It’s six o’clock on Friday morning. There’s more snow forecast and plummeting temperatures. I really love the cold. I love wearing long coats and big hats. I love roaring fires and drinking hot tea in the street. The little dog has miraculously grown a thick white coat and his previously bald belly is now covered in downy fur.
I spent the day in London yesterday. Partly to deal with the Jake’s lost iPod incident and partly to see friends but mostly to go to an AA meeting in Soho and connect with my tribe.
I left my laptop and my iPhone at home and consequently enjoyed the train ride to London thinking..thinking about how it doesn’t get better. Dan Savage‘s ‘It Get’s Batter’ campaign is a load of baloney designed to encourage gay youngsters not to kill themselves because anything is better than death.
The truth is not so obvious. I have been thinking hard about America, about gays in America and how totally useless my gay brethren have been about getting things changed for themselves, politically, socially and morally.
I wrote to Peter Tatchell last summer asking his advice about how things could possibly change for gays in America..his response…from a brave, hard-hitting activist shocked me. He thought the situation depressing and hopeless.
It is. The people refuse to be seen. They refuse to leave the comfort of their den, their TV, their fast food..they refuse to hit the streets and demand a morally accountable government.
The simple fact is this: gays in America, for all the millions they spend trying to change the laws, with a ‘sympathetic’ Democratic government and a ‘change’ motivated President things have not changed one iota. Marriage/Civil Union is still a state by state privilege and not a federal right. Gays are still not welcome in the military and I have come to realize that gays are simply not welcome anywhere.
Gays are not welcome to live honest and open lives in America..so they don’t. The gays I meet in the UK are leagues ahead in their thinking and the openness. They can depend on their government, their church, their judiciary to support them.
In a country like the USA where Christians define the moral terrain I have never lived anywhere that is so morally bankrupt. The people are routinely lied to by successive Presidents, they are gouged by the government they elect, they are continually bullied by church and state and do nothing what so ever about it.
The people are not free.
They are terrified of their government.
Unlike our students in the UK who got off their asses and demonstrated (invigorating a generation of new activists) Americans angrily run to their expensive lawyers and seek judicial review for their many and varied problems which end up taking so much time to resolve that when their cases are finally heard the fire, passion and determination has been dampened…the urge for change forgotten.
Change happens: sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly.
I despair for the gays and the liberals and the moderates in the USA.
Morality has been hijacked by the right because we were too cowardly to understand what it meant to us.
Mention the word morals to most gay men and they balk.
We have no morals. Jake invited me into his amoral world and I willingly walked through the door. Most gay men think it is perfectly reasonable for him to have behaved immorally. Morals don’t count for anything in the gay community.
How does it get better by not killing yourself?
Most American gay men I know have, at some time, wanted to kill themselves. They have given it serious thought. So, you don’t kill yourself…what have you got to look forward to? The gay community riven by sex and drug addiction, by racism, by homophobia. Yep, you heard it here. The gay community is riven with homophobia.
Delicate gay men who don’t want to sleep with anyone unless they are ‘straight acting’ (read invisible). They are terrified of looking in the mirror and seeing themselves age. They are terrified that will never be rich enough to buy a baby.
Sometimes I wonder what will happen to Jake. Will he settle down and want a baby? Will he get the sex with everyone out of his system and concentrate on one man? When I meet him twenty years from now, when I am an old, old man..will he have lived the life he bargained for? Will he become one of those ghastly gay men flying around the gay world, refusing to grow up, like some grotesque Peter Pan?
So, I went to court yesterday to deal with the Jake iPod incident. I told the court that I was Not Guilty and now there will be a full on trial in March. It made me hate Jake even more. Fuck you Jake. Timid, cowardly Jake encouraged me to go after those kids, standing behind me, not stopping me, encouraging me, knowing that I would defend him because I loved him.
He lost his fucking iPod. He lost his iPod in a drunken blackout and I am now having to deal with this shit. It infuriates me.
If you are a sober person..try and avoid people who take drugs and drink. Please.
Had a lovely evening at Soho House, met Suzanne Portnoy who is great fun and told me that she stopped blogging because it impacted her sex life. Ironically she too met a literary agent through her blog with romantic complications…those fucking agents.
William Borthwick the cool director and the very beautiful, very flirtatious blue-eyed Kenny Doughty on the terrace for mince pies.
They were lovely.
Had dinner at Wheelers with friends. Haddock. Delicious.
