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Category: Queer
Categories
Queer Love Song
You know, I just drove 700 miles from Petrolia to LA. I listened to the radio as much as I could bear it.
In between the many, many Christian broadcasts that you can hear very easily and NPR which you can’t, I listened to love songs.
Not one of them from one man to another, one woman to another.
Whilst we may be addressing our visibility in tv and film we are woefully represented on the radio… especially the love songs where I never hear my love mentioned.
Why is this so? Is the music industry a harder nut to crack than the military or sports?
I remember when I fell in love with a woman the songs on the radio seemed to make more sense. They had meaning and relevance.
When will I hear that love song? When will I see a real queer love affair on TV that isn’t the butt of some joke?
Why do I have to re-imagine every love song to include me?
The love between two men is implicit in George Michael‘s work but not explicit. It is obvious in Joan Armatrading‘s work but her songs have not been played for a very long time. Elton John is gay but mostly wrote the music for Bernie Taupin’s heterosexual lyrics.
When I hear queer love songs, lyrics that speak to my condition, on the radio… I will know for sure that things have really changed for people like me.
Categories
Last Days in Petrolia
My final days in Petrolia. I’m home now. The exhausting 11 hour drive.
Stopped in San Francisco for lunch.
We must have climbed the steep hill to Alexander Cockburn‘s Tower ten times a day, getting ready for Daisy’s first paying guests.
By the time we were finished it looked magnificent. Beating rugs like Victorian chamber maids. Oiling the redwood kitchen. Making beds with fresh white linen. Sweeping cobwebs off the windows.
Giving succor to the inner butler that lurks within.
Here is the sculpture that decorates the path:
Here are the fossilized fish that decorate the bathroom:
Here are random pictures I failed to publish earlier:
Categories
The Problem With Pride
President Obama has third graders announce LGBTQ pride month at the White House. Whose idea was that? Even POTUS looked a little incredulous. Obviously I don’t have any problem with 3rd graders manning the barricades but… perhaps we can have kittens next time… or puppies… or fluffy yellow chicks… or a new born foal?
The gays are in Pride party overdrive. Circuit parties, sex parties, pride events, bear parties, underwear parties, mourning parties, party parties.
When Joe and I lived in The Pines on Fire Island we went, over the years, to various high-octane, drug fueled, over lubricated, semi-naked circuit parties. Yet, however many drugs I took, however great my body was… I still felt alienated. I still experienced a strange, out-of-body disconnect from those men around me. You see, I remember thinking quite clearly that they… GOT IT… and I didn’t. I thought back then… they understand something more about homosexuality than I did… than I do.
Don’t get me wrong… I wasn’t looking down my nose at them. I wasn’t feeling superior. I would love to have connected with those men. Like I used to feel connected (high on E) in my mid twenties exploring London (straight) club land. The same heaving mass that miraculously included me. Joyfully, willingly abandoning self, self consciousness terminal uniqueness and dancing as one with a thousand others.
That is what I felt then. This is what I feel now: To have ones life defined by gay circuit parties is simply revolting.
Some people prepare for weeks for Pride, in the gym, tanning, organizing parties, getting the right tickets for the right events. Making sure the drink and the drugs are pre-ordered. Leaving nothing to chance. The last ‘pride’ parade I attended I saw a drunken man defecating in the street. It was not the enduring image of LGBTQ solidarity after which I was hankering.
There is a hideous disconnect between the civil rights we demand and the public face of ‘pride’. A parade of semi naked gyrating narcissists. How can anyone take that seriously? Pride simply reinforces the difference between me and them: I do not drink or take drugs. I am not driven (compelled) by my homosexuality.
The parade terrifies me. Aesthetically. The corporate floats lack ingenuity and wit. The rent boy/sex worker float lacks class. The thongs, the swagger, revealing the lie of Pride. The near identical bodies in various hues. Searching, begging for tiny differences between each naked, muscular physique that may determine the uniqueness, the individuality of just one of these men. Of course, I am excited to see so many out men. But they are all the same. I look at them and, as much as I want to be, I am not attracted to them. I am not attracted to their essence… to their remarkable lack of ego.
The Pride parade is a celebration of sexuality. First and foremost. And I, absurdly, want to fall in love. You see, I proved it. They wanted sex… and I didn’t. I wanted to fall in love… and they didn’t.
“I want to tell you how much I love you.” I whispered.
When I have sex. I tell them to say… I love you. It turns me on. “Even if you don’t mean it.” I was useless then and I am useless now to those gay men at those gay circuit parties because I didn’t want to have sex. I wanted to fall in love. I didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t and they knew it. They could see by the look in my eye that their sexuality terrified me, baffled me. I wanted to fall in love.
That man I loved. After he came out… he told me about the sex he was having with many, many men. He was really good at meeting strange men and having sex with them. His priorities shifted. When we were together and he was in the closet he told me he loved me, he was emotional… the moment he came out he threw his emotional interest in men away. In favour of sex. I wanted to fall in love.
It was my fault. I had this sex genius at my disposal and couldn’t work out how to use what he was brilliant at. When we made love I felt the same disconnect. Out of body. Away.
Pride is a tough word to have appended to any celebration because it means so many different things to so many different people. That’s why I love the LGBTQ Mardi Gras in Sydney, it doesn’t have PRIDE in the title. Mardi Gras is everything you want it to be because Mardi Gras mean nothing to me. Means everything to me.
Mardi Gras implies celebration. It doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t. Even though it eschews the word Pride, on the several occasions I attended… I felt really proud. Proud to be just like them. Just like you. I looked for the similarities and not the differences at: The silly Mardi Gras community events, the Mardi Gras parade, the film festival, the theatre festival, the LGBTQ city art tours… even the leather cruise… something I would never usually do seemed fun and interesting.
It was a gathering of the LGBTQ clan and made no mistake by calling itself something it isn’t. The parade and the party. Mardi Gras was so different from London Pride. London Pride in the 1980’s, was a sombre affair. Men and women. Simply being seen. It was originally held during the miserable months of the British year. Overcast skies. Rain.
London Pride has evolved from a bunch of angry gays and lesbians marching through Westminster (Margaret Thatcher’s back yard) denouncing the infamously homophobic Section 28 to right now and a profoundly different landscape for the LGBTQ community. We have enthusiastically embraced the Blair (credit where credit’s due) government’s equality overhaul and the introduction of legal parity for all citizens of the UK regardless of gender.
London Pride is a deserved celebration… but it was earned. It’s not my cup of tea. But it was earned. If it isn’t your cup of tea… what is? What does this old queer want?
Well.
Somewhere between the seriousness of a civil rights march and the celebration of Mardi Gras there is a parade I want to attend. There’s a parade I want to join where all men and women are respected and nurtured regardless of age, sexuality and religion. Let me know if you find that Parade because I’ll be there… to hold your hand.
I promised that I wouldn’t write about where and who I was staying with… it feels like I am boasting. But… here I am staying with Daisy Cockburn on The Lost Coast. We met thirty years ago at Phil H’s house on Langton Street, Worlds End, Chelsea.
Daisy’s house/compound, filled with unusual and beautiful things collected by her father Alexander Cockburn, leaving his only child this house in Petrolia. Alexander was a disruptor, a magnificent political writer. Alexander died last July after a long illness.
Collecting the most extraordinary ceramics, eclectic paintings the decaying house is a warren of red wood improvements and additions. James built a tower on the hill… I’ve not yet visited. The ceramics are mostly by LA based ceramist Jim Danisch.
Daisy’s mother is the writer Emma Tennant. Her cousin is Olivia Wilde.
I drove from LA. Through San Francisco. The last 60 miles along perilous roads in the dark. Tarmac Roads that suddenly give out to treacherous gravel. Past the magnificent redwoods that even in the dark… are extraordinary.
I slept in a huge bed built on a wooden platform. I slept like a giant redwood log. At night, I can hear the Mattole river moving quickly over tiny gray pebbles. This morning we all… dogs too… swam in the cold clear water.
More pics tomorrow.
Categories
Bradley Manning: Silenced by Poverty
The perception amongst most Americans is that Bradley Manning should never have told us what was going on because he was breaking the law.
A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.
The perception of most Americans is that Bradley Manning is a traitor.
More so, I imagine, than the man who shot 17 Iraqi women and children as they lay sleeping in their beds.
If a journalist with a degree had uncovered this information I believe most Americans would be ok with that.
His expensive education would somehow allow him the privilege of exposing the wrongs of the nation.
We are shooting the messenger because the messenger is poor white trash… who the hell does he think he is?
That’s what I’m hearing. That’s what’s really going on here.
Categories
Venice Realness
It is a black day for the international LGBTQ community.
Clément Méric is as good as dead. His brilliant, 18-year-old queer brain mangled by right-wing thugs on the streets of Paris.
He is presently kept alive by a tangle of opalescent tubes.
In Russia activists are targeted by government sponsored bullies.
In London intellectuals are beaten to the ground by members of the EDL.
In NYC a black man is shot in the face and killed.
Trans people are murdered every day all over the world, often without investigation.
Have you heard? There is, amongst the general population, a perceived inevitability about LGBTQ equality.
Some amongst us are becoming complacent. Bloated on the success we think we have.
Basking in the support we think we get from the President. In fact we are silenced by him.
His words over deeds have silenced us.
We must speak up. Continue to challenge. Continue to be seen.
We must not shirk our responsibility to queer martyrs like Clément Méric.
Speak up. Heckle.
ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) is only now being widely discussed after the petulant FLOTUS was confronted by GetEQUAL queer activist Ellen Sturtz.
I congratulate Ellen. Finally, a voice for the queer poor heard over the screaming voices of the queer rich.
As the Great Recession continues in so much of the USA, ending workplace discrimination (especially for trans people) is essential.
Listen to me or you can take the mic, but I’m leaving. You all decide. You have one choice.
FLOTUS
Remember. As we strive for parity there will be those with equal and opposite views.
There will be violence.
There will be those who will kill an 18-year-old queer boy because they can.
African-Americans had to face nearly another century of lynchings before the Civil Rights Movement was powerful enough to push back strongly against violent racists.
The women’s movement of the 1920s, side-tracked for a generation until the 1960s, with so many needlessly broken lives and life expectations as a result.
Queer people are being attacked all over the world: Paris, Moscow, New York, London by increasingly emboldened haters.
As we demand equality in the workplace, the home and in the establishment these attacks will become more frequent.
We must, whether we like it or not, form a true LGBTQ alliance not only in name but in practice.
It is too late for fear to drive us into the shadows. We are out. We are visible.
We need to be more fearless and more visible.
LGBTQ.
This means YOU.
This means ME.
Reading about Clément Méric this morning, looking at his sweet, boyish profile… I began to question my own behavior.
I have, of late, let resentment toward the gays shape my own kind of homophobia.
For those of you who have read my blog these past couple of years the provenance of this loathing may seem understandable.
Today, I need to jettison those resentments.
If I truly believe in this fight… I have to accept those I detest as my queer brothers and sisters.
Categories
Compare and Despair
There is an endless stream of ‘good news’ on Facebook. The parties, the marriages, the births, the home renovations and the ubiquitous instagramed plates of delicious (and not so delicious) breakfast, lunch and dinner. The grandiose exclamations of joy and delight. The boasting, the dressing up… the glitter and sangria.
In between the nihilistic leather soirees and endless travelogues come occasional glimpses of the pain and suffering most of us endure but seldom want to admit. At least… not on social media. Not to those who seem to be having the time of their lives every single day.
Two deaths this week. One old lady I never knew and one young man I did. Sandwiched between bottles of french wine and exotic vacations on the French Riviera is the truth. The young American who can’t stop drinking and the miserable single woman who can’t get the man to stay.
They say, when I post my bits and pieces, that I am angry… lonely… sad. When I don’t agree with a theme they say I am a sullen contrarian. When I post expressions of joy I am inundated with ‘likes’ as if my happiness needs affirming.
My friend’s mother dies peacefully in the hospital bed. He updates us by the hour. Her final words remind us of our own mortality. I am so grateful he tells us so. I learn so much more from her last words than a another blurry picture of enchiladas posted at some obscure Mexican restaurant where my ‘friends’ boast of the wonderful time they are having.
I have stopped posting pictures of parties, of other people in their gorgeous homes. I have stopped reporting which celebrities I have seen and what they were doing. Of late I have been concentrating on injustice. My own and others.
The realtor who engages his powerful friends to incarcerate. We are getting to the bottom of that mucky situation. The way the rich use government institutions to their own ends. Corrupt district attorneys, prosecutors and law enforcement. We are getting to the bottom of that one. Slowly, like archeologists gently removing layer after layer of dirt… getting to what was so carefully buried. For every corrupt official there is another eager to help.
For the time being I have to be obtuse. That will end… sooner or later. I am patient . I can wait.
Bradley Manning, queer hero, his trial starts today. Although I doubt we will get the outcome we desire and that boy will probably spend the rest of his life in jail for doing the right thing… he will not be forgotten. Bradley Manning will not be forgotten.
Paul, my white gay friend, the talent manager. I saw him yesterday. He had been to a Liberace viewing party in the hills. A bunch of straight acting gay boys watching Liberace in the opulent surroundings of an older gay man. Their reaction was as expected… they hated it. They didn’t see what Liberace had to do with their lives. You see, they complained… they wanted to see themselves. Paul couldn’t understand why Scott Thorson (who he knows) had his story told. He described Scott as a ‘user’. He said he thought it was ‘unfair’ that Scott’s story was told rather than a ‘gay hero’.
“Who?” I asked. “Which gay hero?”
His brow furrowed. He’ll get back to me with the answer.
Then it occurred to me why a bunch of boys under the age of 25 drinking free booze in the house of an older Hollywood oligarch might not like the film Liberace. Rather than not seeing themselves… on the contrary, they all saw themselves exactly and hated what they saw.
Like on Facebook the ugly truth is sometimes sandwiched between the glitter and sangria.
No matter how deeply it is buried.
Listen, I want you to know something about me. I hate condoms. I hate wearing them. I love fucking raw. I love it. I don’t do it. I can’t do it. I wanted to fuck my lover without a condom. I want to cum inside you. I love you.
This is what HIV looks like in 2013:
Brandon, he’s 22… he wants to be hog tied and fucked in the mouth and ass. He wants to meet me.
He wants me to ‘take control’ he wants me to beat him and fuck him. He wants ‘verbal’. He enquired if I preferred him to call me daddy or sir. I’m interested. This daddy loves an obedient boy. We talk on the phone, he’s upbeat and sweet-natured but after we agree to meet he texts me:
‘Before we meet. I’m Positive. And I’m honest about it. Thoughts?’
I wait a moment. Restraint of pen and tongue.
I text him back. ‘Can we talk?’ I explain why I can’t meet him. I tell him that I’m scared and I don’t want to risk an infection. I’m too old to get infected. I lived through the AIDS catastrophe. I didn’t get infected.
The conversation I had with Brandon is not common. Usually when I say that I can’t have sex with someone who is HIV positive they spew vitriol. They tell you that it was a ‘mercy fuck‘ anyway, that I’m ugly , that I’m ignorant… of course… I know what they are really saying. They usually get what they want when they want it and woe-betides anyone who fucks with their plan.
Some HIV poz men feel that by being honest I will feel equally warm and fluffy and my respect for their honesty will translate into a fuck.
Let me tell you what I remember when someone tells me they are HIV positive.
I remember the gaunt, yellow faces of formerly beautiful young men crying because they don’t want to die. I remember men hermetically sealed from the world in plastic tents. I remember the smell of piss and shit. I remember the quiet sobbing of newly widowed men. I remember all of that and I cannot go there.
More controversially… when you tell me you are HIV positive I am confronted fair and square with your sexual history. I imagine other men cumming inside you.
I just do. I can’t help myself.
That’s why I can’t sit facing the toilet when I am in a restaurant. Imagining people pooing and wiping their asses. It puts me off my dinner.
There are two communities. Two gay communities. The HIV negative and the HIV positive. I have no interest in interacting sexually with the latter. I will be damned for writing that.
Brian says: ‘Duncan, someone who knows they’re positive and is on treatment can easily be less infectious than someone who doesn’t know that they’re positive and happens to have a high viral load, and is therefore very infectious. That could be the issue of ignorance of which they speak. I agree no one has the right to go off on you for not wanting to play, but the issue is more complicated than pos/neg.’
The issue is NOT complicated for me. I don’t want to be HIV positive.
The community with HIV is very eager to diminish their responsibility and guilt those without HIV into thinking it’s all ok just because they describe themselves as ‘healthy’. They still have HIV and they can infect you… however low their viral load. They claim they are ‘undetectable’ which means they have a very low viral load.
Undetectable is a big problem. It is used incorrectly by many people to make others feel that the sex they have is safer than with those who are not undetectable. Undetectable people are still HIV poz. The condom breaks. You are now a slave to toxic chemicals. A slave to big pharma.
Who are these undetectable people? These invisible men? Gay ghosts. Scarcely there. Leaving behind just the whiff of AIDS. HIV is totally avoidable in 2013. Yet, we still go on being the largest group of new infections in what is still an epidemic. I don’t want to talk about Africa or straight people or intravenous drug users.
I want us to take some responsibility. Especially those of you who are transitioning from the Neg community to the Poz community. Those of you who make the choice… who made the choice last night to take a risk. Those of you who thought, or did not think, as he came inside you… that you would risk the consequences of HIV. You are packing your bags, you are moving to the other side. To the other gay community. The undetectable gay community.
Finally, one last nail in my gay coffin.
What’s this crap about gay men and shame? We can’t shame gay/bisexual men into wearing a condom? Because they are gay or bisexsual and have shame about their sexuality?
We can’t shame gay men or bisexuals into making better choices for themselves? Like we do smokers? No… because the gay community must be shameless at all cost. We are gay! We live without shame. We’ve been shamed ENOUGH.
Huh?
I say… shame those who knew they were HIV poz and took away the neg status of others by lying. This really happens. I know a few good men who have had their good health stolen from them by unscrupulous gay men.
There are two gay communities. One of them is HIV positive. The other is not. Those who are not positive are described as elitist by those who are. Those who are HIV positive scoff at those who are not… because the implication is: they weren’t pretty or handsome or desirable enough to get infected with HIV.
I am scared of getting HIV. Like some people are scared of snakes.
I am happy that I am HIV negative. In fact… I am proud to be HIV negative. Does that make me elitist? Well, yes… if elitism means that I mostly took care of myself.
That I don’t have to buy costly drugs every month to stay… undetectable.
