Category: Malibu

Categories
Gay Malibu

Paid in Full

It rained steadily all night.  This morning the sun is shining.

Yesterday stayed in almost all day.

Dinner at Frank’s Whitley Heights apartment.   Very little traffic on the 10.  There were ghastly British people who Frank had met randomly at another party.  I left early.   Food was good though.  He made some sort of Brazilian coconut chicken with rice.

Parking in Hollywood is shit.

I like Frank..even though his slimy British friends just wouldn’t stop talking about how much they had drunk the night before.  “So Duncan, why did you come to LA?”  I told them that Los Angeles had more AA meetings than any other city in the USA.  They looked baffled.  After a difficult moment of silent processing the Brit said, “Each to his own old chap.”   He really did call me old chap.

Before dinner this black kid from the deep south sang/warbled/yodeled a prayer.  I looked at my feet in HORROR.

Met JA at Soho House.  Drank espresso.   Miles arrived looking very dashing.  Saw Eugenio Lopez and told him about Steve Martin‘s book.  He was DELIGHTED and reported this to his friends.  “Steve Martin has written pages in his book about meee…tell them Duncan..tell them.”  I told them the Getty story.  Eugenio was with an older gentleman and a slobby boy whore who he scolded for putting his feet on the furniture.  Eugenio was wearing a black sequined jacket.  Seemed delighted that Martin had written about him.  Who wouldn’t?

I was going to hook up with some random dude from Grindr but he didn’t turn up on time so I left and we all (dogs) curled up alone in my big white bed.

Oh yeah, I forgot, Jerome (my next door neighbor) rented his house this weekend to a young couple who threw a huge, ornate wedding…could almost be described as baroque.   The ceremony took place in the garden.   You could hear the dreary, clichéd classical music…a good third of a mile away.  All the obvious shit mixed in with random film scores.  They probably couldn’t tell the difference between Ennio Morricone and Pergolesi.   Idiots.  A disparate group of badly dressed men and women gazing admiringly at this bride and this groom about to be locked in matrimony.

The dogs started barking during their vows.  I didn’t do much to stop them.  I didn’t want to hear their fucking vows broadcast over my quiet valley.  Obnoxious white, straight people.  A coalition of the entitled.

The party continues there today.  A simpering European party/events planner slimed around to the house like a huge slug..apologizing in advance for the noise.  Thank God this is a random event.  Events planners btw are always the worst kind of gay and always the dullest human beings on earth.  Who the fuck would ever find an events planner interesting?  Oh yeah, I remember.

JB sent the money he owed me.  Deal done.  Goodbye JB.

A fit black guy contacted me on Manhunt.  He wanted to fuck.  He asked if I was good.  I replied..does it matter?  Do I care if you think I am good at fucking?  I cum you leave.  I won’t be reading the reviews.

Categories
Dogs Malibu Rant

Old Friend

Billy Childish Painting

A very old friend returned my call yesterday.  I had no idea that he was here in California and not in London.  It really lifted my spirits.  I could stop writing right there.  My spirits are lifted.  At peace.  The comfort of listening to the voice of a man who had known me and loved me through thick and thin.  I am greedy to hear him again.  He is within 100 miles of me.  I need to see him.  I need to spend time with him.

I was so unwilling to let him love me when we were together.  My loss.

When are we ready to accept love?  I wasn’t ready to accept love for very many years.  I did not understand how love between men worked.  It terrified and confused me.  My old friend loved me very much but I didn’t know what that meant.  I suppose that Jake must have felt the same way.  My loving him was confusing and scary.  How do men love each other?   How do I say I love you to another man?

When I have fallen in love with women the very act of saying I love you is said with ease, after all..every song on the radio, every poem about romantic love seems written about the love that exists between men and women.

When Elton or George Michael sang about love and disguised that they were singing about men I felt betrayed.  Tell me what it feels like to fall in love with another man.  To lose them.  To reflect on that separation.  Sing that song.  Read that poem.

No wonder our popular culture has sunk into a world of miserable hook ups.

I met someone else from off-line.  He brought me toys for the dogs.  This morning the cow and the bear lay abandoned on the carpet.

Like children have been playing here.

Eric popped by.   Other people came in the morning.  I was grumpy because my leg hurt.  Had massage which seemed to help.  Realised that I have not been touched with any kindness since Jake.  To be touched.  When my Mother stayed I offered to get her a massage but she balked.  She said that she didn’t like the idea of a stranger touching her.

Eric asked how I was doing.  How am I dealing with the Jake thing?  Well, I think about him occasionally..when the masseur was working on my back.  Thoughts shifting between loving and loathing.  I allowed him into my very soul.  It’s hard to wash away this particular stain.

So, when the old friend called, my old love..it reminded me that we can all heal. We heal, that time is the greatest distance between two people. That one day no vestige of him will remain.

I thought about Jake when the man arrived bearing gifts.  That he would have had sex with the man but I could not.  Part of me wanted to prove that I could.  I wanted to leap on him and do what was expected of me but I could not.  I simply can’t have sex with strangers.  I can’t.  To know someone is my aim.   He stayed for a couple of hours chatting and by the time he was about to leave I felt that in some small way I knew him.  The very act of leaving made him attractive to me.

Everything seems ruined by Jake.  The joy, the enthusiasm, the monumental optimism that I used to begin my day.

After Eric left I watched make-over shows and cooking competitions.  I did not go out and meet friends as I had agreed.  Every night this week there have been invitations.  Every single night.  I could have hobbled out last night but I did not…favouring this perfect isolation.

I am going to hang pictures.  One picture that has stubbornly refused to find a place to hang.

Late night call from another addict..struggling with his life.   I am so glad he called.  It gave purpose to another day.

Of all the men I have loved I seldom see any of them.  To hear the voice of my old love within 100 miles of where I am…well…it is possible to forgive.  To love and be loved by those you never thought you would love again.  It is possible.  I know it.

As for my tiny black maggot? I can’t leave here until I know that everything is OK.  I don’t want to lose everything.  I need to go home.  I need to get this sorted but I just can’t until I know that nothing is going to go wrong here.

Categories
art Malibu Rant

Sweet Thing

The rain has finally stopped pouring over the house and into the view.  The skies have cleared. The sun is shining.  The sea is glistening…etc.

Confined to my room with painfully torn ligaments.

Ashley has been running around fetching and carrying.

Sweet thing.

Paying gardeners, buying logs, feeding me pain pills.

This evening she and her friend Aaron Rose sat by the roaring fire whilst my blue eyed friend Bowdy entertained us with unusually funny impressions. When he started his ‘performance’ I was dreading that he was going to be terrible.  He was GREAT!

It’s incredibly unusual in LA to meet a young actor who can actually act.

Aaron is curating a street art show at MOCA.  Next week he is in Paris working with young artists.  A commercials director..apparently they make a ton of money.  Do I wish that I had the ability to make commercials?  Just talking about it, the prospect of it…made the inside of my mouth dry up.

With Ashley making busy around the house life is filling up again with unusual and interesting people.  She is such a doll.

We discussed these three words:  Nigger.  Cunt.  Faggot.  The impact each word has and the power we invest in them.  It was a fascinating conversation.  We felt really naughty talking about each of them…as if overheard we might be arrested or torn from our lives.  It felt subversive.

We were talking about the concentration camps and Aaron revealed that he didn’t know that the pink triangle, symbol of gay pride, originated there.  The pink triangle (German: Rosa Winkel) was one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, used to identify homosexual men, as well as those imprisoned for sexual offenses such as rape, bestiality, and pedophilia. Originally intended as a badge of shame, the pink triangle (often inverted from its Nazi usage)  is second in popularity within the gay community only to the rainbow flag.

Alan Davies the British comedian and I had a fight in the Neptune Pub, Whitstable twenty-five years ago when he started wearing the Pink Triangle to prove his solidarity with gays and lesbians.  The problem was,  he was homophobic towards me.  After a huge shouting match and a bitchy struggle he removed the pink triangle.

I have been reading my old blogs.  The ones written when I first arrived here in the USA.   Not only are they a very good read but life sure was full up with people places and things.  Of late (and more contemplative) the written journey has been internal rather than external.

Every day I get closer to my goal of exorcising the ghosts of past love.  Things are getting so much better.  Not so very long ago I didn’t think I could go anywhere that we had been together..not Paris nor New York or Whitstable.   I feared that just walking down the same street we had strolled would ruin it for me.  But, you know, that was the voice of shame whispering seductively in my ear.  The shame I felt about failing to keep him.  The shame of making bad choices in love.

I am better than that.  Paris is a big city.  I am a bigger man.

I sometimes wonder in whose arms he rests now?  Placating him.  Telling him the lies he needs to hear.  Is he happy?  I know in my heart, I know that he will never truly be happy.  He has made terrible mistakes and those mistakes may never be forgiven.  He will try to put it right but not for her.  He wants her to forgive him so he can feel better about himself.

He will be in perpetual torment until he truly understands a selfless apology. Equally, she needs to fully embrace the act of forgiveness.  Can she forgive him?  Eventually she will.  She has no option.

Living with hate or resentment in one’s heart can ruin your life.

Forgive him for being frail and flawed and weak and cowardly and for telling inexcusable lies?  Yes, we can do that.  Eventually.

We are connected forever.  A dance with death.  A marriage with the Devil.  There is something oddly Gothic about it.

I called the small claims court to have the date moved so I can go to London and deal with this bollocks stuff.  Directly to London.

Sooner or later Jake and I will face each other.  Whether it is in the court room or on the street he will pay what he owes me.  He would be such a fool not to.

We will bump into each other.  I know that scenario.  If he has worked properly on himself he will have undergone the change he so badly wanted.  He will be gay.  Not like when I first met him:  A gay man sheltering in the husk of a straight man’s life.  He will be true to his own nature, to the mannerisms and voice that he was so scared to reveal.  I began to see the occasional gay moment when we were in France, the twist of the mouth, the limp wrist, the effeminate draw on the cigarette.  All quite normal for a delicate, passive homosexual.  Endearing.

Like so many ‘straight acting’ gay men he is petrified of being seen to be gay.

He will be revealed.  He will find happiness.  I pray for it.

Categories
art Gay Health Malibu

Dreaming of Being Healed

As is things couldn’t get any worse I fell in the garden yesterday and ripped the tendons in the back of my right leg.

Thankfully Ashley was at home and wrapped me in ice.  I dare not go to the hospital because it will bankrupt me.  Now at home totally incapacitated.

Began to panic about getting back to the UK with one functioning leg and a dog.

Have to go via Paris again.  Not even directly to Paris but via NYC to go to court to get the money that Jake owes me.  This really stinks.   Everything conspiring to make life more difficult than it needs be.  It was such a silly thing to do.  How did I do it?  I tripped up the path and instantaneously I could feel the tendons detach.  Pop.  Oh God.

Ashley cooked dinner for us.  Her friend Emma arrived. They made steak and greek salad.  After all that meat we ate chocolate and drank hot tea.

It rained heavily all night.

The night.  Plagued with nightmares.  A kitten hidden in a chair.  Me as a child wandering into the road outside my Grandmother’s house in Herne Bay overlooked by my step-father.  Torrential leaks from the ceiling coursing unchecked through the house.

This year has been ghastly.  Made more so by Jake’s despicable antics.

Unthinking, callous, selfish.

I sometimes wonder how his parents put up with his lying shit?   Of course!  They love him unconditionally.

This leg situation is going to take at least a month to fix…more without treatment.

I wrote to Jake’s father asking him to persuade his son to just pay me the money.   We have a court date fixed now.  This is fucking bore.  He is holding onto me.  Refusing to let go of the final tendril.  The last vestige.  Let me go Jake.  Pay me the money so I can go to the UK and get on with my life.

I am sure that he feels the same way…we were perfectly synchronised.

The drawings are by Jennie.  She sent them yesterday.  Drew them when we were in rehab. They have a real Picasso feel about them.

Categories
Malibu

He Deserved It

Sunday, forgot to tell you,  chatted with Lady Rizo.  I love her so much.  The call lasted all the way from West Hollywood to the PCH…giggling and analysing.

Spent the larger part of this morning in bed skyping with Tim Willis whose book about Nigel Dempster hits the shelves today in the UK.

Dempster was an old-fashioned gossip columnist who worked for the Daily Mail and the satirical rag Private Eye.

When I was a small boy living in Stanley Road, Whitstable I used to just love reading his column.  A window into another altogether more exciting world.  A world with which my Mother was very familiar from her days working as a waitress in the Carlton Club.

I was secretly shocked and delighted by his salacious Royal gossip.  Dempster’s code name for the Queen when he wrote about her in Private Eye: Brenda.

I think more than anyone it was he who inspired prepubescent me to search out the fun-loving aristocrat and the demi-monde.  I alluded to him at the beginning of my film AKA.

Years later he wrote about me unfavourably after I was caught pretending to be ‘one of them’.

Nigel Dempster and the Death of Discretion published by Short Books.  Buy it.

Today I am strangely at peace with myself.  It’s been this way more often than not these past few days.  I have no idea why.  I guess because I am no longer in love.  No longer pining.  No longer focused on another.  I am listening to Copeland, majestic strings elevating the view, the moment..this life!

Two good friends called for advice.  Isn’t that strange?  I can help others when I tend not to be able to help myself.

Now that my fantasy of loving another has been safely stowed in the overhead compartment or under the seat in front of me I can concentrate on what I do best.  Dreaming.  The dream of love is so much better than the reality.  Good God it is so exhausting being in love.  So consuming.  Being in hate can be just as tiring.  Thankfully I am neither.

I have named the lil maggot on my ball.  A pain in the balls.  I have a picture of my tumor.  I will put it up when I can.

Categories
Malibu Rant

Raining

Raining hard here in Malibu but you wouldn’t know it if you look at the weather websites.

There is a leak from the skylight.   I really didn’t expect the rain for another few months.

Unexpected and welcome water for the garden.

My tummy aches and so do my balls.  Nothing much to report today.  I have to work my way through a pile of papers that need dealing with.

Neither of the dogs are enamoured by the rain.

Yesterday friends popped over.  It was nice to see them.

I may just go back to bed.

Oh yes, I went to WeHo to a gay AA meeting to get a 14 year ‘cake’ then dropped in on John.

I should get on my knees and pray.

I keep thinking about all those men I knew who died of AIDS.  Years ago.

Categories
Dogs Malibu Rant

For Sale

I showed the house for the first time yesterday.  A Persian man who lives not far from here.

He was looking for a cheap house as an investment.  I really don’t care who buys it.

I spent the morning rearranging.

I rearranged the furniture so the dining area is set above the sitting room on the terrazzo plinth.   It looks great.  I used the black leather chairs that I bought for ElCerrito Place.  I tried using the Morrison chairs but they looked too complicated.  Compromised the aesthetic.

I am going to sell my Jasper Morrison dining room chairs.  They are now stacked outside looking really forlorn, they need to go else where..where they can be loved.

Had tea with JA in West H’wood yesterday.  Everybody is in such a funk.  Things have ground to a halt.  Is this just on the West Coast?   Nobody knows how to crawl out of this hole?  Maybe we don’t crawl out of anywhere but learn to live with new parameters.

Popped in on Trevor at the bottom of the canyon to see the young doe that the coyote had savaged in his garden.  It was all gnawed at.  Its tongue sticking out.  Trevor’s wife was a bit pissed that I had made the effort to see the dead deer but not their new baby.  Sorry Jen.

Meg Whitman the ex Ebay CEO is running in the Gubernatorial race here in California against Jerry Brown.  She has spent over $119, 000, 000 of her own money on her campaign.  She becomes the largest self-funded political candidate in history.

Yet all of this might come to naught if her ex-maid and nanny of nine years Nicky Diaz Santillan swings the vote.   Nicky’s story is a familiar one in California.  An illegal immigrant (undocumented) who worked hard for Meg and her husband is cruelly let go when she asks for help to become legal.

“Thown away like trash.” she sobbed on TV.

The latino population in SoCal will take notice.  They know what that feels like.  To be part of a family, whether Witman’s or family USA only to be thrown away when things get tough.

The economy in this part of America has relied heavily on the cheap labour that these illegal immigrants offer.  Making the rich richer, they are hard-working, uncomplaining people.  I have employed Spanish-speaking men at the local labor exchange and they work tirelessly in scorching heat, lugging great hessian bags of garden waste up and down the mountains like donkeys.  I don’t ask any questions.  Nor do my neighbors.

These latino workers have no expectations, except to be treated poorly by white folk like me.  They don’t have much choice.

When they do not get treated poorly they are grateful and go the extra mile.

The truth is, frustrated white people in the USA very begrudgingly gave up their slaves so having illegal Mexican immigrants who do as they are told for very little somehow placates their desire to be slave owners.

White people may say they are pissed off by illegal immigrants yet I don’t know any one of them who would be prepared to do what these people do.  Washing up, gardening, busing, etc.  Menial tasks.  White people wouldn’t know how.  They don’t know how.

We tried to import a bunch of colourful faces into the UK to do the same during the 1950’s but they opened corner shops and restaurants and got richer than the people who imported them.  Anyway, we had colonial apologists who refused to see these people used like American white people use Latinos.

Thank GOD for bouts of socialism.

I could bang on about the racism that exists here but I can’t be bothered.

White people are hurting.  They have lost their jobs and their homes. There is no industry.  They can’t seem to relearn working skills and get humble and wash dishes for other white folk.  The dream is dead.  Arianna Huffington is on TV telling people that America is a Third World Country, that the middle class is over and that the American Dream has been compromised.

Similar circumstances existed in Germany before the second world war.  Crippling debt (war reparations) unemployment, hunger, desperation, hopelessness.  Do not underestimate the gruelling effect of hopelessness..regardless of how comfortable you are if you feel hopeless your view on the world changes.  It gets easy to blame the immigrant, the jew, the gay…the innefectual black President.

I pray that I am wrong but given the current state of the USA, these extreme economic circumstances I am guessing that the people of America will, come the next election, elect a far right, socially conservative Palin type President who will irrevocably damage the entire world.  We are desperate for strong, innovative, modern leadership yet it seems that only the far right have the balls to serve what the people hanker.

We are witnessing the cynical destruction of the USA as we, and millions before us, dreamed it.  It is a crying shame.

By the way.  Rich Sanchez the latino CNN host fired this week for saying that Jon Stewart was pompous and that the media was controlled by the Jews.  Well, that’s how it was reported.  Not quite the way he said it.  Actually he said he felt bullied by Stewart, looked down upon.  That people like Stewart look down on latinos..and he’d be right.  I am sure what he felt about Jon Stewart may very well be right.

I rather like Rick Sanchez.  Isn’t it amazing that Sanchez can get fired for saying two rather obvious things (one an opinion and one true) and that Glenn Beck gets to say terrible shit everyday but nobody lifts a finger?

Willie just took a huge dump on the carpet…nice.  Thankfully I know how to clean a rug without resorting to calling a maid service.

Categories
Malibu

14 Years Sober Today

There were many times when I was with him that I wanted to drink.  Not because I wanted to get drunk but because I wanted to be where he was.

I didn’t want to feel apart from him.  I wanted to share his experience.  Our experience as he experienced it.  Making love after a couple of glasses of wine.

Wanting so much to feel that warm glow that I remember being ever so slightly tipsy affords me.

So glad I didn’t.  Could you imagine giving up sobriety for him?  For anyone?  I shudder when I think about it.

The desire to fit in never really goes away.

So, yet again, fate has been kind.  I’m lucky to have escaped without totally ruining my life.  I’m telling you if I was drinking now I would never be able to deal with half of what is being thrown at me.

Even though we have been estranged.  My relationship with AA has really been the best thing that ever happened to me.

Even though I don’t want to believe it.

My relationship with LA AA has been particularly beneficial.

Going back to my 7am meeting in the Palisades.   That’s why I’ve been waking at 5am, write this blog then schlepping down the mountain to that little room.  It was the men in that room that persuaded me to move here to California.  After a couple of years of getting involved I stopped going.  The personalities there started to annoy me.  I stopped listening.  So, this time, I have been pretending I don’t know anyone.  Like it’s my first time.  Listening for the similarities, going back to basics.  Relearning the language of AA.

It has been a time of great reflection.  AA birthdays always make one think of how life might have been if I hadn’t stopped drinking.   Good God.   I was always so angry.  Every day.

My anger is so destructive.  I wonder if it has anything to do with that massive head injury I suffered when I was a kid?

Even though you might not believe it, I really hate me when I am angry (really hate me) and as you have seen these past few months I am not well served when I get angry.  Letting myself down like that.  Love, it seems, not only brings me sorrow but makes me very angry.  Angry is not the man I want to be.

My real father was a very angry man.  Not my step-father.  My real father was pathologically angry.  My step-father was just frustrated by me. If I hadn’t been around he would have been much calmer.  Probably.  There I go again, letting him off the hook.

So, I shall be off in a minute.  Making my entrance again with my usual flair.

I had my Manhunt date Number Seven last night.  It was lovely.  Let’s see what happens.  I told him about the blog and (you wont believe this) I decided that after this entry I wouldn’t write about what happens between us.  Do I wish I hadn’t written about Jake?  No, he deserved it.  To be written about.  But, I may have learned my lesson.  Some things just need to be not written about.

I’ll tell you this before I keep my mouth shut:

We walked up Abbot Kinney in Venice.  We ate at all the food trucks.  It was really, really sweet.

The house is now officially on the market.  First viewing today.  I am in two minds.  Part of me doesn’t want to sell.  Part of me is desperate to.  I will never have the opportunity to own such a gorgeous house ever again but buying a small place in NYC is perhaps a better idea.

Jerome popped by yesterday and said, “You have too much stuff.”

He’s right.

I spent a great part of yesterday getting rid of half of my books.  I now have a much leaner library.  Dictionaries gone.  Thanks internet.  Thanks Kindle.  Thanks new technology.  Thanks spell-check.

I am not the sort of person who hoards crap.  Everything I have is beautiful and could probably sell for exactly or even more than I bought it.

I love heavy, white linen.  When the house is rented I put colored sheets on the bed.  Now I live here full-time I have stripped off the dark green sheets and remade the bed with my freshly laundered, white Irish linen.

It is still dark.  Waiting for the dawn.  The light on my desk attracts moths.  Tiny little moths.  I crush them and put them in the bin.

A HUGE cricket just landed on my desk.

Categories
Malibu

Hot, hot, hot..

103 degrees.  Listening to The XX.  It’s hot weather music.  I have to get out of the heat.  There is a stiff, hot breeze coming off of the sea lending no relief what so ever.

I am going to lay in the Piette’s pool.

That’s what I need.  A pool.

I could just throw myself into the sea.

The dogs are utterly miserable.

Yesterday’s lunch was great fun.  So much fun…I totally forgot to take pictures.  People started turning up at 12.30 and there was a steady stream until 4pm.  I cooked the organic pork loin on the grill along with the chicken breast that I marinated in maple syrup.  Roasted potatoes and beats.  A huge salad including the big black figs that I picked from my tree.

Lively conversation.

Had dinner with Toby in Malibu at The Lumber Yard..Cafe Habana.   It was severely lacking.  I ate the fish tacos.

Recognized twice yesterday, once in Cafe Habana and again in Starbucks.  Always pleases me.

I couldn’t even sleep with a sheet covering me last night.

The problem with the stiff, hot breeze is that this reminds me of when the fires came two years ago.

This morning in therapy I shared that I should go to Resentment Anonymous.  I sat in that room feeling angry and fearful.  However, saying that my anger and fear was mainly with and about that room.  I hate going to therapy when things are NORMAL.  During the past months I really needed my support group.  Now, of course, they just irritate me.

I may go to the UK sooner than expected.

It will be autumn there.

I hate the idea of leaving Willie behind but really I have no option.

Frank flew off to Atlanta.  When Willie saw him yesterday he cried with joy.  It was so adorable.  The Little Dog has his own human friends but Frank isn’t one of them.

Too hot, my eyes are sore from sweat dripping into them and dryness.

Categories
Gay Love Malibu Rant

Smile on my Face

I am listening to Keith Jarret’s iconic Koln Concert recording.

It’s a beautiful day here in Southern California.  I woke at dawn.  The huge eucalyptus outside my bedroom window, back-lit by the rising sun, it’s smooth silvery bark and majestic limbs delightful to wake up to.

I made iced coffee.  I am going to boil an egg.

Must not forget to eat today.  This thin thing is getting tired.  I am too thin and my nails are cracking.

Regardless of my dwindling weight I am feeling totally settled again.  In my own body.  Out of my mad head.  Thank God I am no longer waking up in the morning feeling like shit.  The morning has always been my favorite time.  Renewed, refreshed, full of promise.

I awake every day to the glorious, sun drenched morning here in California.  I am a lucky man.

Remind yourself:  I am a lucky man.  I have lived a life others could only have dreamt about and if it ended tomorrow..well,  I would be at peace.  That’s all I ever wanted, to die at peace with a smile on my face.   Ducks in a row.

Last night was one of those nights when the sun went down and it didn’t get any cooler.  I suspect it’s going to be like that all this week.  If it becomes unbearable I may just head over to Hollywood and stay there until it cools down.  I don’t like watching the dogs panting, it distresses me.

The organic box arrived yesterday from Jennifer.  The raw butter, yogurt and milk are all delicious.  The vegetables were mainly good except the rather pathetic beats that are small and shrivelled.

The fridge is now full of wonderful things to eat including crab claws from Santa Barbra, fresh pasta, home cured bacon and free range chicken and pork loin.

I am cooking with Ashley today.  We are having a lunch for thirty but I suspect more people will arrive.  Today has THAT sort of vibe.  This is a great house for a party.  It always has been.

Ah, finally..there is a light sea breeze washing through the house.

Now I have a date for my operation I really don’t give my balls much thought.  I know that this thing is inside me and I know that if I don’t deal with it..well, we all know what will happen.

I can spend hours in this house not really doing anything at all.   Just rearranging.  This is a good substitute for me being a writer?  No, not really but now the love shackles are off I can concentrate on other things.  It’s a great start.

No Manhunt dates planned.  Especially now I am in Malibu.  It’s all a bit of a hassle.  Anyway, I don’t want to go through anything like I have been through recently ever again.

It was a terrible madness: enmeshed, co-dependent, destructive, cruel.

I remember writing this:  I am never lonely when I am on my own, I am only ever lonely when I am in a relationship.  I yearn for the other at the detriment of all other things.

Today I am not lonely.  I am capable.  I am a good person.

Try saying that out loud!

“Hello, my name is Duncan and I am an alcoholic/addict…and a good person.”

I am a stranger to those I have loved.   Let’s keep it that way.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMN4U-Alqfc&feature=related]