Category: Love

Categories
Gay Love Malibu

Limerence

Malibu Spring

Woke up this morning in a wonderful mood after a lovely evening with Anna.  True friends are too few in this life.   I woke up in my own body.  Does that sound familiar to anyone?  Doesn’t everyone?  I woke up in the moment, not in some delirious fantasy about what could be.  I smiled to myself.  Gently.   I imagined myself walking the pavements of Notting Hill Gate.  I imagined looking into the beautiful homes there.   I thought about London-because I am happy.

A beautiful spring morning in Los Angeles.

The fact is I don’t live in New York.  I live here and for the foreseeable future I will continue to live here.  I have to make this work as best I can.   Any other plans to move will have to be made because it suits my sensible self.

My great friend John has gone travelling and I miss him being around.  He reminds me to be awake, to no longer sleep walk through life.

I loved seeing Jennie this week.  It was after all this week last year that I entered Sex Rehab and the adventure began.  The journey of self discovery, the great revelation, the great insight, the life of many choices, the decision to love myself, the strange and wonderful experience with reality TV and of course my relationship with the inspirational Jennie Ketcham.  The love affair, the language of recovery.  The list goes on and on.

To love someone selflessly is hard.  To live without hope is very hard.  To put a lid on my feelings for another seems almost impossible.  If I think back to the end of my most beautiful relationships there are weeks of debilitating sadness, sad songs then emerging from the pall with my head held high.

Today is Saturday 3rd of April.  I pay my rent today.  I go to my Saturday morning meeting and see my friends.   Do you have a group of men or women around you who can hold you when everything seems desperately bleak, when things are going so well that your feet scarcely touch the ground?

Several of my readers really helped me yesterday with their comments.  I read about limerence and it was painfully, embarrassingly familiar.  I particularly liked Leslie’s comment.

“What are the three most dangerous words? ‘I love you.’ By saying these words to another, we give them power. But the power is two-fold: the Other then has the power to destroy us, to kill our heart. The Other then also has the power to create us, to give our heart life. So what is the love we give when we say those dangerous words? It is peace, patience, mercy, trust, fidelity and forgiveness.”

It is hard to explain to those who are close to me how important this blog is.  It is a relationship with the world.  Reaching out daily to those of you who read what I write and honour me with your comments and opinions-good and bad.

So, Anna and I sang sad songs and laughed out loud and when I went to bed I no longer had any yearning in my heart.  After all, what have we got to look forward to?  I’ll tell you what-today, this moment..right NOW.   Like so many people I have lived so much of my life regretting the past and hoping for a brighter future without really paying attention to what was happening to me right now.

Categories
Gay Love Rant

Fuck you God

Golly Gosh.  I was ready to write an obituary.  Now there’s some hope in the air and it smells so sweet-like winter flowering Jasmine.

To my readers:  I want you to understand something.  You don’t know who I am writing about.  You can guess but you’ll be wrong.   Even if you are right-you’ll still be wrong.

Men together?  I don’t understand how that works.   Can it work out?  Need I worry?  Just go with God’s plan and see what he has in store for me.  God’s plan never ever includes meeting a normal nice man with no issues who can be ready and willing to deal with mine. hahahahh.  Fuck you God.  Have I ever told you just how much I trust how God works in my life?  That whatever happens everything is going to be ok?   It’s all going to work out just the way it’s meant to be.  God, can you PLEASE not torture me by making me learn how to be patient? By making me be the one who has to be selfless?  Can you just give me a frigging break!

The problem with long distance relationships?   There is no comfort what so ever in the time spent apart.  The distance, the anticipation and the disappointment.  It drives me BONKERS.  In the Land of Needy I suddenly become King.

Wonderful times spent together are mirrored with miserable times spent apart.

Added to all of this it feels like I am being given the mighty heave ho.  Why oh why are relationships so DIFFICULT.  It’s not just me.   I know it.  Why can’t everyday be like getting up in the Jane Hotel feeling complete?

Now I understand why you don’t get involved with certain kinds of men.  Well, we all have to make our own mistakes don’t we?  One day you walk away and you don’t look back. But I can’t walk away from this one-there’s still fuel to burn.  It’s not exhausted.  Yet.  As much as I want him to tell me that’s it’s over.  There is something intoxicating about being loved.

It’s not who you think.  It’s nobody you have ever met.  Nobody I have ever introduced you to.  He’s a different man.

Yesterday was rather wonderful despite emotional long-distance telephone calls with this young man that I recently met in NYC.

I had a deliciously long cup of coffee with an occasionally tearful Jennie… tears of joy I hope.  We looked each other in the eye.  We talked recovery and lost love and new love and what it was to have sex whilst being present.

By the end we were hugging and smiling and everything was just how it was meant to be, you see… what ever real friends go through they remain real friends.  The foundation of our friendship was constructed almost exactly a year ago when we entered Sex Rehab.

It is obviously unshakeable.  The Lord and the Porn Star.

So, I arrived at Amanda’s for dinner, she was in a fractious mood but I think she may just have been hungry.  She has lost a ton of weight.

Amanda and Lady Forte had spent the day with their grown up children looking at universities.  There was some unexplained drama around how easy it was to buy yourself into UCLA.   Anyway, had long chat with Charles about helping him make a film this summer, a short film to get into film school.  I would rather like to do that.  In lieu of teaching at UCLA this year which I really miss.

Categories
Love Money Rant

Elvis Pelvis

1.

Time to reconcile, to forgive and forget.  Time to see Jennie.  Time to catch up, to make up, to explain.  Time to confide and wear dark glasses again.

“Let us suppose that I have wept, on account of some incident of which the other has not even become aware (to weep is part of the normal activity of the amorous body), and that, so this cannot be seen, I put on dark glasses to mask my swollen eyes (a fine example of denial:  to darken the sight in order not to be seen).  The intention of this gesture is a calculated one:  I want to keep the oral advantage of stoicism, of “dignity” and at the same time, contradictorily, I want to provoke the tender question (“But what’s the matter with you?”); I want to be both pathetic and admirable, I want to be at the same time a child and an adult.  Thereby I gamble, I take a risk:  for it is always possible that the other will simply ask no question whatever about these unaccustomed glasses: that the other will see, in the fact, no sign.”

Living in love, in a state of grace, in acceptance.   Living outside of pornography, fantasy, catastrophic thinking-living in truth, trust and kindness.

2.

In Europe things, economic things are getting a whole heap better.  House prices climbing, job prospects improving.

It’s funny listening to British people complain about their lot.  They really have no idea how lucky they are.  They are blissfully unaware what is going on here.  Nobody really reports it-no journalist can bring themselves to say these words:  America as we knew it is over.  America where all our dreams would come true.  Where the promise of freedom would be fulfilled, where truth and equality would be respected.  Where innovation and hard work would be rewarded.

What happened?

There has been an economic catastrophe in the United States of America, brought on by endemic greed, corruption and false Gods.  The American people are angry and rightfully so-but because they are so badly educated their anger is totally misdirected.  Because they have no democratic choice their vote is meaningless.  Because their government is utterly corrupt they have no voice.   Their youth are disinterested in anything other than instant fame, fast food, sexual gratification.

The elections have become Corporate America’s great firework charade, costing millions, lights up the night then all smoke and ash leaving things just the way they were before.  Conning the dumb people into believing that they have choice and change they can believe in etc etc.

The last election was the most cynical of all.  Listening to Obama make any promise he could to get those folks to vote for him then watch him and his party of fools renege on every one of his election promises-knowing that the American people will never lift a finger to defend themselves from their worst enemy-their very own government.

Today I listened to Tim Geitner finally admit that the millions of lost jobs were not coming back anytime soon.  Just as I predicted.   When as my ‘smart’ white AA Palisades friends were looking down their suburban noses at me telling me that things would be back to normal in a year or so.  I looked back at them in utter disbelieve.  Who were they trying to convince?  I would gently remind them that nothing was going to return to ‘normal’ any time soon.  They sneered at me.  They laughed because they didn’t understand.  They are complicit you see.  Complicit in the demise-in the USA’s financial melt down.  Do you think they just totally underestimated the depth of the deception?  The greed?  Or was this a risk the rich were prepared to take?

I don’t trust Tim Geitner, I don’t trust Rahm Emmanuel, I don’t particularly trust Obama.  But in a world of distrust I would rather have these bandits than the last mob.  The characters in this administrative pantomime are more entertaining than the last.

This ‘Democratic’ administration cast by Ari Emmanuelle.   Make up by..hair..

3.

The flight back home from New York was 45 mins early, which made up for the 6-hour delay on the way there.   The staff were sweeter too.  One of them gave me free food.  If you could call it that-processed crap.

I had had a lovely time in NYC and even though it rained and rained I felt at home, like I always do, in the big city.   I loved it.  I really did.

For my last night in town Joan took us all to the Spotted Pig.  I sat next to Lady Rizo and opposite Joan’s husband.  He told us how he once dated a girl Elvis was dating and even though I had heard the story twice before I was still captivated.

Jake mooned over Lady Rizo’s husband.


Categories
Love

Good Day

I woke up overwhelmed with resentment.  Furious.  I hate that.  Starting the day feeling angry.  But as it turned out the day got a whole lot better.

It started like this:

Oh Fuck!  Why did I do it?  Why did I respond to his advances?  Why did I give up my sexual sobriety for him?  Why did I convince myself that he could be the one?

I woke up not wanting to hurt myself but wanting to hurt him.

My friend Sarah is staying here so I managed not to look at pornography last night, obviously I don’t isolate when people are around.  So I don’t let those dark thoughts get the better of me.

Then I wrote a fuming email to Him.

After half an hour he wrote back and it was obvious that I had petrified the poor boy with my vicious note so after a lengthy and what turned out to be a very positive and unusually healthy email exchange it seems that we can now move forward as friends.  Just friends-even though we still both care very much and, rather amazingly, fancy the hell out of each other.

I had a long conversation with my dear friend J about the nature of love and why it inspires such extreme emotions in me.  All family of origin stuff.  When I start to get that crazy feeling my entire body feels like it is going to reject every organ in my body.   I heard the words ‘i love you’ in such appalling ways-whispered late in the night.  It should come as no surprise that I have such problems with it.

It was just the kind of conversation that aids recovery.

I finally understood that if I had self esteem (something at which I used to sneer at the mere mention) and could truly love who I am then I would never let unhealthy people into my life. I act as if I have no choice. I have plenty of choice.  And what of past loves?  I have operated an open door policy for the vulnerable and the damaged, to assure yourself a place in my lovers hall of fame tell me you are straight then tell me that you love me and watch me drown in self doubt.

After the email exchange with Him and the life affirming conversation with J the day just got better and better.

Throw a sweet letter from Jennie K into the mix,  Anna coming to the house and shooting a spoof commercial for Lesbian Menopause Treatment that had us rolling around the sitting room laughing until we cried, tea with Joe on Cahuenga and hey presto we have a jolly nice day.  You see?  If I had killed myself I would be killing the wrong guy.

I need to get my act together.  I have wasted too much time this past few months on YOU.  Now we are friends-as we should have always been.   See..it wasn’t too hard was it?

All I have to do now is write my book, finish my film and I might not be a washed up old queen tied to the trauma of ‘i love you’.

Let’s see if I can be loved this year.  Allow myself to be loved.  Let the words be heard.   Bring it on.

Categories
Death Gay Love

Normal People

Dinner with Anna in Los Feliz.  We discussed how focused one has to be to make a film… how determined.  More importantly… we both really have to want to make film.   Neither of us are motivated by studio films.

I am in perhaps the most ideal position ever to make another film yet without a script that I really believe in what’s the point?

The same goes for my book.  I don’t want to write it.  I was writing it with him and now he has gone so my interest has burned off like the marine layer over the Malibu Mountains.   Oh fuck.

The problem with the last script?  It is really two films crammed into one… like Siamese twins I have to very carefully separate them.  This requires me being meticulous and I can’t summon the interest.   Where did all the energy come from before?  How did I muster the enthusiasm?

I have lost my enthusiasm for film, for love, for life.

I have been asking normal people about falling in love.

It seems that most people believe that they are worth loving.  I have never felt like I was worth loving.

Tonight I saw a gay couple leaving the restaurant.  One of them was much older than his boyfriend.  My heart sank.  They looked so happy.  Both of them probably believed that they worth loving.  They didn’t come from a damaged place, they hadn’t had their childhood ripped apart by shame, violence, lies, resentment.  I hope not.  I really do.

I wouldn’t wish my early years on my worst enemy.

I wanted to kill myself as soon as I understood that it was possible.  I tried when I was 12, then again when I was 17 and finally gave into the interminably slow suicide that alcohol and drugs offer the committed self hater.

I have a few amends to make in NYC.  To those I sidelined when I met him.   I did a terrible thing.  We both cheated… it wasn’t just him.   I can make a thousand excuses but I am sick of making excuses.

At dinner (crispy crusted pizza) Anna and I discussed pornography.

In search of that authentic moment in the narrative.  Isn’t that why so many people go to such dark places on the internet?  Looking for a moment that is indisputably real?

How could any man ever measure up to what I see there?  Whilst love makes a fool of me I seek solace in pornography.  I prayed again tonight for some sort of deliverance from the obsession.

Send me somebody kind I say-but would I know how to let them love me?

Oh, I have been loved so much-so often.  So many men.  Yet, until recently, I thought that anyone who loved me was a fool.  If I couldn’t love me how could anyone else?  So I thought again about the long sleep-longer than the one I have been awake for.

Down the dark corridor.

Categories
Gay Hollywood Love

Help Me

Banana and Walnut Loaf
Banana and Walnut Loaf

I wore a Helmet Lang jacket this evening that I have not worn for years.  It felt great.  I trotted off for dinner with my friend Dom and his sweet friends.

I was late.  As I walked over I ended up on the telephone with you know who.   I needed to break things off, or rather recalibrate my relationship with my dear New York friend.    Break things was what I tried not to do; he is already a broken man.   I failed.  I was heavy handed and abrupt.   In spite of my best intentions the seething resentment and obsession and mad thoughts spewed out of me because I couldn’t hold them inside for one minute longer.

The day ended thus.  I felt free for the first time in weeks.

The day began very badly.

This morning, after the 10-second earthquake, I stood naked in the middle of my sitting room sobbing like a baby because all I could think about was him and all I wanted to be rid of was the thought of him.  Our friendship has been so fucking overwhelming-watching him fall apart, pick himself up and be there for him without ever thinking what was best for me.

My fantasy was that a man twenty years younger than me who I met for the first time three short months ago would fall in love, move to LA and get a job in the film industry.  How INSANE is that?

I prayed, “Send me somebody who’s strong and somewhat sincere.”

The good news is that tonight, after our chat, I am feeling a little more like myself.  I have come clean with those I love and admit that I have been looking at pornography rabidly for the past week-as of old-so intense was the feeling.

Whenever I am feeling vulnerable I resort to my old friend-pornography.

Tomorrow I will try for one day of abstinence.  I will try to get through the night without looking at that heaving pile of stinking pink flesh claiming me with so many muscular arms.   For the past week I have stuffed my feelings with porn, cigarettes and food.

My flat is dirty, my clothes strewn over the floor.

This is a lesson in unmanageability, I am powerless over…well, fill in the fucking blank.

You see, I thought that I was falling in love but I was just held hostage by intensity.

The past three months have been wrought with emotion-watching someone I deeply care about tear himself and his life to pieces and being judged for doing so by people who fail to understand his predicament.

The point is-his problem is not my problem and I foolishly shouldered the entire burden of his life.

I have choices yet my choices diminish the moment I get obsessed-a hideous chain reaction then unfolds before me:  Obsession, resentment, anger.  When the pain becomes too much to bare, when I finally get angry enough to reclaim who I really am, then I feel shame for getting viciously angry-then remorseful for how I treated those I love.

My dearest friend I want to thank you for the privilege of watching you be brave.  For demonstrating how the truth can set you free.  Now, fly like a bird my darling.  Soar as high as your tiny wings will carry you.  Never settle for second best.  Don’t give yourself away to fools or liars.   From this moment on always tell the truth. Never tell people what you think they want to hear.  Be true to yourself.

Life is never without lessons to learn and I have learned a great deal during these three amazing months.

You know, my dear, we have our finest days to come but probably as great friends and not as fuck buddies.

And so to bed.  I am so tired.  So bloody tired.  I may even sleep tonight.  Let’s hope so shall we?

 

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Categories
Gay Hollywood Love Rant

Pornography: A Spectacle

It was an early morning yesterday.  I was up before the dawn.  And I really have enjoyed my stay. But I must be moving on.

Sexual anorexia is a term used to describe a loss of “appetite” for romantic-sexual interaction but can be better defined as a fear of intimacy to the point that the person has severe anxiety surrounding sex with emotional content.

4am, Saturday morning.  It is almost impossible to sleep.  My lover is in town.  My sleep schedule rearranged as I learn all over again to share my bed.

We have been in and out of bed all weekend and whilst it is reassuring to have this oversexed lil monkey crawling all over me I end up thinking far too much-both good and bad.  The bad thoughts: wanting to escape, trying to remember old conquests, those perfect pornographic moments that always get me off.  The good thoughts: fully engaging with newly learned sexual behaviors/insights.   It is delightful to be mainly present during the sex.  Now, when I say sex what are you thinking?   The sex I have is, I am sure, nothing like most people.

When Bill Maher condemns sex addicts I doubt that he understands that most men who consider themselves sex addicts are not having the sort of sex that he is having.  They are not meeting, fucking, cumming and leaving.  Many men identify as sex addicts but the men I identify most with are actually porn addicts who seldom leave their apartments or Internet addicts on hook up sites with multiple on-line personalities.  These men exist apart from the Tiger Woods variety of sex addicts: men who hook up with women or other men whilst wives and children sleep oblivious at home.

Bill Maher’s limited understanding of sex addiction and general scoffing negates those of us who work daily in order not to retraumatize ourselves.  Bill Maher is certainly not recreating moments of childhood fear; he is not replicating perfect porno moments nor dealing with erectile dysfunction.

Tiger Woods may be a serial cheater but his story is the exception rather than the rule.  Those of us who compulsively masturbate seldom get to meet anyone at all regardless of our engaging personalities.  Addicted to the soothing effect of ejaculation, the calming thoughtless moments just after we shoot our dwindling load.

1983.   I answered an ad in Time Out for gay performers who wanted to make a play with Neil Bartlett for the Institute of Contemporary Art about pornography.  Drawing on historical texts, Diaries of a Marianne  (attributed to Oscar Wilde) for instance, we all at once celebrated and condemned the production, consumption and effects of pornography.  In one scene we compared the fantasy of pornography with the reality of our own sex lives.

After our 10 city tour in the UK and Canada I went home and never gave the polemic we were positing another thought, yet had I… my life would have turned out very differently.

How has gay pornography influenced my thinking, my relationships, my life?

Pornography has ruined my sexual expectations.   Pornography: where men together do not tenderly hold each other, look into each other’s eyes, do not cry gently, do not laugh out loud, and do not ‘fail’ with half hard cocks.    The perfect bodies, sexual performance and youth of most gay porn stars are impossible acts to follow.

Yet, the moment I get into bed with a man I try to emulate what I see in pornography.   My stance is both dominant and aggressive, my voice lowers, I am uncharacteristically clumsy, and my kisses are full lipped.  I have no idea what the end point of any sexual encounter is because I have so rarely ejaculated with another human being.  I am rarely even in the same room because I am off in fantasy.  I am rarely hard.

My lover is sexually submissive so what good am I to him if I am so full of fear that my cock does not get hard?  That at the back of my mind I know my darling pornography waits to own me the moment he is gone?  How many men cheat on their wives/boyfriends with pornography?

The past few days of sexual activity have been perhaps the best of my life because I am at least in the same room as the man I have elected to sleep with.  I am authentic, present, calm and honest.  I tell him the truth.  Perhaps too much talking but frankly I would rather talk than be absent.    There has been a great deal of consolation since he arrived.  There has been a remarkable kindness.  I no longer objectify him nor resent him simply because he sees who and what I am.

With the truth comes vulnerability, certainly never evident in pornography unless it’s a ‘mans first time’ with another man.  Then the gay for pay virgin simply looks confused or humbled by desire.   I have wasted so many years to pornography, so many wasted opportunities, so much lost love.

Men have humiliated me.  I have, in turn, humiliated men.   I have defined myself by my inability rather than my gifts.  I have invested in my defects rather than my talent.

I am trying to have a few wonderful moments before my lover leaves LA and God knows if I will ever see him again.   Of this I am sure: we got to know each other before we lay together.  This meant that I had no shame when he finally held me in his arms.  That I felt comfortable enough to let him know what was going on with me when I could not perform as perhaps he wanted me to perform.   That we continue to laugh and cry and feel comfortable doing so.

I only have until Friday and I am going to make the most of it-before he returns to his own war zone and I to mine.

Categories
Dogs Hollywood Love Rant

World of Wonder

Anna and Melanie beneath a mermaid pinata.

It is a world of wonder.  The day opens thus:  the clouds have cleared over Los Angeles.  The sun is bright and the air is clean.  The birds are singing.  The squirrels are playing in the palm trees within feet of my window.

Everyday I wake up is a new day to think about what life has to offer and I am all at once terrified and enchanted.

I frantically tidied the house, put all the clothes that were stacked in my room in their correct places.  I remembered to fold my teeshirts and not put things in draws that were inside out.

I have to move the car at 9am so I don’t get a parking ticket.  The little dog is looking at me expectantly.  We need to walk, we need to take the trash to the building dumpster.  We need to go to yet another 12-step meeting and rip my heart open again and again.

I want to smoke cigarettes.  I want to lay in bed and not feel.  Please.

Right here, right now.  That’s what John A says.  Reminding me to stay right here right now.   Not yesterday or tomorrow.   Right here, right now.

Everything happens for a reason.  Collating the artwork made me take an essential inventory.  It seems that there is more value in what I own than I first suspected.  The choices I made for 20 years have been good ones.

Everything happens for a reason.  That’s what they say.  That’s what they tell me.  That’s what I have come to believe.  The plan is set, the dye is cast.

I felt sickly last night, too sickly to leave the house then spontaneously decided to visit my friends Anna and Melanie.  Driving through the heavy rain the little dog and I arrived in Silverlake and ate slow roasted pork, black beans, plantains and lemon sorbet.   Chatted to my arty filmmaker friends and loved every minute.  Drove home, lay in bed waiting for the anticipated thunder but none came.

Silverlake, Los Felis, Arcadia, La Canada, Flitridge, Brentwood, Malibu, Santa Monica, Pasadena, the map of LA unfolding like an old linen backed map in my head.  The freeways, the concrete LA river, the Pacific Ocean all wrote in Indian ink.

I once owned a 17th century map of Venice that I found in a library in Dorset when I was a boy.   It was folded into a marbled envelope and each painstakingly hand drawn section of that map remains engraved in my memory.

Venice stretches across 117 small islands in the marshy Venetian Lagoon along the Adriatic Sea in northeast Italy.

For a moment this morning I remembered that map and wished to be magically transported to the saltwater lagoons that stretch lazily along the shoreline between the mouths of the Po and the Piave Rivers.

When I die the various maps of many cities will be lost.  I think often of that.  The many and various maps of  all the cities I explored that will be lost along with the smell of fresh snow, the taste of my lovers mouth, the unmistakable sound of my own childish footsteps running down warm unusual, sunlit corridors.