Categories
Queer Whitstable

Sir Tom Croft Architect

Sir Tom and Max Croft Christmas 2010

If ever there were I time I needed this blog… then now would be that time. Writing has always afforded me the opportunity of untangling the scribble of thoughts and furies in my head. When I was a boy I made sense of complications (secrets and lies) by writing. Setting out the problems and finding solutions. My first attempt at creative writing, a series of short stories about mice… written when I was no more than 11 years old. Reading them now they are a fascinating and heart wrenching attempt to unravel the unrelenting brutality I suffered at the hands of my step-father, at school and the casual racism of Whitstable people.

Now I am kept awake at night by other furies, no less brutal. The continuing and evolving cruelty of Brexit. The take down of an elected leader by those who sought to discredit with lies and false allegations of anti-semitism. Watching a good and honest man hooked by his enemies, made to squirm for no good reason other than he sought to challenge the vile status quo and support the arab people of Palestine, confronting apartheid Israel.

Many, many people feel hopeless after the recent UK election. A rigged electoral system, a billionaire owned press spouting lies about a good man then amplified by state media. The obvious similarities to all those soviet style broadcasts we smirked at thirty years ago becoming apparently ours. This, of course, is only the tip of the iceberg. Ha! Riven from the ice by global warming. Climate change another of the challenges facing humanity denied by the same charlatans who sought to destroy Jeremy Corbyn.

There are two distinct types of people at home in the UK. Those who are invested in the truth and those who believe anything they are told. It is clear to people like me they dare not challenge the dominant voice. The others do not dare to take on the establishment. They cower before the lie.

You know I’ve never held my tongue. Restraint is alien to me. I’d rather lose a friend than stay quiet. This happened just before Christmas three years ago at an old friend’s house. Tom Croft and his wife Max. Sir Tom Croft. I’d know Tom since my teens and was very fond of his parents and his spinster aunt. I had spent years of Christmas at Tom’s beautiful converted barn. They had very kindly included me in many of their social events. Lunches, beach parties and garden parties, their garden is magnificent! However, their pretentious gardener, the vile Posy Gentles is not. I’d not always enjoyed these excursions. Their posh white friends were gruelling company. Trapped in a tight spot, forced to find any conversation with Amicia De Moubray, married to Kent’s Lord Lieutenant is a special kind of hell. However, I played the game and respecting Tom’s feelings ignored their right wing banta and kept my end of the conversation non controversial.

Christmas Day, three years ago at an intimate supper with Tom and Max I was forced to endure a local carpenter’s offensive opinion of gay men. I complained. Tom kept quiet as his wife, a Guardian editor, sought to protect the idiot carpenter and silence my experience as a gay man. She sought like most right wing women, at the highly polished, mahogany dinner table, to defend the dominant article: a white heterosexual male who didn’t want to understand his privilege. Who couldn’t bare… not for one moment to walk in another man’s shoes. I couldn’t shake the resentment and wrote her the following day:

‘Privilege has nothing to do with money.  You may very well have come from a worst family situation than me (tho I doubt it) even if that was the case my journey as a gay man these past 60 years has not been easy and when I share my story I do not expect you to diminish my experience. 

I do not expect you to be gay holocaust denier.  I do not expect you to do anything other than respectfully listen to those who suffered because they were/are out gay men fighting for equality, visibility and anti vilification.

Here is what you refused that night to acknowledge for me and millions of other men my age:

1. Born a criminal.  Know what that means?  Ask other gay men in their sixties.  It means when I was born a gay man could still be sent to jail for being gay.  In fact, men were still being sent to jail for consensual sex acts as recently as 1988.

2.  Facing violent prejudice in the street if you were an out gay man.  Swearing, spitting hitting and worse. And as I found recently still evident on the less enlightened streets of some European countries.

3.  The aids crisis deliberately ignored by government because it was perceived as a gay plague.   Watching over 100 young men dying gruesome deaths.

4.  Section 28, Margaret Thatcher’s draconian discriminatory anti gay law.

5. Marriage and other institutions lgbt people were excluded from.  

6.  Fear of openly expressing affection to ones we/I loved.  This is perhaps the most egregious.’ 

She replied she did not recognise herself from my description and we were no longer friends. She wrote this from a holiday in Istanbul she and her husband shared with Anne McElvoy and Martin Ivens, the editor of The Sunday Times, who have located to my home town of Whitstable. One can imagine how they soothed her ruffled feathers and told her to ignore the uppity faggot.

The Guardian is now under the thumb of MI5. Forced to destroy their hard drives by a man from the ministry, the editor removed after printing ghastly truths provided by Julian Assange. How can anyone have any respect for Max Croft?

Arriving from London last Tuesday Sir Tom and his dog were waiting at the station. He said hello. I shook my head. His absurd wife, Lady Max Croft greeted him with a shrill. I do not need their garden parties, their equally dreary friends or their condescension. I do not need them to protect their friends from uncomfortable truths.

Categories
Gay Hollywood Los Angeles Queer Tivoli NY

Golden Globes 2017

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It’s the morning after the Golden Globe awards.  I don’t have a hangover but I do have a severe headache.  Ahead of my rant, the first order of the day?  Congratulate Barry Jenkins who brilliantly won the best drama golden globe for his exquisite film, Moonlight.  By awarding this black/queer film best drama the HFPA have thrown down a gauntlet to Hollywood.  They are daring The Academy to address its crippling lack of diversity.  I predict that Moonlight will go on collecting nominations and awards (will win SAG, Spirit Awards) but can it win Academy Awards?  Here lies the rub.  The only two bankable commodities in this little film are Jenkins and Harris who are both Hollywood gold.

The liberal, Hollywood talent elite are trilling about Meryl Streep.  They forget the less liberal Hollywood majority booed Michael Moore after receiving his Bowling for Columbine Oscar and using the academy podium to remind us of President Bush’s fictitious reasons for invading Iraq in his brilliant and oft quoted ‘fictitious times’ speech.  President Obama of course, perpetuated those fictions but did it by stamping out dissent and whistle blowing within the United States.  Snowden, Assange, Manning.  My heroes.

The real money in Hollywood is behind Trump… the power.  The talent can make art out of outrage and in turn make billions of $ for the white Hollywood establishment.   I can’t imagine former friend and UTA boss Jeremy Zimmer is anything other than thrilled by the prospect of a Trump presidency, salivating over the kind of big money he’s going to make these next four to eight years.

I wonder who reps Barry Jenkins?  I can tell you one thing.  He won’t have a black agent or manager at one of the leading agencies or management companies… because there aren’t any.  Until there are black faces repping big money at the agencies, black faces producing movies or living on Carbon Beach in Malibu or heading up the teamsters union…  Hollywood will be as is it always has: racist.  A white industry where predominantly white men control the money.  It is not a place where your dreams will come true, it is a place where old white men will decide which of their dreams will come true using your talent.

It’s simply not good enough to call Trump names at award shows. Yeah he’s a prick, yeah he’s hollow, yes he’s predictable. Are we gonna repeat ourselves every day? Expecting a different outcome? Let’s call him what he is: Donald Trump is the most powerful white supremacist in the world. Riding an international wave of fascism. Your president is a white supremacist.

As I’ve asked a million times before, are you willing to put your life on the line to fight fascism? Are you willing to demonstrate, be interned or tortured or imprisoned? Sooner or later Facebook rants and memes just won’t cut it. History proves that when things get nasty the people do as they are told. However brave they say they are before the black shirts arrive. It’s my guess that you’ll put up with it too. You’ll go on the one million woman march… then they’ll round-up the South Americans in California and what will you do?  Then they’ll go after lgbt rights… and what will you do? They’ll outlaw abortion. What will you do? They’ll shoot to kill and fill the prisons with any and every black man who looks scary and what will you do? Tweet?

You’ll tweet about it.

2.

I’m very slowly going blind.  Foolishly, after many years of  not looking carefully at my plate, I started wearing my glasses when I eat.  Oh My God, revolting!  Gelatinous sauces oozing from the edge of beef and chicken.  Seeds baked into bread.  Glazes and jus and creamed potato sprinkled with chives.  I want to vomit, overwhelmed by the detail, the slightest movement as you press down onto the burger and my lunch becomes a suppurating sore discharging blood, guacamole and mayonnaise.  I am captivated by gravy as it seeps under and drips around roast pork.   Nauseated, I have to take my glasses off.  On Saturday night we had pasta with sea urchin butter and caviar at Fish and Game in Hudson.  Although delicious, I couldn’t fully enjoy it until it was just a blur on my plate otherwise, it was a mesmerizing… awful experience.

3.

The dogs know it is bitterly cold this morning.  Minus 13.  They are under the covers.  Hidden away.  Unlike England which is cold, wet, dark and raw thankfully it is bright and cold here upstate making the day less of a chore.  Our store, Tivoli General is open and there are AA meetings in Hudson.

I stayed in bed, too distracted by pain.  The infection in my jaw getting worse.

The third Monday of January is notorious for suicide.  This third Monday in January will be no different.  A mass suicide event will take place in the USA and nobody will say a word.

Did you know I fell out with Stephen Fry a year or so ago?   I had the audacity to mention the freedoms and privilege a celebrity enjoys.  Celebrities HATE when you discuss their fame.  Or in his case… his twitter feed.  We then had an email fight about God and the existence of God.   I asked him if he realised almost all of his sober friends have a god in their life.  He reluctantly accepted that spirituality may be very loosely beneficial for some people but that’s that.  There’s a connection (if you can be bothered to work it out) between his reluctance to discuss celebrity and his eagerness to dismiss a certain kind of God.   “Stephen, you don’t have to believe in God,”  I said.  “As long as you know you’re not God.”

He said rather ominously, “Be very careful.”

Not being very careful, I asked, “So if you don’t belive in God… who do you cry out to every time you try killing yourself?”

That was it.  No more Stephen Fry.

 

Categories
prison

My Faith is Restored

The dog sleeps by my side, I worry that I might roll on him in the night and kill him.  Or, in a dream, I dismember him then wake up and he is dismembered.

As a very young child I worried that I had torn a dress to pieces that belonged to my mother.

I convinced myself that I had stolen the dress from her wardrobe, torn the dress, trying to make it fit me.

The shame of shredding it lived with me for decades.  One day, some time in my 40’s, I confessed to her.  I told her what I had done.  She laughed, the dress had been her sisters, she had returned the dress.

The woolen crepe feel of it, the silk lining, the dark blue flowers lifted like brocade on the darker blue surface.  The dream, the scissors, the cutting, trying to make it fit….me.

It was a dream.

You know that every word I write is being read by the police, by the brunette DA?  By the ‘victim’s’ lawyers?  They trawl this blog for evidence.  Did I just prove how ‘dark and creepy’ I really am?

In another dream the DA is wearing suspenders and a bra, panties (crotchless) a wet gash, slipping herself onto her much older husband’s giant cock.   She glances at the bible that sits primly on the bedside table and kicks it off.  Her ankle bracelet (an anniversary gift) catches the light, her Christian name written in gold.

Her children are sleeping in another room.  Oblivious.

These are the dreams I didn’t have in jail.  I could not dream.

Another marathon press session yesterday.  This time a fearless woman made it up the mountain.  Blond, slim, attractive.  I asked her who would play her in the movie of her life.  Jodi Foster.  Good choice.

I often wonder, when I am having an out-of-body experience, out of my life for a moment experience…what the hell is happening?

A four-hour interview.  After she left I fell into bed and slept deeply until Kevin arrived.   He chauffeured me into Venice, for dinner with Anna at Axe (where I once made a beautiful boy wear agent provocateur underwear and blow me in the bathroom…)  We ate everything on the menu: the flat bread and the crab and the boiled beef with polenta.  Anna drank a bottle of wonderful white wine, I envied her so much.  I wanted to taste it.  To feel the effect of the wine on my body and mind.  To take a few hours off.

When the sun sets, the nights are chilly, cold enough for a scarf.

After dinner a Mormon arrived from the internet.  We could not keep our hands off of each other.  I slipped my hands up under his coat onto his warm belly.  I kissed him on his lips.  He smiled coyly.  28 years in the closet, 28 years yearning for this.  Yes, he was the Mormon boy you see dressed in a suit wearing a badge, looking like a talent agent.

He’s out there experimenting, meeting men, feeling his way into a gay life.

At home we fell into bed and I found myself giving into him, becoming uncharacteristically submissive.  He came three times.  He didn’t lose his erection in between.  I couldn’t stop kissing him.  I made him mark my neck.  I made him bite me.

Sucking the spit out of his mouth.  The cum out of his cock.

The twins arrived home at 2.30am.  He had long gone.

The silent house.  I lay in bed and listened to my breath fill my lungs.  Enjoying the sensation of being alive.  A sensation I have had often since I left the jail.  I have been so alive since they shat me out of the MCJ. Walk through that door and you’ll be free.

The jail has restored my faith in humanity?  You wanted to know how so?

Because I met men in there, undeserving black men, paying the price with dignity. Because it made me re-evaluate everything.

(He brought me a bunch of hyacinths, the pungent fragrance fills the room.)

I have met extraordinary men and women since I left the jail.  Men and women who restored my faith in America. The USA.  Brilliant, humblingly brilliant minds working to free the men I knew (and men like them) from a barbaric life in an American jail.

This is the Newtonian ‘equal and opposite’ reaction to the life I had before I passed imperceptibly into my dotage, my serious…third life.

Picasso was hot, even when he was 70.”  he said.

The people I am meeting, the places I am visiting are so startlingly different from the life you thought I aspired.  I find myself in dingy offices down town.  Understanding obscure laws.  Recasting myself.  Relishing the next interview.  I am useful at last.  I am useful to them.  Useful for changing laws, illegal protocols…and people are listening.  I am being heard…it feels good.

You see what they did to Julian Assange?  They will try to do that to me.  They will discredit me.  They will try.  Scurrilously, meticulously, evidentially.  They will tell you that I can’t be trusted.  When the moment…that moment we have all been waiting for, the moment before the curtain rises, when the audience hushed, the lights have dimmed.

That moment is fast approaching.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Dogs Gay Hollywood Rant

John and Valoree Papsidera

Writer Michael Gastor collected me and the injured Little Dog from the Malibu house at midday and we drove east.

He has been in Berlin writing a script for a German director about Julian Assange.  I am toying with moving to Berlin in December.  He had a great time there.  I’m sure I would too.

We stopped at American Rag and bought wrapping paper and a birthday card for Transformers Producer Tom Desanto.  Tom’s birthday pool party thrown by his friend Adam Press.  He seemed pleased with the gifts.  Books from my personal collection that he had admired last week.

We arrived early…before the beautiful, half-naked boys began playing beer pong.

I was dressed for the next event so looked like a total freak.  I wore the hat I bought for Jake at Lanvin last summer.  My futuristic Helmut Lang shirt was commented on but not, I think, admired.  Everyone else in board shorts and…and nothing much else.  Chatted to a couple of really cool kids.   Managed, of course, to locate the only straight boy and settled into a long, fruitless conversation.

Michael played pool and drank whiskey.  The host was charming and sweet.  Dane arrived.  Huh?  How did that happen?

Our birthday parties couldn’t have been more different.  Somebody bought him a 6 foot inflatable penis.

Really glad I made the effort and hauled my ass over there.  Good God!  Who knew that there were so many beautiful, young actor boys with perfect bodies?   Toby arrived with his new squeeze.

Apparently Bryan Singer turned up just after we left.

At 3pm (in the blazing sun) we drove to another pool party.  John and Valoree Papsidera’s ‘Paws‘ fundraiser at his office ‘compound’ downtown.  The offices are an ex-swimming club that he has beautifully renovated.  This man has exquisite taste.  His art collection…to die for.  Some great names: Clemente, Judd, Pettibon and the most gorgeous George Condo.  I am newly converted to Condo.

John Papsidera is king.

John Papsidera

Of course, John can attract a glittering Young Hollywood crowd.  Jason Ritter (super sexy), Zach Quinto (super cool), Drew Barrymore, Olivia Wilde, Molly SimsMalin Akerman, Gavin Polone (owns The Waffle with John), Amber Heard , Alicia Silverstone, Olivia Munn, Jules Daly, Rainn Wilson, Ali Larter, Hayes MacArthurTalulah Riley, Elon Musk, Dwight Yoakam.

Chatted recovery and Dr Drew with Drew Pinsky‘s Love Line side kick, the devilishly handsome Psycho Mike (Michael Catherwood).  He was in Dancing with the Stars….Valoree produces that show.

Is Psycho Mike Gay?

Olivia Munn joined Psycho Mike and I.

He said, “You are the hardest working woman in Hollywood.”  (unfortunate choice of words)

I said, “Oh, that sounds good, what are you doing?”

Olivia snapped, “If you don’t know who I am, you don’t need to know who I am.”

I smiled wryly.

Her mouth twisted into a sneer and she gracelessly recited her IMDB credits.   I thought, the problem with you dear Olivia…you have no poise.

Chatted with a woman called Suzanne from Hidden Hills whose daughter was dating the most delicious boy.  A singer and guitar player.  A feast for the eyes.

I hadn’t realized that my great friend Manu is married to the gorgeous Kim Raver.

Totally adored Zach Quinto who, of course, we saw in Angels in America.  We talked AIDS, his new film, his producing.  That boy is a fucking star.

Fell in ‘boy love’ with Jason Ritter.  Those eyes…those beautiful blue eyes.

I flirted with boys.  Michael chased girls…we had a blast.

We left at 7ish for a fish and chip dinner with Henri then home to the coyote infested garden.

Robby booked his first big commercial this weekend so am dying to hear all about it.

Tracy Emin, the crazy talentless British ‘artist’ has been adopted by the Tory party and has dinner with Prime Minister Cameron.  WTF?  Her work installed at 10 Downing Street.  Her ugly mug pressed onto Cameron’s flacid pink cheek.

Categories
Rant

Rex Weyler

Greenpeace demonstrating against Esso. March, ...
Image via Wikipedia

Dinner with Jason, Jennifer, Hilary and Rex Weyler.

What an incredible man!

I will let you discover who he is and what he does.

Discussed his film…the film he wants to make with Viggo Mortensen about the creation of and how he co-founded Greenpeace.

We discussed potential directors and (rather unusually) how much a film like this might cost.  Can one really justify spending 50 million dollars on a film?  Really?

Naturally we discussed Egypt and how when the people speak governments are forced to take notice.  We congratulated Julian Assange.  We mourned the dead in Bahrain.  We wondered about Israel.

The demonstrations in Madison Wisconsin are particularly heartening as are the angry British protestors who are presently targeting Barclay’s bank over claims of tax avoidance.

Is this Glenn Beck’s ‘coming insurrection’?  Let’s hope so.

Ultimately the question one has to ask ones self is:  Am I prepared to take a bullet for what I believe?

I told him that I knew people who were oblivious of what was going on in Egypt.  In fact more than half of all Americans were not aware of what was happening in Egypt.

Why are people not more inquisitive?

Categories
Christmas

Wiki Christmas

I love wiki leaks for this reason:  It’s like getting to hear what everyone ever said about you behind your back…confirming exactly what you thought they might be saying.

Today…I had lunch with Tom, his wife, daughter and assorted friends.

I am now in bed with the most terrible flu so here are some pictures.  Lunch was delicious.  Conversation amusing.  Children delightful.   Discussed Scott Crolla.

Tom’s Garden
Tom’s Garden

Sir Tom and Lady Croft

me