It’s my new obsession.
Court today.
Spent rest of morning with ACLU.
Breakfast with Ivan downtown.
Lunch with Robby. We ate octopus.
Love this picture of me.
Oh yes, I seem to have pissed off the cult. AA people…in LA.
Freaks.
Categories
Tag: Facebook
I am downtown. Downtown LA. We are drinking coffee in a chic coffee shop.
It is reassuringly sophisticated. It feels like NYC. It feels like a city. Spring Street. Coffee bar. The people who pass by are dressed well and don’t have that Hollywood vibe. The women are not showing off their chests and legs, the boys are wearing well cut pants and have covetable accessories.
Having the car makes life more interesting. I am scarcely at home. I am writing this on my phone.
I had dinner with an old friend on Saturday night. We ate at Bossa Nova then we saw Clash of the Titans 2 at the Chinese Theatre. There were less than 10 of us in the theatre. The film was terrible, Olivia was terrible. Everything about that terrible film that could be said…was said. He brought two young men. They didn’t say much. One was gay, the other ‘in training’. Outside the theatre there was a costume exhibition. We poured over the ormolu costume jewelry Elizabeth Taylor wore in Cleopatra.
We explained to the boys the history of Century City. You know that story don’t you? How Cleopatra bankrupted 20th Century Fox? How the back lot was sold and Century City was built? Everybody should know that story, if they live in LA.
It was pouring rain. Under the theatre, in the parking lot, valley girls were vomiting out of SUVs onto their fake Louboutins. We drove west, we sat together at my club and they drank cocktails. I drank coffee. The boys remained mute.
Not feeling at all combative, I found myself passionately discussing racism and gay equality which quickly disintegrated into a nasty UK v USA argument. At one point my friend told me that if he could press a button and eradicate all Muslims he would. I pointed out that my father was a Persian Muslim and technically so were the majority of my 11 brothers and sisters. That he would have to kill my young sister Rebecca.
How did he feel about that? His genocidal zeal was not diminished.
How come it’s become ok for reasonable men to become so islamaphobic? The conversation further disintegrated into how retarded the Brits were for accepting equality without the word marriage in the equation. It made my blood boil that he would rather have nothing if he couldn’t have the word marriage. Civil unions in the UK seem, to those who have them…just like being married and my friends who have civil unions think of themselves, describe themselves, as married. Anyway, the m word is now being fought for in the UK but more as a nice after thought attached to the equality that we already enjoy. You know how I felt, and people like me felt about that word. Archaic, patriarchal bull shit…antiquated in the secular UK.
Then, this morning, I found myself listening to Democracy Now on the radio as I drove the 101 Freeway.
Van Jones being interviewed.
He pointed out that in the civil rights game played out in the USA…if you are prepared to be arrested for what you believe…and there are enough of you, change happens quickly.
Be seen to fight for what you believe rather than playing the faceless gay equality/marriage ‘incremental’ tactic…employing expensive lawyers and fighting state by state… He mentioned the names of 5 or 6 black civil rights leaders. I got to wondering where our civil rights leaders were? Who are they? Why can’t I name them?
I suppose Lance Black has become a recognizable leader/voice of the gay community but this seems accidental rather than deliberate. It has always been my dream for the gay men and women of the USA that they get the human rights they deserve. But…what are they prepared to risk when demanding those rights? How many windows do they need to break?
There is something weedy and unfocused about the movement. Worse, by articulating this frustration I risk people like my friend telling me that I am letting down the cause. We need leaders, we need direct action. It is the only way the unelected justices (who get the final say) at the Supreme Court will truly understand how important equality is to us.
The system has failed us.
Meanwhile, Justin Bond shared on Facebook a piece from the NY Times about the suicide of a gay man struggling with the notion of old age…amongst other things.
Read it here: gay suicide
Some of Justin’s friends dismissed the piece as worthless. Some of them understood how important it was. Some of them, quite rightly, wondered why the piece was in the style section. Our community wrestles with all sorts of problems peculiar to our people. It is absurd, at moments like this, to pretend that we are just like everyone else. Our generation of gay men, used to unlimited sex, sexual validation, Peter Panism at its worst…has to wake up and acknowledge the wrinkles.
So, it’s been quite a week. A date last night that went really well. Passionate discussions and…well the dogs.
What more could I want?
Doctor’s office yesterday. He wasn’t there.
The receptionist told me with ersatz compassion that they had tried calling me. They had tried cancelling.
She showed me the number they had for me. She let me see the evidence. The right digits, the wrong order.
I remembered telling the young woman who initially took my details. I remembered her thick accent. I knew that she didn’t understand what I was saying whilst I was saying it.
She’s not the only one. I get things so muddled. I can’t spell.
I mean, some words elude me…like the word ersatz. It baffles me.
Hot coffee, very hot microwaved coffee. It’s raining. The dogs are staying in bed.
The boys stayed out last night. I had a friend over. Lit a fire.
Yesterday this mad kid (Turkish origin) from Bel Air in Maryland left violent, racist messages on this blog. He used to call and text. He stopped texting and calling months ago after I threatened the police…so he sets up false Facebook accounts and tells me how he is going to kill me etc.
In his head he is best friends with Peres Hilton.
In his head he thinks he can leave anonymous notes…telling me that I am a disgusting negro lover…and not get caught.
Again, what this idiot, these morons don’t get? They leave their IP addresses , they leave crucial evidence. This is his: 68.55.180.249 It is linked to every email he ever sent, every message he ever wrote.
The kid is a tragic mess who needs help…but I ain’t the one to give it to him.
Robby said yesterday, after I texted some sweet note…’till death do us part’. So I reminded him that death was probably not so far off, (more deaths of contemporaries reported in London) that he would one day organize my funeral.
“Did you get a death threat?” he asked…
No. Not today.
Rain forecast for the next three days.
The kid who shot all those Afghans in their own homes last week…well, he is getting a media makeover.
They say he ‘snapped’, he was ‘drinking’, it was his ‘third tour’. Meanwhile whole families are dead.
Can you imagine the same excuses being made if an Afghan slaughtered an American family. Well, he snapped, he was drinking…he couldn’t take it any more.
Could you imagine those excuses being made?
More details are ’emerging’, more details are being manufactured so we can let this guy off the hook.
Meanwhile the tenant I had downstairs, Matty O’Neil…he has gone…leaving a disgusting mess behind him. The boys took a whole day cleaning up after him.
You know, this kid Matty spent time in jail because of his Arab origins? He was held in a jail after 9/11, probably held illegally by the US government…with his father when he was a young boy…yet when I suggested that his story and mine had similarities he told me imperiously, “I am an American! There are no similarities.”
He moved out, brought a motley crew with him. His sister, her girlfriend….his boyfriend.
The girlfriend was Chinese, the only one there with ancient Mayflower/American credentials was Matty’s boyfriend the acutely fay boy who works in the veterinary office in Malibu who Matty met on Grindr.
Deluded, the week before he left he asked me for a membership to the private club I belong to.
It made me smile. How the American children of immigrants quickly forget the struggles of their fathers.
“I pity you.” He said, as he was leaving.
Along with his pity he left two huge stains on the carpet, refused to pay his rent or accept responsibility for the mess…I pity his next landlord.
For some reason best known to WordPress my entire private collection of blogs (over 350) suddenly became readable. Past blogs that had been hidden from view.
I am now undoing what was done. Annoying.
Yesterday was altogether the most satisfying day I have had for a long, long time.
Early mornings with the boys, lunch in Hollywood, afternoon with lawyers (more will be revealed at a later date) and finally a spectacular party in the hills. A gay party, you know the kind…the sort that usually terrifies me…but on this occasion was great fun.
It was a cold night in LA and I was the only one wearing a coat. The first time I have been appropriately dressed at that house.
I felt, yet again, as if I had left that judgmental Duncan back in the jail so was free to enjoy the party. This has been a long time coming, this freedom. A delightful French actor to sit with. Many people told me how sorry they were that I had been in jail, that it seemed so wrong.
I was surprised by the reaction. Part of my fear of going there was the fantasy I had that people disapproved…in fact, the opposite was true.
I hadn’t realized that people cared as much as they do. Why is that so hard for me to believe?
Let me get back to privatizing my blog.
Categories
Give it up for Deputy Gonzales!
There are some moments that I didn’t want to share with you…but they have lingered like a prison fart.
Begging to be remembered.
One particular memory I hoped to forget:
Our dorm, as you know, was the school dorm…the honor dorm. On occasions when the police came into the dorm to conduct the evening count, when we lay on our beds, our faces in the mat, our plastic identification bracelets on view for the deputy to inspect…the police would call out, “Give it up for deputy…so and so..” and it was our job to cheer and shout and welcome the new deputy into the dorm.
If the deputy was homophobic we would be primed to make even more noise, the more well endowed, busty trannies to leap up and show the deputy their tities or dance seductively around him.
The blushing deputy, bloated on the attention, would playfully curse his colleagues.
I refused to cheer and shout. It made me sick. I wondered if the Nazis had ever played games like that in the nissen huts at Auschwitz. Making the starving jews/gays/gypsies play games for their amusement.
One night, an attractive deputy called Gonzales arrived and they cat-called him and cheered his arrival. We gave it up for deputy Gonzales and he, in turn, ran a lap of honor around the dorm. I thought, wow, he’s a good-looking man.
Weeks later Gonzales took a few of us to the visiting room but not before he had told us that homosexuals had a ‘sick lifestyle’ and we disgusted him.
It was strange to me that such a beautiful man had such ugly thoughts.
Today, I was arraigned which meant that I went back to court at 8.30am and plead Not Guilty. It was odd being in court wearing my own clothes rather than my blues. The DA, Anne-Marie Wise was wearing her badly cut, black suit, treating the event like it was a first degree murder of a small child…or something truly heinous.
Anne-Marie and I had Facebook friends in common (another DA) who she demanded de-friend me. Surely she can’t do this? Unbelievably her entire Facebook history is on view for the whole world to see. Her kids, her vacations etc. Why do people do that?
We were presented with the transcript from the preliminary trial so, I assume, this is all on public record. Who I am, who he is, who she is etc. I am still loathed to use his name…just in case it breaks some obscure law.
We met our new Judge, Judge Michael V. Jesic who seems like the most grown up Judge so far. Like a real Judge. He was a Hardcore Gang prosecutor. Son of Yugoslavian immigrants, born in Belgrade. He has gravitas. He loves animals and met his wife at a pet adoption event. Like most of them he is an ex-DA. He seems, from the video published above, like a fair man.
The LA Times endorsed him in 2008 and he is most likely to be described as ‘ethical’ by his opponents. Read a full description here.
However, he is a registered Republican (fiscally) and was strongly recommended by church organizations during his election campaign in 2008 as most likely to hold beliefs that would uphold their biblical values.
Judge Jesic will be our third and final judge.
The first judge (whose name escapes me) the first time I saw him last November, was a MESS. Papers all over the place, tie off, hair askew…when I returned with TMZ in tow he had combed his hair, wearing his robe…his tie was neatly tied around his neck. Showing his best side for the camera.
Judge Karen Nudell was our preliminary judge. I was still in custody so the petulant, young deputy who lead me into the court would rearrange my chair and tell me off for wearing my spectacles on my head.
Judge Karen sat yawning, shuffling papers, playing with her huge earings and stroking her long hair. She sat at an odd angle to the courtroom, like Mona Lisa…but less enigmatic.
She reminded me of the mother in the movie Carrie.
During the prelim Anne-Marie was trying to shame me for describing the victim as ‘The King of The Cocksuckers’. I reminded her that we were gay and being good at cock sucking was probably not an insult.
You can tell what a fiasco the trial will be. The press will have a field day. Anyway, Judge Nudell looked appalled that the words cock and sucker were being used in her court in such close proximity.
My friend later commented that Judge Nudell’s grandchildren probably made excuses not to visit her on Sundays…
Let’s hope that Judge Jesic isn’t so squeamish.
You asked me to describe my arrest. Well, let me tell you that the very courteous cops who arrested me looked like extras from a ZZ Top video. Long beards. Very, very long beards. So long in fact that their police badges were hidden behind them.
The detectives who interviewed me were charming. The first was a good-looking man probably my age (looked better clean-shaven) and the second a younger, probably rookie detective. I had no complaints about the way they treated me, they were doing their job. I’m sure they would have preferred leaping over cars chasing rapists.
I have been slowly crawling back into my life. The dog, who initially pretended not to recognize me, is back on my lap. Three months apart, he had to make Jason his master. He’s a one man dog. Of course he was confused, poor darling. We are getting on fine. We walked to Sarah and Paul’s house on Hume but they moved out. The house was open and empty…except for the leopard print, wall to wall, carpet. He ran around the house looking for them. So did I.
Mel took me to dinner at the Real Inn last night. I ate fish and chips. We sat by the fire. We speculated about the couple sitting near us, whether they were having a first date. She was wearing heels. Her Angora sweater was too short revealing her fat hips.
The house is back to normal or as normal as it ever will be with three young men who find clearing up after themselves almost impossible. Thank you twins and friend for being here. Filling the house with laughter and youthful enthusiasm. I delight in being mother hen…washing and making good food for them to eat.
I can’t complain about anything…even though I feel like I am already dead.
I am sitting at home with my foot in the air swaddled in ice, listening to Joni Mitchell. Well, singing along to her less pessimistic songs. Relieved of the bondage of self.
The dog had his stitches out yesterday.
Henry has been very kindly driving me around. We popped into Gjelina for a late lunch with Anna and bumped into Louisa Spring and the fabulous Chrissy Illey. Chrissy, as you know, is a wonderful writer and journalist from London.
Read her stuff here.
I will see them again this weekend.
I had to buy new towels. All of mine are old and miserable. Nothing worse than getting out of the shower and searing your skin with an old towel.
Meant to be having dinner with a friend in H’wood last night but my ankle blew up like a big pink balloon so I hobbled home and lay in bed. Iced.
I had a Facebook squabble with a well known writer who damned me for appearing on the ‘A’ List. Why the hell shouldn’t I? Low and High culture are there to be experienced. I have certainly had my fill of High Culture. Performance Art, Art Films…even my book (nearly finished btw) feels like it was written for the exclusive few.
Sorry publishers…I know you don’t want to hear that.
When I got home I tried sleeping but ended up not sleeping. Instead I sat at the desk tidying my prose.
Perhaps I am perplexed by seeing you know who next week? Perhaps I am worried by the future. At around 4am I finally fell asleep. Exhausted.
Malibu Chile Cookout today.
Categories
Friends
I used to be a Quaker, a member of the religious organization also known as The Society of Friends.
I went to my first meeting when I was 13 years old, primarily to get out of British boarding school Sunday morning chores.
My headmaster John Lampen and his wife Diana were running the small independent school near Shrewsbury called Shotton Hall. They were both very enthusiastic Quakers. They radiated that peculiar peace for which Quakers are renowned.
When everything at school seemed chaotic John would provide, in retrospect, a different kind of solution. I was drawn to him yet baffled. Nothing seemed to annoy him…and he knows I tried.
His alternative Oxbridge way of thinking both irritated and inspired me. He was self-assured but never smug.
He had something I most definitely wanted.
I asked if I could go to their Quaker meetings.
Sunny Shrewsbury Sunday morning. The meeting was held in a regency building set off the High Street. Cobbled streets, plane trees, red sandstone peculiar to the region.
I was an unruly, difficult child. At my first Quaker meeting I felt immediately accepted. This was an inclusive church. One where a young gay boy might find solace rather than damnation.
I heard, “There is that of God in every man.” and I was sold. The God I knew existed. No longer dressed in extravagant robes, tradition, canticles or phony ritual. A simple room filled with love. No more priests or clergy to funnel God into me like a goose choking back the corn, but there I was a 13-year-old boy looking within to find God in my heart.
I started going to meetings regularly, sitting silently for an hour, attempting to find and nurture a God of my understanding. “Like a spec of gold.” Diana said. If moved to share, a Friend would stand and speak. Sharing whatever God Shot was on his or her mind.
This was revolutionary! We were all priests.
It was as evident to me then as it is now that this was how human beings, focused on a power greater than themselves connected with their ‘God’ and each other…found joy. Without the myths and tales and dogma of organized religion it was here that we set aside our differences and focused on thinking our way into right action.
I knew instinctively that when I sat quietly in a room of meditating humans I was probably doing something that we had learned to do millions of years before. On the tundra, in the shadow of Stone Henge.
Some of us.
Reflection and God-consciousness does not suit every man. It is apparent that not all men are created curious.
My years as an active Quaker were perhaps the happiest times of my life. I loved the room. I have never been frightened of old people, different people, sick people. Perhaps that’s why I get into so much trouble?
I left school, striking out on my own into the dramatic new world of my own creation. I left the tranquility of those Quaker meeting houses behind me. I left God behind me. Nearly twenty years later, smashed to pieces by my own bad choices I would once again seek out some fundamental truths and a relationship with a God I knew was indeed in every man….including me.
I did not return to The Society of Friends but to the rooms of AA where a healthy relationship with God is essential for an everyday peace.
Yesterday was my birthday and hundreds of you wished me well. One of the great benefits of Facebook: we can celebrate our lives with an extended community of friends and acquaintances. Amongst the notes Kevin Sessums wrote to me.
He said, “Happy b’day .. have a special day with special friends not just FB ones …”
I wondered if friends on Facebook were any less special than those I met in the real world. I have never met Kevin yet I enjoy our Facebook friendship. I don’t know if I would necessarily enjoy him more if I met him.
Pen Pals we used to call them when I was a child. People I wrote to in different countries who would tell me about their exotic lives and I would live vicariously through them. Facebook is no different. I like to engage as I do in the real world. I like my ‘friends’ to see what I am up to and like when they comment. I like when they share their holiday snaps, their location and trial and tribulations.
I have several real communities that I keep up with virtually. Whitstable, Sydney, New York. I have friends in all of those places (Jake cruelly called them my sycophants) and Facebook allows me the opportunity of enhancing and deepening my ties to those disparate people.
Real people disappoint me. Facebook friends rarely do. I have no expectations of those I meet on-line. Enter my world or my house and I may not know you for very long.
I had lunch with Jennie Ketcham in Venice. We hadn’t seen each other for an age. She looked great.
Later that night Toby threw an impromptu party for me at his house and many LA friends arrived to wish me well. Were they special friends? The ones I know from AA and SAA most certainly are. I have a deep connection with those friends with whom I sit quietly, go in peace and share a common interest in God.
I didn’t take any pictures.
Regardless of any drama that may or may not be unfolding in this real world I recognize at my core a stillness that I learned as a teenage boy from long dead Quakers on quiet Sunday mornings in Shrewsbury. It is to you that I give thanks this morning. Thank you Joyce, Priscilla, Raymond, Susan, Diana and John. Thank you.
If I hadn’t met you, if you hadn’t shared so humbly what you knew to be the truth about God I don’t think I would have celebrated this last birthday nor many, many before it.
43 minutes to write this post.
14 days left to enjoy this month.
33 days until I face The Penguin in the court.
83 degrees at the beach club.
811 emails from him.
16 days left in California.
7 is a beautifully directed film.
10 feet of Bougainvillea to chop down.
3 loads of organic matter carried to the end of the drive for composting.
7 dollar sandwich for my lunch.
3 dolphins swam past us as we lay on the beach.
1 of the twins helped me with the garden.
4 of us sat in the sun.
23 dogs past us as we sat in the sun.
9 minutes to write this so far.
2 visitors from LA.
460 dollars owed to a renter.
6 months on the market and I didn’t sell the house.
13 years spent in my last house.
3,582 blog views on my busiest day.
531o days sober from drugs and alcohol.
2 days content.
1 day is all I need to think about.
24 hours is all I need to get through.
10 pages a day.
1402 Facebook friends.
90 days I want of sexual sobriety.
1 room with a perfect view.
Robby, the twin that hung around in the womb a full twenty minutes longer than Miles is urging me to go to breakfast at the bottom of the hill. It is 9am and it is already very hot here in Malibu.
The dog is sprawled on his bed in the sun.
Miles is on set somewhere nearby.
Last night Armand popped in and we took Robby’s car and had dinner at Dukes. Dukes, the restaurant of little culinary interest at the bottom of the hill. Why? Mainly because I found one of the waiters attractive. I met him in Starbucks last week and he told me that he would ‘hook us up’. I didn’t eat anything because the food looked so rancid. They had burgers and Caesar Salad and calamari and beer.
We were not hooked up.
Yesterday afternoon, after my long walk with Miles down Rambla Pacifico, my Australian friend Daniel turned up with a bottle of white wine. I poured him a glass and looked at it longingly. Crisp white wine on a warm Californian afternoon.
We have many friends in common in Sydney and it was so nice to hear all the news. I am sure if I just looked on Facebook I could have found out for myself but it was lovely listening to him tell me all about everything and everybody…the weather and the burgeoning Australian economy. The drought has ended, the reservoirs are full.
We headed into Malibu where we ate lunch at the Deli. The once very fat man who runs the Deli has lost 130lbs just by NOT eating white bread. He looks so much happier.
After lunch, as we were wandering around the absurdly priced shopping Mall, a beautiful man with a bleeding dog begged me to tell him where the vet was. His beautiful labrador had been bitten in her face by a Rattle Snake. My worst nightmare.
I pointed him in the right direction.
He had been sucking the poison out of her face. I hope she survived.
Armand stayed long after I went to bed. Teaching Robby how to use his synthesiser.
This morning I squeezed fresh grapefruit from my tree. Ruby red. Delicious.
Categories
Willie Visits
It is raining with torrential force today. See below.
The Little Dog and me are wrapped up warm on the sofa. Frank just left. He brought Willie to see us. Willie and I still love each other but he lives with Frank now. That’s that. I posted a little video of us on Facebook.
Yesterday was not a great day. I hung out with Jen and Jason, helping them with their delivery business. Anything to take my mind off of the anonymous note I received. Of course I thought about it all day.
I called Dan. When is this ever going to end?
Usually when I get notes that are JB related I just ignore them…but this was different. It was designed to hurt both of us.
In a way it was good to know where he is because I can avoid those parts of NYC where he will be. I know that it sounds improbable but I really don’t want anything more to do with him personally. I just WISH he had never ever contacted me.
Resentful about that. Totally ruined the past few months. It probably gives him immense pleasure to know that I have been so badly hurt and continue to be so. He lied his way into my life, stripped me bare and like a wilful child slammed the door in my face. So damned selfish.
I feel cheated out of the investment I made in him. The time he demanded. The love I lost. Only now, after so much damage…like a natural calamity that leaves one in the pause of powerless amazement.
When CP left last week I felt very alone. He, very sweetly, worried that I get depressed when he is away and (annoyingly) there is some truth to that. I feel focused and connected when he is around.
We have been working hard to make our film happen. It looks more likely every day. Spent last night looking at DOP reels.
I am excited by this project. Excited by its potential and our ability to reach out to our community and explore difficult ideas. We spent hours with old gay folk. Let me tell you something: for the rich or the poor old age is a the great leveler. We don’t do nearly enough for our aged population…not in England or America.
Therapy last night.
I love solitude too much.
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