Hot days on the sleepy ocean, lapping around me.
Coffee, editing, read the daily news. It sure looks bad in Syria.
We cruise down to the beach and play in the surf. We are tangled at night in the white linen sheets. We read side by side in silence. A familiar smell, a beating heart, the man I want but do not need.
He asks what we are. Nothing. We are nothing, I say. He struggles with ‘what it means’ to love another man.
My struggle is over. I am too old to give love a second chance.
He sees me thinking. He will read this and tell me to talk to him as if talking will solve everything. Just shut up and make love to me. Stop asking me what it means. Don’t expect me to know anything. Work it out yourself.
I don’t really care.
For all the terrible, meaningless cruelty I am still besotted with him. And, like the parent of a missing child, I wonder daily about his safety. Even though he is undeserving of my worry and considers my concern an intrusion..
I continue to fret about him, however violently I have tried to expunge the memory.
2.
I am mostly happy. I know you don’t believe me. I know that you think I am lying to you about my happiness.
Well, if you could see me… if you were the one laying beside me… you would understand.
Island Wall. The tiny cottage there. It was enough. It was perfect.
Now I lay my head down and it is enough.
Perhaps, you say, you could be happier? How much happier?
Facelifts, apparently, make women happier.
Then I realize that you are confusing your own thoughts about getting older with what you think happiness is. How can anyone be that old and be happy? How can anyone have so little and be happy?
Then, you try convincing me that I should want to be young again. Forgetting, of course, that I was never young. Always old. Always.
I have a spectacular ability to get on with what I have and be happy with it.
I don’t want more. Even in the jail. I found comfort. I found solace.
So, you think I am unhappy because you do not know what happiness is.
Could you imagine a happy person killing themselves? I could.
Come death.
3.
I had another dream about the DA. This time my thumb was in her mouth. She was sucking my thumb. Pressed down on her tongue. Like a calf. Her big brown eyes looking up at me.
Whenever I dream about her, her cheap gold jewelry tinkles like ice cubes in a crystal glass.
4.
I am writing my screenplay. Finishing it. I am enjoying a social life. I let the man beside me massage my neck.
I understand that I am in love with struggle. Struggle is sustenance. It feeds me everything I need to live. I am alive when I fight to survive. I am alive when I feel myself emerge victorious. Even though you could not imagine what I experience as victory.
I dream that I am walking by my primary school in Whitstable. The black, tarmac playground is always empty. The lawn is green. The classrooms, I assume, are full.
I remember the boy who ate coal, the butcher’s son. He looked like a pink pig. Fat, pink, bespectacled. He drowned you know. You knew that… didn’t you? When he couldn’t take it anymore.
5.
Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives.
Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrogered sea.
And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.
This morning, Mel picked me up from the mountain at 6.30 am. He drives a large, white Hummer, his dog and my dog are best friends. They are a similar size and their fur is the same colour.
I left a young black internet date in my bed and the twins slumbering downstairs. I wore the Martin Margiela sunglasses Joan bought for me last year and I only removed them when Mel dropped me off 6 hours later.
The last AA meeting I attended was held in the chapel in The Men’s County Jail. The speakers valiantly trying to spread the word whilst 400 tranny hookers caught up on the ‘T’ (gossip). I sat listening to them that Wednesday evening wondering if I would ever go back to AA, whether I would even remain soba when I eventually left the jail.
Last night I poured myself a glass of red wine. I didn’t drink it. I looked at it in the 17C crystal glass, I sniffed it occasionally but I didn’t have the guts to drink it. Just like I have not had the guts to kill myself, even though some of you seem like you’re waiting for me to do so.
Taking a drink is like the first step toward a painful death. Those of you who have not drunk for some time know what I mean.
Perhaps death is the solution? That’s what they promise in the preamble of Narcotics Anonymous: Jails, Institutions, Death.
I have experienced the first two, now I wait patiently for the third.
AA. I committed to it so many years ago. I was so damned willing, so entranced, so desperate. Now, I loathe it. I sat there this morning wishing I was drunk. My lips stained with red wine…preferably a rich Multipulciano. That twisted smile I smiled when I was drunk. Do any of you old friends remember that? That strange half-smile?
I sat there listening to their white, middle-aged, bourgeois stories, stories of their mediocre triumphs and their miserable disasters. Their engagements, their dying wives, their wayward medicated children…reassuring us that they were nothing without AA.
The most bumptious of them all flaying himself before us, describing himself as an arrogant scoundrel. His tearful confession masquerading as humility. Knowing, of course, that his well rehearsed speech would garner rave reviews from his adoring fans. He had, after all, relapsed publicly, he had gotten back on the wagon with the rest of us (even though he had deceived us) he reassured his brethren that ‘we do not shoot our wounded’.
When it was my turn to speak I felt that crooked smile on my lips. As if I were drunk. As if I had already taken the first sip.
They knew where I had been. They looked down their manufactured noses at the hopeless alcoholic who could not stay on the straight and narrow. The ‘arrogant scoundrel’ looked about him at his friends, scoffing, expecting me to prostrate myself before them…begging forgiveness.
Instead, I told them about the tranny hookers, I told them that I had been in resentment since Jake revealed himself. I let them know that the cloud of resentment, loathing, hatred had thickened so it blocked out the sun. I reminded them that, for the longest time, I had forgotten what it felt like to live in the light. I told them to re-read steps four and five and let me be a lesson to them all. Let my story remind them what it looks like when resentment smothers a recovering alcoholic like wisteria a stone house.
I told them that going to jail had been the best thing for me and they nodded and agreed but they had no idea what they were agreeing to.
After I spoke, others with similar ailments, similar pathologies felt able to share. They thanked me, they said that there was a fine line between sobriety and insanity. They reminded the others just how many of us kill ourselves after many years of sobriety. The darkness in men’s souls.
I was envious of those who had killed themselves. I have wanted to be dead for the longest time. I know what some of you will say…like Chris in Sydney and those of you who would prefer it…you would tell me to hurry on and do it. You would say, go on kill yourself, good riddance to you Duncan Roy.
But when the time comes and I hold the pills in my hand like a fist of squirming bugs…something stops me. Something tells me that just one more day and the pain of losing the man/dog/home you love might just diminish.
I may very well have ended my relationship with AA.
My great friend John Adler, my sponsor these past few years in AA and SAA abandoned me a few weeks after I was locked up. Even though his own sponsor is a child molester and child pornographer, even though his wife begged me to get her a club membership, apparently I am a danger to him and his family.
It was a betrayal that I never thought I would have to endure, it was the one and only time I cried in the jail. My best friend was a coward.
He wasn’t the only one.
I learned many lessons in the jail. I learned about America. I learned more when I read the comments posted after the piece published in the online version of The Independent. The difference between the British and the Americans. I was proud to be British yesterday.
For the record, I have to see the doctors tomorrow to work out what we do about three months of medical inaction. God may very well be doing for me what I cannot do for myself. If you know what I mean. The pain in my belly is occasionally overwhelming. It feels like my insides are being ripped out. My kidneys burning. The blood in my urine a daily reminder. A serious situation.
It is more serious than the stupid charges against me, charges I cannot find the time to take seriously. More serious than DA Anne-Marie Wise would want you to believe.
We sat in the deli after the meeting, before the long walk in the canyon, and Michelle Bachman was on the TV. She looks like Anne-Marie, she has that look those women who think they are powerful. Women who work for men believing the glass ceiling has been broken.
She’ll read this and she’ll try and prove how powerful she is…she’ll try and make life difficult, like she did when I was inside the jail, tacking on extra weeks of incarceration before the trial…waiting for me to buckle and except her pathetic ‘deal’.
Do your worst Anne-Marie. Your very worst will not hurt me. You cannot hurt me. You don’t know me.
You should have seen her in the court with her pile of papers, feeling very important.
Fingering that cheap jewelry as if it were Cartier. Taking it all so personally. She probably goes home and tells her children that mummy does very important work putting dangerous men behind bars. Not that she has been colluding with the super rich to steal from the poor.
You see, the resentment overwhelms. It gets me. It bites me in the neck like a vampire. It keep me alive…even though I should be dead.
Let my slow suicide be a lesson to you all.
Categories
AA Birthday
As I embark on my 15th year of sobriety are things as I imagined they would be?
Well…they are as they are.
In God‘s perfect world there is nothing I can’t handle.
I have enough.
Enough is all I have.
What was it like before I got sober? It was a daily, living hell.
This is the day I that I yearly recommit to sobriety and this is the day that forces me to take stock and move forward unburdened.
The day where I take a thorough inventory, both good and bad.
Some things need left behind. You know what I am talking about.
Some things need embracing.
Life needs to be lived.
For all the love/health/death/aggravation of the past year…today I am strong and secure. Today.
It seems that although forgiveness is key…it is a hard thing to swallow.
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.
I have spent the past day or so in bed. The dog is less sick, eating again. We have to get his drain removed. He is wearing the Elizabethan collar but hates it.
My left leg is getting better…my right ankle isn’t. Robby stayed over last night. Today he watered the garden, filled the hot tub, went to the supermarket and ran around the house as I finally caught up on all the various tasks that could be accomplished from my bed.
Jen and Jason were incredibly helpful. Anna brought supper.
Surrounded, as usual, with love. Occasionally it is hard to recognize just how lucky I am.
Robby and I have a wonderful relationship. We talk and play and the more I know him…the more I trust him. In fact, I might trust him more than any person I know right now. He has been a perfect antidote to JB. I feel hopeful again because he brings me love.
Crippled and confined to the couch he was pottering about the house making everything look good.
We were talking about how private one needs to be in life.
He is a tentative soul.
He wondered why I write every personal detail here in this blog. Make public what most people keep private. Something that delighted Jake until (of course) he was part of it, part of the narrative…then it wasn’t quite so alluring.
Learn this lesson: If you don’t like your private life being scrutinised…avoid public figures…you will lose your anonymity.
The reality guy who killed himself this week? He had no idea just how pernicious reality TV really is.
We mused about what remains private and what should be public. I am quite clear why I write everything here.
If, like me, you have lived an audacious, notorious life then for every eager friend there is a fool desperate to pull you down.
It is best to live without secrets. Many years ago I was taught that we are as sick as our secrets. What does that mean? If you are cheating on your wife you will be defined by your deception. If you are lying to your friends you will be hindered by self-doubt.
If I have made mistakes, told a lie, cheated a friend or been generally disreputable then I write it here. My part in what ever unfolding drama is worth noting. We tend to focus on who to blame and rarely acknowledge our responsibility.
Keeping my side of the street clean.
That is why I have struggled so badly with you-know-who. It has been incredibly difficult to own my part. I don’t want to admit my short comings.
I make him responsible. I blame him. I say: He lied to me. He cheated. He duped me. He did drugs in front of me. All of this is true…of course, but has to be balanced with: I am responsible. I lied to him. I chose somebody inappropriate. I allowed myself to be duped. I had no boundaries.
When I point at him three fingers point back at me.
What is the answer?
I aim to be ashamed of nothing. This leads, inevitably, to peace of mind.
You, dear reader, know everything! There’s nothing I’ve not written about. You know every insane thought, every defect, every leak and misery.
You know everything…so I fear nothing. Not one of you has anything on me.
When you live a lie you are vulnerable. I don’t want to be vulnerable.
Back to NYC next month to see JB in court but it’s fashion week and I’ve been invited to a slew of fashion week events. Robby will be in town so we can do some fun shit. I love that boy. Jenny will be there too and wants to come to court with me. Before we vanish to The Hamptons.
There is a great deal to do these coming autumn/winter months.
LA will be hosting Pacific Standard Time the culmination of a long-term Getty Research Institute initiative that focuses on postwar art in Los Angeles.
Through archival acquisitions, oral history interviews, public programming, exhibitions, and publications, the Research Institute is responding to the need to document the historical record of this vibrant period.
Between October 2011 and February 2012, a major exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum will present a survey of postwar painting and sculpture in Los Angeles.
It will be a great deal of fun.
In tandem with PST, Art Platform—Los Angeles, the west coast cousin of The Armoury, is collaborating with Pacific Standard Time to organize an extraordinary series of events and services to highlight this historic period and unprecedented weekend of art in Los Angeles. Rather wonderfully I am part of their VIP Programme.
Tonight Eric is bringing supper. The little dog will get better. I am willing him to. Help me think him right.
Dawn. Crows cawing. Dawn chorus.
There is so much dew it looks and smells as there has been heavy rain. I spend an hour every morning watering whatever I can from the path at the top of the house. I enjoy this.
There are so many snails.
Had lunch in Hollywood yesterday with a writer. Actually, we didn’t eat lunch. I drank some iced tea. Met the man who owns Mama Shelter in Paris. I have known him for years but I just didn’t know that he owned that hotel. You know we stayed there don’t you? This time last year.
How can I spend so much time wishing away the past?
Long conversation with a man in Sonoma who makes chicken coops. They are expensive but look great.
Jennifer bought fresh garbanzo beans which seem like they might be easy to grow in my garden. The melons are growing. The black tomatoes are doing well. Something ate the pumpkin seedlings. The lemon trees, after the wet winter, are laden with fruit. There are figs and plums and ruby grapefruit.
There are roses blooming all over the property.
What else can I tell you? I write my novel as per suggestion. It gets better and better. Perhaps I get better? It started as one thing and already, with a little intelligent coaxing, is evolving into something quite different. It started with vengeful intentions. Now it is getting funny. It started with a view to kill. Now it embraces the will to live. These are not my ideas.
I would prefer my original plan.
I have just a few weeks to finish writing The Scarlett Empress. It is by far the most commercial thing I have ever written. It is helping me though. Helping me think in a different sort of way.
The more I write the other stuff…the less I want to write this. Yet, this spurs me into action.
Three days until the ‘Big Adventure’. The Dane arrives from NYC on Sunday.
Becoming a Pilgrim. You’ll enjoy reading about it. I have had to keep the plan a big secret. I don’t want anyone ruining it.
The twins are running around the house in their boxers.
Pains in chest and arm. Balls ache once again. Nasty cough.
Categories
Inside Out
Breakfast with the beautiful Dane.
We stepped out of the restaurant for a moment to smoke and a young woman approached me.
She said, “I saw you on the show. You’re very brave.”
I felt like a total fraud.
I wanted to tell her that since the show I have broken every rule, every principal I had ever committed or adhered to. These past few moths I have run roughshod over all the progress of the past 13 years.
I feel like I am at square one.
Sure I didn’t drug or drink. Sure it was brave of me to reveal myself on TV…but look at the trouble it has caused. I let myself succumb to the vagaries of love. With a chimp.
The beautiful Dane wanted to know what she was talking about. I told him. I suppose now he’ll see everything. I wonder how he’ll feel about it? Time will tell.
I love talking with him. We talk and talk, his stories are riveting and compelling. This is more like it. He’s only 33. Suddenly we are surrounded by people we know. Friends we know rather than he or I.
Feel comfortable, relaxed and happy.
So happy I begin to cry, my nose stings, my eyes fill with tears. I think about what Jon said when I first got sober in SAA. He asked me to imagine what a relationship ‘looks like’ I cried then too. I just didn’t think it was possible. A healthy relationship with a healthy, kind man. Then, by way of alcoholic sabotage, I proved to myself and the whole world that I was incapable of making good choices.
Enter The Penguin. Exit The Penguin.
I am so happy to be in the bosom of AA. Surrounded by men and women whose language I respect, whose journey I relate to. Listen, there could be an argument made that every relationship I have ever had (except Matt) has been with active alcoholics/addicts.
Last night, after the poetry reading, I walked the dog…wrote this blog and went to bed. I woke at 6am to arrange the apartment for the return of the decorators. After our rather wonderful breakfast I caught a cab to JFK and am now on a plane to an undisclosed location for a couple of weeks in the sun.
I may have been brave (I was brave) when I told you all the truth about my childhood suffering but the consequences of being on that show have been very severe. I would never in a million years have met or absconded with, danced with, dillied or dallied with that terrible man. I would have remained ignorant of his ugly face, his dishonest world. I would never have worshiped his stinking hole or kissed his lying mouth.
I would certainly never have risked losing my sobriety. I came THIS close!
I would rather be single than take those risks again.
What does a relationship look like? I don’t know if it exists. Not because I am unworthy but because the damage has been done. If only you could see it on my face like a burns victim. If only you could see the ravages of child abuse on my face.
A relationship? The damage maybe too severe. I have to look at it like that. The war is over but I am limbless, traumatized, impotent, angry. There is nothing I can do other than STAY AWAY from normal human beings who say they love me.
They just can’t see.
They think I am healthy, able bodied, sane. Until they uncover the truth.
For the time being I will stick to my own kind. I am never lonely with my own kind. I never have to kid myself when I am with my own kind. My own kind never try and kid me. They treat me carefully.
What does a relationship look like? Well, it’s me, myself and I. That’s all I can hope for.
That’s all I will ever need or be able to depend upon.
Remember, if you meet me, that I am covered in the most terrible scars inside and out. You should think twice about getting involved. Alcoholics seem to see the scars and hold out their hands so I can walk proudly amongst you…but don’t be deceived.
I am not what I am.
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Gorgeous day here in Malibu. Another day on the beach with the twins. They are dragging me out of the house and making me laugh. More to come. A heat wave with record-breaking temperatures. I may go into rehab sooner than I thought. Long chat with therapist/admin at Pinegrove Mental Health Facility in Hattiesburg Miss.
The film is progressing. We have a title at last.
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1.
Before I hit the doctor’s office I stepped into Regen Projects on Santa Monica Boulevard.
Owned by Shaun Regen this is by far the most interesting gallery in LA and consistently shows challenging and stimulating work.
Regen Projects is currently showing work by German artist John Bock.
Born 1965, Gribbohm, Germany
Lives and works in Berlin.
The show reminded me (inevitably) of fellow German Martin Kippenberger.
Kippenberger is one of my favorite artists. His work has been inexcusably and crudely plundered by the YBA (Young British Artists).
Bock influences include: Paul McCarthy, Otto Muehl, Paul Thek and Maurizio Cattelan.
John Bock is a performance artist and sculptor whose three-dimensional works often serve as props for his performances.
Bock creates entire universes using a wildly eclectic range of materials, described in multiple languages, and presented with an antic energy that is equal parts mad scientist and Buster Keaton.
A dizzying mix of pseudo-scientific, aesthetic, social, and political commentary, Bock’s works defy logic.
This view of the world has various precedents, notably in the post World War II Theatre of the Absurd, a movement whose goal was to shock audiences into facing up to life “in its ultimate, stark reality.”
Bock believes the pre-conscious associations inherent in words are unavoidable and that only through experience and empathy can we penetrate what he terms the “heavy numb dumb world” of daily life.
Bock’s lectures seduce and confound, simultaneously proving perhaps, the inexplicability of the interrelationship of man and his universe.
2.
When I let God take the reigns of the humble buggy I drive down the promised path of happy destiny I am sure of one thing: things are going to turn out just the way they are meant to. Good and bad.
When I angrily push him out-of-the-way and drive myself I am sure of nothing.
I used to think that if I let God take control of my life, my life might be ever so slightly boring but that simply isn’t the case. God and I can still go on a wild ride, we can still have excitement and ambition. We just do it the right way.
I get to have all that life has on offer without paying the terrible price I seem to pay when I wilfully drive the buggy myself.
I used to think (convinced myself) that doing the right thing meant that I had to live a pious life.
This simply isn’t true. God doesn’t want me kneeling at his feet all day praying that his will be done. He knows that I believe in his will being done, but what I have come to understand of late is that his will needn’t be dull.
Everyday things get better in my head. Everyday without the grip of obsession, compulsion and the like I am calmer, more centered, more and more in my own skin.
Getting back to work and in touch with my God-given desire to create (and a means to do so) I feel more like the man I was meant to be rather than the man I have been lately.
Yesterday I went back to the doctor, had more scans and lo and behold there are yet more problems to deal with. The difference between this time and the last is that I now have a skill set to deal immediately and healthily with these problems rather than the last time when I associated the problem with him.
It is remarkable to me that for nearly a year I let somebody else rule my head and my heart. By so doing I allowed the deep shadow cast by another to blot out the sunlight of the spirit.
When I talk about God I don’t mean a christian…organised religious God. I mean a God of my understanding, a higher power to whom I must defer at all times if I am going to live a healthy life.