Category: Love

Categories
art Gay Hollywood Love Rant

Nancy Rubins

Nancy Rubins

The Nancy Rubins show at Gagosian is the real deal.  Not one wasted wall nor expectation disappointed.  Spread over four galleries on two floors this energetic show needs to seen.  The huge newer gallery to the south of the original space has never been used so successfully.  It is devoted to an ambitious, spectacular forest of kayaks that delight and inspire!   Pewter colored boats strung together with high tensile wires exploding thirty feet into the air.

We were shown smaller bronze editions that somehow don’t lose their magnificence even though they seem like maquettes for the larger works.

The art was violent and beautiful just as one would expect.   Huge, crumpled graphite on paper pieces bearing down like storm clouds.  The whimsical collages..covetable.    A most enjoyable experience.

Nancy Rubin lives in Topanga, Los Angeles.

My day began with breakfast at Cecconi’s with John.   We talked about an art project for his store.

I called TW but he is in the midst of an obsession so cannot be relied upon to carry me away from mine.  My obsession to get out of dodge, to leave these filthy streets.

There was a rat that had to be dealt with in Malibu.

Chatted with travelling companion.  Listen, every day that passes until I get onto that plane to Paris is absolute torture.  I CANNOT wait.  He thought I sounded pensive.  Not really pensive, just bored, uninspired.  Bored of LA.  I need an enriching, invigorating, salubrious experience.

I am glad that I am taking a friend.  It is always so delightful to see things through new eyes.  I think we both need to run away.  What we don’t need is more drama, prying eyes or complicated love affairs.

Even my more evenhanded friends seem haunted at the moment.  Haunted by the prospect of no prospect.  The economy, the war, the oil spill..the groggy, ineffective Obama administration.

I remember moving here.  I thought, back then, that anything was possible in LA.  I was wrong.

I am tired of the interminable struggle of living.   Every day is a monstrous challenge. Every fucking day.   Driving, parking, dealing with half-wits.  Driving, parking, dealing with half-wits.

Nancy Rubins

Although I woke up this bright Sunday morning feeling a little less pessimistic I swerve from irritable and discontent to the inner peace of absolute acceptance..then it’s back to the dark side.  Malcontent, that’s what I am.  Even looking at art yesterday, as inspirational as it was, could not stop me yearning for Europe.

I wondered what steps I could take to not be on my own.

I thought about joining a dating site.  I tapped in the name of the site.  As soon as the site popped up I was reminded of a time when all I wanted was to hear the reassuring buzz of new messages.  Looking at that site was incredibly depressing.  Page after page of cock pics, ass pics and naked men.   On either side of the multiple cock pics were ads for porn sites.  Mountains of white, heaving flesh.

I have no currency on sites like that.  I am invisible and rightly so, I have no reason to be there.   No reason to be judged simply by my age, weight and the size of my penis.

I know that this plan works very well for many men.  I have heard from friends how relationships form and prosper.    Many things work for other people that have never worked for me.  The ease with which I see my friend become a fully fledged and engaged gay man has shocked me into knowing just how stunted my own experience has been.

The prospect of never being touched or kissed again fills me with fear.  Is it so unreasonable to want a man who loves me as much as I love him?

If I have learned anything these past few months it is this:  my heart sings when I am in love.  Not when I have sex that is disconnected from my feelings.   I wish I could!  I wish that I had been made that way.  But, the truth is..if I had been made that way I would have been killed by AIDS years ago.  Before we knew what AIDS was.  My reticence saved me though ultimately kept me on my own.

Nancy Rubin

I have never been so eager to meet someone yet so disconnected from the possibility.  I am resigned to the fact that it is totally unlikely to happen.

Friends, I suppose, are just as good.

I will be travelling with a great friend.  I am grateful for that.  Grateful to have a friend with whom I can laugh and although I once wanted more it is with the same resignation that I understand that what I have is just as good.

Some people will always be there.  Until the very end.  I hope that by sharing this journey he remains my friend.   Seldom have I experienced such ease with another and have, on occasions, confused that with being in love.

I spent almost the entire day with Dom.  We saw the show at Gagosian, ate lunch in Beverly Hills then I came home had a nap and cooked dinner for the both of us.  Carrot and ginger soup, pork chops and peas then cups of British tea.  It’s a quarter after 12 and he just left.  Shooting the shit, putting the world to rights.

As for sex addiction?  What of that?  Well, I have been really well-behaved.  Not acting out, not objectifying, intriguing, not making inappropriate comments, not looking at porn, not…well, not doing anything that might compromise my sobriety.

Dom Nancy Rubins

I think my friends here worry about me.  Think that I might be depressed.  They might have a point.  It has been a very, very hard six months.  Not with people, but with banks and aspirations and an inability to make art.

The trouble with LA is the lengths one has to go to make sense of every day.  I have been here for five years now.

Five long years in purgatory.

On Friday night I had dinner at Soho House with a new friend.  It was like dining with a ghost.   A beautiful man with no soul.   A beautiful man who referred to me as an uncle.  Again.  That fucking word.  Asexual uncle.   I didn’t pay for dinner.   Uncles pay for dinner.

Categories
Love

A Prayer

Some people come into your life and teach you just what you need to know just when you need it.

Some people take what they need and leave like thieves in the night and one must be willing to sacrifice all that one has for those who have very little.

They would not steal unless they really needed it.

Friends come and go.  Those you have loved with such great passion eventually fade away.  Old friends die, but remain eternally in one’s heart.

I am grateful that I have had a life enriched by so many.   Each and every one of you, whether you like me or not continue to add new dimension and colour to a life less ordinary.

I tread water so that others may not drown.

Can you help me please?  Can you show me the way?  Can you be wise for me?

Occasionally my Wikipedia page is vandalized.  They always do the same thing.  They take down all my achievements leaving only the acts for which I am notorious.  They underline every cruel adjective ever tossed my way.  They remove every kind word or deed.

They want you to believe that I am only bad.  That I am only capable of cruelty, vileness and loathing.

I wonder what sort of fool does that?    I know some of you have found it very hard to forgive me for merely surviving against the odds.  I know that you would like me to end up like Sebastian Horsley: alone and dead and cold.  Frankly, when the time comes..who cares?

Chatting with Toby Mott yesterday we concluded that Sebastian maybe more interesting dead than alive. We agreed that the British art establishment ignored his life but will embrace his death.

However I may be rewritten on the pages of Wikipedia the truth is I am all the things I have been described, good and bad.  Yet, in my eyes, neither as good or bad as the next man.  Why is it so impossible for those who seek to devalue me to own that this might be true?

We are all made of devil and angel.

I may have made errors of judgement, lost my temper occasionally, owed some people some money but I have never raped or murdered anyone.  I have never committed treason, nor have I been part of any radical conspiracy.

I have been a bit of a cunt but who the fuck isn’t?

I have no desire for legacy.  When I am dead and gone the sand will cover the place where my footprints once were.  The tide will wash away any evidence that I even existed.

God save me from mediocrity, from suburban thinking.  God help me stay curious about everything forever and sensitive to those I love.

You know, I have never understood why people treat love so casually.   When I first feel a connection with someone, when I feel that love is in the offing I am not only inspired but convinced that new love must be treated like a precious thing, as fragile as a Ming vase.  If we are truly capable of romantic love then we must treat it with respect.  As relationships grow the vase morphs into an old leather football that can be tossed around if needs be.

Time, familiarity, endurance, perseverance all serve to strengthen love.

I have prayed these past few months to be delivered from the worst that love has caused in me.

Have my words far outweighed my actions?  It is easy to say that you love someone but maybe the word should never be spoken.  Love should be like a silent film.   If I truly love you, if my love is pure then you will know it and honor it.

Long chat with my mother yesterday.  She sounded happy.  The Women’s Institute keeping her busy.  My brother’s baby will be christened on August 1st.

Categories
art Dogs Gay Love Money

A Message from Kristian

I found a book of photography called Chaos by Josef Koudelka at my house in Malibu that Kristian gave me for my birthday some years ago.  In it he wrote:

“I thought this book was very apt.  Life is never black and white yet always flowing with chaos.  I feel this book goes some small way to prove that even in chaos there is beauty.”

It was lovely to find his note.   A message from Kristian, from the past.  The past, where we must leave him.

I had to make some huge and grown up decisions today.   Decisions and about romance and finance.  The two are unconnected yet have been hideously intertwined as I grappled with one or the other for the past few months.

As my fear of financial ruin overwhelmed me I turned to him to deliver me from the truth.   Today, I just had to face my unfortunate situation head on.

My financial insecurity is undoubtedly connected to uncomfortable feelings of self-worth, prestige and power.  The romance I want but cannot have.   Some things are just not meant to be.  It is challenging to come to terms with these sorts of truths but as I have written here in this blog on many occasions when I do make decisions they are swift and sure.  Something, actually, Drew Pinsky taught me whilst I was on the sex rehab show.

I have deliberately avoided talking about either the romance or the finance on this blog but more importantly I have kept it secret to those who love me best.  Fuck, it is exhausting keeping secrets.  I really hate it.  I have no intention of going into any specific detail about the romance or the finance right now.  All you need to know is that I sat with John after the cake was cut and the presents were opened and told him everything I had been hiding for the past few months.  Phew.

As we all know: the truth will set you free.

I let go of a secret I was determined to keep.  Everything I have ever let go of has been relinquished unwillingly.  With claw marks all over what ever was finally gone.

Deep down I am as sure as I ever was that everything will turn out just the way it was meant to be.   I believe in my fate.

My relationships burn like super novae in the cosmos then shrink and die.  I have an opportunity right now to make a different set of choices: taking contrary action, living in acceptance and handing over what ever gives me pain to my higher power.

Just a few days away from my trip to Europe where I will celebrate a hefty milestone.   I have chosen to travel with a close friend.  Someone I love but not a lover.   We (and The Little Dog) will explore London and Paris.  For the sake of The Little Dog we will once again visit the wallabies in the Jardin des Plantes that my darling, loyal pet found utterly spell binding when we visited Paris last Autumn.   I am sure he must have thought that they were the biggest squirrels he had ever seen.

Am I prepared to walk away with dignity?  From people, places and things?

What I own is not who I am.  Who I love cannot define me.  Of course I would love to be in love with a man who loved me as much as I loved him.

I have come a very long way this past year.  The road to serenity, self-love, sexual sobriety is littered with the corpses of those who could not.

I must have buried 30 people during the last 12 years, killed by addiction.  Overdose, suicide, etc.  Every one my hero for keeping me sober.   Each and every one.

This evening I celebrated my friend’s daughter’s 5th birthday.  I sat with his family and watched his happy little girl blow out the candles on her cake.   After supper I wandered into Soho House on my own and found people I knew to take my mind off of the grueling aloneness.  I am not lonely, I just can’t be bothered to make the effort to accept the invitation nor get in the car and drive to people who genuinely love me.

On my way home, as if by magic, friends called me.  Emails arrived, text messages appeared on the screen of the iPhone and I was wrenched away from the promise of a night of self-pity.  I can be such a pig at that particular trough.

I said to him the other night that what I found so hard to let go of was the promise of enduring love.  The door had been opened then slammed shut.  I am the wise uncle, asexual, decrepit yet ultimately willing to be of service to those who need me.

Without the crutches of objectification, intrigue and seduction I can some times flounder.  I can sometimes fall.  Late at night, when all hope is gone I wonder who will catch me?  Who will catch me when I fall?

For a moment back then, I thought it might be you. I thought, foolishly, that it might be YOU.  I thought it was you when I was 20, 30, 40 and now.   Being in love with Richard in my twenties.  I was heartbroken when he would flirt with girls.  At my birthday party on Island Wall, Whitstable my Mother saw the pain I was in and tried to reach out to me but shame got in the way.

The legacy of shame.

Love has always been my goal.  To be loved.  I crave love the way most men crave sex.

I told him:  I’m really scared that I will never love again.   That I will never be loved.  How could I have got this so wrong?    To believe that love was possible, enduring and could be one day mine?

From out of the chaos comes beauty.  It will give me succour when all else fails.  I am going to Europe to fill my heart and soul with art and architecture.  To walk the streets and parks of two great cities.  To explore what it might have been like to be loved.   I know that when I get back he will be gone.  It is our swan song, our last hurrah.  But before I write the end I must enjoy the journey.  I must not fear the future nor have unrealistic expectations, I must set aside my shame and feel the sun on my face, in my heart.

Categories
Hollywood Love Rant

Drug of Choice

Dream:  weirdly compelling dream, I am in a beautiful country house in South America, there is an anaconda, I am guarding the little dog, then we are on a train to a small village, lots of people..then on my own.

I am on a high protein diet so I can lose a few pounds before I get to England rather than work it off whilst I am there.      The upshot is I am feeling aggressively horny.   Need..want..love.

Taming the beast.    Look, I have to confide in you:  I have never been interested in second best, making do, half measures not only availed me nothing but I am turned OFF by the avowedly second rate.  I am interested in first class everything and why shouldn’t I be?  I don’t mean huge houses or fancy cars, I don’t want ravishing beauty or perfect bodies all I have ever wanted was something or someone who could tell me the truth.

Again, let me state as boldly and confidently as I know how: AUTHENTICITY.  I am only interested, I have only ever been interested and will always only ever be interested in that that is authentic and true.

This may account for the kind of pornography with which I used to be obsessed.

If I look around my home I can tell you that there is not one fork, spoon, chair or rug that I don’t LOVE.

Selling my art recently has given me the freedom to let everything go.  I may have no option.  Yet, as fast as I let things go I acquire more.   It is an addiction as grave as pornography or drugs.  I used to look around my home in Whitstable and I could tell you to the day how badly I felt by the amount of money I spent on the possessions I owned.

Last night I met some actor from a show called Dollhouse.  I don’t remember his name.  Fran someone or other.   He was/is attractive but because I no longer objectify or intrigue I really didn’t know how to engage with strangers.  The conversation lingered and died.    Is this how things will be from now on?

Fuck.

Before my sexual maturity work in therapy when ever I went out I would flit from table to table intriguing and flirting and having a gay old-time.  Yesterday night I was compelled to chat with people I knew rather than making brand new friends.

Fuck!

I really do not want to lose that motivation.  I love people but how do I love people without them becoming my drug of choice?

Categories
Love

Dennis Hopper

I am still not in the UK where I am meant to be.  I am trying to fit the pieces of my life together so when I finally leave I can feel safe things wont fall apart whilst I am away.

I am in the doldrums.   I can’t wait to get home to see friendly faces, hear familiar accents, wash the last few months of indecision, lost love and tales of ordinary madness into the Swale.

No longer in love my cupboards fill with chocolate.  I look at myself in the mirror and realize that I got what I wished for..the invisible man stares back at me.   Yet, saying this, this morning I was full of hope.  I sat in acceptance and said so out loud.

The little dog and I have not climbed Runyon for days and this is partly because my back twinges and I am scared that it will fail me again like it did earlier this year and I will have to sit in bed for a week unable to move without excruciating pain.

There isn’t much to report.  I am not allowed to write about my trip home in case I say/write things that upset the man I am travelling with.  Needless to say there are good times on the horizon though I am not sure if my companion will enjoy the whirlwind exploration of things past.  My past.  I am getting to show someone I care about the locations I love including the place where, in this now half over life, I experienced as a child a moment of total freedom that, strangely, I never really experienced again.  It is this place that I want to visit most and ultimately end up under the elder, hawthorn and the sycamore of my youth.

I linger in depression when I am alone then, when people knock at my door, all at once I am happy and content.  I know that I am going home to very friendly faces, to the great loves and the equally magnificent disappointments of the past half a century.

I am dreaming eager like a ghost through the Sunday drag shows of the Vauxhall Tavern, the streets of London, the parks and moribund locations of my youth.

There are people I must see who are essential to reconnect with if, as I plan, I am to remain at peace with myself.   A smile on my face.

Dennis Hopper died this week.  I spent a few afternoons/evenings with Hopper in Bucharest when I was directing the ill-fated Method..a truly ghastly film.  We were staying in the Marriott and would sit in the marble bar with hookers, actors and gamblers.   The entire cast of the film Modigliani including Andy Garcia, Udo Kier and Miriam Margolyes.

During one odd excursion we sat in a darkened screening room and watched the last few moments of the lives of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena who were executed by firing squad in 1989.  I remember her suburban coat and the way she fell.   Bullets into their bodies.  Hopper was unmoved.  The next time we bumped into each other was at a pre Oscar do at Barry Diller‘s.   He told me that rather than being unmoved he was shocked that the man who showed us the footage (the owner of Media Pro film studios) was so gleeful.

The Ceausescu were the last people to be executed in Romania before the abolition of capital punishment in 1990.

Louise Bourgeois died this week.  Another colorful character from my past.  The very same week I sold one of the two works I owned by her.  The auction of some of my art collection went very well.

I had, it seems, invested wisely.

Categories
Dogs Gay Love

i Can’t Help You

Stone

All day the Little Dog has been sick.   He is listless and miserable, his little black nose hot and dry.   I checked his gums but they seem ok.  I get scared that he might die.   The past few months would have been utterly unbearable without him.

At about 7.30 he perked up and has been right as rain ever since.  Leaping all over Eric when he arrived for hastily put together dinner.

He is snuggling in my lap as I write.

I think about the darling big dog.  My darling big dog, I miss her more than I ever did.   I still have daily, violent memories of her broken, bloody body.  Searing into my mind.    Replaying the last few moments of her life before that evil truck scraped her across the road.

My fingers angrily bang the letters of those words onto the page.

I CAN’T HELP YOU.

I blame the man driving the truck.  He did it on purpose.  He didn’t stop.  Bastard.

At moments like this I soothe myself with memories of home.  I think a great deal of England-green and pleasant land.  The Kent countryside, the buses to Canterbury, Georgina, The Goods Shed, etc. etc., I nightly drive through Clowes Wood in my semi conscious state..naked..shameless.

I remember a recurring nightmare:  I am a young boy naked in the schoolyard.  I have no idea where my clothes are or where I lost them.   I hide behind the half door in the toilets as the other children are called to class.  I stand naked in the schoolyard covering myself, the cold wind whipping grit into my eyes.  The other children sitting warm inside at their desks.

Last night as he was with me in my bed I lay thinking of how I might get home safely.  How can I get back home?  For all that raucous, interminable thinking we slept soundly.

I’ve not written a word these past few days.  Full moon blues I call it.   I lost interest in my blog as things calmed down with my (ex?) and my new friend holidayed in Italy.

I had to deal with a moving traffic violation issue that meant going to the Superior Court twice this week.  The judge was very fair and funny but going through a stop sign still cost me $550.  I have opted for community service.  The art auction last Sunday seemed to vindicate my ability to pick the winners.  Things sold mostly at the upper end of the estimate.  I bought a beautiful candle stick by a potter whose name I have forgotten.

Prevaricating.  Stifled.  Tongue-tied.

The point is:  I can’t really write down any of my true feelings.  I am in shut down mode.  I can’t do anything, move anywhere, release myself..rant or rave.  The malaise seems to affect every area of my life.

After the headiness of New York I’ve fallen into a sharp decline, my confidence at an all time low.    Dinner with friends last weekend I simply couldn’t hold my head up, my libido, my enthusiasm, my recall deserting me.  She was a very cool next generation producer.  CAA agents greeting her at our table.  Hugs and kisses.  Fast track.

I say to myself, “I am on my own with no one to focus on, no one to say that I love.”    It feels like a terrible waste.   I had some real hope!  Hope that I could travel the world with a man I was excited by.  How those dreams crumble into dust.  I am fractured by time and distance.  I am in the wrong city, in the wrong country, on the wrong fucking planet.  I am desperate for a change of circumstance.

The road that leads to the Malibu house is weeks from being repaired.  It maybe the very metaphor I am looking for.  The road to the house is being repaired so I can escape my verdant prison.   Yet every day I do my best to make it more like paradise.

I want to write about The Great BP Catastrophe but I can’t.  I want to write about anything other than me but each time I begin I am stopped by something inescapable.  I just don’t care. I don’t care about anything.  I am exhausted..spent.

Beaten by the sheer force of inequity:

BP, miserable pictures of delicate Pelican eggs smeared with crude oil.  The watered down banking regulations that caused Wall Street a collective sigh of relief. Congress about to pass an additional $32 billion to pay for war in Afghanistan yet it struggling to justify a $23 billion bill to forestall the layoff of nearly 300,000 teachers next year.

What kind of country are we?

Categories
art Love Self Sufficiency

Donald Judd’s Bedroom

Plane home to LA.  Lovely few days in NYC.  Returning Delta.  Man had panic attack and had to be removed just as we were taking off.

Really lifted my spirits.  (The trip not the panicking man.)

Upon my arrival in NYC and the ghastly Comfort Inn I had a few moments of bitter disillusionment (the cause of which was mainly in my head..actually the cause of which was totally in my head)  I had the best time with Jake, Dan, Lady Rizzo, John and Jamie.  The little dog hated the rain but didn’t like being left at home.

Drank far too much coffee in the East Village.

At the behest of a new friend Bernard, who works for the Judd foundation,  John, Jamie, Jake and I privately toured the Donald Judd private residence at 101 Spring St, Soho and reminded myself that on that very corner one cold winters afternoon in 1983 Fred Hughes and I saw John Gotti smoking a fat cigar.

We brought expensive cookies and marveled at the Japanese themed bathrooms and kitchen.  How come the HUGE Dan Flavin in the bedroom felt like it was spewing microwaves?   That thing, however beautiful, must have fried Judd, his wife and children.

I was recognized by one of the staff who LOVED the sex rehab show.   “How you doing now?” she asked with a sympathetic crumpled brow and puckered lip.

After The Judd residence tour Jake and I celebrated his birthday with a dinner at the restaurant of his choice and the waiters brought him his desert with a candle on top.

Last night Dan and I attended a charity auction at the Milk Gallery to raise funds for the Stephen Petronio Dance Company.  I was in a spectacularly good mood and was seen to be so.  I met Cindy Sherman who had donated a huge, dark work, which raised over $20k for the troupe.

I bought 3 works including a very beautiful Dustin Yellin.

Dan and I had a late dinner at Westville where we saw Sam Rockwell.

Back in LA soon where I have a traffic court date, a returning lover and Mary the organic gardener has her new driving license which means she can continue tending the garden.  I have a great deal to look forward to and a huge amount to be grateful for.

 

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Categories
Death Gay Love

Gaping Hole

Nothing.  Nothing to say, write or comment on.  In my own head.   Do you know that feeling?  When life is so overwhelming?   I could not sleep last night.  Perhaps it was the cheese again.  Must stop eating cheese before bedtime.

It is easy to look over ones life and just remember the things one has lost rather than what one has found.

I am going to New York this weekend.  Staying on 10th street again.   Comfortable.

It seems like for the past few months I have made one bad decision after another.   If only I could tear myself away from the self-loathing.  To love myself enough to give the man I see occasionally in the mirror..a break.  Do you think that is possible?

I just made a huge pot of black coffee and drank it all.  Friends arriving from London today.   Dinner with Toby last night.  Saw Please Give with Katherine Keener.   It was a lovely film.  Very New York, very sad.   I shed a tear at the end.

Did I ever tell you that for a short time I was friendly with Katherine Keener?   She has a lovely house in Santa Monica, beautifully decorated with really well-chosen furniture.  She has the most amazing taste.

I tell you what is happening in my head.  I feel as if I am in some terrible competition.  A competition that I can never win because it’s not my game.   I am not like ‘them’ so I can’t win.    I feel very unsafe.  Not like I was going to die because that would be easy.  To know for sure the time and place of ones own death.

Unsafe, because I want something so badly knowing that it can never ever happen.    That something is not a person or a thing or a place but the peace of mind that has eluded me for so long.   I have learned that nothing can fix me.  Nothing can make it better.  Maybe a more complete relationship with God but to have that relationship with God I must remove the lead cap I am wearing that keeps me in the dark.

I sat in a room yesterday morning with 70 men who all looked so fucking miserable.  Every man in there just trying to make sense of what and who he was.   today, I have no idea what the answer is.

To wake up with no answers is a terrible thing.

The little dog is sleeping.   He is waiting for me to pull on my pants and take him for a long walk.  I used to think that if I could just keep on going, keep the momentum then everything would be ok but I have nothing to look forward to right now.

Just a gaping hole where a life should be.

Categories
Gay Love

White Chocolate

The 18th Century Man has just peeled beets and the little dog is sleeping on the sofa.

This evening he very kindly bought a huge chunk of white chocolate for me at Wholefoods.  In no time at all we seem to have settled into a harmonious domestic routine.  We do not challenge each other unnecessarily nor do we expect anything more from each other than this moment where we exist right now.

He is cooking gnocchi.  His accent is becoming apparently British and he is threatening to shave his beard revealing just how young he looks without it.

It was a beautiful early morning yesterday above the marine layer when I drove to my meeting in Hollywood, saw my breakfast boys then drove back to Malibu so I could take him to work.  Carless because his spunky roommate had borrowed his baby blue Mustang-yes, he has a baby blue Mustang.

I have been on the West Side all week.  Seriously thinking about getting a studio in Venice rather than keeping a place in Hollywood.  I will have ‘community’ and be able to get to Malibu and my meetings and go to the gym without travelling 60 miles.

The 18th Century Man and me seem to cause some of you consternation.  What do you expect?  That I settle down into some miserable, suburban co-existence with a man more my own age because it suits your idea of what is ‘best’ for me?  The reality is-I have no expectation, we have no expectations.  We are having fun.  The sex that I should have had for three months with the other I am still not having in abundance because I am not breaking my vow!  We are getting to know each other! Getting to know what it feels like so if and when the moment comes-and it seems to be coming..imminently then it will be the right moment with the right man.

He is not a boy.  He is a grown up man packaged in a boyish body.  Men just like him are presently going down mines, being blown up in wars or designing bridges like the wunderkind Thomas Telford.

I don’t care if you approve of my choices or me.  I am obviously not the kind of man the average mother is going to approve of or the best-girl-friend.  Women get it so wrong when they imagine what is best for men together.  They really have no clue.   I am never going to get the best-girl-friend to love me as often the best-girl-friend has carved out a place in her heart for him that is never going to include anyone-ever.

So, for my many detractors:

I think that a lot of you forget that whilst you were out there having sex with multiple partners, or even one partner I was not.  I was at home on my own cosseted away from the world of sex looking at the Internet or simply too scared to have sexual relations.  Don’t give me a hard time now I have learned how to do it.

You can be a very punitive bunch. Wouldn’t you wish a condemned man a few days of happiness?

You know what I adore about him?  He gets it.  Night Jasmin, white chocolate, black glazed cotton.  But the best thing about this friendship is that we both understand that any narrative will have a beginning, middle and an end.  Remember, he isn’t on the rebound, he isn’t new from some sweaty closet, and he hasn’t come to me riddled with self-doubt or jaded by relations with many, many men.

I have looked into the eyes of too many men who were simply not there.

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Death Dogs Love Malibu

Crying

The Sex Rehab show effect has been cumulative.   When it first aired I expected to be immediately recognized.  As the weeks and months pass more and more people come up to me in the street and introduce themselves.

Shown daily on VH1, making it easier for old ‘friends’ and acquaintances to reach out to me.  Long forgotten, now reminded by Sex Rehab re-acquainted on Facebook, twitter etc.

Reality TV is truly life changing.   Opportunities include film projects,  book deals,  lovers-I am anywhere but where I thought I might be at my age.

Outside, this rainy afternoon, the gardeners are pulling out tons of weeds.  It is good to hear them chattering away in Spanish.  So, that’s what life will be, a life of chattering Mexican gardeners until Dorset Mary pitches up in her airstream and tends the goats and the chickens.

I have to call the bee man today about getting the bees up here.  I know where I want them to go.

I wrote yesterday about crying, a commission for a new magazine.  There’s been a great deal of crying during the past few months as my focus shifted from the big picture to just one man.   Ones view narrows exponentially when one falls in love and at the same time balloons into something huge.  My tears were not often for him but for past traumas and relationships and deaths.  My focus became very shallow and as I retreat from love I seem to be more aware of the horizon.

I cried when my Darling Big Dog was killed. I sat in my bed for a week and sobbed like a child.  I am still prone to sink into that deep, black well of sadness, tears  flooding my eyes and my heart.

If I had not witnessed that terrible moment I would be a lesser man today.  In many ways to have suffered like that unleashed all I had been denying myself throughout the years.  So many times I should have, could have, would have cried but remained stoic and dry-eyed.

The architects have just been to the house to check out the layout.  She was a rather wonderful, practical woman with a great attitude.

My film is taking shape, the garden continues to give pleasure and I am getting into my creative groove.  Although I am still mourning the death of love I am looking forward to a brighter, leaner future.