1.
Monday morning. Brooklyn. The end of this particularly hard winter is nowhere in sight. In LA the sun shines over the glittering sea, in London my friends post pictures of balmy evenings in St James Park. I run from our place to sit in crowded coffee shops. I’m writing under a pseudonym nowadays for publications that love paying him/her but would never pay me. Funny. Doing what writers have always done: assuming different names for different opinions, different styles, different genres. Consequently, I don’t get to write my blog very often… as I traverse the continent once a month. From sea to shining sea. No one understands why I love driving 2,800 miles twice over once a month… but I do. The last trip was short and sweet. I stayed in LA a few days then drove back over the Rockies and into a 50 car wreck on the i80 a hundred miles east of Chicago on the Ohio Turnpike. Trapped on the side of the road for ten hours with two patient dogs and so many bad christian radio stations. Badly educated, right-wing bigots on the radio. Wondering out loud how they will roll back the rights of women and gays and undocumented workers, how they will keep hold of their white America. The America their ancestors battled to tame. I think about those early Americans very often as I drive over the Rockies, the hardship they suffered, the dreams they had… the cruelty they inflicted on those who lived on the land they took and the slaves they owned.
I tried sleeping in the car. Minus 6 degrees. Occasionally fellow travelers would stop by to see if we were okay. They offered cookies and consolation.
2.
I’ve been with my boy for 8 months. We cook at home and watch bad make over TV. Every day our situation gets stronger as we over come our own and the prejudices of others. I realized that most of my male gay friends are single, even the ones with the best pedigrees. The ones who are good-looking and sweet and a ‘good catch’. I, of course, am none of those things. I am the bullet you need to dodge. That’s what they say. But the gays are eager to diss all of their friends burgeoning relationships. They are disparaging about anyone who may not be ‘ideal’. This ideal that keeps them single and lonely. They look at me sadly when they find out how old L is as if I am deluding myself that my relationship could ever work. Did I think it would work? Well, not in some fairy tale way, not the way gay writers write the perfect arrangement… the ideal. We muddle through, we miss each other when we are apart, we fight occasionally but not as much as we did when we first met. All in all, I’m happy and feel love from him and let my love flow… to him. That’s occasionally a very confusing and baffling thing for me. To let myself be loved.
3.
In Des Moines, I met Kookie Kardashian… the morbidly obese (500lb), hirsute… older sister of Kim Kardashian and Kourtney Kardashian. She is the least known of the KKK Klan. Drinking alone in a dump of a hotel bar, reruns of KUWTK playing on the flickering TV above the tequila selection, staring absently into a soupy pina colada. Text messages remained unanswered as she pulls at her thin mustache. I introduce myself, she says she appreciates the company. Apparently, when the cameras are in her Calabasas house Kris makes her leave with the undocumented servants. Kris pokes her with a stick. Kookie said that Ryan Seacrest called her a ‘fat cunt’, that if she wanted to be on the show she should ‘get a fucking lap band’. Kookie, blinded by grief, drinks herself regularly into a blackout. She commandeered Kanye’s jet and took it to Iowa. Her brushed denim and patent leather Fendi bag stuffed with cash. If she loses the weight… Kris promised her that she and Rob can have their own show.
She told me she misses her dad.
4.
Has anyone been watching the OWN Lindsay Lohan ‘documentary’? That girl is OUT OF HER MIND. A world without consequence will do that to you. A world where nobody has the guts to confront an addict and her worst defects. A world where she believes she is still important or relevant, a world where no one will tell her that death is imminent… like Heath, Phil, River… living in a room stuffed with clothes, jewelry… evidence of active addiction.
Despicably, this tragedy is being manipulated by entertainment industry matriarch Oprah Winfrey… the disingenuous bad mum who knew all along that her little girl would let her down. Oprah’s fake outrage is utterly disgusting.
