Categories
Queer

Fag Bash/Last Weekend

Kevin Campos at Fag Bash

There’s a party thrown every Wednesday night in Provincetown called Fag Bash.  I popped in late last night.  It’s perhaps the best $5 you can spend in this little town.  It seems that everyone (crammed in the tiny dark basement) takes hours applying meticulous makeup and dressing in gorgeous goth/romantic costume.  Thick black eye liner, masks and glittering lipstick.   Organza capes, knitted horns for devilish girls and boys, a carnival of creative wonder.

This procession begins weaving its way up Commercial Street at 10 o’clock and back again, disheveled and drunken, after the decadent party in the wee hours.  It’s so heartening and invigorating to see.  Inspiring!  I’m going to dress up next week.  Count me in.  She’ll make an appearance.  I promise you.

Thank God for Fag Bash!   Earlier,  yesterday evening,  I had to sit through perhaps the worst gay themed film… ever.  Tom Dolby and Tom Williams’s co-directed travesty: Last Weekend.

Billionaire, Tom Dolby is the Dolby sound system heir.  In lieu of any real talent he has bought himself a free pass into the film industry.   Last Weekend is his debut film made after the crashing disaster of his first novel… I’m assuming another vanity project?  Tom embraces the ‘right to fail’.  Why not?  Tom and his husband and their two surrogate daughters have nothing to worry about.  It really doesn’t matter how miserable their artistic endeavors… because money is no object.

Co-Directors Tom and Tom arrived at the opening night screening wearing their crisp navy/cream linen suits, their Hollywood team in tow… their ‘award winning’ producers, their manager; my old friend Danny Halstead and their leading lady Patricia Clarkson.  Tom introduces the film with a sullen one liner and so it began… the dirge.

After a confusing opening moment… Clarkson gazing wistfully, maybe perplexed (perhaps she has cataracts) over Lake Tahoe, family members arrive for Memorial Day Weekend.  They are served by a phalanx of miserable latino staff.  There are bad jokes about celebrity, alcoholism and how ‘crazy’ Clarkson’s character is.   The pace is languorous and indulgent, the characters are clichéd and increasingly… unwatchable.

After twenty minutes the roof of The Provincetown Town Hall begins to sag with disappointment.  Members of the audience leave.  Feet shuffle, somebody drops their change.

Patricia Clarkson is an accomplished actress, yet in Last Weekend she is left flailing, undirected, spewing appalling lines in badly constructed scenes. Left to her own devices… she resorts to pleading hand gestures (elephant’s testicles) and shrill, post menopausal delivery.  The director of photography does her no favors with unflattering close-ups and clumsy framing.  I felt so sorry for the actors.  Trapped in trite scene after trite scene.  Forced to act out the life of the writer/director… was it shot in the Dolby family lake house?

Heartless, bereft of emotion, contrived.

My friend, the talented actor Zachary Booth plays a screen writer… obviously Dolby.   Yes, another film about a conflicted writer.  Why can’t these people have real jobs?  Lazy writing by rich, entitled, white gay men.   Neither director seems to have any compassion for their characters, just as they had no compassion for the Provincetown audience.   This film is terrible and no amount of Dolby gay millions could save it.

These two local events (Fag Bash and The Provincetown Film Festival) serve as a metaphor for gay life in the USA.  On the streets and in the bars the club kids are brimming with creative genius, embracing modernity. Wearing their extraordinary costumes they stand in opposition to mediocrity.  Last Weekend is what affluent, heteronormative, white gays serve up as ‘gay culture’.  My fear is that the obscenely rich and bourgeois Tom Dolby and his terrible film will be used as evidence for what queer life is like now rather than the vibrant party thrown by the disenfranchised in the dingy Fag Bash basement.

Categories
Queer

Forgotten Artists

Fire Island Dawn

For centuries great artists have been isolated, opportunities withheld for being homosexual, women and people of color.  Amazingly, black, gay and female artists are still side lined, deliberately obscured, forgotten.  One of them might have been Robert DeNiro‘s gay father, Robert DeNiro Sr. who is currently having his gay moment in the sun… albeit posthumously.   His famous son and names sake pledges that he isn’t going to let the establishment forget his father’s name.  DeNiro keeps his father’s studio like The British National Trust keep Vita Sackville-West‘s tower.  In aspic.

DeNiro cries because he regrets not forming a loving relationship with his father.  Why now?  Why is DeNiro telling us now about his gay dad?   Because he can.   DeNiro is rewriting his personal history to include his previously forgotten father.  Yet, it turns out that it wasn’t just DeNiro who erased his father’s memory for so long… predictably, so did the arts establishment.

For hundreds of years the male-dominated arts establishment didn’t want women written into art history, as recently as the 1930’s painter Gwen John, the more talented sister of Augustus.  Side lined.  Ignored.  Considered an acquired taste.  Black directors of theatre and film… considered inadequate.  Gay men passed over for straight directors or their gay films/scripts/stories ignored… often by other gay men in positions of power.

You know, gender/race apartheid still happens in Hollywood.  Fine directors, black, women and gay… side lined, excluded and maligned by otherwise ‘liberal’ or ‘forward thinking’ agents managers and studio heads… in favor of straight white men.  Most of the decision makers, ironically… are gay white men.  Colluding with the status quo.

We all have our Hollywood horror stories, I used to think my Hollywood story was unusual but sadly I share my experience with black directors, women directors and fellow gay and lesbian directors.  I used to think it was just me, Duncan Roy… the ‘difficult one’ but I have met some really nice people, some really talented folk who share this Hollywood experience word for word, blow by blow.

I’ll tell you my story.  It’s a true story.  I have not disguised the names of those I met.  Here it goes.  Get ready.  Ten or so years ago after the initial success of my British Academy nominated film, AKA  I found out that old ideas about who should succeed based on gender, sexual orientation and the color of your skin flourished in Hollywood…

I made a feature film.

Making an independent film is difficult.  Making a gay, independent film is almost impossible.  After shooting the film we had no money to finish it.  Margaret Matheson the award winning Producer came to our aid, she took the film to The Briitsh Film Council who reluctantly agreed to finish the film.

I was told by Paul Trijbits at the UK Film Council that “No one will be interested in your film… only you and gay people.”  He spat the word gay at me.  Paul was a renowned ladies man.  He had slept with Gulshan Jaffery the producer of my previous films.  Paul could get away with that kind of homophobia ten years ago.  Both Margaret Matheson and I were, by that time, used to snide and homophobic remarks from straight men like Paul Trijbits.   We learned to ignore them.

After the film was finished we realized that we had a cult gay hit on our hands.  AKA travelled the world opening and closing gay and lesbian film festivals winning many awards.  We were invited to Outfest, the LA gay and lesbian film festival.  They offered us a prime time screening at The Directors Guild if we could provide them with a 35mm print.  We agreed.  Until that point I had never seen my film on a huge screen.  I had never seen it projected on 35mm.  I had never experienced it in Dolby surround sound.

The weeks leading up to the screening I was camping at the sprawling, un-renovated home in Santa Monica of writer/actor Brandon Boyce and his Italian child bride Roberto.  The film had been winning awards but I did not expect the cynical film industry to respond very well to a gay film told (think Abel Gance Napoleon) on three screens running simultaneously throughout.

Paul Trijbits’ remark lingered like an acrid fart and I wondered the night of our Hollywood screening if Paul’s prophecy would come true.   As it turned out, he was completely wrong and completely right.

As Brandon and I arrived for the screening  he said, “God, the entire velvet mafia are here.” I had no idea what that meant.  I wish I’d asked.  The film played to a hushed crowd and after the final credit the audience erupted.  Applause like I had never known.  In the lobby afterwards I was assaulted by every one who was anyone but I had no idea who anyone was.

That night Jason Weinberg from Untitled took me to dinner at The Chateau Marmont, he said he wanted to be my manager but Stephen Macias from Outfest had already told me that he was my manager and so, not realizing what a terrible mistake I was making, declined Jason’s kind offer.  Macias, as it turned out, was going to be one of the worst people I ever let into my life.  A more conniving, drunk/drug fucked and foolish man you ever did meet.

During dinner at the Chateau people were coming to our table and congratulating me.

That night I took a taxi home to Santa Monica and even though this had been the most triumphant day of my life I had never felt more alone and uncomfortable.  I learned a great lesson that night, for all their foibles Americans believe inherently that they are destined for greatness so when it happens to them… they are prepared.  They graciously accept the award, the money and the plaudits.  I had, that night, in my greatest hour… only the lingering promise of defeat.  Paul and men like him poisoning the moment with their homophobia, their doubt and their jealousy.

During the next few weeks I met everyone who was anyone in Hollywood, Leonardo DiCaprio came to a screening of the movie, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston had a screening at their house and I was invited to meet every major agent, every studio, every independent production company.

The previous year I had been in Cannes and met John Lesher who is now a fine producer with exquisite taste but was at that time an influential agent at Endeavor.  So, when it came to choosing an agent I was clear about who I wanted representing me.  Brian Swardstrom, Tilda’s agent, had seen the film and had reintroduced me to John.  I made the decision and told Steve Macias.

Macias told me that it was Hollywood etiquette to take every meeting.  So, I was forced by Macias to go to CAA, William Morris,  UTA and ICM even though I had already made a decision to sign with Endeavor.  The agents I met were utterly appalling.  At every agency I was introduced to the token gay agent and every one of those gay agents told me definitively that if I wanted to make further gay themed films I should kiss my Hollywood career goodbye.

It was like being forced back into the closet.

My favorite line, delivered by lesbian agent Rowena Arguelles at CAA, was said with such gravity I thought it was a joke.  I told her that I had already made a decision to go with John Lesher at Endeavor.  She told me that Endeavor was going bankrupt, she told me that I would just be another director at Endeavor but if I chose CAA to represent me I would be a star.  I laughed out loud.  Not because I was being a dick… but because I thought it was a joke.  Because nobody had ever spoken to me like that… not seriously.

On the way out Rowena looked scathingly at my Smythsons, black leather diary and thinking it was a bible asked me what chapter I was reading… I opened it and said, August.

As it turned out, my representation at Endeavor was short-lived, deliberately upended by then ICM agent Nicole Clemens.  Nicole made a particular nuisance of herself in her attempt to sign me, coming to Brandon’s house in Santa Monica at 7am and calling 24/7 begging for a meeting that my ‘manager’ Stephen Macias insisted I take.  After the third unsolicited call to my home Nicole delivered this apocryphal line.

She said it through the letter box.

“You and I have to work together because we have so much in common.”  I opened the door.  “What,” I asked, “Did we have in common?”

“Well,”  she spluttered, “We both love being fucked in the ass.”

I slammed the door.   That incident really happened.

I told Stephen Macias but he insisted that I meet with her and her boss at ICM even though I was already represented by Lesher.  When I finally met Nicole at her office I told her again that I had signed with Lesher.  She tried to persuade me to change my mind.  She told me that I would end up like Ken Loach if I didn’t change my attitude.  I laughed.  I told her I couldn’t think of a better way to end up.  I told her I was leaving, she picked up the phone and had her assistant call Swardstrom,  she told him I was at ICM taking a meeting with regard to representation.

Brian, understandably, went crazy and that was that.  No more Endeavor.

Finally, I signed with Bobby Thompson who had discovered and nurtured Tim Burton… but it was over for me in Hollywood.  Between the rabid homophobia, my lack of experience, Macias and Clemens I kissed my Hollywood career goodbye.

During the next few months I met all the above again, firstly at Sundance where the film played to enthusiastic audiences and at the British Academy Awards where I was nominated for a best new comer award.  I didn’t win.  I stayed in the UK.  A very long way from Hollywood and the homophobia, conniving and lies of the people I met there.

At Sundance I bumped into Paul Trijbits, he looked sheepishly at me over a dinner that was thrown by my agent for me and Tilda Swinton.   He was wrong that nobody was interested in the film… but he was right that at that time gay product was worthless.  Ten years later all of that has changed.  I, of course, was in the gay film making vanguard.   I often wondered if I stumbled so young gay directors could flourish?

No.  That hasn’t happened.  Gay directors are still sidelined by gay agents and gay studio executives.  Gay projects hijacked by established straight directors… Liberace, Dallas Buyers Club, Brokeback Mountain… to name but three gay themed films made by straight directors and producers.  The work we all put into changing attitudes toward gay film making and gay story telling worked… but not for gay directors.

Homophobic people like Nicole Clemens who may very well have ‘evolved’ since then… put the kibosh on that.

The 35mm print shown that extraordinary night now rests peacefully in the vault at UCLA as part of the Outfest Legacy Project.

 

Enhanced by Zemanta
Categories
Queer

Gay Rape and Pedophilia

Between oysters and pizza at Gjelina and sultry nights in Hollywood the whole gay world went cray cray…

In less time than it takes to come up on Bath Salts the sex lives of some very powerful gay men in Hollywood changed dramatically.   The unfettered and often illegal activities those Peter Pan like older men were so used to getting away with… ceased… forever.

During the week hundreds of lurid photographs surfaced of a puffy faced Bryan Singer and his friends holding onto young boys at restaurants, in private jets and at clubs.  I wagged my finger at my lap top.  I told you so!  It was only a matter of time before Bryan’s life exploded like a ripe teen zit all over the internet.  Times they are a’changing.

Written by outsiders the Singer scenario seems absurd.  Bryan’s friends have names like second rate gangsters or third rate porn stars: Wayne Castro and Tommy Johnson. Brazenly, flagrantly, indiscreetly photographing themselves with boys and more boys… willow thin, pale and hairless.   Funnelling boys into Bryan’s world: club promoters, model agents and studio executives.

The scale of Bryan’s boy network, his boy compulsion can only be guessed at.  It is without doubt an addiction over which he is powerless, his life unmanageable.  Yet, to many… perfectly normal.   A sex addict amongst sex addicts.

He says, “I don’t see the point of knowing anyone unless I’m going to have sex with them.”

After the premiere I am invited to the Ritz in New York.  When I get to the room they’re there.  It’s one of those parties… the men and the boys.  Snorting coke, drinking beer, young boys sitting on the laps of those revolting, sour men.  It makes me sad and angry.  When I write about their party the following day they are outraged, they tell me to take it down…  I mean, I’ve been to straight parties and met trafficked eastern European girls… hookers.  I feel the same sadness.  They are a long way from home.  They sit with me until they realize I am useless to them.

A young, straight actor/waiter tells me proudly that Bryan takes him to an apartment, gives him drugs and alcohol, hires a pretty girl prostitute and throws himself into the mix as the boy fucks the girl.   The boy tells me that Bryan tapes the encounter.  He has a big smile on his face, this was the role of his lifetime.

By mid week the Singer scandal gains traction and the true colors of the gay community reveal themselves… unsurprisingly they were not the colors of the rainbow flag.  The first reaction from the gays, found in anonymous comments all over the gay online press, are more favorable toward Bryan than Michael Egan, his accuser.  The gays huffed and puffed about Egan having taken so long to come forward.  They say, he must have known what he was getting himself into and generally blaming the victim for his pubescent naivety.

My Bryan Singer blog piece went viral and Egan (who alleges rape) named three other predators… one of them Garth Ancier was once a Facebook friend.  During the press conference Egan’s mother sits by her terrified son.  She is crying.  She blames herself for not doing more.

Even though ‘everyone knew’ about Bryan and his hedonistic mates indulging in the joys of trafficking young flesh… it turns out this lifestyle is in fact a fantasy many Hollywood gays aspire.  They want what Bryan has: the parties, the money, the drugs and the sex. Bryan, they concluded, was living the gay dream.

I spoke with Lucas John who writes the well read blog WeHo Confidential.  Even though Lucas has written terrible things about the gays and their behavior in his blog (he boasts the gay mafia live in fear of photographs of their parties ending up on his site) he reassured me WeHo Confidential wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, it was ‘a game’. Lucas was shocked that anyone was taking Michael Egan seriously, that the wider world might now have a negative opinion about his ‘friend Bryan’.  Lucas vehemently stands by Bryan Singer.  This strident support is not unusual amongst the gays.  The support Bryan receives from the gays sounds like the support Sandusky received initially from Penn State, the support pedophile priests garnered from their reeling congregation and the Vatican.

The opinion from the ‘wider world’, as it turns out, is mixed.  Many news outlets are covering the story tentatively.  Why the caution?   They don’t want to be accused of homophobia.  They don’t want to get it wrong or upset their homo-collegues.  Gay news proprietors like Nick Denton at Gawker are trying to treat this gay tabloid story as they would a straight tabloid story but their readers think him a traitor.

LA gays are shocked and confused that their sex conduct could be considered somehow… wrong.  Those rules, they squealed, don’t apply to us.  Fucking a persistent, consenting 15-year-old wasn’t pedophilia, they scoffed.   It’s fun!  Don’t shame us!  Without a hint of irony they argue that the victim ‘could have said no’.

The victim could have said no.  The predator could have said no?  No.  The logic of the gays.

The truth is:  many gay men willingly had sex with older men (in lieu of our peers) when we were teenagers.  We liked it, we wanted more.  Most gays can’t understand why Egan is complaining.  After all, he got to hang with celebrities, taken on a private jet and all the drugs he could manage.

Gay men can’t get their heads around the reality of man/man rape.  It’s a total mystery to them.  Rape is what happens in porn films or to women or closeted straight men who can’t face the truth about their first anal experience.  Some gay men can’t make a connection between the girl held down and raped by the lacrosse team and the boy held under water and raped by the studio executive and his friends. There is a disconnect for most gay men between these two narratives.

The gays operated, until very recently, in the shadow of heterosexual society, where they evolved their own rules, their own standards, their own language.  The gays must now learn to live in the light and dance to a different tune.  For some this is a hard transition.  Facing the responsibilities equality affords us.  Like willful children holding onto old ideas.

Gays: It’s time to grow the fuck up.

On Wednesday I was hounded by Buzzfeed to tell what I knew about Bryan but generally I kept myself to my blog.  The comments section on Gawker lit up with the usual kind of screaming homo hate I have long been used to.  They claimed I was a hypocrite for ‘discrediting’ Bryan when I have a hairy 25-year-old boyfriend.  The difference?  My boyfriend and I have monogamous, consensual sex and have done for the past 8 months.

In other news, my old buddy the teen loving Dustin Lance Black hit the headlines again this week because his former college in Pasadena thought it inappropriate for an ex student who took pictures of himself having anal sex (with a porn star without a condom) lecture their students.  Lance Black cries Homophobia! and Shame!   He proves to be another entitled, white gay men who lives beyond the consequences of his actions.

I mentioned this to one of the bone fide journalists I met with this week.  I explained what I had seen, innocent boys being trafficked from model agencies in New York to the hot tubs of Hollywood.  He asked why I wanted to get involved… why I wanted to share my own story of gay Hollywood, knowing how unpopular my opinions are to my fellow tribe members.

I told him this:

When I was 8 years old I ran away from home, away from my abusive father.  When the police caught up with me I told them what was going on.  They took me home and told me if I ever repeated those allegations against my powerful and well-respected father they would fall on me ‘like a ton of bricks’.  This terrible injustice shaped my view of authority.  After the policeman left I suffered 6 more years of merciless brutality… in silence.

The gays have no sympathy for the abused because they have always felt abused,  they say: Suck it up, stop complaining, boo hoo.  They have learned to forget their miserable past, their bullies, their abusive parents.  They have learned to ignore what I refuse to ignore:  things must change and the only way that is going to happen?  We talk about the abuse/rape/pedophilia… we go on talking about it until it stops.

Until we can learn to say no without shame.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Categories
Queer

Compare and Despair

Hot Wax and Chains J. Patrick Walsh

There is an endless stream of ‘good news’ on Facebook.  The parties, the marriages, the births, the home renovations and the ubiquitous instagramed plates of delicious (and not so delicious) breakfast, lunch and dinner.  The grandiose exclamations of joy and delight.  The boasting, the dressing up… the glitter and sangria.

In between the nihilistic leather soirees and endless travelogues come occasional glimpses of the pain and suffering most of us endure but seldom want to admit.  At least… not on social media.  Not to those who seem to be having the time of their lives every single day.

Two deaths this week.  One old lady I never knew and one young man I did.  Sandwiched between bottles of french wine and exotic vacations on the French Riviera is the truth.  The young American who can’t stop drinking and the miserable single woman who can’t get the man to stay.

They say, when I post my bits and pieces, that I am angry… lonely… sad.  When I don’t agree with a theme they say I am a sullen contrarian.  When I post expressions of joy I am inundated with ‘likes’ as if my happiness needs affirming.

My friend’s mother dies peacefully in the hospital bed.  He updates us by the hour.  Her final words remind us of our own mortality.  I am so grateful he tells us so.  I learn so much more from her last words than a another blurry picture of enchiladas posted at some obscure Mexican restaurant where my ‘friends’ boast of the wonderful time they are having.

I have stopped posting pictures of parties, of other people in their gorgeous homes.  I have stopped reporting which celebrities I have seen and what they were doing.  Of late I have been concentrating on injustice.  My own and others.

The realtor who engages his powerful friends to incarcerate.  We are getting to the bottom of that mucky situation.  The way the rich use government institutions to their own ends.  Corrupt district attorneys, prosecutors and law enforcement.  We are getting to the bottom of that one.  Slowly, like archeologists gently removing layer after layer of dirt… getting to what was so carefully buried.  For every corrupt official there is another eager to help.

For the time being I have to be obtuse.  That will end… sooner or later.  I am patient .  I can wait.

Bradley Manning, queer hero, his trial starts today.   Although I doubt we will get the outcome we desire and that boy will probably spend the rest of his life in jail for doing the right thing… he will not be forgotten.  Bradley Manning will not be forgotten.

Paul, my white gay friend, the talent manager.  I saw him yesterday.  He had been to a Liberace viewing party in the hills.  A bunch of straight acting gay boys watching Liberace in the opulent surroundings of an older gay man.  Their reaction was as expected… they hated it.  They didn’t see what Liberace  had to do with their lives.  You see, they complained… they wanted to see themselves.  Paul couldn’t understand why Scott Thorson (who he knows) had his story told.  He described Scott as a ‘user’.  He said he thought it was ‘unfair’ that Scott’s story was told rather than a ‘gay hero’.

“Who?”  I asked.  “Which gay hero?”

His brow furrowed.  He’ll get back to me with the answer.

Then it occurred to me why a bunch of boys under the age of 25 drinking free booze in the house of an older Hollywood oligarch might not like the film Liberace.  Rather than not seeing themselves… on the contrary, they all saw themselves exactly and hated what they saw.

Like on Facebook the ugly truth is sometimes sandwiched between the glitter and sangria.

No matter how deeply it is buried.

Categories
art Rant

psychopath or artist?

Writing this film has been so cathartic.  Not least because I get to exorcise a life time of demons.  I also act out crimes of atrocious ferocity without ever once having to lift a gun or a knife.

What keeps me from murdering those who give me pains?

Well, for a start, I am not (much to your irritation) a psychopath.  A sociopath maybe…but even that is doubtful.

After all these years of not committing vicious crimes against humanity.

I’m not about to start now.

What stops me from commiting the vilest crimes?   The very worst of my vengeful nature?

Well, my dears, I am an artist.

When I made Clancy’s Kitchen (essentially a film about my wanting to kill and dismember a homophobe) when the prosthesis arrived…boxes of beautifully made hands, feet and other body parts…I thought to myself…good god…you really are one sick mother fucker.

Looking at the descriptions for both psychopath and sociopath…they are strikingly similar.  But what is more striking is that they describe perfectly…most Americans.

In particular those who work on Wall Street.

A blatant disregard for the well-being of others.  

Here are some other Wall Street traits…these could apply to most Hollywood talent managers…in fact…any American ‘agent’…talent, literary, real estate…

These sociopathic character defects are perceived as virtue and coping mechanisms on Wall Street or in Hollywood.

Here are some of my favorites:

  • Glibness and Superficial Charm
  • Manipulative and Conning
    They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
  • Grandiose Sense of Self
    Feels entitled to certain things as “their right.”
  • Pathological Lying
    Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.
  • Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
    A deep-seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
  • Need for Stimulation
    Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.
  • Callousness/Lack of Empathy
    Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others’ feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
  • Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
    Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
  • Irresponsibility/Unreliability
    Not concerned about wrecking others’ lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
  • Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity
    Promiscuity, child sexual abuse, rape and sexual acting out of all sorts.
  • Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle
    Tends to move around a lot or makes all-encompassing promises for the future, poor work ethic but exploits others effectively.
  • Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility
    Changes their image as needed to avoid prosecution. Changes life story readily.
With Wall Street running things here…Goldman Sachs et al…and trying to run things everywhere else…the disregard and arrogance they have for those of us who have very little may be their undoing.
The 99%ers are storming the Palace of Versailles!  As I predicted here in this blog many months ago:
Here come the poor!  Here come the disenfranchised.  Like Zombies.
Here comes the change we can believe in.
They ain’t going anywhere.  Get used to it.
The rich in Britain were very canny, they gave away a little to keep a lot.   The establishment flourishes.  The Royal Family keeps its many palaces.
As crowns fell all over Europe, the British picked up fabulous jewels at bargain prices, abandoning their cousins to the guillotine, the Bolsheviks and worst of all…Scandinavian mediocrity.
Americans are too greedy to give a little to keep a lot.  They want it all.  The winner takes it all.
Just remember this Jamie Dimon/Lloyd Blankfein/Rupert Murdoch:  The French Revolution.
The French Royal Family had become so complacent, so arrogant…so rich…when they heard that the angry/hungry people were coming armed with pitchforks…they couldn’t close the gates to the magnificent Palace…the iron gates had rusted open.
The peasants just walked in…
Categories
Gay Malibu

Sunday Hollywood/Malibu

Such a perfect day…see more here.

Categories
Uncategorized

The Garden

It was perfect this evening in Malibu, I thought I would share it with you.

Alex and I hung the bronze lamp this morning.  I found it in a Beverly Hills dumpster..where they throw this sort of thing away.

 

Categories
Gay Health

Pilgrimage

Dawn.  Crows cawing.  Dawn chorus.

There is so much dew it looks and smells as there has been heavy rain.   I spend an hour every morning watering whatever I can from the path at the top of the house.   I enjoy this.

There are so many snails.

Had lunch in Hollywood yesterday with a writer.  Actually, we didn’t eat lunch.  I drank some iced tea. Met the man who owns Mama Shelter in Paris.  I have known him for years but I just didn’t know that he owned that hotel.  You know we stayed there don’t you?  This time last year.

How can I spend so much time wishing away the past?

Long conversation with a man in Sonoma who makes chicken coops.  They are expensive but look great.

Jennifer bought fresh garbanzo beans which seem like they might be easy to grow in my garden.  The melons are growing.  The black tomatoes are doing well.  Something ate the pumpkin seedlings.  The lemon trees, after the wet winter, are laden with fruit.  There are figs and plums and ruby grapefruit.

There are roses blooming all over the property.

What else can I tell you? I write my novel as per suggestion.  It gets better and better.  Perhaps I get better?  It started as one thing and already, with a little intelligent coaxing, is evolving into something quite different.  It started with vengeful intentions. Now it is getting funny.  It started with a view to kill.   Now it embraces the will to live.  These are not my ideas.

I would prefer my original plan.

I have just a few weeks to finish writing The Scarlett Empress. It is by far the most commercial thing I have ever written.  It is helping me though.  Helping me think in a different sort of way.

The more I write the other stuff…the less I want to write this.  Yet, this spurs me into action.

Three days until the ‘Big Adventure’.   The Dane arrives from NYC on Sunday.

Becoming a Pilgrim.  You’ll enjoy reading about it.  I have had to keep the plan a big secret.  I don’t want anyone ruining it.

The twins are running around the house in their boxers.

Pains in chest and arm.  Balls ache once again.  Nasty cough.

Categories
Rant

Waiting To Be Dead

LIly

The day passed slowly and uneventfully.

I watered the garden. “Why don’t you have an automated system for that?” I hear you say. Well, I do. But…a bit like our mad bad Prince of Wales I like watering the plants individually and chatting with each of them. The citrus trees especially respond to gentle coaxing.

There is something charming and rather annoying about the ‘we’ pathology of twins. We are with each other a little too much. Consequently, when we left for Lake Malibou, I wasn’t in the best of moods.

We all helped Jennifer with her Out of The Box Wednesday pack then Miles set off with the delivery.

Robby and I drove into Hollywood. I wanted to stop in at Fresh and Easy where I buy English staples. Tea, bacon, marmalade etc. I can’t do with out them. We, me and the Little Dog, sat in the ugly court-yard outside the supermarket drinking coffee waiting for Robby watching lithe men heading for 24 hour fitness.

A woman from Chicago, who had arrived in Hollywood two nights previously, looked down at the dog and said, “There’s a little person trapped in there.” She fed him chicken breast. “This has got to last me two days.” She told the Little Dog. She was plump, dyed black hair and red lips. She told me that she was here in Hollywood to pitch reality TV ideas to…God know who. She was going to pay to pitch her ‘concepts’.

I was overcome with pity for her. She told me a couple of ‘ideas’ she had thought of pitching.

It occurred to me that for forty years not one original thought had been formed in that sappy brain.

I went for a walk.

Hollywood is grimy. There is nothing of any beauty to look at…to be inspired by. I yearn for my garden.

Robby picked me up after an hour in the gym. We had planned on going to an art/film/glamour party in Beverly Hills but I was tired and irritable so we drove home.

Well, we drove back to Malibou Lake and I helped Jason cook dinner for the children. After dinner, as the children were going to bed, I sat at their Steinway and tried playing the piano. I had not played for thirty years. I was shocked by how clumsy my fingers were. No longer able to slide effortlessly over the keys. I began to sweat. Evidence of my old age. Evidence of my own mortality. It was so frustrating! My left hand refused to even practice the scales in unison with the right.

I lay in bed last night thinking too much. Waiting to be dead.

Not so fast Batman!

Next week I set off on my ‘great adventure’ culminating in the birthday hootenanny. There are people flying from all sorts of wonderful places to help me celebrate my 50th Birthday…before I am not. I am stunned that so many old friends even exist for me let alone want to jump on a plane and be with me. You know, this is what I should have done last year…but last year I was with him in the back parlor of Wheelers.

Last year there was no room for anyone else. WTF?

Categories
Gay Rant

Teen Wolf

Tyler Posey The Teen Wolf Star and Lil'Kevin Iwashina

Hollywood.  Nice to be back for a few days.  Even nicer to drag myself out of Malibu and up the 10 Freeway to Toby Wilkin’s birthday party.

Miles came with me.  Robby was stuck at work…and sick.

I wore a very chic black suit and tee-shirt with a picture of a scantily clad woman on it.  Hair much longer than it has been for weeks and sporting a fuller beard.

The little dog loves Toby.  He jumps around on his back legs whenever he sees him.

Many beautiful, interesting boys.  Two girls.

Jeff Davis writer of MTV’s new Teen Wolf series told me that he insisted the gay character in his very promising new show be played by an out gay man.

That was brave, or perhaps reckless in Hollywood?  I have no idea.

I applaud Jeff’s audacity.

Maybe things really are a’changing?

Had longest chat with rich gay about US equality politics.  Of course I remember his name but it wouldn’t be polite to mention it.  Even though I told him that I would blog about the party I don’t think he thought I would blog about him in particular.

He is as passionate as I am about gay equality though his solution seems very different to mine.

We agreed that both HRC and GLAAD  are getting it wrong.  But where as I think change needs to start with an aggressive ad campaign that positively validates us, our love and our history…his strategy boiled down to making lawyers richer by changing things judicially.

I suggested that men like him and David Geffen and women like Ellen should publicly stop paying their taxes until they have equal billing..he balked.

I urged him to ‘take the bullet’ if he truly believes in equality.  I reminded him that there were men and women in Yemen this very night risking their lives for freedom, equality and democracy.

I didn’t necessarily agree with his point of view but tried (unusually) to look for the similarities rather than the differences.  I was feeling, shall we say, diplomatic.

Another Ken Mehlman apologist.   Apparently, even though our Ken has been a very bad gay he can help us by getting Republicans to speak out for gay marriage.  Oh gawd.  That argument is nearly as convincing as trickle down economics.

My new friend was a firm believer that all things gay are good and we should not under any circumstance be questioned or challenged.

He seemed perplexed when I suggested that by keeping our own side of the street clean we might attract rather than promote people to our cause.  We seldom ever look at our own behaviour, morals or lack of them.

He told me rather imperiously that he did not have any friends with drug or alcohol abuse issues.  Forgetting of course that his good friend Elton has been sober for many years after many more years of a torturous drug and alcohol problem.

He had not read or even heard of The Velvet Rage.

We parted on good terms.

One young queen kept hounding The Little Dog.  The Little Dog took offence and tried to bite him.   Oh how we laughed.

Generally very good party even though I missed the sausages.

Almost the entire Teen Wolf cast in attendance.

Bumped into my very old friend Tom D who scarcely recognised me.  I must look very old.  He claimed it was the beard.  He has become a hugely successful and incredibly well-respected producer.  We hugged a lot and agreed to meet very soon.

The beautiful Dane and I are going on an adventure.   Watch this space.