Tag: California

Categories
Queer

Amanda Demme at Obsolete

Afternoon Chair

The days are long, hot and sultry.

After the NYC winter the Californian sun seems unrelenting.  One glorious day folding like melting fudge into the next.

91 degrees today.  A rare winter storm this weekend.  That’s what they say.

My Russian friend makes thick black, sweet coffee.  We sit on her verandah overlooking the sea.  The dogs lay on their backs in the sun.

Anthony calls and talks my ear off.  His brother is in NYC with Amelia enjoying his birthday.

A 5 year old boy shoots his 2 year old sister with a gun recently purchased for him by his father.  I find a website devoted to pictures of white children/babies holding firearms.   It reminds me of Somalian and Iranian militia children holding semi automatic weapons.

Here it is:  Kids With Guns.  I just checked and unsurprisingly ‘kids corner’ has been removed since yesterday.

These people, so it seems, are waiting for the government to come and change their lives irrevocably.

Part of me sympathises with those folk.  The high minded elite looking down upon them scornfully.

At 8pm I take the car into Venice and meet Anthony at a gallery called Obsolete.  Amanda Demme’s vernisage.

There are large, moody photographs of old men and young children and homeless people and people of colour.

The rather beautiful photographs are printed on textured paper.  Like canvas.  It is distracting and tacky.   It’s a problem.

We eat meatballs and salad and fresh almonds.

A tribe of scarified women in their 60’s huddle on a $100k sofa and gossip.  Their surgeries performed to be seen.  What’s the point of spending that much money on plastic surgery unless you can see it?

Amanda introduces me to Sara Gilbert and her other.   Many people are wearing hats.  Wide brims.  Beaver rather than rabbit.

I am wearing a midnight blue velvet suit and red shoes.

A young actor greets me with a hug.  He asks me in that way what I’ve been up to.  He knows.  I tell him anyway.  “I read about that.”  He exclaims.  “You’re the real deal.”  That’s the difference between the gays and the straights.

Straight people know I’m a fucking hero.  The gays, huddled around teacher are fucking terrified of me.

And so they should be.

Outside we meet Joaquin Phoenix.  Anthony made a film with him.  I have not seen him since before Heath died.  A flicker of recognition but no more.  He looks like he is made of pale green wax.  He is stick thin.  He looks like a Shropshire farmer.

He said to Anthony,  “I hear you’ve been making sober calls.  Don’t call me.”   We laugh.

It’s funny.

After the show we have dinner at Gjelina with two art collectors.  Pizza and pudding.  Everybody at the table knows someone else in the restaurant.   We receive.  I forget to stand for one grand dame.  She stares at me frostily.

I know what she’s thinking.  She’s wondering if I left my manners in the jail.

Categories
Alcoholics Anonymous Brooklyn NYC Queer

The Endless Summer

January NYC

1.

The definite seasons on the east coast. The passing days, changing. Slowly.

Each day has a brand new identity. New light. Color.

The bland, endless Los Angeles summer has finally come to an end. After 8 long years. I am heading home.

I wear my long, grey cashmere coat (Hermes) and fur hat (Dior).

I pull on my knee-length, woolen socks and my heavy boots.

I am going to therapy… daily. I am finally addressing the issues I have been ignoring this past year. You know, those pesky medical issues.

Strangely, without warning… even though we share the same streets. I never see him. Nor do I wish to conjure him, manifest him, make him appear… I had lunch with one of his co-workers the other day, a youngster (we met at an AA meeting) who wanted his job.

It was funny being at the same table as someone who works in close proximity to him. Their opinion.

They knew the story. An urban myth that they delighted in fact checking.

Oh well.

Of course there’s loads going on (Film/House/Social) but somehow I don’t have the energy to write it.

I take pictures and let that suffice.

2.

I found a picture of Joe. He’s obsessively going to the gym. A man mountain. In his late 60’s now.

I scarcely ever think about him. Isn’t that odd? To have no thoughts about someone who was once the center of your world.

Categories
Los Angeles politics

Fuck You Jerry Brown

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Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the TRUST Act, a bill championed by immigrants rights advocates.

The bill, which was the antithesis of Arizona’s SB 1070, would have helped stop racial profiling and restore trust and transparency between California’s communities and law enforcement officials.

While the outcome of the fight is disappointing, I am thankful for activists who appealed to Governor Brown by signing thousands of petitions then making hundreds of calls to his office urging him to sign the bill.

Adam Luna, is the Political Director of America’s Voice, a leading immigrants rights organization wanted to share this message:

“While it was a bitter disappointment to see the governor veto the TRUST Act, I wanted to let you know how much your activism and solidarity made a real difference.

11,300 petition signatures (more than any other organization!), which were hand-delivered in Sacramento, hundreds of phone calls — it was amazing.”

Those of us in the immigration reform movement know that this is not a fight which is going to be won overnight and the governor said that he’s open to making a deal next year because he knows that you, and we, won’t rest until the fight is won.

While Governor Brown’s failure of leadership on this issue is disheartening, the campaign for fair and sensible immigration policies will go on.

Next week I will be announcing my very own action against the secure communities protocol that incarnated me and thousands of people like me.

A few months ago a young, gay Australian man here legally in the USA on a tourist visa was arrested for peeing in public (a sex crime felony in the state of California) and held in the Men’s Country Jail until he agreed to be deported.

Why?

IMMIGRATION REFORM NOW!

Categories
Gay Los Angeles

Return To County Jail

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6OYGEDO2mw&feature=youtu.be]

1.

No. Not what you ‘re thinking…hoping?

I set out at 6am for the Men’s County Jail to see my friend Jeremy who is presently residing in dorm 5200.  Jeremy is a good-looking white man in his mid-thirties. A meth head with a penchant for transsexuals.  He has two kids in Utah. He used to manage an ihop.  He is the kind of character I couldn’t invent from a movie I couldn’t write.  A charming man with anger issues.  Like most inmates he is pre-occupied with his own case, another miserable drug dealer hauled off the streets.  We spoke for thirty minutes, I left $50 for him to eat well and I drove home.

The deputies who processed us into the jail were very pleasant, polite.

2.

Yesterday we drove to Redondo Beach where we met with Democratic State Senator Lieu.  The second State Senator I have met this month. He has a strange constituency, ranging from progressive liberals in the Venice area to hard-core Odinists in Orange County.  We sat in the sparse office with his Harvard educated interns. They were polite but they didn’t offer us water or coffee.

Our successful visit last month to Senator Calderon lead to his decision to co-sponsor the Trust Act.  The bill then passed the Senate Public Safety Committee and is now headed towards the Senate Floor .  The Trust Act will make what happened to me less likely to happen to others. It may liberate the 3000 un-convicted men and women currently held on ICE holds in California.  The Trust Act will demand that ICE follows its own guidelines, its own rules.

It is essential that Senator Lieu support this bill.

Lieu is an interesting man.  In his Redondo office there is a huge studio photograph of Lieu and his family lounging on a white, fluffy rug. He is wearing a dress shirt but no tie.  He has been a vociferous supporter of the LGBT community, especially the transsexual population for whom he reserves special respect.

I sat with Kristine Chong from The Californian Immigrants Policy Center and three other Immigrant rights specialists… including a day labourer from Mexico in the Senator’s dingy ‘conference’ room.  Lieu’s people wore badly cut suits. We all began to sweat in the un air-conditioned office.

Antonio, the day laborer, spoke very movingly about the catastrophic effect ICE and the Secure Communities protocol are having on the immigrant population. Families broken apart, 5000 American children made orphans, their mothers and fathers deported.  Immigrants are routinely forced to sign deportation papers or threatened with months held in privately owned immigration camps, camps that are currently costing the people of California 6 million dollars a year

The situation is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.

This state has enjoyed, for many years, low-cost manual labour on which their false economy was based. Now, these undocumented migrants are being rounded up like animals. Targeted on the streets, in their cars, in their homes.

ICE have to deport 400, 000 people a year to fulfill a federal government quota.  Even President Obama’s announcement last week supporting The Dream Act didn’t stop three ‘Dreamers’ being deported yesterday.

I told my story. I told them what they must have heard many times out of Latino mouths. Spanish speakers, their accents somehow devaluing what they have to say.  Listen to me.  Listen to my clipped British accent.  Listen to me eloquently tell my story.  Pay attention to the dramatic pauses.

It is always very shocking for them (especially the starched, ivy league interns) that an affluent white person could have got caught up in the immigration net.  They bowed their heads in shame.  After 45 minutes our meeting is over.

They tell us that Lieu’s support on the Senate floor cannot be assured, he has to pamper to the right-wing element of his constituency. They say: Lieu, in the past, has been threatened physically for supporting immigrants rights. He received death threats.  Pampering to the right? I ask incredulously. Pampering to the right will keep this state poor, our children uneducated, the prisons full and gay men like me… unmarried and childless.

Be brave, I urge him, and do the right thing.

As we are leaving we pass another group of men and women patiently waiting their turn to be heard. They could have been Odinists for all I know, demanding that Lieu hunt down every illegal immigrant in California and throw away the key.

Categories
Alcoholics Anonymous Gay

Yikes

I love this picture.  Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud in Wheelers.

1.

Waking up at Robby’s apartment.  West Hollywood.  Feeling like I have a hangover.  I haven’t.  I’m still not drinking.  Waiting for the right moment…but it never comes.  The sanctity of sobriety.

It’s hard after nearly 16 years to think about the right time to start drinking.

A woman I know from the programme called yesterday.  I told her that I had renounced AA.  “How’s that working out for you?”  She pried condescendingly.

I faked a dropped call.

2.

Saturday pre pride party.  Good fun.  The über gays.  The fake NYC producer I mentioned in an earlier post sitting at his table wondering how I manage to surround myself with such beauty.  He looked exasperated.  Staring over at us.

Pride was a great deal of fun.  On the streets.  The floats have not changed for 30 years: muscle boys and drag queens.  Not very inventive.

I stayed at the London Hotel courtesy of my Kuwaiti friends. They pitched up at 8am.  We ate smoked fish and Quiche for breakfast.

3.

Nothing is obvious.  Just when you thought you’d never kiss anyone meaningfully ever again.

I saw you in the bar and knew you were the one.  A brief conversation.  Kisses, glances, then you pissed on me.  That was new to both of us but so damned exciting.  A mouth full of piss.  Then we spent the afternoon talking.  Eating.  Each other.

You left an impression.   Creases in the bed sheets.

4.

Without me even noticing it LA is full of gay men with beards.

Does this mean that they/we are growing up? That men are trumping boys? The aesthetic is not only very pleasing but means I get looked at all over again. I have some currency…if you know what I mean.

5.

I don’t have time to write this very often.  There’s a great deal to do.

I’m helping those boys in the jail, even though they don’t know it.  Meeting lawyers down town who are investigating conditions in the jail.  They seem shocked.  Young lawyers.  Fresh faced.  Idealists.

I try balancing my complaints with a broader understanding of the jail dynamic.  The deputies are not just cruel…they are frightened.  They do not treat the trans population with contempt because they hate gays, they are confused by the feelings the girls bring up in them.

Ernest lawyers ask how I would change things in the jail.  I am always prepared for those questions.

Last week I sat with Senator Ron S.Calderon who is co-sponsoring a bill in the State of California that would basically abolish the situation in which I found myself.  Protocols would have to be adhered to.  States right to decide trumping the draconian Immigration Department.

I drive for hours to get to the meeting and speak clearly and concisely.  I know that I am speaking on behalf of thousands of wrongly incarcerated immigrants.

I go to cities I would never usually visit.  I am introduced to people I would never usually meet.  Immigrant rights advocates, Methodist ministers.  I am familiar with Secure Communities.  I hear terrible stories.  They tell me that ICE operate like the Gestapo.  They spread fear in the immigrant communities, wrecking homes, lives, marriages, separating families, sending children into foster care.

6.

Then, there is the other work.  Kevin, my incredible new assistant, and I…running all over town.  Putting this show together.  Holding things together.

Today I see the doctor.  No good news all over again. I’m sure.

Wish me luck.

Categories
art Hollywood Los Angeles Malibu Photography

LA Portraits

Categories
prison

Illegal Incarceration of Aliens

Things are moving rapidly.

My fight against the illegal incarceration of aliens at the Men’s County Jail in LA and jails across California gathers both support and credibility.

There will be a press conference during the first week of April hosted by NILC.

Follow me on twitter @duncaninla for further details.

Also, if this blog is emailed to you (1800 of you) remember that I often add and edit each post as the day unfolds.

Check into the blog for updates.

I will be Testifying at the LA County Commission on Violence in Jails on Monday April 16, 2012 at 9am at 500 West Temple Street 381BM.

And, most excitingly, I was asked yesterday to consider testifying before the senate in Washington.

Look out for interviews in both the LA Weekly and Newsweek during the coming week.

Meanwhile….

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Categories
Gay prison

House Mouse

Every dorm in the Men’s County Jail is represented by one elected inmate, that inmate is the dorm’s House Mouse.

Originally called the House Mouth his role is to liaise between the dorm and the police.   He fixes problems, discovers when holds are lifted, dates of release, learns when the police are likely to come into the dorm for unusual reasons and generally makes life easier.

If there is a fight in the dorm it is up to him to get the truth of the fight and make appropriate punishment decisions.

A fight may result in the loss of ‘Programme’: TV, vending machine, late night privileges, even access to the commissary or when things really get out of hand…and the police raid the dorm and rip everything up…we end up without blankets or mats sleeping on ‘steel’ which never happened when I was there but we sure came close.

The House Mouse is a tough job, he has to command total respect from both the inmates and the police.  He needs to understand who he can ask for favours and who he needs to leave alone.

The first dorm I lived in was a mess.  The 5300 Mouse was disrespected.  When he called for silence during the time set aside for dorm business nobody took a blind bit of notice.  When silence in the dorm is required he would call ‘Radio!’ I’ve no idea why but that’s what they do in jail.   It means, shut the fuck up.

In the second dorm 5200 our House Mouse Carlton, a young, great looking black man.  An ex gang member, all he needed to do was call ‘Radio!’ once and there was silence in the dorm.

I made friends with Carlton when he learned how good I was at playing Spades.  After a couple of weeks he moved me into the bunk next to him.  Intelligent, wise and stylish he really shouldn’t have been in jail.  If he’d been white he wouldn’t have been.

The language of jail has to be learned quickly.  If, for instance, we were walking outside the dorm and found ourselves approaching a deputy we would be obliged to call out, ‘Walking!’  which alerted the deputy that an inmate was behind him.  Once, I was being escorted to the attorney room and told that I should always be more than five foot from a deputy.

Many of the the younger deputies came to California to pursue other dreams but those dreams had to be set aside because of the recession…here they were marshaling men who simply hated them.   Marshaling the disenfranchised, feeble-minded, surly, mental patients…I mean…there were so many people in the jail with severe mental health issues.  They needed nursing…not policing.

Many inmates were just nuisances rather than criminals.  It’s an expensive way to look after the mental health of the state of California.

Some of the cops, of course, are unapologetic sadists.  Yet, even though I witnessed unsavory behaviour I had sympathy for those men and women.  They are, after all, in jail too.

We were allowed out of dorm 5200 a great deal.  School of course, outside on the roof once a week for three hours, church on Sundays and AA.  The AA meetings were not like any AA meetings I had ever been to in my life.  Imagine 300 trannies from 4 gay dorms catching up on gossip, not giving a damn about the ‘experience, strength and hope’ of who ever was brave enough to come into the jail and share it.

Some of those tranny hookers were really convincing.  Like really high-end chicks with dicks.  Some of them were just really ugly men with make up and long hair and over weight, crafting some sort of cleavage out of their fat pecs.

The tranny hooker market is so huge that most of them put very little effort into looking like real girls.

When Rosemary walked into the dorm the less attractive, more masculine tranny hookers looked very perplexed.

Rosemary was 5 foot tall, well cut hair, perfect tits, hips…a really pretty girl.  Even the deputies looked at her askance.  Obviously intrigued.  She commanded a huge amount of attention.  Good and bad.  She was caught telling another tranny in Spanish what she thought of a particularly fine-looking deputy.  Unfortunately he understood her, pulled her off the line, bawled at her, frisked her and threw her against a wall.

A big man throwing a small, delicate girl against a wall is not a very heartening sight.

The gay dorm in the County jail is unique, I have no idea if beyond California these dorms exist.  I know that they don’t exist in prison.  Which, by the way, was where everyone wanted to be.  Prison rather than jail.  Prison condition are a million times better.  Nobody wanted to do their time in jail.  There are three kinds of prison, the jail (run by the police) the state prison (greater freedoms) and the federal prison which by all accounts is like a country club.

The problem with the Los Angeles County Jail is that is it falling apart, it is over crowded and technically condemned.  There is no money to replace it and no political inclination.  During the boom time the jails were a luxury used to lure voters to vote for those who promised to fill them.  Now the prisons and jails are a huge financial burden and nobody has the guts or political gall to face this crippling problem head on.

The two biggest unions in California are the police officers and the gaolers.  Even if crime numbers fall the police make sure that the jails remains filled.  Consequently, There are a huge number of parole violators and drug offenders inside the jail squandering precious tax dollars.

Even more galling?  Whilst the police arrest and the judiciary hand down custodial sentences the LA schools are falling apart.

There is a correlation between these two facts.

A fearful tax payer would rather pay for more police and prisons rather than educate their kids.

Just look at the draconian Californian three strike law that keeps many, many men inside who really shouldn’t be there.

It is a totally broken system with too many vested interests.

The twins are living here with me in Malibu once again.  They are dancing downstairs.  Their friend Kevin has moved in too.  It’s raining.  I have to see my lawyer today.  Blah, blah, blah.

Categories
Malibu

What A Treat

The storm passes over Malibu, leaving clear blue skies.  Catalina clearly visible on the horizon.

The garden dripping wet after the torrential rain.

The clouds were magnificent!

That’s all I can tell you.  Is that all I can say?

It has been a very busy month.  With more health issues on the horizon I retreat from normal living.  With art as my salvation I hunker down and do what I do best.

Day by bay, unfolding before me…life delivers one delightful treat after another.

I am glad I am not them.

Categories
Malibu

Full Moon

Scintillating few weeks.  I am happy.  Even though I shouldn’t be.  I have no idea what is keeping me so buoyant…not smoking, not eating wheat, full moon, going to AA meetings?  I really have no idea.

So many little things are giving me a great deal of pleasure.

The ripe figs I picked yesterday morning, the aubergine and tomatoes, the trips into Beverly Hills with Robby.  The California sunshine, the hot nights, the pool lights that I managed to fix so the water glistens at midnight.

This too will pass.

The weather has been gorgeous, the company stimulating.  The future a glorious mystery…the past not jumping up at me like a badly trained dog.

A great deal is going on…but my energy is being used creatively.  Will let you know asap.

Anyway, just as you all seem to think I have vanished…

Here I am.