Tag: Forgiveness

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Gay Love Malibu

Am I Weak?

I had no idea yesterday was Friday. I thought it was Wednesday. That’s how disorienting the mountain can be.

I have been trapping squirrels. Peanut butter and Weetabix. My secret weapon. The little dog at my side. Spent the rest of the day under the deck clearing dead leaves.

Paid water bill in Malibu, picked up some milk.

Dinner with friends. Crappy Cafe Habana. The rudest waitress on the planet.

Cold mist over the mountain. The weather is totally fucked up.

Apparently The ‘A’ List is very amusing.  Ian had an advance screener.  I probably don’t come off very well.  Never mind.  I am, according to Ian…referred to as ‘smelly’.   Watch the show on Logo, Monday night.  More will be revealed.

Because you love me (huh?) an anonymous ‘friend’ out there decided to send a recent picture of Jake.

Please don’t do it. As you are well aware, it just inflames the situation.

I don’t want to see him or hear anything about him.  I am at peace with him. Want the best for him.

I forgave him for writing that horrible email, for lying to me.  His lies, in retrospect, were perfectly understandable.  He was in a terrible situation.  I forgive you for being selfish and insensitive….for doing what perhaps all your non-sober friends would think perfectly reasonable.

I forgive you for wanting me to be something I never was.  I forgive you because you didn’t know.

What is my part in all of this? When everyone around me was warning not to get involved I ignored you all. I ignored John. I ignored Mr. P. I ignored Dr. D and my therapist Jill.  Instead of going to meetings and connecting with dependable friends I sank into my addiction. Acting out with a straight identified man.

Regardless of what he morphed into…he was not mine to love.  It is indeed very alluring to be told that you are loved but I am old enough, experienced enough to have seen it for what it was.  I chose not to.

I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger. I’m sorry for bruising you inside and out. I’m sorry that I couldn’t stop myself from loving you. I’m sorry that I was insensitive and selfish. I’m sorry for shouting.  I’m sorry I lied.  Most of all, I was wrong to have waged this war against you, not least because I have done myself irreparable damage.

I was wrong.

I was weak.

I fell for him…as many will.

You are a beautiful, sexy, romantic, intelligent man. Above all…you are curious.  If you are not already, you will make someone very happy, very proud.  You will make some equally honorable man a great husband, you will be a good father.

I wanted you for myself. In a different narrative that wouldn’t be so bad. But you had just come out, bravely left one life to make something brand new.   I should have been a support, a conduit.

Peace comes from acceptance and forgiveness.

I hope one day you will find it in your heart to forgive.  I don’t need to know that you have.

My Whitstable mash up…I was his age when I made that video and it reminded me of what sort of man I was. Unprepared. I was unprepared and willful.

I imagine that he is out there doing his best to be honest. Living in New York, working every day.

Connecting to his new gay life.

I hope he marvels at his good fortune: his new gay life. The opportunities it affords. With marriage and babies and freedom…it’s a great time in New York to be a gay man.

Both Zach and Dan told me that I should stop writing about Jake.  Zach told me that it made me sound weak.  Well, that maybe.  Weak or not, it’s time to move on.

At some point soon I have to remove (yet again) any reference to him from this blog. Any photograph, his name etc. It just has to be.  Not because I am being forced but because it is the right thing to do.  As if it never happened. As if we never happened.

This blog and his name written here ties him to me as much as I have strapped myself to him like a suicide bomb.

So, Adieu my friend.

I am writing this at The Country Mart in Malibu waiting for Karim as he stands in line for our lunch.

He is off to Patmos, Paris, Antibes and Athens for the rest of the summer. Places I love.

Some of those places we visited.  I will cherish those memories.  I will overlook the problems.  I will keep quiet now about what we loved most because only we know.

Categories
Gay

Genuflect This

I sat quietly in St Patrick‘s cathedral.

Just me and the Little Dog strangely all alone in that vaulted place.

I have no idea how or why I ended up there. I wanted avocado on toast at Gitane not a divine intervention.

I genuflect and bow my head.

I knelt right at the front, first pew, and looked up at the painting of Jesus who in that particular church is part cherub.

I don’t really believe in Jesus.  It’s a lovely idea but nah…Jesus is not my friend.  God, on the other hand, is my friend and it was to him that I genuflect, to him that I kneel and to him that I found myself praying with some adolescent insistence.

I kept on praying for the strength to forgive.  Please let me have the strength to forgive him.  Forgive his childish letter, forgive him for so crudely lying his way into my life.  Forgive him for being ordinary.  Yes, that sounds cruel but I wanted him to be extraordinary and he just isn’t.

We only have a few more days before I face The Penguin in court and all I want is to forgive him, to look into his face and forgive him.  I am praying hard that happens.

I don’t mind listening to anything he throws at me…I know he is fighting for his life…as long as I am at peace.   He made some really, really silly mistakes.  Mistakes that not only impacted on my life but on every person around him.

If only he had the guts to just say that he was sorry, he has no idea how forgiving I can be.

I spoke to John yesterday about unanswered questions and he made a very good point.

If, for instance, I asked my step-father why he did what he did to me, he really wouldn’t know.  He didn’t know.  When I confronted him all those years ago he collapsed into my arms.  Defeated by my directness.  It was the only time I ever saw him vulnerable.

The Penguin has no idea why he did what he did so it’s really no use asking him why.  Even though I want to know so badly.

Last night I rolled around a large bed with a young man I met in the park.   He walked to my house, brought me lilacs, paid for my dinner and as people are want to do, flicked through various photographs on my iPhone left over from when I first met The Penguin.

He said, “He looks like me.”

Yes, I said.  “He does look like you but he’s not at peace like you are.”

NYC is jam-packed with beautiful jewish boys.

Categories
Gay Rant

trying to forgive

OK, it’s really time to forgive.  It’s so fucking hard to forgive someone you have loved. I don’t know if it’s the right thing?  We had such an intense time together.

I dealt with the unresolved financial aspect today but it gave me zero pleasure.

I think..why the fuck should he get away with anything.  Here it comes again..the wave of resentment.

I wish on more occasions that I care to admit that I could remove every single mention of him on my blog just like he wanted but now look..the pages are covered with him.   Mentions and pictures and insults.  I know that it must have hurt him terribly.  For what?

Because I loved him.  Because I don’t want to love him. Because I want to let him go..forever and this seemed like the only way.

I broke my promise to celebrate every moment of his new gay life.

Two people come together for what ever reason and try to make something happen.  The moment the heart is engaged it becomes treacherous.

Toby and I went out last night to WeHo where I thought I wanted to be happily surrounded by own kind.  It was GHASTLY!  I LOATH mediocrity!  Jake wasn’t mediocre.  He wasn’t deliberately cruel.  He was just confused.  I should have known better..but why should I?  Why should I know just because I am older?  I keep thinking about The Velvet Rage.  How we become who we are shaped in a hostile world.  Having to invent ourselves as we go along.

I don’t know the answers…why should I?

I tried to be there for him, to help him but I couldn’t help myself..I fell in love.  So, every time I eat a tomato I think of him because we bought those beautiful tomatoes in the market in Sanary and ate them like peaches.

Every time I sit opposite another man on a ‘date’ I compare them to him.   Every time something good or bad happens I want to share it with him..yet I have no right.  I never had any right.  You see, he always made it perfectly clear after he left her that he wasn’t leaving her for me.   The damage was already done.  I was already in love, I believed him when he wrote to me telling me how much he loved me.

Even though I urged him to get honest I think it suited me that he wasn’t.  When he finally told her I was in SHOCK.  It seemed like the most brave yet foolhardy thing to do.  There were other ways of telling the truth.  But that’s just my fucked up head getting in the way.  He did the right thing.

When I told John the Saturday morning he told her he was gay we both looked at each other in SHOCK.

As we became more involved I couldn’t just continue with things the way they were.  I couldn’t bear listening to him tell me about other men and not be profoundly hurt however generous I wanted to be.

I didn’t want it to end but it had no future and if it had no future I couldn’t continue.

I need either to be on my own or to share my life with a man who gives equally, kindly, compassionately.

This will make you laugh:  I met a man (my age) at dinner the other night who wanted a date but cancelled after reading my blog.  So, it’s just me and my blog.

As for the money? I don’t care about the money, I just care that he’s not getting away with anything.  Then of course..I do care.  When I am feeling angry or resentful I care so much about the fucking money.

It’s 110 degrees in LA.  At the end of the week we return to sultry days and chilly evenings.

Where are the grand romantic gestures?  Should I have moved to NYC ?  I simply couldn’t.  I couldn’t shift my life east because I loved him so much.  I always knew that I would eventually have to let him go.

Now look, these pages are littered with every mean thing I could have written about him.  But inside my crazy head every mean thing I think about him is balanced with a good thought, a lovely memory, a kind gesture.

I just don’t want you to think I am weak, laying in bed this morning and trying to conjour up good thoughts of Jake, wanting to remember all that was sweet and let the loathing go.

Toby and I went into Weho last night.  It was a cluster fuck.  The Abbey was throwing a birthday party for its owner.  We left a few minutes after arriving.   It was shirtless night there.  Just more flesh.  More male bodies, shaved chests, cropped hair..like walking onto the set of an endless porno shoot.  Aspirations reduced to one thing: cock.

When I craved, in the 1980’s, more openness for our gay culture so we were not hidden from those who might harshly judge us..did I ever imagine this:

From the sidewalk we could see into Mickey’s where half-naked men gyrated on podiums with dollar bills stuffed in their knickers.  At East West more half-naked men on podiums wearing cowboy hats trying to dance unsuccessfully to country and western music. In Fiesta Cantina karaoke boys sang moody songs very badly and worst of all, just a few doors away in Rage a man was being bound and gagged in the entrance of the bar and hoisted above the audience by a vile, tattooed queen in leather.

I, like the dumfounded straight people around me,  looked in at this horrible spectacle.  I felt sick that this carnage was the public face of our ‘culture’.  The freaks, the mediocre, the wet brains, the fools..and (however beautiful they were) all so ugly..so inauthentic.

That we had all fought so hard to be taken seriously…and crave marriage and equality.

I let the little dog out of the car and he ran like a lunatic around the West Hollywood park and I felt as if in some small way my faith could be restored in the world.

Categories
Rant

Forgiveness and Acceptance

Anger disguises sadness. My anger disguises my sadness.

I am trying to forgive him. I know that my anger toward him merely disguises just how rotten this breakup feels. Whilst it is easy to blame him for his insensitivity I will sooner or later have to totally accept my part in this drama. Accept that I wanted him to be something he could never be.

Accept that I chose to overlook his drinking and drugging and manhunting because I wanted him more than I was prepared to know what was good for me.

Forgiveness comes in waves. Acceptance too. I must forgive him and accept that things are exactly how they are meant to be.

The truth is (as per the tenets of AA) sooner or later I will have to totally forgive him and make my amends..a living amends in this case.

I was so happy when I came back from Europe! I felt and looked like a different person. Everybody noticed it and commented. Now look.

I just want to sleep. Get back into my bed and stay there all day long. I have another article to write and a proposal to submit. I have to wrap the art in bubble wrap to take to NYC. I must do these things or he steals even more than he has already stolen.

When we got home all I wanted was an open and honest relationship.

I woke early this morning and drove to the beach where I walked the lil dog for an hour. On the way there I passed a cute man in a sleek convertible and chatted with him briefly at the intersection of Fountain and Labrea. He looked lovely. We continued our chat at red lights on and off until I turned onto the 10.

What must he have thought of my battered truck?

The promenade in Venice early morning is a cess pit of vagrants and drug dealers. Rich folk unlock their homes overlooking the ocean and tip huge dogs into the melee.

Here it comes again: I am so angry with him. Yet, just like I was broken when the big dog was killed and every death and loss and separation came to be healed as I sobbed for her poor broken body so now when the tears come it is for every man I have ever left behind.

No tears yet.

I wish the tears would come. I am dry-eyed, emotionally arid.

When I am not feeling angry, I feel like a fool. It was such a waste taking him home to Whitstable. I thought I was taking someone who would appreciate what he was being given but all he did was lose his iPod and cause trouble and make a fool of me.

He took a huge shit at the very heart of my life. Did you notice that he was always on his lap top when we were in Europe? Couldn’t keep him away from it. He’s addicted to intensity, to fantasy.

Everyone else could see that he was just a using fame whore. I hadn’t had anyone want me just because I had been on TV. I genuinely thought he wanted me.

8 months of Jake.

Last night Michael and I watched Goddess with Kim Stanley. Written by Paddy Chayefsky. It’s a really camp half-telling of the Marilyn Monroe story. One huge, cumbersome monologue after another. There couldn’t have been a single conversation during the entire movie.

The film eerily anticipates Monroe’s demise.

As we lay on his bed watching the film the Lil Dog kept an eye on Michael’s cat who hissed and spat until we left for SHLA stopping briefly at Boa where we met Bryan Singer and Toby. Up in the house we were assaulted by three very drunk people who wanted to be our friends who, in fact, totally ruined our evening so we scarpered.

I had a massage at my house at 11pm..no not one of those…and fell asleep.

I wrote to Jake today telling him to cough up what he owes me. I suppose he will force me to do what I am telling Irene to do. Go to small claims. It’s a fucking bore but I’ll do it.

I want to drop an atom bomb on him for hurting me. I want everyone to appreciate the injustice. That I did nothing to chase him, lost my sexual sober time.. As I look back over the months we spent together every beautiful moment is lost in the dark cloud of resentment that blocks the sun out of my life.

I must pray for acceptance. It’s the only way.