Categories
Gay

Happy Birthday Me

Here are some of the pictures Dan took last week at my party…I will add them as and when they arrive.  I am having my LA birthday party tonight….should be fun.

Lady Rizo

Lady Rizo sang Lilac Wine, Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend and a Brittany Spears mash up.

Devon, Aleksa and Me

Aleksa came with her husband Devon…straight from the set of Boardwalk Empire

Dan and Stephen

Dan took all the pics but thankfully had one of himself.

Ian and Bradley

Ian Drew and Bradley from US Weekly…who told me yesterday that I am indeed in the upcoming A List.

Rob Roth who sang ‘I’ll Melt With You‘ rather wonderfully and the legend who is indeed Chandler Burr.  The performance artist and NYT scent editor…

Duncan and Robby

This trip to NYC changed darling Robby’s life.

Sweet friends from LA Jess and her lover.

Victoria Whitbread and her friend Tom with Dee Mansfield who flew from Hong Kong for my party.

Yaniv, Michael (GLADD) and Cyndi Stivers who started Time Out NY

The Black Soft

Chase and Joey from The Black Soft came and not only performed their new song for me but totally wowed their new audience.

Zach and Alex

Joan, Lady Rizo and Joe

Greg Lucas and David Stillman Meyer

Kaolin, Friend and Zach

Lady Rizo and Donovan.

Duncan, Charlie Parsons and Tom Desanto

Jeff and Robby

And over to you LADY RIZO!!!

OK, that’s it!  More tomorrow from tonight’s party.

Categories
Gay

Birthday Party

Robby left this morning.  I was really sad to see him go.

The indisputable zenith of my birthday party was Lady Rizo singing Lilac Wine.    Seventy people in the room, you could hear a pin drop.   Such a disparate group of people with a magical spell cast over them…as only Rizo can.

The day was perfect in every way.    Dee emerged from her room at The Standard and we ate a delicious lunch with Toby and the super cute Joe.  When he took his clothes off and dived into the pool everybody watched him in awe.  A man not a boy.  A man with a perfect body.

Joan met me mid afternoon and delivered my birthday gift.  A BEAUTIFUL pair of sunglasses I had been hankering after for six months.

We all returned to Dee’s room at The Standard.  I love this hotel.  The finishes and detailing throughout the hotel are ravishing, the amazing view of The Statue of Liberty peeking over the horizon.

Spent the afternoon with Joe.

The weather has been stunning here.  Walking the streets has been inspiring.

Soho House did an amazing job of organizing my birthday party.  The food was excellent; the staff were charming and helpful.  The room perfectly appointed.

As well as Lady Rizo my friends Joey and Chase also known as the Black Soft and Rob Roth performed.  Rizo stole the night.  She sang a brilliant and very funny mash-up of Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend and Wannabee.  With the writer of the Spice Girls classic in the room it was especially poignant.

People really made the effort.  Victoria Whitbread, Matt Rowe and Charlie Parsons flew from London and of course there were many, many gorgeous boys to look at.  I had exactly what I wanted.

This was the birthday party I should have had last year but traded for a miserable time with the crazed fan.

We ended up on the roof by the pool with yet another blue balling straight boy called Sean.  Soft skin, perfect body.   As we were sitting there I saw Dominique Lomas from Sydney!  Of all people.  She looked gorgeous.  Here in NYC writing a novel.  If only I had known!

So, we all sat there in the balmy night looking down at the Hudson.  Dreaming of Sean’s face in my lap.

Sean headed off with Dominique.  We were invited to young FJ’s house.  We walked the few blocks to his huge Soho loft, stuffed with amazing art belonging to the boy’s step-father..a renowned art historian and personal hero of mine.

Tom, Robby, me and the boys.

We had the beautiful boys to take their tops off and then we took pictures of them.  It was honest (sordid) fun.  Note the Lucian Freud beside them.

I was surrounded by love last night.  Surrounded by people who loved me.   Serenaded me.  Friends old and new.  People had traveled a very long way to see me and I felt finally rewarded for these past months of painful growing.

I am determined that these final months in America will mean something to me.  Determined that they will be happy, joyous and free.  The glimpse of the Statue of Liberty reminded me why I came here, have made it my home but also why I must ultimately move on.

Categories
art

Konrad Wyrebek Studio Visit

Categories
prison Rant Travel

Stealing Virginity

We are in Marseilles.   Bad hotel in the port but very welcome after our long journey from Calais.

Our trip?  A spontaneous event.  Bought a ticket and jumped on a train.  The train was packed and we were moved around a lot.  The dog was in good spirits. The coffee was delicious.  In Lille I ran to Monoprix and bought ham and cheese forgetting that Jake doesn’t eat cheese.

We sat next to very good looking man and his gf who I befriended.

The last part of my stay in London was irritatingly dramatic.  A largely drama free vacation morphed into the worst kind of melodrama.

Firstly, the iPod turned up.   Whether it was in fact stolen or not is another matter.  It was not my iPod.    Yes, you heard me.  It wasn’t even my iPod.  Yet, I felt incredibly responsible.  It was Jake’s iPod – and critically, if not found, would jeopardize my relationship with whomever the fucking iPod belonged to…Jake.   Pride before a fall.   My pride before my fall.

I have only myself to blame.

A little more information about the incident:

The cast of characters I mentioned yesterday included a tall spotty boy who was recently expelled from school for stealing a girl’s virginity in the school toilets.  Ruby, a small, fat girl with bright red hair with a nasty mouth and attitude – until she wants something of course, like a fag then she sweetens up pretty damned fast.  The ugly gay friend and his pretty Greek ‘best friend’ were perhaps the worst of the lot.

Paul, Phil’s long-term man friend explained to us how rude and impossible he found them all.   He told me that Ruby was a thief.  Actually he really fanned the flames once the iPod went missing.   It seemed like there was no other reasonable explanation.

Sure I over reacted but nobody tried to help.   Yet, it was none of my damned business.  The moment it went missing I offered to pay for it as if I were somehow responsible.  Why?

I had no reason to feel responsible for somebody else’s stuff.  Especially as they were drunk and had lost the damned thing.  I was sober and didn’t lose anything.    When I left my sunglasses in Whitstable I didn’t expect anyone to pay for them yet for some extraordinary reason the moment someone else loses something I feel as if it were my fault.

As I was sitting in the cell I had a series of catastrophic thoughts.  The dog was dead, my friend was dead, my stuff had been ransacked.  I sat on the edge of the bed blaming myself for introducing someone essentially blameless into a den of thieves.

As it turned out the kids had not stolen the fucking iPod and it was LOST.   I was angry with myself that I had brought a sweet, kind, good person into a den of thieves but as it turned out I brought a forgetful person and my temper into a largely innocent adolescent smoking den.

As much as I loathed them for their promiscuity, their smoking and rudeness I had no reason to jump to conclusions.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

There is an Indian woman taking very loud telephone calls on her very large phone with a very loud alarm that goes off with appalling regularity.   I think every train should have a mobile/cell free zone where other travelers can escape.

Delightful dinner with Charlie Parsons at Dean Street Town House.  Just me Jake, Charlie and delicious food.  Calves liver.  Bumped into at least twenty old friends on the streets of Soho including Tania who was in Clancy’s Kitchen.  Ended up at Soho House with Richard and his friend.

Today we are going to rent a car and aim toward Monte Carlo.  The streets at night around the port are transformed this morning.  I am wearing a brightly patterned Etro shirt and my black sandals.   I am tired but eager to get on the road.