Category: Malibu

Categories
Gay Malibu

Happy Go Lucky

One has a moment in life when the horizon comes into view.  Unable to hold onto old ideas we strive to recreate ourselves as perfectly as we can.  I am in Malibu looking over the sea and I am not driven to look at porn nor throw a warm wank blanket over the day.   My American spell check doesn’t recognize the word wank-but you all know what that means don’t you?

I am listening to Joni, her words either fill me full of hope or throw me into a terrible funk-thankfully I am happy today.  There is a cool sea breeze to remind me that the ocean is just there, at the bottom of the hill.  Sadly in the Gulf of Mexico avarice is ruining the water.  More oil, more goddamned oil from which we refuse to wean ourselves.  Sarah Palin has kept remarkably quiet about this environmental disaster that she said could never happen.

I have spent the past few nights with my 18th Century Man and it has been such a delight.  Of course it’s hard not to compare what one had with what one has.  The most significant difference is the proximity.   I will never have a long distance love affair ever again.  I am simply too fragile.

I will never again make the mistake of falling in love with a man who is not available.  I am not the sort of person who can keep a secret, especially when it is steeped in shame.  I have, in the words of my deceased Grandmother, lived a shameless life.  She used the word pejoratively but actually she was right, I have been shameless and I am proud to be so.  My proximity to the toxic shame of others is just as bad as experiencing ones own.

Even though I was born into shame I was a shameless boy.  When I was a shameless boy they tried to tell me that I should be ashamed of who I was, the colour of my skin, my flamboyance, my birth, my teeth, my love, my understandable mistakes.

I hoped that I might meet a beautiful man and I have.  It is wonderful to just experience the spontaneity, to drive to a coffee chop in Venice, to reach out and run your fingers through flaxen hair.

Last night we cooked dinner at his house in Venice with his super cool room-mate who incidentally knows Anna and Gwen and my lesbian art contingent.   The night before we ate dinner at Axe.   Roasted beats, huge chunks of halibut.

Of course I miss talking to that boy in NYC (of course I do) but I am enjoying the simplicity of what I have found here-the eagerness, the delicacy of his touch.  The difference between men.   I have no idea what I miss about what was.  I think it was the rabid intensity that kept me diving into those choppy waters expecting not to be battered by the huge waves.

The moment I have any sort of expectation I am doomed.  I feel battered from the last few months.  Battered by doomed love.  Battered by not knowing.  Battered by resentment.

So, here I am-just as I have always been-on my own but with my eyes wide open.  I have to read the treatment Ms Turner has sent me.  I have to make my peace with writing once again.  Writing and reading.  I have to make peace with myself.

I am fast approaching a huge birthday and don’t really know how to celebrate it.  I dare not ask fifty people for dinner but that’s what I think I would like to do.

On another note I have two sponsees in the 12-step programme I belong to and they give me such joy.  Joy.  Spent Sunday with one of them trying on hats and celebrating his birthday.  The other keeps in touch daily reminding me why I am sober.    It is time to keep the door open on recovery and all that means.

Categories
Gay Hollywood Malibu

Human being/Human doing

Busy, busy, busy!   Fled, after my morning meeting, to the bank and Malibu and back again.  The misty garden smelling of jasmine and other, sweeter perfumes.  I love the way the garden evolves.  Wood chip paths and great forests of Euphorbia down where the goats will live.

Meeting with lawyer re. company in Santa Monica-where I also bought English chocolate and piccalilli.  Had stove and blender fixed.  Kept an eye on Blankstein grilling via NPR.   Even if it is just political theatre it’s fun to think that this most ghastly of all men-Blankstein is having to play the villain role for all to see.

Goldman Sachs is just another human empire and it will eventually fail as they all do-eventually.  It is the way we do things here on earth.

Human being/Human doing.

The Christian Louboutin party at the Robertson store with the great man in attendance (wearing lilac slacks) was a very friendly, if soulless affair.

‘A’ gays including the poisonous Peter Dunham with his age defying boyfriend the celebrity dermatologist Peter Kopelson-we often take time ignoring one another passing on Runyon Canyon.  Peter Dunham, hideously scarred by acne and HIV, making small talk at the edge of the room with similarly scarred reptilians.  Peter’s talentless, screeching ‘artist’ friend Konstantine Kakanias arrived bound in a flimsy scarf that did nothing to distract from his unusually fat face.   Oh how one loves to loathe.  The most amusing line from Konnie’s on-line resume- Second Prize, International Award for blah blah blah…who the fuck boasts about coming second?

As well as the gays, some of whom I liked by the way-none of whom were wearing CL shoes there was a contingent of Iranian women with huge asses squeezed into badly cut denim jeans tottering around on red soled CL hooker heels.   These dusky gals baying for their photograph taken with Christian who willingly obeyed as only a man can when he is selling most of these women over a thousand pairs of his shoes-each!  It was like a fetish party.  I didn’t recognize any of the women other than the ubiquitous Tracy Ross-saw her at Prada party too.  Dull.

One woman arrived in McQueen but the ensemble was so badly put together she looked like a Michael Jackson Halloween clone.  Sad.

There have been a glut of ‘recessionary chic’ soiree held in small stores across Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, usually with red carpet facilities but there was none last night.  Tomorrow will be the shoe-signing event when Christian signs shoes. My friend Jamie is going, one might want to link to her blog to find out how that went.

Dinner with Peter Scarf at the Mercantile before he went off to drink at some hip club somewhere.

Sweet, late night conversations with lamb head made me content and happy before I slept.  Oh, if only..

Categories
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.

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 Malibu Money Rehab

Sunday Sunday

The sunlight is steaming into my apartment.  Everything here is so colourful.  The silk cushions, the porcelain, the art.   The little dog ate an entire chicken breast.  Sara has set up camp in my apartment whilst she deals with her breakup and somehow her being here has given me an enriched perspective on my own situation that I didn’t previously have.

Eric, Sara and I drank English tea and ate thick slabs of banana and walnut loaf-I made two more of them yesterday-and gossiped.

Emotionally I am very strong but maybe only until the sunset, until the demons come knocking.  These are old demons.   Feeding off ancient insecurities, child hood trauma as well as present day fears.  They have a veritable banquet of old behaviors, resentments, fears and shame from which to feed their ghoulish appetite.

This coming week has everything going for me.  I am excited that American Airlines DOESN’T have WiFi.

An incredibly kind gesture by a very generous fan of Sex Rehab allows me to spend the next week in NYC.  I leave on Wednesday.

I have a great deal of practical work to do this week as I have let almost everything else in my life slide as I was summoning all of my psychic power to will what I wanted most to come true.  I am exhausted.  I spent almost of all of Sunday in bed.

I unpacked my script and took a good hard look at it.  Things have to start changing now.  Harnessing the power of the universe to make huge amounts of cash- marshaling the money Gods to provide!

All of my art has gone off to auction.  The app has to be developed-with help from by great lawyer.  The house WILL be sold now the road that leads directly to it will get built.  The great move East begins here.

On occasions I wonder who God wants me to be?  If I am to be his humble servant or a leader amongst men.  If I am present to accept the will of God then how do I square my ambition with my fear that I am taking my will and my life into my own hands?   Ambition must be celebrated.  Willfulness condemned.

By deciding to be part of Drew’s Sex Rehab I and my fellow Rehab travelers opened the door to much that American society considers taboo: sex addiction, sexual unmanageability, sexual powerlessness, the gay equivalent of all the above and my openness about erectile dysfunction.  I have no shame what so ever discussing these issues as every time I do I am overwhelmed by the messages of hope that I receive from fellow sufferers who judge themselves by their inability rather than there ability.

Those of us who have been brutalized by abuse are forced to address the consequences we all suffer daily, consistently and forever.

Psychological and behavioral effects of child sexual abuse may include low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, fear, hostility, chronic tension, eating disorders, sexual dysfunction, self-destructive or suicidal behavior, post traumatic stress disorder, dissociation, multiple personality disorder, repeat victimization, running away, criminal behavior, academic problems, substance abuse and prostitution.

Gosh, I can tick most of those boxes.

Anyhow, as comes the solution so comes the erection.  I love being sober.  I love my life when it includes him.

There is a solution.

Sunset fears?   No, not tonight.

Categories
Dogs Gay Hollywood Malibu

Day of Wonder

Interesting day yesterday-after a good twenty four hours of stinking thinking-God delivered to me an old fashioned day of wonder.   Began in Hollywood drinking Turkish coffee.  My mood dramatically shifted from the day before when I felt so utterly wretched.  I could have climbed Runyon but didn’t.   I could have bought a pack of cigarettes but didn’t.

Peter arrived and took 20 works of art and furniture for sale and you know what?  So crowded with stuff is this apartment that as quickly as he removed things I hung stored paintings in their place.   After he left I felt relieved that so much had gone-all part of my less is more project.  I can now walk all the way around my bed!  My bedroom was crammed with too many things.  As well as a queen sized bed there was a huge Jasper Morrison sofa stuffed in there.  Frankly, I hadn’t really liked most of the sold work.  I bought it for all the wrong reasons.  Things were mostly collected to show off my great knowledge of contemporary art.   Yeah right.

Jenny A not Jennie K (we are still avoiding each other) called me from Solar de Cauenga on the corner of Cauenga and Franklin to drink more coffee.  The little dog and I sauntered down Franklin to see her.  The weather has been spectacular, warm and spring like.  Daffodils sprouting up all over the place, the trees budding, the birds singing, the air is fresh and clean after all the glorious rain.

I hadn’t seen Jenny A for a couple of years-not since I stayed in her beautiful home in Todos Santos.  You can stay there too if you visit her WEB SITE it’s now THE most perfect hotel.  Anyway, we hadn’t spoken since I climbed onto that dusty Mexican bus-but it was only a matter of time before we did.   We are both incredibly fractious and proud so when we spend time with each other have tended toward the dramatic.  Anyway, that was then and this is now:  two calm, evolved human beings having a quiet latte together in a noisy café.    She looks wonderful.

A young filmmaker came visiting after I returned form my time with Jenny.  Josh, a Persian Jew looking for an internship somewhere.   Oh God!  He sat there and I just couldn’t wait for him to leave.  No life, no experience, no opinions, no point of view-no heroes!  How could he ever expect to be a filmmaker?   He told me that he wanted to ‘change film making’ yet, as usual, when you ask who his favorite filmmakers were he was hard pressed to tell me.  Like so many wannabe directors he was just a kid who liked movies, the difference being that this kid was raised in LA yet knew nothing about the city in which he was raised nor the industry that he says he wants to be part of-in fact he had no interests in anything apart from soccer and his girlfriend.  I told him I could not help him and he left.  It was like meeting a 40 something married guy.   Do any of these kids have heroes?  What happened to boys having heroes?  I had all sorts of heroes when I was a boy.

I dashed to my car and headed to Malibu.

When I arrived Patrick the gardener was hanging around doing I don’t know what but it was nice to see him.  I cleaned the house, laid a couple of rugs that had been sitting around in H’wood and then decided to go to Nina Hagen’s listening party at the recording studio next door.

Nina Hagen must have used the word Jesus at least 20 times to describe her new life as a Born Again Christian-she has renounced Buddhism.    She told me that Jesus was guiding her, that Jesus was showing her the way etc etc.  With flowers in her trademark two-ponytail hairstyle this slight mother of two is haggard but vibrant.  She avoids looking directly into ones face.   I ate a delicious cream puff.  However, I didn’t stick around to listen to the album, as I was worried that the constant references to Jesus would make me laugh out loud.

At 3pm I met Stephen Fry at the Peninsular Hotel.  Bumped into Donall McCusker who had worked on AKA but is now one of the producers of The Hurt Locker.  Stephen and I ate scones and silly finger sandwiches and the staff made a terrible fuss about the little dog not being allowed-which we ignored.    Stephen is writing the second part of his autobiography.   Since my therapy I have walked into most situations free of shame and I am glad to report that today was no exception.  I am usually so ashamed of my lack of formal education, my slight career, my meager achievements that sitting before this intellectual giant can shrivel any attempt I may have at a passable attempt at being anything other than a good natured baboon.   Today I just felt like a man with nothing to prove-just enjoying him and his extraordinariness.  In fact, I felt so comfortable I told him my great app idea, which he really liked.

As we left I introduced Stephen to Donall who was sitting with a group of execs-Donall called later to say that as Stephen and I walked away he was excited to have met Stephen Fry but his guests were more excited to know if I was really me (Duncan Roy).  Funny eh?  The power of reality TV.  SF drove away in his mini.

Met John and Jamie at Phyllis Morris for more diet coke and discussed my previous days misery.  They gave me three yards of heavy oyster colored upholstery silk from Osborn and Little to recover the chair JB didn’t buy.

Dinner with Chrissie Isley and Michelle Collins amongst others.   We ate delicious chicken, asparagus and green beans.  Strawberries and real whipped cream-Hungarian chocolate with pear.  Our hosts had vegetables growing in tiny garden.  Nearly fell asleep at the table even though conversation was good, Michelle very funny.  We discussed Lulu, Soho House, Obama and David Cameron-apparently he isn’t going to win the general election.

Brought home fresh bananas, lemons and tangerines from my trees.

No dreams.

Categories
Malibu

silence

can i sit with myself for more than 30 mins without doing anything at all?   can I sit without making a call?  checking facebook, text messages or emails?     can I sit in my own body listening to the twittering humming birds fighting, the waves crashing below me, little dog breathing deeply on my lap.

can i just stop imagining for just one god damned minute?  can I stop being so bloody infuriated by injustice?  can I just concentrate on the blood pumping around my body?

I sat alone in malibu all day and I did not nap, I did not look at pornography, i lit a huge fire, i fed the dog tinned salmon, i picked up my godson from  his drama class and ate chocolate with him in the truck as we drove down the PCH in the rain.

I like being on my own.  i have no idea what being with anyone would be like anymore.  I don’t know if I can share what I have.  being a curmudgeonly bachelor may be on the horizon.  was it meant to be like that?   probably.

strangely peaceful tonight staying over in deep malibu where my phone does not work.

i am a very lucky man.  i am surrounded by people who love me, who include me, who will catch me if I fall.

Categories
Gay Malibu Rant

Public Option/Private Option

without beard in sydneyWhenever some catty reader tells me to go home to the UK because I write optimistically for positive governmental change, fair taxes or that there might be a public option in the healthcare bill-where am I meant to go?  I live here!  Some of you can be very cruel, writing vile and damning notes to me-do I care about your vile and damning notes?

Do I fuck!  It takes a great deal more than a few inarticulate insults to upset this old goat.

What could any of you possibly do to upset me?   Well, like my errant lover, you could keep me hanging around LA waiting for you when all I want is you beside me-that’s pretty unsettling.  I am unsettled. Bemused by adolescence.

Even though I know you are fragile, it’s hard not to be selfish.  I love you. I need you.

I want to fuck you.

However, I loved laughing with you last night Mr. Darling NYC.  Sitting together by the fire in Malibu with Chris. Laughing like we should be doing when two people meet and fall headlong into…whatever men like us fall into.  I wish there was a word for that exciting moment just before you fall in love.

I couldn’t sleep last night.   I remembered the giant from twin peaks.

This is all I am permitted to say.

So, I was thinking about just how lucky I am surrounded by like-minded friends who want the best for all of us-rather than just themselves.

I was thinking about God and how regardless of circumstance I am never alone because I have faith.

A great deal of faith.

There’s a man in a smiling bag.

I have faith that the good of the people will overcome the evil in men’s hearts.

I was thinking about being a liberal.   I was wondering what American’s mean when they say the word ‘liberal’?  When they think of a liberal what do they see?  I was thinking that in some countries even Glenn Beck would be perceived as a liberal and that it’s all a matter of context.

Actually, regardless of whichever country Glen Beck lived, he would still be a simpering, self-obsessed cretin – a suppurating sore on the backside of humanity.

Unable to sleep I was thinking a great deal last night-holding my lover in the night gently snoring and fragile in my arms.

Without chemicals he points.

Having been one, I was thinking about the British Aristocracy.   Drunk aristocrats, dressed in tartan, over glasses of port rueing the day the British media went bad, nostalgic for a truly right wing rag.

Some would raise a glass to Oswald Mosley.

I met Oswald Mosley,  leader of the British Union of Fascists and his beautiful wife Diana Mitford in Paris when I was 19.    By the time I met him he was a demented old man wracked with Parkinson’s disease.  Lunch was cancelled because he took a dump in the sitting-room-I remember the smell and thought to myself  ‘that was a stinky poo’.

Until his dying day, Oswald Mosley was convinced that the British people would eventually come to their senses and call him home to lead the country he believed vehemently he was born to lead.

Oswald Mosley was not a rogue British fascist.  It is well known that had Hitler invaded the United Kingdom the aristocracy, of whom Hitler was in awe and had great sympathy, made a pact to hold onto what they owned.  Edward VIII‘s pro-German views made him a source of concern for the British government. “He’d always admired Hitler. He was, frankly, very pro-Nazi,” says John Julius Norwich.

Edward’s affair with Wallis Simpson – an American with a racy past, who was even more pro-fascist than Edward – was of great worry to the Royal Family. In 1936, Edward gave up the throne. The couple married as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in 1937, and went on a tour of Nazi Germany, finally settling in Portugal. While Adolf Hitler plotted to seize the duke and use him as a puppet king, Churchill banished him to the Bahamas – where he could do the least damage to the British war effort.

I want to write about the private option.

The man I met in New York, the scruffy handsome man is gone.  There’s no two ways about it.  Gone, gone, gone. I just didn’t call him back and now friends are calling pissed at me for my summary dismissal.   One night he lays there in my arms as gently as a baby the next he is on the streets diving into gay bars in The East Village.

Jake bauman Jake Bauman

That, my friends, is the way it is in the life of a sex addict.

What do these things mean?

LUNCH:  Cold poached chicken with watercress sauce.  Delicious.

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