Tag: God

Categories
Health Malibu

February

Madness, when it comes upon me is a grueling mystery to solve.  For months now I have been gripped with what started out merely as a broken heart.

When one begins to feel the onset of ones own brand of insanity it is always impossible to make sense of the confusing depth and range of emotions.

In the midst of the maelstrom it all feels so incredibly real.  Yet, as we are well aware, once sanity returns:  FEELINGS are not FACTS.

Regardless of how and why I experienced such a destructive wave of emotion I could only wait, as one does, for the storm to end.

It was galling that I had not suffered a comparable emotional torment for many years, fourteen in fact.  As you have read on these pages, when I first got sober I had the same misery, the same terrible sense of powerlessness that has overwhelmed me every day since last January.

There is no way to prepare for such misery.  One can only pray that it passes.  That it passes swiftly and without too much damage being inflicted on either myself or others.

I have learned so much these last few months.  Learned the very good and the very bad about myself.   It is so incredibly lonely when one is gripped by such furious indignation.

After the storm inevitably there is the wreckage.  After the storm, picking up the pieces of everything that has been smashed and knowing that it is impossible to mend what is so utterly broken.

Salvaging first and foremost ones dignity.

On this occasion I know that I have done irreparable damage to myself.  I used to have hope and I no longer do.  The reserve of hope that I was born with is exhausted.

In many ways I have been returned to that moment last January before we met when I had everything to look forward to.  It is now up to me to start again.  Start building, start a positive dialogue with myself that may include some sort of sanctuary.

My body is wrecked from these past few months.  Fighting, fighting, fighting.

Fighting what was growing inside me, fighting the feelings, fighting my true intentions to be a good and better person.

I have no idea what comes next.  I know in my heart, in the pit of my stomach, in my soul…that I will never attempt to have another relationship.  I seem truly incapable of that basic human connection and unable to deal with the associated feelings of inadequacy that swamp me once I meet any person I value.

I dare not take that risk.

I know that all familiar avenues others take for granted are now closed to me.

When I was a child, the only way I could express my fury at the world was to smash everything in my room.  Everything I held dear.   It was my only option.  There was nowhere to run, no place to hide.

And what of him?

Well, I hope and pray that he is already living a wonderful life, that he has great and extraordinary beauty ahead of him.  I know that he is capable of things I can only dream about.  I finally expunged his name from this blog and worked hard to uncouple him from me in the virtual ether.  His ‘bit of fun’ turned into a nightmare for us both but I am determined to forgive him…the alternative will merely drag me into further insanity.

He is not the problem.  He must be part of the solution.

If I am truly over this catastrophe then I must love him as much as I must love the unfair world around me.  He is a stranger now.  He will remain a stranger.

For what once felt so beautiful, as I predicted, must now be an inconsequential blip.

To this end I must accept any and all of my own shortcomings.  I must see my part in this drama.  Own my part in it.

I must let God take back the reigns.

There are other more important lessons to learn, adventures to be had…but I will not learn any of them unless I can truly forgive.

Categories
Malibu

God Children

My darling God Children give me so much pleasure.  Here is a glimpse of them.   They have moved to Lake Malibu which is  just PERFECT.

Loads going on in SoCal…but just H’wood shit.   On HLN again tonight with my valued opinions about Charlie Sheen.   SAG awards…blah blah.  Aleksa won with her Boardwalk Empire colleagues.  She texted me after…so excited.  I am so proud of her.

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Categories
Gay

Crazy Christian/Muslim/Jewish Monsters

Just a quick note about the repeal of DADT:

This gay male ain’t impressed. Like everything Obama does the goodwill gets lost in the detail.

I am not holding my breath for better treatment for gays in the military.

Of course DADT was absurd but repealing it does nothing when you get to thinking about the real and immediate problem for gay men and women in the USA:   The Christian Right hates us (along with the devout Muslim and the Orthodox Jew)  and would like us to self destruct in a cloud of holy vapor.

With the advent of fascist Palin and her ilk…who intellectuals love to laugh at as the German intellectuals did at Hitler…laws like this can be very easily repealed.  For Goodness sake, they are already discussing separate dorms for gays!

Now, let’s start talking about the real issue: legal parity, matrimonial parity and stop gawping over the death of a ridiculous law that affected a tiny number of men and women compared to DOMA which affects us all.

There’s something else, something I always forget to write:

The gays and the lesbians ain’t going anywhere.

We ain’t asking and you ain’t telling.

You murderous, repellent christian/muslim/jewish folks can kill every black man, every white man, every asian, every jew, every muslim, every christian, every aboriginal…but as long as there are humans on the earth we will be there too.

Get used to it!  Get fucking used to it!

We are your children and your grand children.  You can hunt us down and kill every one of us but tomorrow another gay will be born.

It is God’s Will you crazy Christian/Muslim/Jewish Cunts..it’s God’s fucking will.

As for the gays…

Parity, unity and now.

Get off your fat, lazy, complacent asses gay America and start breaking windows until you achieve equality.   Stop relying on bloated lawyers to fight unwinnable cases.  Do SOMETHING!!!  Do it NOW!!!

I know you won’t.  There’s a boy you’ve seen on Manhunt..a martini waiting for you at the bar…weights to lift at the gym.

I live in the USA. I am appalled by the lack of political initiative that gay people take or are engaged in.

Frankly this DADT repeal is small cheese.   American gay and lesbian equality is leagues behind the rest of the developed world because they refuse to engage in direct action.   They refuse to seen to have an opinion…refuse to fight in any meaningful way and, just as Obama attempted to engage with the Christian right with his ill fated consensus politics..reaching out to his adversary, the gays have their agenda prescribed by their homophobic enemies rather than doing what government hates most: insurrection.

Governments hate their own people on the street demanding to be heard.

Gay men especially still live in a great deal of  fear.

Look at the way radical British gay human rights activist Peter Tatchell fought hard and visibly for all to see, worked in tandem with Stonewall lobby type groups and allowed the oppressed a voice in the streets.

In America we are regularly stoned, beaten, insulted and killed.  It is time to fight back, it is time to be heard and a smidgeon of compassion is simply not good enough.

Categories
Christmas

Snowed In


Totally trapped in Whitstable!  So many old friends to be trapped in the town with.  Lovely seeing everyone.  Had tea in Wheelers with Anita and Michael.  Adam and I drank more tea and ate mince pies by the fire at Carol’s house.  Saw Tim at Tea and Times where Ronnie came a’visiting and I caught up on all the local gossip.

Ronnie showed us pictures on his phone of a dead polar bear.

Meant to be in London today dealing with Jake’s iPod fiasco but God dumped a trillion tons of snow on Kent so we are all stranded.  Hurrah!

The Little Dog just LOVES the snow as you can see from these pictures.

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I am rather hoping that I get stranded here for Christmas!

By the way, did I ever mention to you that whilst I was in the police cell that miserable day in July Jake met a man from Manhunt and sex with him.    That was supportive wasn’t it?

Categories
Hollywood

New Beginnings/Happy Endings

I sometimes wonder if it is me or the planets that determine my relationship with the world?

With Venus in retrograde (huh?) I have a lightened spirit today.

Actually, regardless of the orbiting planets, nothing has really changed other than the volume of the conspiring demons in my head.

Let’s do a little inventory.

Firstly, having Ashley living at the house makes everything more fun.  The truth is if she can get to me with coffee and fags before I write my blog the whole tenor of this blog changes significantly.  I tend not to dwell on Jake for instance….who ever that (Jake) is…so much time has passed since we communicated I am just left with a few shards of unresolved resentments and a few hundred pictures of him in various states of undress.

What the hell were we doing together?  Two desperate renegades or two men who had a genuine connection that I should learn to honor?  If I compare him to the men I meet now, have met..then the attraction is obvious!  I loved his pickled brain, his logic, I was even attracted to the shadow in which he lived as it heightened the emotional chiaroscuro.

I hope I get to the point when I can think about him fondly, not skip over the many, many pictures of him in my photo library, not endlessly relive the betrayal,  get some perspective….some forgiveness.  What am I writing?  Have I forgiven him?

Today I absolve you Mr. B.  Just for today.

So, what forced me out of the hideous funk?

Getting out of the house sure does help.

Yesterday,  JA arrived after the therapy group that we were meant to go to together but I haven’t been to for some time.  We drove to PC Greens and bought a delicious lunch.  I saw Sarah.  We hugged.  I cooked two steaks on the grill and tossed organic vine tomatoes and spinach together with a salty vinaigrette.  We sat on the terrace overlooking the sea and ate it.

I have this idea for a film.  The sort of idea that I know will end up on the screen.  I may not write it myself or even direct it but I sure am going to be its midwife.

I tentatively discussed the idea with JA.  He loved it!

So, after we talked it through I offered to write the treatment and finish it by the end of the week.  A little research..but mostly it’s there in my fingers waiting to be written.

I spent a little time on a gay hook up site and arranged to meet a particularly attractive young man in West H’wood.  We shall call him Manhunt date No. 8.  JA also invited friends.  One of his friends turned out to be a small, timid, New York Jew.   29-years-old.   Talent agent.  Very intelligent.  SOUND FAMILIAR?  I laughed at how God plays games with the heart.  I was very nice to the NYC Jewish guy and knew that had I not gone through what I had just so recently been through I might have gotten further involved.

After all..a good brain is worth a thousand abs.

No.

My hook-up arrived, tall, willowy, perfect face and body..lovely demeanor.   The attraction was mutual and before very long we were headed toward Malibu.  I invited him home on the understanding that I did not want to have sex but after a few hours asleep I woke up feeling like breaking that particular promise.  The problem is: the passion that Jake and I shared in the bedroom/forest/shower does not transfer easily to another.   Our passion was based on knowing each other.  A magnetic attraction.  A profound level of connection.

Sexually, I am very aggressive.  I am not interested in being taken.  Never have been.  I know what I wanted at dawn but I also knew what I was doing: bringing the passion I shared with Jake into another bedroom…it simply does not work.

By the time Ashley brewed the coffee this morning the beautiful stranger was gone.  Will I see him again?  No idea.  Up to him really.

Birthday party today.  I WILL go.  Eli Roth etc.  Maybe fun.

Of course I am thinking about the treacherously intelligent agent.  Funny little man.

I did not hear back from my old love yesterday.  He is in Vegas so probably very busy.  I would adore to see him but strangely just having a brief chat on the phone gave me confidence that there is always closure however long it takes.

Then, when the resentments have been laid to rest, only love remains.

I have a treatment to write.  Let’s see if I can write the diary of a film getting made with the same verve as I have Jake these past nine months?

A film getting made rather than a doomed love affair?  I don’t doubt that some of you will be interested in this process but not nearly so much as you were in my imploding relationship.

Everybody loves a train wreck..

Categories
Malibu

Shrinking/Shirking

Andrew

Had to take a couple of days away from my blog.  Firstly, my reason for writing it has become skewed. Secondly, when all one has to write about is the blog itself… hmmm. You understand.

Malibu.  The garden has been totally cleaned up by the new gardeners.  This annual sweep gives me so much pleasure.  The most rewarding $800 a man could ever spend.

Exciting news:  friends are seriously thinking about buying the house.  When they contacted me I was relieved then I began to wonder why I was selling it? Where else in the world would I be able to live like this?  The view, the land, the house… it’s all so beautiful.

The repaired road will make it so much better living here (I can walk to the local shops) but rather than thinking it would make it better for me… my fucked up head thinks it would make it better for someone else.  That’s insane!  I deserve it too.

I had to get away from the blog because I was indeed writing about Jake far too much and whilst I needed to I also have to stop.  This is the problem with obsessive thinking and who ever wrote I should get off the Jake thang is right… I really have to start thinking beyond the object of my obsession.

Just when you run out of good ideas God throws you a life line.  My friend Anna is moving into the house with me.  She is having a blast with her new film (traveling all over the world) but needs a place to live. We are very similar in as much as we both daily invent our lives.  So, next Tuesday I have a room-mate.

My friend Ashley needs a place too so we are all going to live here together.  The only remaining booking is for October so we are going to vacate for that.

I achieve so much more when I am with other like-minded people. Whenever Anna is here I get important things done that would otherwise remain undone.  I can be mother hen, make breakfast, organize walks, sit down and write.  All I have to overcome is the obsessive urge to clean the house and keep order.  I have to let that go.

Because I know that he reads this I often think of him when I am writing.   It’s horrible.  Trying to keep the flame burning.  Fragile, timid beautiful Jake.  I want to remember him kindly.  I really do.  I don’t want to believe that he came into my life to take whatever he needed.

Manhunt?  I want to be on Manhunt because he was on Manhunt.  I want to meet men because he met men.  I want to in spite of my own healthy needs.

The Manhunt thing is interesting.  It has taken no time at all to be totally disinterested in that site.  It cannot serve me.  Why do I go there?   Real people can serve me.  Living in fantasy around what could be only leads to disaster… as we have witnessed these past few months.

I have been attending gay AA meetings, connecting with my sober comrades.  Trying not to be negative, understanding I still sit in a great deal of fear around gay men… I begin to relax.  There is a community of men and women at my disposal who are more than willing to open their arms to me.

I am, after all, a rather well-known gay man in recovery.  So I should lead by example.

Coming up to my sober birthday on October 1st.  Traditionally this has always been a time of great reflection.   A time to remember what I gave up to become the man I am now.  If I had continued along the path of least resistance… I may very well be dead.  I will write about that last day of using on October 1st.

Fly East tomorrow for a few days.  Have to take art to NYC.  I really dread being in the city just in case I bump into him.  I don’t know what I would do.  It’s like when I got sober… those first few months I could be around people drinking but I could not be around anyone taking drugs,  it was too triggering.   As I have said before, he is not real… he is a cypher.

As he shrinks away I attempt to own the possibilities.  I am left with so much!   I am left with all of this… the view, the hope, the love and of course the very human fight to survive.  The fight to live.  The fight to make art.  The fight to breath in the new day.

I may very well have thrown away this past year obsessing over him.  I pray that I learned something useful from knowing him.  Please don’t let it have been a total waste?

My Australian friend Andrew visited yesterday.  I met him in Sydney ten years ago.  What a delicious man he is.  I think you would all agree?

My AA sponsor told me in no uncertain terms that I was shirking from the very real health issue I have.  He told me that I have to get it seen to as soon as possible.

Categories
Health

Blank Cheque

Reading over this entry I am reminded that perhaps a more pious life might suit me better that a life devoted to intensity.  Piety, we tend to use the word pejoratively,  saying more about our Godless world than the idea behind the action.

Today I crave piety, humility, silence..

Tres Triste urged me to go into one on one therapy.  I will have nothing to do with that.  I am bloated on my experience of one on one therapy.

I am, however, recommitted to the rooms of AA.  I know that they understand because I am just like them.  One on one therapy obviously suits many people but I don’t trust doctors, I don’t trust therapists who profit from the misery of others.  I resent paying them.  That I become their blank cheque.  In fact, I resent paying all doctors because I come from a country where visiting a doctor is free.

AA is free.  For fun and for free.

The simple fact is: I chose to abandon the principles of AA during the last few months.  Not taking a drink is just a small part of what we do in those rooms.  The rest of the time we help and guide each other toward sanity.  During the past months I deliberately abandoned my principles and let my alcoholic head run the show.

Many people ask why I moved to LA.  It really had nothing to do with film making.  I came to LA to be closer to the rooms of AA where I found comfort, solace and peace.  I made friends and found an extended family of people who understood me, who were always willing to forgive…no matter what.   I felt as if I needed, as if I NEED a great deal of forgiveness.

After a few years I became disgruntled and disillusioned with AA and went to fewer and fewer meetings.  As I did so my mind became more and more confused.  If I do not do the work to keep me sane I very quickly unravel.

I believe in the power of AA.  It is a church. It is my church.  For all to see during these past months I threw away my sanity because I wanted to use..so I did.  I used HIM.  He is not even real.  He is a bag of coke, a bump of crystal, my works, my baggy, my bottle, my paraphernalia.   He is not real.  Do I miss him?  I miss him like a glass of Montepulciano.  Full bodied red wine that I secretly want to drink when that day comes…and it very well might.  Never take your sobriety for granted.

You think that I have been cruel but I needed him out of my life and sometimes keeping your dealers number is the way back to active addiction.  If I had not jettisoned him that day I KNOW what would have happened.  We would have remained friends, we would have hooked up, my head just could not take it.

I napalmed the poppy fields.

This morning I chatted with Tim about the past.  A place one tends to reinvent as one gets older. It is invigorating having him there at the other end of the phone/skype.  He is in Worcester waiting for his triple bypass.  We are both waiting to have our skin cut open and our insides messed with by experts.

We talked about the power of prayer.  Our spiritual lives.  I needn’t tell you how important a loving God is in ones life but even though I know that prayer really works I am loathed to pray just in case is doesn’t.

That even God might let me down.

There is no doubt what so ever that for the past few months I used another man as my drug.  Intensity, fixation, obsession etc. etc.  Remember when you spent your last cent on drugs? When the getting and using was your main focus?  Remember the risks you took?  I am a crazy addict.  Yet, it is somehow easier for us to understand a man who cannot say no to drugs than a man who cannot say no to his addiction to people.  It is a far more complex and ultimately destructive addiction.

I think you have all been my witness to that.

I crave a healthy relationship with people who ever they might be, lover, family member, friend, shop assistant, telephone banker etc.    I am powerless and my life becomes unmanageable.  I am powerless over people, places and things.  This powerlessness causes me such misery. Powerlessness, vulnerability, weakness of any kind cannot be tolerated and as you have seen…I will bring you down if you challenge who I am, get to the heart of me.

I don’t think I am so different from most of you?

Yet, I most definitely am.  I do not think like normal people.

The idea that somehow, someday I will control and enjoy my thinking is the obsession of every abnormal thinker.

That was a quote from Bill Wilson with the word drink switched out for think.

Wether you believe it or not the rooms of AA are filled with men and women just like me.  When we sit together sharing our similarities and not our differences then I become aware of the presence of God.

I have struggled with SAA.

There is a big difference between being an alcoholic and a sex/love addict.  Alcoholics share the experience of abstinence.  Sex addicts do not.  The differences between sex addicts, when we share our stories, are all too apparent.  The similarities..scant.  Where there are few similarities I find myself divorced from God.

As I have reported in earlier posts, as the years pass and ones last drunk become a distant memory I am forced to deal with other more pressing, more destructive addictions.

The consequences of my actions are all too apparent.  I have rampaged like a spoiled child through another mans life.  Regardless of his part in it..I have only myself to blame.  As I have said before, it is none of my business assigning blame or becoming an interventionist for others.

We all learn by our mistakes, by the lies we tell, by the havoc we wreak.

So, today’s prayer:  God, relieve me from the bondage of self.  Help me be kind.  Let me be present.  Let me tell the truth.

Bind me so my arms do not flail,  gag me so I cannot speak, shackle me so I cannot walk, lay me down in some quiet place so I do not think.

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

Anthony Has Left the Building

This morning I woke up and felt different. Something had happened. It was like waking up after a….catastrophe.

There was an ominous silence. Of course I knew immediately what had happened. Anthony had let off a huge bomb. Destruction all around. Now he was gone.

Anthony has left the building.

How did I know he had even been? I need look no further than these pages.

Oh well, God doing for me what I could not do for myself. Jake is dispensed with. Sad really as he was kinda sweet.

Anthony was right, the kid was not only too young, he is in a different league.

I am in SHLA waiting for inspiration.

Still have not made another appointment or even called the doctor. This entire cancer palaver has just polaxed me.

The Him episode. The cancer scare. The house. The money.

5am Friday.

Hunting around the house for a forgotten smoke. None to be found.

I spent the day yesterday in my apartment. It was brutally hot outside. In the evening I met J and J for a light snack then Will for dinner. Home and in bed before 12.

He and I have spoken nearly every day for the last 8 months. We have expunged every detail of our lives. Even though I cannot have him near me I miss the familiarity.

I made coffee and read over the emails I threatened to publish but they are simply too revealing. About us both! I am shocked by our behavior. The anatomy of a failed relationship. The ups and downs of my mad head and him emerging into the light.

He is indeed a fragile man. He is the first American that I ever really felt I knew. They speak English but they are not like us. They are just wired differently.

I am going to have to let this go. Really!

I found an email that I hadn’t read before. It was his penultimate email. It made a lot of sense.

This is what I think is going on: You are cutting me off because
you’ll take nothing if you can’t have it all I suppose it was naive
of me to believe that we could function as anything in between. You
are a perfectionist.

I wish I had read that email. I just had a lot on my mind. I didn’t read his penultimate 17 emails because I wanted to sort my head, my thinking, my feelings. He sent 17 emails.

Then he sent the final email, email 18 was the very one I decided to read and I couldn’t stop the anger.

I just needed that day, a little bit of solace. To know that he still cared. Like in the endless stream of emails when we first met. When he was wooing and seducing me.

Anyway. Anthony has left the building and at therapy today I shook with fury about addiction and Anthony and wished it wasn’t so…but it is.

Oh dear, he really let off an atom bomb. Oops. Sorry….

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.