Tag: Kent

Categories
Christmas

Snowed In


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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Health

NYC/Paris/Whitstable

I am in Whitstable.  It is really cold.  The water-butt is frozen.  I slept under two comforters.

Carol woke me this morning with a fresh lemon and ginger infusion and a big plate of steaming porridge.  Ate another breakfast at Copeland House with Georgina.

It’s later on Saturday morning and I am laying under a blanket at George’s house.  Feel very beaten up.  I managed to wear myself down so badly that I now have bronchitis.

Terrible cough, phlegm, headache.  Best thing is: I am at home so everything seems very dealable with.  I am so glad that I don’t own anywhere here.  It’s so much nicer crashing at Carol’s or laying here on George’s sofa.

My head is too painful with real pain to concentrate on anything else.

Whitstable.  Last night.  Sitting with Georgina and her grand-daughter Poppy eating shepherd’s pie.  Do you remember Poppy?  Poppy!

Carol and Marc dragged me out to a small town on the other side of Canterbury to watch a ska band.  Even though I felt pretty bad it was nice to be included.

Feels safe here.  I arrived from Paris on Friday morning.  I rented a car, drove to Calais on the A1 toll road (20 euro).  Ferry to Dover (120 euros) then drove to Whitstable.  Dropped in at Wheeler’s, Dave’s and Carol’s place.

There is a cute gay boy running the new coffee shop.

Dumb man that I am…I decided to watch Brokeback Mountain again on the flight to Paris.  I could scarcely get through the first few moments without having to change channels and watch Friends reruns.

Went back to it and still cried buckets.

I left New York the night of the 25th.  I’m good at that…finding half empty flights to Paris when everyone else is settling into American public holidays.

Remember when we left for Paris on July 4th?  That seems like it happened decades ago.

Why did it take me so long to leave NYC and why didn’t I write about it?  Well, we didn’t go because the Little Dog wasn’t well and vomited all over the place so it wasn’t prudent to go anywhere.  Anyway, the vet advised me not to.

I was offered a very kind room in a very beautiful hotel to rest my weary body…for free.  They really looked after me.

I stayed on 10th St for a few nights.  During the day I would practice what it would be like to live in NYC again.

I sat with friends outside Mud, I hung out at the Derby and Joe’s Pub with Amelia.  I made many, many new ‘friends’ on line and met with them at obscure locations.

After a few days of being in the city I totally forgot about Jake unless, of course, I found myself on 1st Street or outside the Judd Foundation or on the roof at Soho House which is cleared away…just like the memories I have to clear away.

I no longer thought that any man who resembled him was him and instead marveled at how many men there were who might be him.  Cute, short, hairy men with winning smiles.  On occasions, as the days passed, I realized that I told too many people about him…that it was obvious to them that I was having difficulty letting him go.

When they asked if I was still in love with him it was difficult to say no without crossing my fingers.

The emotions are far more complex and seem to exist on a far deeper level than I ever planned which is why I took time away from my blog because it just riles me and I find myself posting things that I regret.

I had a number of dates with really extraordinary men but one in particular made my heart sing.  I ate dinner at Mary’s Fish Camp in the West Village and met some good gays.  A producer, a stockbroker, a TV anchor and a journalist..I found myself thinking: Jake would like these men.

He would get a kick out of these intelligent, ambitious men.

The anchor  (Don Lemon) was a cool black dude who said that in his opinion Obama was frightened of white people.  Which explains, he said, why Obama is such a loser.   The anchor’s bf of 3 years was 20 years younger.

I don’t know how I felt about that.

Aleksa P and I had supper in Chelsea.  She talked candidly about how much fun it is for her making Boardwalk Empire.  I told her that I get hundreds of people a week looking for references in my blog to her hairy armpits.  She showed me how shaved they were with a wry smile but lamented how she must start growing them again soon.

We talked about our absent dads and how this shapes our view of ourselves.  We talked about her gorgeously happy marriage.  We laughed a great deal.  She showed me the pictures of her in Vanity Fair and I felt as proud as any dad could ever be.

We talked about Jake.  She was sad for me.

Brokeback: I had forgotten that Ennis and Jack had that fight.  That their fight had more to do with their love and their frustration and how much they would miss each other.

Dressed as cowboys their fight seemed more romantic than ours on the King’s Road.

The last night in NYC I met a man who I could imagine being with.  Just like that.  I have no idea if it will turn out like I want it…but we connected.  I am excited to see him again.  One thing is for sure:  I ain’t writing about him. Not any time soon.

TSA pat-downs are really thorough.   At JFK the rather good-looking man who inadvertently (or maybe not) held my balls whilst looking for what ever they are looking for looked up at me and I said seductively, “My balls have been held by a lot worse.”

Categories
Auto Biography

Bully For You

Woke up at 4am.  Bugger.  Spent a little time online then went back to bed.  Fell into deep sleep.

A knock at the door at 9am.  I had meeting with a writer from a popular TV show who had read my blog and wanted to meet to talk about her new TV show.  Kathy.

A charming and funny woman who is currently dating a very beautiful ‘A’ gay director friend of mine.   What a gorgeous couple!   The meeting was meant to last an hour but ended up lasting 3 hours.  Ashley joined us at the end.

Whilst we were talking I remembered one of the fabulous Whitstable gays I met as a child who totally shaped my idea of what it was to be gay.

Firstly, he taught me that being gay could be WONDERFUL.  That man, an antique dealer from Thanet, was called Christopher Stocking.  He drove into Whitstable weekly to search for antiques and that’s where he found me, sitting at the back of Zoe’s antique shop one cold winter’s afternoon playing with her kittens by the fire.

The shop used to be on Harbour Street opposite the harbour entrance which was rather sadly demolished in the 1970’s when all that grubby Georgian architecture seemed to bore town planners.  Thankfully, Whitstable was largely ignored by Canterbury Council so there was little to no ‘urban regeneration’.   No wholesale destruction of our old homes and shops.  Whitstable was left to decay.   Thank God.

Jake and I went to Whitstable…he loved it…that was a nice moment.

Anyway, Christopher Stocking found me in the back of the shop and realized IMMEDIATELY that I was a trainee homo and took me for a spin in his pink Jaguar.  I remember his sweet and unusual smell.  He asked a bunch of questions and I remember being so ashamed of where I came from that I think I lied every answer.

I really looked forward to Christopher’s weekly visits.  He taught me what was what without ever mentioning the word gay.

He’d say, “He’s gorgeous isn’t he?”

And I would get all red-faced and nod my head.

He was a perfect role model…consequently I never had any difficulty being a gay.

It all seemed perfectly natural.

A couple of years after we met Christopher told me that he wanted to tell me something.  Seriously.  We sat in the Tudor Tea Rooms, he held my hand and told me very gravely that if I was going to have a good life, any life..he stressed the word life..I would have to leave Whitstable.  That this small seaside town wasn’t going to be big enough for me.

He told me urgently,

“You have to get out of here and make something of yourself.”

I knew that he was right but I didn’t think it was possible, plausible…mine to have.

Heroes are never quite who you expect them to be.

A man and a boy holding hands in an English Tea Room talking about the future.  About the future. He was saving my life..and he knew it.   He knew that there was no one else in that place who could possibly tell me what I needed to know.

That my life could be assured if I left Whitstable.  That I would be valued, validated, loved.   Sadly, his dream and my dream for enduring happiness diverged as I grew older.

The disease of more.  Who could have foreseen that outcome?

For those of you who think bad thoughts..no..we never did anything inappropriate.  He was a very appropriate man.  I was 10 when I met him and 14 when he vanished.  If he had made a move would I have let him?  You betcha.

That afternoon in The Tudor Tea Room I saw my future reflected in his face and knew instinctively that it was essential for me to listen very carefully and remember every word he said.

Amongst the shop owners there were other gays.  There were the gay twins who ran the antique shop on the corner of Albert Street and Harbour Street which is now an elegant tapas bar.  Johnny and Jimmy.  Clones:  checked shirts, full moustaches and tight denim jeans.  They scared me a bit but they were kind to me.

Everyone was.

They guessed, they knew, they never made mention, they saw the bruises, they held out their hands just in case I needed to hold on.

The years passed.

For a few weeks I moved in with Michael the gay tax man.

Our local gay bar: The Guinea on Island Wall.  Florence, the very grand landlady, was always throwing people out for no good reason.  She had thick red lipstick on her lips and teeth…a crow black bouffant.

When the boys got too hot and bothered in the snug she snarled,  “Darlin’ you’re barred.”

The kissing boys would feign outrage, throw their scarves over their shoulders, theatrically deliver a particularly vicious bon mot from the threshold of the pub, slam the door and scamper out into the night..until tomorrow of course when they would sit in exactly the same spot nursing pints of thick, warm beer and kiss each other as Florence was serving out of sight.

I remember when you could be thrown out of a bar, a gay bar, for kissing another man.

So, this morning, Kathy and I talked about gay men and the community.  Our community that existed around the bar.  Every community has a bar.  THE BAR.

When the Guinea closed we headed to The New Inn, Margate.  I didn’t drive and God knows how I did it but I got there and back 30 miles every Saturday night.   Compelled by the need to meet other gay men.

I rarely went home with anyone.  They were all so pig ugly.  When the pub closed at 11.30 my very camp friend Mark and I went to a  ghastly Margate club which was always half empty..called Skids.  Ew.

The men there knew I was different from them.  Somehow.  They urged me, like Christopher had years before, to take my big ideas elsewhere.  In their own way they let me know how much more of a world there was than the one I had chanced upon in Margate.

We talked about being bullied and I told her that I was bullied at school and life was pretty miserable for a few years but I just knew that high school was not the sum of my life.   I knew that Christopher and men like him were out there somewhere.  That I could and would be like them.

I knew that my time at boarding school would eventually come to an end.  Anyway, as I mentioned before..bullied by day, blowing by night.  Usually the same boys.

All these bullied kids killing themselves.  I know it’s hard to be singled out to be gay by your peers, but you can’t be so sensitive.   Get tough!  Fight back.  Ask for help!  The sad fact is, when I was being bullied I rather enjoyed the attention.  I learned to fight back.  Ruthlessly.  I knew the people who bullied me were simply appalled by my difference.  It scared the shit out of them.  I learned that to be different you had to seek out your own kind.

I have searched and searched.

So…I went to Paris and New York and I ended up here.

Thank you Christopher Stocking..wherever you are.

I owe you my wonderful life…when I can remember that it is wonderful.  I owe you my Malibu view.  I owe you my aspirations.  Thank you Christopher, thank you the boys..thank you the girls..where ever you are…thank you for reading…thank you and good night.

Categories
Dogs Travel Whitstable

New York/Paris/London

I left LA last week (July 2nd) though it actually feels like months ago, so much has happened.   I flew into JFK with bags and dog and chaos.  He was waiting for me and whisked me off to a beautiful house set in perfect woodland and rolling lawns.

We ate and walked and talked.  I never tire of listening to him.   We have done our fair share of soul-searching these past few months and now it is time to have a few laughs.   I know that at the back of his mind he worries, that he is not truly free.

I loved the countryside and delightful clapboard houses on the border of New York and Connecticut.

In distant, very white upstate town Katonah there were two very black gay men from the Caribbean eating a light lunch.   They were the only black people for miles around.

 

Two days later we were in a taxi back to JFK and onto one of Air France’s spectacular Airbus A380.   The huge plane was almost empty!  Deciding to fly on July 4th was a great idea.  Taking off over a million 4th July firework parties.  Fireworks exploding all around us.

The first part of the journey was not without drama as we managed to get delayed for 3 hours by a bomb scare at JFK.  The entire airport emptied out just minutes before we were about to fly.    We were herded outside and sat around smoking cigarettes and drinking water.   After a couple of hours in the sun we stampeded back into the building directly onto our planes and landed in France 6 hours later.

It is delicious to be back in Europe.  Away from the tangled life I have left behind in the USA.   Once in Paris we checked into Mama Shelter in the 20th, seconds from the cemetery Pere Lachaise.  We loved it!

 

Although I smuggled the dog into the hotel-actually we had no need as dogs, we later found out, are allowed.   The food and service were excellent.  The only vaguely irritating thing was the Internet wi-fi connection which was linked to their rather modern but baffling Apple TV.  Apart from finding it impossible to get on-line their sophisticated interconnected system meant that the TV remote would also remotely control our lap tops..hmmm.

It is so easy to concentrate on what is wrong in life or in others without noticing how beautiful things are.  The staff at the hotel were gorgeous and we drooled over them everyday.

First day of Couture shows in Paris.  We had lunch with William Stoddart at Hotel d’Amour near Pigalle.  Gosh that area has changed so much!   When I lived there with Claire Sant it was ghastly.  Last week it was wonderful.   The weather has been gorgeous everywhere we have been.

The beautiful Edouard joined us afterwards for coffee.  We had dinner with him the night before and 6 others at Italian restaurant.   Very pretty German model who was obviously rooting for Germany in the World Cup..she was tall and womanly and intelligent.  We talked France’s ignominious exit from the competition and sneered at the British teams pathetic attempt to get into the last 8.

 

Three days in Paris followed by a train ride to Calais and a ferry to Dover after a short taxi ride home to Whitstable we were sitting on the beach eating venison burgers and the travelling companion couldn’t believe how beautiful it all was and complained that I had underplayed how Whitstable really is.

 

Today there are warnings that old people may overheat.  We are going to take a train to London.

I am sitting writing this from my room overlooking the sea in Georgina’s home in Whitstable.   It was my birthday yesterday.   The day started well enough with coffee at Dave’s deli catching up on gossip and drinking his perfect latte.   I left the companion in bed.  He is not really a morning person.  We met my mother for lunch at Wheelers where Mark Stubbs the chef there continues to surpass himself-this time with delicately spiced soft shell crab.

I really had no desire to see anyone other than who was at that table.  I am certainly not interested in tangoing in front of 500 people like an eastern European gypsy.    My mum and Georgina bonded over their hatred of Asylum Seekers.  My mother pointed out that some asylum seekers were pretending to be gay so that they could stay in the country.  If it’s not the Mexican’s it’s the Eastern Europeans..there always someone to blame for never having enough.

I thought that the fear of others getting something for nothing was an American phenomena but no!  It’s British too.

After lunch Adam took my picture as part of his photographic Whitstable project and his lovely mum cut my hair.  We sat in their lush garden drinking lemonade and lusting after his gorgeous, recently tattooed, diver brother.   After the pictures were taken we walked the couple of miles home up the beach.   I have never been so happy.

When we got home the companion had a drama unfold which he needed to deal with.  When he finally tore himself away from the Internet we sat in the garden and ate dinner with Georgina.  We ate huge organic pork chops that I managed to burn on the bbq.   After dinner we sat outside the Neptune pub with Barry and other drunksters.   The dog was tired and lay on the beach and fell asleep.  The night was balmy and the sea lapped lazily over the shingle.

This morning I woke at 6am and walked the dog up to the harbor.  He loves it here.   The Greens who own the Oyster Company scrawl unfortunate notes on black boards all over their property.  Don’t do this and don’t do that. Those black boards used to be charming now they just look vicious.

Some people like to get their own way..I am one of them.  When you finally meet your match, as I seem to, it can be less than comfortable.  I am trying to be sensitive to the needs of others but I am a stubborn old fool.

As for him..the traveling companion..he’s finding his feet and I am finding mine.

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Categories
Auto Biography Death Hollywood

Bastard

50 years ago this month my Mother, eight months pregnant, was scrubbing floors for nuns at a catholic ‘Mother and Baby’ home in the depths of rural Kent.    For 6 months, this teenage girl, had undergone an emotionally  disfiguring baptism of shame.

The young girls in this Catholic facility were persuaded that for their acts of fornication and subsequent pregnancies they should be punished before God and their unborn, bastard children maligned.

This penance would not edify my Mother.  She would not repent.  She had already glimpsed the burgeoning freedoms of post-war Britain.  She had met a rich, well-dressed, exotic, Persian boy who drove a sports car and had given herself to him.  She was aspirational, a teenage girl with an appetite for the modern world.   She wanted what he had, the freedom he had but he wanted less from her than she from him and after moments of unbridled passion she was pregnant and abandoned.  One can only imagine how dreadful she felt telling her Edwardian parents that she was carrying me, knowing that her life would never be the same again.

My grandmother, disgusted by her willful daughter’s precocious ambition, spoke to a priest who organized seven long months of incarceration at the Mother and Baby home where she would be forced to abandon her dreams in exchange for shame, resentment and fear.

My grandparents abandoned her to her fate.  During the 7 months she was sent away they did not visit her once.  After I was born they accepted her home begrudgingly.

Most of the girls would give up their babies.  Some of them willingly some, like my mother, unwillingly.

She could not breastfeed me.  I refused to suckle.   Perhaps I already knew that life was not worth living?  The nuns insisted and forced me onto her nipple.   My mother left me behind at the Mother and Baby home to be adopted but fate or circumstance or racism intervened.  I could not be adopted.  My skin was olive toned, my hair curly, my eyes jet black.  It was obvious to all the prospective parents who viewed me during the time I was offered up for adoption that I would not fit invisibly into any nice, white family.

By July the 8th 1960 the day of my birth the door had well and truly shut on the promises of the age.

Remember, during the first few months of the 1960’s my mother was unaware that this decade in the United Kingdom would be described variously as ‘swinging’, ‘progressive’ and ‘free’.

What of these nuns now?  These Brides of Christ?  Where was Jesus when all of this was going on?  Where was the love of God?

My Mother was neither free to keep me even though she begged to do so and the home I would eventually end up in, although loving, was certainly not progressive nor swinging.

My Grandmother, in a rare moment of charity, decided to go fetch me and I ended up, once again, with my teenage mother and her mother and her mother in a small, semi-detached house in a genteel seaside town.   Besides these three women I lived with my two aunts and my sickly grandfather.   Victorian Herne Bay was, was at that time, still enjoying the benefit of the second longest pier in England, a bandstand and the cavernous Kings Hall where polite tea dances were held.

mother

There are photographs of me ensconced in the bosom of this dysfunctional family.   I was the son my grandfather never let my grandmother have.  She doted on me, walked me through the streets come rain or shine.  Then, she let me go.

During the darkest days of my childhood I would try to get back to that house.  A house I knew and loved but when I got there it was never the house I remembered.  She sent me back again and again.

I lived there for two years until my mother married a local lad and we moved to Whitstable.   My Grandmother was thrilled to have her sullied daughter married.  It was, in fact, against all the odds.   She was ‘taken off my hands’ my Grandmother later told me.

50 years ago.  50 years. I have lied about my age for so long that I am in shock when I type those words.  The number has come too soon.  I am not prepared to be this old nor was I ever expecting it.  Shocking!  Why did I never expect to live?   On many occasions during my childhood I expected to die at the hands of my angry step-father.

When I finally escaped that man I sought out equally destructive situations.

I have been hankering after the long sleep since I was born.

As I sit at my desk in Los Angeles my greatest triumph, if at all my only triumph, has been to survive.  To avoid the catastrophic blow that I expected every day.    I may not have fulfilled my potential but I have certainly achieved more than I ever expected, more than I was told to expect.    In spite of my temper, my addictions, my desire to take up where my murderous step-father left off I am alive!

It is only recently that I tentatively acknowledged that life must be lived.

For as long as I can remember I have imagined and reimagined my death. For long as I have flown in aeroplanes I have reveled in turbulence.   As often as I have picked up strange, beautiful and dangerous men I have wished death come to me.

Shame has cast such a deep shadow over me that all I ever managed to do is struggle blindly down life’s treacherous path.  Stumbling into people along the way who could see.  Many of those people realizing that I was blind did not help without benefit to themselves. Many of those people, when I understood what monsters they were, were shocked when I ferociously bit their hand off up to the elbow.

Perhaps this is why I stayed close to my family home, a family that did not want me.  Even to this day I hanker after Whitstable.  There are still elderly parents of friends my age who remember the small boy who escaped his home whenever he could and seek refuge in theirs.

My Father 1960

During the next month I am going to write an abridged memoir.   We know the beginning and most of you know where I am right now.  So, as I make my way East through New York and Paris back to my old hometown of Whitstable I will let you know what I remember, what I care to remember from the last 50 years.

Today, the little dog is on my bed waiting to walk through the Californian sun to our local coffee shop.  There are people there who know me from the television.  People who might wave a tentative hello.   Tonight I may hear from the man I love and tell him so without shame or expectation.   It’s not much to ask is it?  To be loved, to love.  To be loved..to love?

Categories
Gay Whitstable

I Heart Whitstable

I thought about Whitstable today.   I miss you so much!  The shallow lazy sea, the honey coloured shingle, buying espresso from Dave’s deli, walking the little dog on Duncan Downs.  I wondered, like I do occasionally, if I could ever live there again.

Part of me wants to be there but most of me is perfectly as ease with where I am right now.

If I went back what would I be returning to?

It’s a great place to visit but maybe it’s never going to be my home.   Maybe it never was.

Taking that bloody, stinky train to London.  I never had the money for a ticket.  Hiding in the toilet.  One hour and fifteen minutes.  Faverham, Sittingbourne, Rainham, Graveney, Bromley South.  Victoria Station!

Walking to Mayfair.  Sweet-scented drawing rooms, thick carpet and polished silver.  Oh God. I know why I am thinking about this!  I am dreading being left on my own on Tuesday evening when the man/boy leaves for Italy.

I want to travel too!  Paris, Sydney, Whitstable or New York where do I go next?  If I go what am I running away from?  I’ll tell you what:  a great,  gaping God shaped hole.

18th Century boy/man was up until 2.30 last night pottering around, tidying, making a mother’s day card and finally fell into bed exhausted.   We had dinner at Axe on Abbott Kinney.  I ate the farmer’s plate with prosciutto.   This morning we toured the Santa Monica Farmers Market and bought fresh almonds and pale pink hydrangea and delicate budded peonies.

He reminds me of Patrick Kinmonth, the same sensibilities and creativity.  He is so tall and elegant, so curious about everything, which can all at once excite and tire.   It is good to live again with someone on my arm that has such an extraordinary zest for life.  He wants me to teach him how to sew.  I would love to do that, pass on a few of the many skills I have that were meant for some unborn child in an imaginary family.

I wish that I hadn’t killed the snake but I was scared that it would bite the little dog then where would I be?   John watched the video of me killing it and looked delighted at the very manliness of my snake murder.  I should have been more proud but I wasn’t.  I value life, even the life of a dangerous snake or the rat I killed the previous week.

Josh, my sober A gay friend and I toured Barney’s yesterday.  Trying on expensive clothing neither of us would ever buy.  Bumped into a friend of Charlies who was wearing cut off denim shorts, a sleeveless tee, a man bag and Jackie O sunglasses.  What a fucking STATE.  Also bumped into my friend Jody who has recently had two surrogate daughters-the $250,000 a pop kind.  I asked, like I would my straight friends, if he is signing them up for pre-school.  He spat back that he had no intention of sending them to pre-school as their nanny had them on the Einstein system for infant learning.  He said that he wanted to control who came into their lives as he had no intention of letting them socialize with other kids as they might pick up bad habits.  Now tell me if that doesn’t sound unhealthy?   Child as project.  Lot’s of my gay friends have chosen this route when they become parents.  However, this is not peculiar to gay men, I know straight parents who do this too.  In my opinion it can only lead to disappointment and resentment.

I thought about my mother and where she might be this overcast mother’s day.  I wondered if my brothers had brought her flowers or sent her a card.  I did not.  Then I thought about Kristian’s mother who seems to loathe the idea of his friends getting together to celebrate his life and I wondered how she could be so bitter about this simple act of remembrance?

I pay scant regard to my creative life.  My desire to create comes in huge waves that crash inconsequentially and leave me feeling tired and unfinished.  Why can’t I seem to finish anything?  My novel remains unfinished, my film too-as for everything else?  I don’t know.

As his departure looms so do the morbid thoughts.

I find myself thinking about the NYC man and grieve for what was and what is lost, broken or as dead as the headless rattlesnake.   I am all at once in celebration for what I have and desolation for what was and how that affected me.  Man/Boy asked if I was on the rebound last night which I strenuously denied.  But, of course, there is some truth to his accusation.  John cautioned me yesterday about euphoric recall, the yearning for an acting out partner rather than the fully fledged, present young man who I now have.

I have no reason or right to have wanted more from NYC man.   As I have said before I was an inconsequential blip in his life.   It’s hard to own that.  Yet, in a way, it has made me a stronger man for what I have now.    I look at this new man and love him and care about him with new eyes.  The eyes of a man who has loved and lost but is lucky to have loved at all.

As for my sobriety, I am sober!  I have that to be grateful for.   Gratitude is key!

Have to write for the Good Men Project.  I am going to write about how to be a man when other men don’t recognize the sort of man you were born to be:  A quest for validation.

Categories
Poem

Whitstable

On my way back to the United Kingdom.  Even though it is to deal with very bad situation at home.  Includes a long journey so I can travel with the little dog: New York, Paris, Calais, Dover, Whitstable!  One month before I leave-will arrive there May 30th.   I am excited.  I will stay there for three months-one of the many benefits of not having a career!

Anyway, a great deal to sort out.  Nothing much to write or worry about today.

Will make film in London rather than LA.

I found a charming little video for you to watch.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuYj03qyzxM&sns=em]

Categories
Poem

LOVE POEM

London.  I crave the capital of my Island jewel.  I am too far now from cream teas, steak and oyster pie.  Oh London and the Home Counties I miss you with all my aching heart.

I am tired of selfish boys.  Tired of his jet-black hair.   Tired of waiting.  Tired of mistress censorship.

I want to see Amanda, Tim and banter; with Simon Finch and hold my nose in the air.

I want to stroll down Old Bond St in my red suede boots, visiting Patrick in Hanover Square.

I want to smoke cigarettes in West London with Katrina.  Let me ride horses in Hyde Park with Martha; explore electrical hardware stores with Toby and Arthur.  Clandestine giggles with Joe and Adam and Eve, cottage amusements with George.

The train to Bromley and Chatham through the Garden of Eden.  Where the Thames meets the Medway and the Swale beyond.

I am tired of you because I don’t trust you, but I know very well what it is to lie to some one you say that you love.  To meet in some dark, wet guinnel, to feel your warm body under your navy blue coat.   To feel your lips and always your lips.

Oh I miss you so much my darling hometown, and wish you invited me Whitstable style.   Up on the downs overlooking the sea.  Turbines, the horizon that chased me away.   I have arrangements with banks to consider and beg that homeland security take me away so decisions are easier where no choice is to stay.  Wholesale foreclosure, redistribution of wealth.

Take me.  Take me away.

I am tired of selfish boys with raven black hair and myself in every one of them.   Just you.  I met just you.

Let me forget these people, struggling with prosperity and stemming the tide.    Seeking solution and tanning the hide.  Let me go home. Let me go home.  The 12 step recovery clichés that keep me in purgatory with less time to go than one hundred years of perfect sobriety.  Oh please send me home to smoky church halls and WI and no multi-malls.  Remind me of jet beads stitched onto her bodice, of peplums and bagels and tottenham forest.

I am TIRED of you showing me men that are hot, hotter than me or you for that matter.  I am tired of boasting to keep us alive, to stimulate interest and punish my precious child.   I am naked before you my darling creator.  This and more like it is all I can offer.

So take me away with you darling Ophelia on the Thames and the Medway and the Swale far beyond.