Tag: Edinburgh

Categories
art Auto Biography Love Rant

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know

I was informed you were dangerous and to only speak to you when chaperoned.

AMANDA ELIASCH

You know who coined the phrase Mad, Bad etc?  Lady Caroline Lamb of course… about Byron!  Although my fun friend the sadly departed Matilda, Duchess of Argyll thought the same of her predecessor, the even more glorious Margaret, Duchess of Argyll whose husband found Polaroids of her sucking a huge cock… naked but for a string of pearls.  Frankly I would rather have been Margaret than Matilda.

Margaret said, “If you have to be a Duchess you may as well be the Duchess of Argyll.” I loved my Duchess adventures in Edinburgh and The Highlands playing back gammon and drinking whiskey, even though she hated paying her gambling debts.

Tell me how brilliant that is?  Amanda warned off me?  Most people are in no uncertain terms.  It certainly separates the chaf from the corn.  (The Chav from the Thorn). The people who remain in my life are up for the adventure of knowing me.   My new friend Ed, for instance, who I am spending tomorrow evening with…  what a sweetheart.  Of course there’s a long list of oafs who cannot bear the heat in the kitchen…  more fool them.

When I left Joe he told the friends who remained my friends they were ‘spineless’.  I am PERFECTLY sure that I would do EXACTLY the same. I am excited by my own life all over again.  What adventure will I have next?

Amanda and Tim are once again breaking up…  but the truth of the matter is that Amanda… poor old bird… can’t bear to be separated from Tim.  I know THAT feeling.  I hate to be separated from the man I love.  I want to punish the fuck out of him… so now she’s upon FB slagging him off like an old fish wife.

I was never so lonely as the moment I left him.

Tim’s being very discreet but really!!  These two star crossed lovers must decide what they want to do!  I can’t be the sacrificial lamb every time they fetch out their AK 47‘s.

Amanda’s beef?  Tim bought her a voucher for a ‘Garden Center‘ turns out that the ‘voucher’ is for her to buy something from the glorious Chelsea Physic Gardens a stone’s throw from her Cheyne Walk home.   Now, I would love that as a gift.  I don’t really care if Tim berates me behind my back.  It’s his prerogative but the simple fact is… I don’t care!   He’s in excellent company.

What’s been going on in FREEZING COLD Whitstable?  Had breakfast at Windy Corner Stores.   Wandered home along the  beach.  In the very short time it took me to get home something of a miracle  happened…I began to inhabit my own skin once again.  Every time I pray for something it is swiftly delivered.  The only problem is… I don’t pray enough… because I’m frightened that the magic won’t work!

Typical Boxing Day… cold meats, TV, pickles, a trip to the pub.

Whitstable, my darling home town grounded me.  Everything is going to be OK.  This is where I have lived and I will die.  The people who know me..know me.   I am so happy here..even though it is not my current home there is always, and will always be room for me.

PS You’ll need more than a chaperone to keep safe around me.

Boxing Day 2010

Categories
Love

Red Sofa

Dione Sofa

8am.  I didn’t go get the biopsy.  Something is stopping me.  I don’t want to know the truth.  Just like I didn’t want to know the truth about him.  Some truths are just too hard to face.

I am aware of the dull thump in my ball sack and in my lower back.  Like somebody is gripping my left testicle.

One of Jake’s friends wrote to me saying, and even though inaccurate, I really liked the quote, “We have all had diamonds thrown in our face.”   It was lyrical and charming.  He could have added darling to the phrase.  It would have worked perfectly.

Anyway, interesting day yesterday after I published the Irene blog.  She, of course, is threatening the IRS and an internet fraud investigation.   The problem is..I do my taxes, really thoroughly.  It’s not worth doing them any other way.   I am not feeling so feisty today.

I remain teachable.

Last night something rather remarkable happened.  I met a man a year and a half ago who is perhaps a dream of a guy.  That dream of that perfect man.  Beautiful in every way.  When we first met he explained that he was anxious about his sexuality, we had talked it through but nothing happened.  I had wondered about him occasionally, mentioned him to Jake even,  but had not contacted him.

Yesterday I received a blunt email from him asking if I wanted to explore his curiosity about men.

I thought about it for a nano second and invited him over.

So, last night we had a very steamy session with each other but I wasn’t engaged.  I felt distant, absent..and not really ready to have sex with anyone else.  I didn’t even want to kiss him. It is odd this morning to wake up with the smell of some other man on your fingers.   I knew that it had to happen sooner or later..somebody else but it’s still too early.   I tell you, I don’t envy men like Jake who can sport fuck but the healthy alternative is such a lengthy process.  We all agree that if I had been a sport fucker I would have been dead a very long time ago.

Why was his coming to see me last night so remarkable?  Because I was always warned in AA to be careful what I prayed for.  Getting what you want when God wants you to have it rather than when you want it can be very ungratifying.

Peter Doig painting in my bedroom 1982 Boom Boom Boom (The Sublime)

Is getting to know a man before you sleep with them so bizarre?   So when the moment happens, one is present and authentic?  After all,  Jake and I talked for months before we finally fell into each others arms.

Perhaps he can do that with anyone?  Perhaps a period of total abstinence is what I need?

I could have let things just stay the way they were, letting him tell me about his conquests but by the time we returned from Europe I just knew that merely having him in my life would be too disruptive.

I did not want that young man to stick around last night.  He left and I lay on the red Victorian sofa I have owned for twenty-six years.  I began to doze.  There was something very comforting about laying there.  The over stuffed arms, the familiarity.   The constant presence of that sofa in my life.  Dione bought it for me in Edinburgh in 1984.  It was on the street outside a junk shop and it was desperate to be loved.  I covered it in white ticking, the first of 4 times it has been reupholstered.  Jake was three when I bought that sofa.  Unexpectedly Dione’s daughter wrote to me yesterday.  She’s a sweet heart.

Things have given me more pleasure than the men I have loved.

So, the young man left the house at 2am.  I don’t think I’ll be seeing him again.

The picture at the top of the page was taken in my Whitstable house, the house that belonged to Peter Cushing.  The red sofa wearing it’s blue slip cover.

Categories
Death Dogs Malibu

Eclipse

The Big Dog

7am Friday morning Los Angeles.  It’s time to come clean.

This week last year was the last I would spend with my Darling Big Dog who is now buried in Malibu.

I miss her so much.

The occasions when I just breakdown and cry for her are fewer nowadays but it still happens.

If it weren’t for the little dog I don’t know how I would have survived the darker days this year, the dread comes upon me but I have to get up and go on because his needs come first.  He is a little dog, he comes from a damaged place and I made a promise to him..

The dread.

There is, I hear, something quite magical about drowning.  There is a euphoric moment just before death that could make a long swim quite an attractive prospect.

Up and down, up and down.   The trip home will, I know, keep me balanced and sane.  So much to do and see.   Spoke to my travelling companion last night.  He seems well and happy.

Yesterday I woke at dawn and filled my time until I could legitimately start the day.  The little dog sleeps as I potter around in my bathrobe and read the news.   I am going to climb Runyon this morning.

Over in Malibu I saw another huge snake in the garden but it was hot and angry so I didn’t fetch my shovel.  Anyway, I still feel guilty for killing the last one.  So may people asked why I didn’t keep the meat and eat it.

The problem with changing your life so completely is that you are left with a huge hole where your life once was.  Sex Addiction meetings are not enough to keep me happy or secure or in touch.  Gratitude lists look paltry when written down.  Even meeting up with my friend and mentor can’t seem to shift the immense longing I have in my heart that periodically casts such a deep shadow over me.

My happiness eclipsed I look to the usual suspects to shine light into the darkness.  Sadly their batteries are dead.

Listening to loud and uplifting music can go some way to making life better.   My choices may seem suspect, Elton et al.   I can’t listen to Joni, her obsession with lost love merely plays into the pessimistic thoughts I am already prone to when the sun stops shining.

Dentist yesterday.  The dentist gave me a lecture about flossing and I lectured her about the perils of white flour/sugar/rice etc.   I don’t think any kind of doctor here likes being told anything because they are so used to dispensing advice and usually remain unchallenged.  She tried to scare me with apocalyptic visions of the bone around my teeth falling away that can only be solved, she said, by spending thousands of dollars and endless hours in the dentist’s office.

I think I will ignore her advice and see my lovely dentist in Sydney when I am there this winter.   Oh yes, I am going to Sydney this winter.   I decided this morning.

After seeing Sebastian this week I thought a great deal about my father.  Dead, maligned,  reviled..much like I expect I will be.

Another Sebastian to think about, my friend Sebastian Horsley who has finally become the glittering star he always wanted to be.  I knew it.  In death he has become the man they wanted him to be.  Death becomes him.  In death we can acknowledge the fantasy of who he was rather than the stinking reality, the crazed drug addict.  I will remember him for twenty-seven years from Edinburgh to London.  I will remember him struggling to stay clean, vulnerable, and helpful to other heroin addicts.   How can I forget?

I stopped in on Andrew yesterday.  He had a square, roughly glazed vase of white hydrangea mixed with other tiny, yellow flowers.  The mere act of filling the house with flowers lifts the spirits.  They have hung huge photographs and his found chair collection grows weekly.  I fell asleep on the sofa and when I woke up he was gone.  When did I stop appreciating these tiny gestures of good will?  When did I stop buying flowers?  How did my house get so full of other stuff?  That’s why I like going to the Malibu because I have stripped out all of the mess.  I am left with an African seed pod on a porcelain plate.

My Darling Big Dog

When did I start forgetting that aesthetic?  The aesthetic that Patrick taught me when I was Andrew’s age?

Meanwhile I am dealing with the birth of a monster.  One I can scarcely contain.  One I have done my level best to avoid for many years.   The goblins hold a cracked mirror to your face and all you can see is the ugliness.  Not the age, (because I am sure of my age) but how very ugly one is.  My confidence stems from this:  that when I look into the mirror I appreciate what I see and hope that others may see me just as I see myself.

OK, off to Runyon with the Little Dog.   Time to go now.   Time to get on with the day.   Busy, busy, busy.