Tag: HIV

Categories
Gay Queer

A Tale of Two Gay Communities: Poz and Neg

Just Like You

Listen, I want you to know something about me.  I hate condoms. I hate wearing them. I love fucking raw. I love it. I don’t do it. I can’t do it.  I wanted to fuck my lover without a condom.  I want to cum inside you.  I love you.

This is what HIV looks like in 2013:

Brandon, he’s 22… he wants to be hog tied and fucked in the mouth and ass. He wants to meet me.

He wants me to ‘take control’ he wants me to beat him and fuck him.  He wants ‘verbal’. He enquired if I preferred him to call me daddy or sir.  I’m interested. This daddy loves an obedient boy.  We talk on the phone, he’s upbeat and sweet-natured but after we agree to meet he texts me:

‘Before we meet. I’m Positive. And I’m honest about it. Thoughts?’

I wait a moment. Restraint of pen and tongue.

I text him back. ‘Can we talk?’  I explain why I can’t meet him. I tell him that I’m scared and I don’t want to risk an infection. I’m too old to get infected. I lived through the AIDS catastrophe. I didn’t get infected.

The conversation I had with Brandon is not common. Usually when I say that I can’t have sex with someone who is HIV positive they spew vitriol.   They tell you that it was a ‘mercy fuck‘ anyway, that I’m ugly , that I’m ignorant… of course… I know what they are really saying.   They usually get what they want when they want it and woe-betides anyone who fucks with their plan.

Some HIV poz men feel that by being honest I will feel equally warm and fluffy and my respect for their honesty will translate into a fuck.

Let me tell you what I remember when someone tells me they are HIV positive.

I remember the gaunt, yellow faces of formerly beautiful young men crying because they don’t want to die. I remember men hermetically sealed from the world in plastic tents. I remember the smell of piss and shit.  I remember the quiet sobbing of newly widowed men.  I remember all of that and I cannot go there.

More controversially… when you tell me you are HIV positive I am confronted fair and square with your sexual history.  I imagine other men cumming inside you.

I just do. I can’t help myself.

That’s why I can’t sit facing the toilet when I am in a restaurant. Imagining people pooing and wiping their asses. It puts me off my dinner.

There are two communities. Two gay communities. The HIV negative and the HIV positive.  I have no interest in interacting sexually with the latter. I will be damned for writing that.

Brian says: ‘Duncan, someone who knows they’re positive and is on treatment can easily be less infectious than someone who doesn’t know that they’re positive and happens to have a high viral load, and is therefore very infectious.  That could be the issue of ignorance of which they speak. I agree no one has the right to go off on you for not wanting to play, but the issue is more complicated than pos/neg.’

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The issue is NOT complicated for me. I don’t want to be HIV positive.

The community with HIV is very eager to diminish their responsibility and guilt those without HIV into thinking it’s all ok just because they describe themselves as ‘healthy’.  They still have HIV and they can infect you… however low their viral load.  They claim they are ‘undetectable’ which means they have a very low viral load.

Undetectable is a big problem.  It is used incorrectly by many people to make others feel that the sex they have is safer than with those who are not undetectable.  Undetectable people are still HIV poz.  The condom breaks. You are now a slave to toxic chemicals.  A slave to big pharma.

Who are these undetectable people? These invisible men? Gay ghosts. Scarcely there.   Leaving behind just the whiff of AIDS.  HIV is totally avoidable in 2013. Yet, we still go on being the largest group of new infections in what is still an epidemic.  I don’t want to talk about Africa or straight people or intravenous drug users.

I want us to take some responsibility.   Especially those of you who are transitioning from the Neg community to the Poz community.  Those of you who make the choice… who made the choice last night to take a risk.  Those of you who thought, or did not think, as he came inside you… that you would risk the consequences of HIV.  You are packing your bags, you are moving to the other side. To the other gay community. The undetectable gay community.

Finally, one last nail in my gay coffin.

What’s this crap about gay men and shame? We can’t shame gay/bisexual men into wearing a condom?  Because they are gay or bisexsual and have shame about their sexuality?

We can’t shame gay men or bisexuals into making better choices for themselves?  Like we do smokers?  No… because the gay community must be shameless at all cost. We are gay! We live without shame.  We’ve been shamed ENOUGH.

Huh?

I say… shame those who knew they were HIV poz and took away the neg status of others by lying.  This really happens.  I know a few good men who have had their good health stolen from them by unscrupulous gay men.

There are two gay communities. One of them is HIV positive. The other is not.  Those who are not positive are described as elitist by those who are.  Those who are HIV positive scoff at those who are not… because the implication is: they weren’t pretty or handsome or desirable enough to get infected with HIV.

I am scared of getting HIV. Like some people are scared of snakes.

I am happy that I am HIV negative. In fact… I am proud to be HIV negative. Does that make me elitist?  Well, yes… if elitism means that I mostly took care of myself.

That I don’t have to buy costly drugs every month to stay… undetectable.

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Categories
Gay

Bitter Old Queen

NA 13

When I first started going to gay bars in Britain in the late 70’s we drove (with those lucky enough to own cars) twenty miles to Margate, a larger town near my home in Whitstable.

Margate is famous for being the birth place of conceptual artist Tracy Emin.

Margate was a derelict, regency ex-holiday resort.  Butlins had closed, Pontins was on the way out.  British people wanted to go to Spain where sunshine could always be assured.

The sweeping, majestic Palladian mansions were being torn down or turned into multi occupancy dwellings for the unemployed.

The crowd at the gay bar, run by morbidly obese Shirley was divided in two groups.  Two distinct crowds:  older, local men who had stayed local and younger men and boys who were using bars like this to spring-board into a metropolitan gay world.

The older men were routinely described as ‘bitter old queens’ by the younger men and there was indeed something bitter and suspicious about these older men that intrigued my teenage self.

Always the contrarian I hung out with them rather my teen peers and learned about these older men, their lives and their failed ambitions.

Older provincial gays who had been mocked, beaten and subjugated.

In Britain Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1965.

To me those old queens seemed incredibly brave for staying loyal to their home town communities.

To my younger ‘friends’ these men were simply stuck or foolhardy for not moving to the big city where their gay dreams could come true, their gay lives could be lived fully, openly and without fear.

My interest in them proved fruitless.  They may have been older but they were not very wise, stripped of ambition by soul rotting low self-esteem.

They wanted to be like everyone else.

I wanted to be different.

They mocked me as they had been mocked, they chastised me as they had been chastised, they still do.

Those older gay men waiting for younger gay boys to emerge from the shadows.  Supping gin and tonics.  Bacardi and coke.

Hanging around the local ‘cottages’ (public restrooms) waiting for straight boys to unload.  Playing an endless game of cat and mouse with law enforcement.

“So and so was sent to prison for cottaging.”  So and so would emerge a year or so later, jaundiced, older looking.

It seemed to me that these men had every right to be bitter.  They had every right to harbor resentments against a cruel society that deemed them criminals even after they weren’t.

The swinging 60’s, the sexual revolution, the progressive explosion, the post war boom really only affected my generation who grasped hold of the bucking bronco and held on for dear life until, of course, AIDS came along in the 80’s and we were all thrown far, far away.

The AIDS pandemic.  Fear in men’s eyes.  Disco dancing queens learning to dance to a different tune.

If I had taken pictures of those old gay men in the late 70’s they would have looked defiant, like those pictures of native Americans by Edward Curtis.  They were fat and badly dressed, their teeth were rotten, they were working class, they were left behind.

So, it amuses me now when I am described thus:  A Bitter Old Queen.

The advent of gay marriage, the normalcy of children for gay men (if they can afford it), the regular inclusion of gay men in prime time TV shows.  All of these changes have heralded a new acceptance, a new normal, a new peace of mind for young gay men.

Or has it?  A new generation with a new set of fears and anxieties.  “Will I ever earn enough to buy a surrogate child?”  “Am I pretty/handsome enough?”  “Should I be totally hairless?”  “Is my penis big enough?”   “Am I ‘straight acting’?  Will I get married?

A generation of gay men comparing and despairing.

What of us?  My generation?  Those of us who survived the great epidemic.  It seems that many gay men still feel left behind.

Shamed.

Last week I met a 55-year-old man who told me he was recently diagnosed with HIV even though he had, he assured me, never indulged in risky behavior.

He told me that older gay men were being revealed to be HIV positive because of a latent strain of HIV that only makes itself apparent after the age of 50.

A strain that has been there all the time, undetected.

I was shocked.  Perhaps I hadn’t dodged the bullet after all.

The man way lying.  I researched the claim.  There was nothing.  I asked my friends on Facebook if they had heard of this anomoly.  They had not.  They scoffed at the idea.

No, I reasoned, this man is a well-respected gay advocate.   As it turns out you can be a well-respected, well liked gay advocate and not be at peace with your HIV status.

Being gay for many men remains a hard task.

If I ever think of my ex boyfriend I still wonder what is was that kept him in the closet for so long.  Even now, after the revolution.  Why he created and maintained such an illusion? Risking his girlfriends health?  Lying to his family?

Then I wonder if we are all illusionist?

How easy is it in 2012 to tell the truth about being gay?

There seem to me like there are so many dirty little secrets that we hold onto.  That we continue to live shame based lives… even the youngsters, even when there is no reason to hide?

I wondered what we were striving for?  To join the military, to get married…

I got to thinking about David Petraeus resigning because he had an extra marital affair.  Adultery is illegal in the military but would those rules apply to serving gay men?  Would we, once married, be held to those same strict hetero rules?  Is this what we want?

Today I posted something about Israel.  Like most Europeans I find myself erring toward the support of the Palestinians.  I find the Israeli treatment of these falsely imprisoned people abhorrent and ironic.

What is the difference I ask myself between The Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza?

My American gay friends react with comments like:  all muslims are terrorists.

Just like I was told when I was a child that all homosexuals are pedophiles.

Those older, less educated, less principled, men were from a different time.  Embittered by circumstance, godless, hopeless.  Drowning their sorrows in great vats of beer, their greasy faced pushed against the window of life without ever joining in.

“No kissing at the bar, dear.”     Shirley would tell her clientele.  “No kissing at the bar.”

Categories
Auto Biography Gay Health Hollywood Los Angeles

HIV Negative

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This morning Robby picked me up from the house and drove me to Van Nuys.

Court day.

The handsome deputy in the court room gives me a cheery wave, the clerk courteously holds open the door and even the wicked witch looks softer… more agreeable.  She’s only doing her job. I can’t be too hard on her.

After our short stint in the court we had coffee with my lawyer who is, it turns out, covered in tattoos.

Robby then drove me into Hollywood to the Gay and Lesbian Center where I waited in line for my annual HIV test.  Since 1984 I have been regularly tested for HIV. Since I was Robby’s age.  It has always been a fearful time for me. I’m sure it is for everyone.

I was given the wrong diagnosis in my mid thirties. A confused New York nurse told me I was HIV positive. For three weeks I thought I had it. Until I fled to London and the doctor told me I was perfectly ok.  In those days an HIV positive result meant certain death. The kind of death that included cancerous lesions inside and out. Opportunistic diseases caught from potted plants, cats and canaries. Dramatic weight loss and the most painful end.

Now, of course, HIV just means being wedded to big pharma for the rest of your life, a huge liver and for most people… a new closet to live in.  It occurred to me, as I sat waiting for my result, how I would tell you all if I had contracted HIV.  I live a public life. I am sure that the shame I have heard others talk and write about would envelop me too.

But, as I sat there I decided to tweet the fact that I was there and what I was waiting for. I gave myself no option but to come out and tell you… if I was HIV positive. I knew it wouldn’t be like telling you I had cancer.  I asked the counsellor what would happen if I was HIV Positive? He gave me the medical facts. It didn’t seem that bad. But we all know: it’s not the medical implications… it’s the social implication that packs the negative punch.  In the gay community there is huge prejudice around HIV and AIDS. The frank discussion we need to have about HIV is not being had.

After he read the result I looked obviously shocked. I really did not expect to be negative. In fact, I rather thought I might be seriously ill.

“Why?” He asked.

Because, and it grieves me to tell you this but after JB and I saw each other that last time… I had no way of drowning my fury so I trawled the internet and transformed from the ‘curious top’ to the ‘pig bottom’.  The pig bottom who wants to be fed. I think you know what I mean.

“Just cum in me.” I said. They were very eager to please.

“It was a suicide bid. The only one I knew would work. I hated him so much…”

“Did you hate him? Or you?” The counsellor asked kindly.

I smiled wryly. “I’m still HIV negative.”

“You dodged the bullet.”

You see, I have never been like most gay men… craving sex many times a day. I have never visited a bath house or a cruising park. I rarely meet the men I speak with on-line. I am not like you. I tried it once… not so long ago and it made me feel sick.

This week Paris Hilton was caught squealing at her friend’s Grindr. She’s right to be appalled. AIDS has taught us nothing.  Pre bug chasing… I didn’t want to have sex with someone I didn’t know. It kept me negative. I wasn’t about to be shamed into having sex with anyone.

When I was a kid, men would invite me into their homes. The mere acceptance of a cup of tea somehow meant agreeing to full on butt sex.  They try to shame you. Get angry with you… but I fought back. Fuck off. I’m leaving. It saved my life.  Now the youngsters who get HIV are similarly shamed. My friend told me (he’s 24) that a guy he really wanted told him they had to fuck ‘raw’ (unprotected)… when my friend protested his amour said, “What? Don’t you believe me? I’m HIV negative.”

He wasn’t. Now… nor is my friend.  Are we kidding ourselves when we say that we are having protected sex?  There’s outrage because Paris Hilton is disgusted by Grindr. She’s right. We should all be disgusted. My women friends say, “There should be a Grindr for straight people.”

I tell them that a usual Grindr introduction consists of one word: Hung? Then: Clean? Then: Dick Pic?  Women are usually appalled when I tell them the way gay men cut to the chase.

I’m happy that I am HIV negative. I’m happier that my death wish has been thwarted. I’m happier still that all that hate and self hate came to nothing.

Writing my film has had a wonderfully cathartic effect on me. He is just a distant memory.  Even though I see him daily on the page he now exists as I want him to. Suffer and thrive the way I want him to… without ever having to suffer myself.

Today… today was a good day to be HIV negative.

Categories
Gay Health

It Gets Better? Better Than Death?

Yesterday a pair of young film makers turned up at the apartment to work with me on their well written but unfocused script.

The man was leaving as they arrived.

They said, “Wow, he’s gorgeous.  Where do you meet men like that?”

Not in clubs or bars, not grindr or Manhunt.  I meet men like that as we pass in the street.  He said, “You looked mean.”  I am…I suppose.  I do.  Keep the fuck away from me.

Anyway, the film makers sat down and we talked about their script.  It was revealed, during our conversation, that one of these young men had recently found out that he was HIV+.

This is the third time I have heard this story, or one like it this past month.  His sex partner had not told him the truth about his HIV status before he agreed to have unsafe sex.

He had been lied to.

I was shaking with rage.

Like J risked J’s life when he was fucking HIV+ artist Pal S behind her back, like X had been lied to…these innocent folk had made bad decisions based on the lies they were told.

On each occasion the liar had tried to make it the victim’s fault.

” You shouldn’t have believed me.”

“You must have realized.”

“I can’t talk about this right now, you are complicating my life.”

“What kind of straight man doesn’t play sports?”

He is 25 years old.  A young man dealing with a huge problem.  He told me that he feels like he has ‘gone back into the closet’, that ‘no one could possibly love him’, that he is ‘damaged goods’.

“How do you feel about the guy who infected you?”  I asked.

“He’s evil.” he replied.

“Misguided?”  I suggested.

No, I told myself, not misguided.  I knew he was right.  Deliberately infecting or risking the lives of others…is simply evil.

My phone rang, I made a plan to see a friend the following morning.  

The boys looked at me askance. What?  I said.  “I’ve never seen anyone make an arrangement like that on the phone.  We text each other.”  I felt suddenly dislocated from life.  How come I didn’t know?

The kid with HIV is now at the mercy of the pharmaceutical companies who stand to take millions of dollars from him as he tries to stay healthy.

The same companies who promote their products in our gay publications… paying top dollar to do so.

Look at the pictures.  Strapping, healthy boys living with HIV.

Big Pharma shaping this generations attitude toward HIV as a manageable/livable with disease… just like diabetes!

Turn your back on health education, embrace ignorance and a life shackled to Big Pharma.  Enslaved at 25.  My heart bled.

“I never knew anyone who died of AIDS.” he said.

When this young man was being bullied at school for being gay he may very well have been reassured by the biggest deception of all:  It Gets Better.  Dan Savage‘s message of false hope.

It is another gay lie.

We don’t treat each other very well.  We don’t talk about not treating each other very well.

They stop bullying us…we start where they left off.

If they don’t damage you…we will…with my lies and infected sperm.

It’s not getting better for the young man I met yesterday.  It’s getting a whole heap worse.  Straight bullies didn’t lie and infect him with HIV.  Gay men did.

Gay men lied to three of my friends…confirming that it is not just an HIV epidemic, it is an epidemic of lies, betrayal and life threatening denial.

Uneducated, shamed, arrogant, drug fucked gay men with no principles.

Just like Jake.

The only reason I have to come back to NYC so frequently is to meet Jake in court.  Prolonging the inevitable.

Forced, yet again, to indulge his tantrums, his ego, his selfishness.

Without me in his life to define him as the victim…what is he left with?  Without me and his appearances in court…he returns to the mundane fixtures and fittings of the life that was…if one can call it a life?

Yet, when I am here in NYC, I make the most of it.  Happily wiling away the days, finishing my novel, seeing movies, hanging with my buddies, walking the dog, enjoying the humid nights tangled in your arms.

When he left this morning we both said, almost in unison, ‘I don’t do goodbyes’.   I don’t.  He had his bicycle over one shoulder, he didn’t look back.  I can still smell him on my fingers.

I will have a shower when I get back to LA.

Categories
art

Yo Yo Yo HIV and Other Tales

Woke up in a panic.  The thing growing in me.  That thing.  Must get it removed.  Have to get it removed but can’t move until everything is sorted.

Too much to sort out before I get there.

Manhunt Date number 9.  A 28-year-old Kuwaiti doing a PhD in architecture at UCLA.  He drove from Brentwood in the thick fog arrived at 10.30 was gone by midnight.  What do people think they are when they describe themselves as masculine?   What in heaven’s name does it mean?  Needless to say this was a huge queen under the thinnest veneer of ‘straight acting’.

The last ten minutes of the ‘date’ he was looking at his kindle and I was staring into the fire willing him to leave.

He left.

Poor lamb, driving up my foggy wet mountain in the pitch black only to be sent home because he didn’t meet my exacting standards.  He asked me about my past relationships.  Of course I told him the Jake saga but as I told him I thought..why am I telling you this?  Not even I am convinced by this story.

One interesting note, when JB was kicked out of his apartment by his long-term gf for being a lying, sociopathic, cheater Jake’s ex-gf  told him he had to pay his part of the rent until the lease expired..I think it expires this November from what I can remember…anyway.  When I told the Kuwaiti that he had been thrown out and had to live with his parents in Westchester the Kuwaiti was outraged that the gf had demanded half the rent.

The gays never get that bit of the story..why he couldn’t just walk away without paying her anything.  They never get the commitment/contract part of a relationship.  They squeal, as did the Kuwaiti, “Why should he continue paying his part of the rent in an apartment that he didn’t live in?”

When Jake complained to Pal the artist he was fucking with (allegedly) HIV behind the gf’s back about the rent issue…(Jake told me that he only found out after they stopped fucking that Pal was HIV positive..but I doubt it.  Pal doesn’t look like the kind of man who would keep quiet about his HIV positive status knowing that Jake was in a sexual relationship with a woman?  No, he looks like a responsible kind of guy.)

Well…

Pal, allegedly, told Jake to stop paying the rent and cut JA out…like a cancer.  This was a woman who had cancer scares ALL THE TIME!

Thankfully Jake did the right thing…he continued paying his part of the rent and the electricity bill despite casting himself as the victim to me and his gay friends.  He was so pissed when he got kicked out of the house…because it meant that he had to live with his parents.

He might have to behave responsibly.  Of course the moment he moved in he just did what he always did, acting out with drugs, alcohol and online hook ups.  But with the added advantage of having parents who would now co-sign his bullshit.

What a fucking moaner!  Unable to see his part in anything.  Complaining about his sister Emily’s wedding and the part he had to play in it.  Complaining about going to Cape Cod.  Complaining that he didn’t live in the East Village anymore.

You should have told the fucking truth!  How about that as a radical idea?

Weinstein pay him $7k to rewrite/line edit scripts for them.  He did three of them the fortnight before we left for Paris and he was still loathed to put his hand in his pocket to buy anything.  The day we drove all day to Cannes he bought me a Mars Bar.    I drove all day and he bought me a lousy MARS BAR?  And you are wondering why I am taking him to small claims court?  The day we drove from Sanary Sur Mer I packed the car with inexpensive and delicious food.

The first time I told him definitively that we should break off our relationship was when I realised that he was drinking and driving.  He would get totally DRUNK in NYC then take the train all the way to Katonah then drive to his parents house..drunk as a skunk…then call me moaning or crying about how TERRIBLE his life was…or text me from the train because he was lonely and I would (foolish me) always be there for him..because as he mocked in one of his last emails…”you find me irresistable…admit it.”

I did.  I found him irresistible.

Jake lived on the filthy underbelly of life because he chose to.

BTW art lovers!  Do look at Pal’s fantastic paintings…they are fucking GORGEOUS…if you are decorating a hospital.  He’s a handsome man.  Pity that he fell into Jake’s ‘straight boy honey pot’.  I wonder if he really did lie about his HIV status as Jake claimed.  Jake lied about everything.

If I were her I would sue that piece of lying shit.

My producer comes today to shape the treatment.   My friend RF tried to visit yesterday but blew a tire on the way up here.  I drove down the hill to find him forlornly at the edge of the road.  I had a long chat with Sharon about film funding.  Things seem to be picking up.   I worked more on the script and loved it.

I ate two bowls of corn flakes and felt tired in my bones.

My heart has been broken and rather than cry gently to myself I am so fucking angry.

That entitled prick has got away with murder and I am daily incensed by how he treated me and others.   Even 6 months after he came out he was still regretting his decision.  He would have been perfectly happy to stay in his vampiric relationship with her whilst he fucked men on the side.  That was a choice!  He knew exactly what he was doing and used her.  Don’t you dare lecture me about collateral damage!  I didn’t cause this mess.

JB is a reptile.

Categories
Rant

Please Like Me? Please?

I sat in my therapy group this morning at 7.30am.  A gay man in his early thirties shared his addiction story (drugs and alcohol).  He caught my attention when he said that he didn’t come out until very recently because he wanted people to like him and he feared that if he told those he knew that he was gay they wouldn’t.

Pathetic.

If I had heard his story a year ago I might very well have sympathized with him but I sat there remembering that this was Jake’s rationale for not coming out until the end of his twenties.

The desire to be liked has never really interested me, being disliked is far more rewarding, one always knows exactly where one stands.   Yet, I think that this desire to be liked may be how a great number of people think.  It seems imperative that they are liked even if they have to live a total lie.

To be liked?  It seems so desperate.  I guess that pathetic JB is getting a whole lot of sympathy from family and friends but especially from susceptible gay men as he miserably tells his tragic story.

Poor Jake knew that he was gay when he was 15 years old, brought up by kindly, understanding liberal parents (why didn’t he tell them?) went to Ithaca University upstate New York (I know out gay men who were his contemporaries) couldn’t come out at Uni apparently because it was a macho uni..he told me that if he had gone to NYU he would have come out earlier….blah blah blah. He then decided to work in the film industry which, as you imagine, is sooooo homophobic.  Couldn’t wouldn’t tell a fucking soul…OH..WAIT…he did tell a soul..he told all the men he was fucking because an ‘on the down low’ gay guy is MUCH sexier to fucked up gay men than just a regular gay guy.  He learned that very quickly.

When he finally came clean, came out, thrown out of his East Village porn performance pad he was GENUINELY disturbed that her friends, their neighbours didn’t see it his way.  Where was the fucking sympathy? Where’s MY SYMPATHY!!!

Even though she tried extracting the truth he STILL couldn’t tell her everything.   He continued lying to her even though she gave him ample opportunity to tell her the truth.

Listen, I sit in those therapy rooms listening to men who get caught cheating every single day.  How pathetic they become when their world of lies and intrigue is blown apart.  It is almost FUNNY how wronged some of them think they are.

I sat in that room this morning loathing that stranger telling his story.

Poor guy, he wanted to be liked so he lied to everyone including his parents and his girlfriend etc.  It was horribly familiar.

Fuck you lying addict gay guy.  This arrogant raconteur, this self-obsessed, manipulative, entitled asshole.  I was just amazed that in this day and age he expected us to feel sorry for him.  In 2010 are we still feeling sorry for people who want to be liked so much that they pathologically lie to the whole world?

Jake lied and lied and lied.  He took risks with his own and his girlfriend’s health.  He set aside his career and his ambition, and when he finally came clean blamed his ex gf for ruining his life because she threw him out of the house.

Want to know something even more damning?  He urged me to see it his way.

Most gay men would…but I didn’t.  For all of you, like Tres Triste, who want to blame me for his misery just give a thought to how I bullied him into telling that poor girl the truth.  Yes, I bullied him into it…because what he was doing to her was cruel and dangerous and one day she will thank me because he would have married her.

Think about HER.

Those of us who bravely told the truth when we were young about our sexuality were made to pay the price.

Before this morning I really hadn’t given Jake much thought.  I don’t bother imagining his life now because it doesn’t take much imagination to figue out exactly what’s going on.  Jake is an addict and his life’s trajectory is obvious to any of one of us who identify as addicts.

The asshole who commented that I was dragging Jake into my fucked up world forgot, it seems, that Jake in fact dragged me into his fucked up world.  A world of lies, deceit, false promises and a desire to be liked at all costs.

That pretty girl squandered her twenties (as well as finding true love) on him, she should sue the nasty little liar for what he stole from her..because it can never, ever be replaced.

Thankfully the $2,000 that he owes me can and will be replaced.

Can you imagine waking up on the eve of your thirties expecting to marry the man of your dreams only to find out that every moment of every day you shared with him was a total lie?

Apparently it was her fault for not realizing that he was a lying.   After all, he didn’t have any interest in sports.  At the end of October that poor girl has to move out of her home, has to find somewhere else to live.  Just because he wanted to be liked at all costs.

The gays will love him.  They’ll understand.  As long as he’s cute and puts out and doesn’t have any emotions.  Oh yes, he’ll fit in with the mediocre, middle of the road, bourgeoise gays..just fine.

It’s still fucking hot here in Malibu.  90somethingdegrees.  I feel a bit tense.  I feel a bit miserable.  I feel a bit powerless..hence I end up blogging about Jake.  Somehow blogging about him makes me feel better.

Finally, the guy who shared this morning told us that he is HIV positive because he was taking meth.  Oh GAYS!  The gays don’t seem to think about condoms when they are high on meth which is great for the drug companies because every expendable gay with HIV is worth $3,000,000 to big pharma.

Categories
art Malibu

Room Mate

Marine Layer at Night

My friend Ashley moved in last night.  She arrived with Thai food and a pillow.

Almost immediately felt a trillion times better about everything.  Being on my own is not good for me.  Just me and my head.  We lit a huge fire, watched interesting film clips on my computer and life felt a great deal better.

The marine layer shrouded the house all night so everything this morning is wet and sparkling.  The gray light, as I have said a million times, suits all the colours here in the house.

I get my watch back today, the big gold one I broke last year but forgot to pick up.  I should fetch my grandfather’s ring that is still in repair.

I bought a family box of food from my friend Jennifer’s company Out of the Box Collective which arrives Saturday week.  She has sourced the best of what is available from local farms including organic meats, vegetables and raw milk/yogurt etc.  I am really excited about this!

Three of us living up here cooking great food, making art and doing what humans do..supporting one another..and I don’t mean through bad times but supporting one another to do the best of what we can possibly do.

The great thing about Ashley is her connection to everything happening in the new arts here in LA.  Performance, film etc.  We watched clips of things on YouTube that inspire us.  She showed me a really interesting animation/performance that I loved.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPWjA8nAmuo]

I understood that I had not just isolated myself from people but from my life blood..art.  I simply stopped going to anything.  I stopped turning up.  To have a life in the arts you have to be present.  For nine long months I have been a dead man.  Jake became my life and the poor lamb head just couldn’t be my life.

Manhunt date number 4 was a funny latino boy. 27 years old and HIV positive.  Hmmm.  We didn’t have much to say so he left. He was a bit pissed that he had driven all this way and didn’t get any.

I feel so much better about everything.

Suddenly all of my anxiety, obsession and resentment has slipped away…at least for the time being.

This morning I thought about writing which I have not thought about for a long, long time.  Just having someone around keeps me focused.

Let him have his life and I will have mine.  I wish we could have had a kind goodbye.

You see, I went from having a dear, dear friend to having nothing…whilst he was surrounded by his family.  Never on his own.  A family to fall back on.  I had nothing.  When I lived in Whitstable the people there, they were my family for good and for bad.  I just had to step outside of my front door and I would engage with people who had known me all my life.

Lily

I saw a property for sale today in England that I can’t stop thinking about.  Hastings is a small British seaside town.  I have always really loved it.  There’s a house there that looks amazing.  Huge.  Lots of space.

You see!  Already my head is in a different, more positive place.  Just wait until Anna arrives and we will be cooking, as they say, with gas.

At 8 this morning Jason popped by with Lily (my god-daughter) and her brother Max for breakfast.  Hot chocolate.  I think this maybe a regular event as they have an hour to kill most mornings between dropping the kids off at their various schools.

Somebody asked me what I seek in a man.  I think he wanted to know about sex but I replied:  intelligence, wit, kindness, fortitude, patience.

Have a great day everybody!

Categories
Gay Malibu

Dog in the Manger

I think that it’s best that I don’t write about relationships.  It tends, as so many people read this blog, to upset the very people I love most.

So we must bid adieu to the continuing adventures of Lamb Head and the 18th Century Man.  We must set aside our interest in the comings and goings of my complicated love life and concentrate on politics, goats and all things beyond my immediate inner circle.

So, let’s talk about George Rekers.

You know, well most of you do who read this blog regularly, that I am all about individual choice.    Particularly, the choice to determine our own sexuality and how we choose to describe it.  Sadly,  there are so few words to describe the extraordinary range of sexual choices on offer to the average man/woman.

And, of course, we all tell so many lies about our sexuality.  Let’s put it this way, most of the men I know who describe themselves as straight have had their fingers in the gay honey pot.  I have no reason to doubt their description of their sexuality so why don’t they just celebrate their sexual diversity?

Well, we all know just how narrow-minded people get when they are asked to describe themselves sexually,  mainly from fear of how they will be treated by their peers.  The gays are all too willing to accept anyone who has occasional same-sex relations into their gay camp and the straights are just as eager to throw that same anyone out of their frat house.

If George Rekers wants an erotic massage from a rent boy does this make him gay?    If a man drinks to excess does this make him an alcoholic?  The answer to both of these questions has to be NO.

As I have said many, many times before: we live in sexually prescriptive times.    It is not up to me to tell you that you are either gay (or an alcoholic) it is up to you to make that choice and deal with the consequences.

It has to be up to the individual to decide what he is and how best to describe himself.    If you are a man who loves men and their bodies and all things homosexual would the word gay properly describe what you are?

If I had another choice of word rather than gay to describe myself would I?  YES.  This is not about me being a self hater, this is about me feeling like I am a bit too old to be gay, a bit too sober, too few sexual partners, a vague interest in the gym and not in tune with the collective who describe themselves as gay.

Just as I now no longer call myself an alcoholic preferring to call myself a sex addict.  It best describes the specific disease of addiction from which I am in recovery.

Of course I find George Rekers despicable, not because he vacations with pretty rent boys or refuses to be associated with the gay word but because he so virulently attacks the unalienable rights of others.    He makes life uncomfortable for those who choose to describe themselves as gay.   He peddles hatred and disinformation.

He has been described as a hypocrite.  Does the fact that he likes erotic massage make him a hypocrite?  No.  If he were living with his husband and children in suburban Tallahassee and telling others that they shouldn’t now that would be hypocritical.

I’m not sure that he is gay.  Is he?  He’s certainly not living a life I would describe as gay.  He is probably just desirous of erotic massage.

Being gay is surely not simply about sex?  Is it?

Are we doing ourselves a disservice calling George Rekers gay?   By claiming this man as one of our own are we throwing the net too wide?

After I was on Sex Rehab somebody wrote to me telling me that if  ‘Duncan Roy doesn’t like sex with men then he isn’t gay’.

I felt rather reassured by this.   It was a complex accusation and one that I had oft considered myself.  Am I gay if I don’t like sex with men?   Am I gay if I believe in monogamy?  Am I gay if I don’t drink or take drugs or, and I expect to be hounded for saying this, if I am not HIV positive?

Very recently I HAVE started to like sex with men-well one man who I no longer have sex with.   I still don’t like the word gay.

So, George Rekers vacations with rent boys.  Elena Kagan looks like a lesbian but is she?  And,  in the UK the Liberals and the Conservatives and making a very big bed to share after the inconclusive general election.

Categories
Dogs Gay Money Rant

Drug Companies Profit From Gay Self-Hate

Eating cheese and pastrami with lashings of piccalilli smeared over the top.  The inside of my mouth is burning.  My lips are burning with desire.  Not really.  My lips are just bored.  I am waiting for the mail to arrive so I can walk to bank and get on with the day.

I just scaled Mount Runyon with Sherpa Lil Dog, we saw two gorgeous yeti and had to: Alert! Avert! Affirm!    It’s simply no good for me to gaze longingly at the perfectly honed abs of my fellow Runyon climbers.

Yesterday I realized, after chatting with a friend of mine with HIV that the average drug company will make over $2, 000, 000 out of a single person with HIV during their life time.  Where is the incentive for those drug companies to educate gay men about staying negative?   Anyway, I am fast realizing that the sexual health education that gay men need is nothing to do with safe sex and everything to do with self-love.

The drug companies have no compassion for gay men, no desire to educate an underclass with no real rights, who are despised by most Christian bigots and have so little respect for themselves that they routinely get infected with HIV and become another $2, 000, 000 meal ticket for big pharma.

Pharmaceutical executives must be rubbing their hands in glee when another gay man converts from positive to negative.

This has to stop.  We must start educating the next generation of gay men to love themselves enough to make good sexual health choices.

I got to thinking about my friend Amanda and how we recently hit a bit of a rock.  I think deep down, even though she has gay men around her to dress her, she really has no respect for gay men. For many people we are clowns who have no right to complain or behave as anything other than grotesque queens.   We are, to her, useless absurdities.   Her notion that it is somehow ridiculous for us to have children, for us to have politics, opinions, etc.  She’s not alone; I think many people are outraged by all of that and more.

Whatever I may have written about gaybies in the past I now see gay men having children as a delicious act of rebellion.  It confronts homophobia head on.