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Dogs Gay Hollywood Los Angeles Travel

Kookie Kardashian

Des Moines

1.

Monday morning.  Brooklyn.  The end of this particularly hard winter is nowhere in sight.  In LA the sun shines over the glittering sea, in London my friends post pictures of balmy evenings in St James Park. I run from our place to sit in crowded coffee shops.  I’m writing under a pseudonym nowadays for publications that love paying him/her but would never pay me.  Funny.  Doing what writers have always done: assuming different names for different opinions, different styles, different genres.  Consequently, I don’t get to write my blog very often… as I traverse the continent once a month.  From sea to shining sea.  No one understands why I love driving 2,800 miles twice over once a month… but I do.  The last trip was short and sweet.  I stayed in LA a few days then drove back over the Rockies and into a 50 car wreck on the i80 a hundred miles east of Chicago on the Ohio Turnpike.  Trapped on the side of the road for ten hours with two patient dogs and so many bad christian radio stations.  Badly educated, right-wing bigots on the radio.  Wondering out loud how they will roll back the rights of women and gays and undocumented workers, how they will keep hold of their white America.  The America their ancestors battled to tame.  I think about those early Americans very often as I drive over the Rockies,  the hardship they suffered, the dreams they had… the cruelty they inflicted on those who lived on the land they took and the slaves they owned.

I tried sleeping in the car.  Minus 6 degrees.  Occasionally fellow travelers would stop by to see if we were okay.  They offered cookies and consolation.

2.

I’ve been with my boy for 8 months.  We cook at home and watch bad make over TV.  Every day our situation gets stronger as we over come our own and the prejudices of others.  I realized that most of my male gay friends are single, even the ones with the best pedigrees.  The ones who are good-looking and sweet and a ‘good catch’.  I, of course, am none of those things.  I am the bullet you need to dodge.  That’s what they say.  But the gays are eager to diss all of their friends burgeoning relationships.  They are disparaging about anyone who may not be ‘ideal’.  This ideal that keeps them single and lonely.  They look at me sadly when they find out how old L is as if I am deluding myself that my relationship could ever work.  Did I think it would work?  Well, not in some fairy tale way, not the way gay writers write the perfect arrangement… the ideal.  We muddle through, we miss each other when we are apart, we fight occasionally but not as much as we did when we first met.  All in all, I’m happy and feel love from him and let my love flow… to him.  That’s occasionally a very confusing and baffling thing for me.  To let myself be loved.

3.

In Des Moines, I met Kookie Kardashian… the morbidly obese (500lb), hirsute… older sister of Kim Kardashian and Kourtney Kardashian.  She is the least known of the KKK Klan.  Drinking alone in a dump of a hotel bar, reruns of KUWTK playing on the flickering TV above the tequila selection, staring absently into a soupy pina colada.  Text messages remained unanswered as she pulls at her thin mustache. I introduce myself, she says she appreciates the company.  Apparently, when the cameras are in her Calabasas house Kris makes her leave with the undocumented servants.  Kris pokes her with a stick.  Kookie said that Ryan Seacrest called her a ‘fat cunt’, that if she wanted to be on the show she should ‘get a fucking lap band’.  Kookie, blinded by grief, drinks herself regularly into a blackout.  She commandeered Kanye’s jet and took it to Iowa. Her brushed denim and patent leather Fendi bag stuffed with cash. If she loses the weight… Kris promised her that she and Rob can have their own show.

She told me she misses her dad.

4.

Has anyone been watching the OWN Lindsay Lohan ‘documentary’? That girl is OUT OF HER MIND. A world without consequence will do that to you. A world where nobody has the guts to confront an addict and her worst defects. A world where she believes she is still important or relevant, a world where no one will tell her that death is imminent… like Heath, Phil, River… living in a room stuffed with clothes, jewelry… evidence of active addiction.

Despicably, this tragedy is being manipulated by entertainment industry matriarch Oprah Winfrey… the disingenuous bad mum who knew all along that her little girl would let her down. Oprah’s fake outrage is utterly disgusting.

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Categories
Film Gay

New Years Eve

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I didn’t tell you about New Years Eve.  We, DL, LM and I… drove to Cold Springs, Upstate New York to the elegant country house of ace fashion PR Kelly Cutrone.

A beautifully decorated cottage, marquee in the garden, 3 delicious courses for dinner including wild Salmon and filet mignon served by charming staff.

Amongst Kelly’s 50 plus amusing friends included the delightful director Lloyd Kramer and his wife.  Lloyd directed Liz and Dick with Lindsay Lohan.   We swapped bad actress horror stories.  He told me about her and I told him about Liz Hurley.  You should have been the fly on the wall.

After dinner we all watched a wonderful firework display.

Anyway, here are the pics and vid from that night:

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Categories
art Fashion Gay Hollywood Photography

Merle Ginsberg

A perfect Sunday lunch with old friends: the wonderful Merle Ginsberg and Orian Williams… producer of Anton Corbijn‘s Control at  The Chateau Marmont.

Followed by a walk up Abbot Kinny with Tristam Summers.

Categories
Fashion Gay Immigration Los Angeles

Lady Gaga and The Trust Act

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My days are split between the remarkable and the absurd. Bloated with new experiences, extraordinary adventures and, of course, passion.

Every day unfolds like a new napkin.

From dawn I write and rewrite. I am determined and hungry, inspired by the 75-year-old man who won the Palme D’Or in Cannes this year.

Contradictions:

On Thursday I stood in front of the Men’s County Jail with a disparate bunch of men and women denouncing the secure communities protocol, the very same protocol that illegally incarcerated me. A press conference for the Spanish press.

The only Anglo Saxon, the only non spanish speaker.

They hailed me and the other people called to testify. ‘Viva Duncan!’ they shout together. I am moved to tears.

Nobody I know cares about these people. Not least my gay ‘friends’ who savage me publicly for standing shoulder to shoulder with day workers, maids and gardeners who face daily threats of deportation and police harassment.

Later that same day I sat with Lady Gaga and Lindsay Lohan at dinner eating spaghetti. My date was overwhelmed. It was wholly unexpected.

The writing and photography give my life meaning and hope. The immigrants, of whom I am one, better shape my understanding of the world.

I am not interested in what I wear. I’m sure I look like a hobo. My beautiful tailored shirts are shredded. I have no interest in replacing them.

All the vintage Helmut Lang has been sold.

I can cobble together an ensemble for dinner. I look respectable enough.

Last week a young gay man told me I was lonely and sad. I feel neither. In fact, I have never felt so complete.

Categories
Hollywood

Fame Whore

Power and prestige can be just as intoxicating for those who are powerful and prestigious as for those who seek them out…or chance upon them.

Infamy can have the same mesmerizing effect. Mass murderers, on their way to the electric chair, marry formally reasonable women.

The mother/father killler Menendez brothers, still get proposals of marriage from star struck suiters.

I have seen gown adults buckle before the very famous and the not so very famous.

The youth of Hollywood, like so many generations before them, have been levied.

Sexual expediency is a price silently adhered to any deal.

I don’t need to tell you Marilyn‘s story…do I?

It’s quaint! It’s so old fashioned…it’s happening today.

Somehow everybody knows that if you are going to go the distance in this town you better go the distance with whomever has the power in this town.

Many people masquerade as powerful and do very well thank you very much. Taking advantage of those who are want to trust them.

Gays are particularly vulnerable.

It’s best, they are told, for a life as an actor…to stay in the closet.

The closet protects and it taketh away.

To be a young, beautiful gay man arriving in Hollywood for the first time has a million, unforeseen drawbacks that seem, to the uninitiated, like wonderful gifts.

Noticed by rich and powerful men (when you have lived your life in relative obscurity) perverts the course of any fate you might believe in.

There are plenty of fate healers.

Look at him.

Picked from a legion of other boys. He feels special at last.

Boys who would not normally indulge in the crepe flesh of the elderly become their most ardent moisturizer.

Especially for a young gay man who may have been deeply closeted, living in the jet black shadow of toxic shame.

Never realizing his own beauty. His own worth.

Ignorant to the attention he receives as he walks innocently down the street.

Like Dorian Gray, shown for the first time how gorgeous he is…becomes immediately vain and arrogant.

Throws off his mantle of quiet humility and becomes addicted to the adoration of others.

Watching my gay brethren in Hollywood flocking to the shrine of the generously rewarded can be a sickening sight.

Young boys arrive uninvited from small towns in far off states armed with copies of US weekly.

Sitting in the Chateau Marmont hoping for a glimpse of Josh Hartnett or Lindsay Lohan.

Hoping to make everything better, validate and soothe away the pain of a miserable and isolated childhood.

Unless those boys are fabulously gifted, educated or similarly bequeathed the last of their youth is stolen from them by the unscrupulous.

Their talents go unnoticed. Their dreams unfulfilled, their virginity discarded to the most affluent.

Another notch in the bed post.

Get them drunk or worse.

People say, let them make their own mistakes.

It’s very hard to do.

So, the fame whores and the star fuckers line up…pig pink, shaved and waxed for the jovial grandees who take turns like so many commissioned shop assistants on the floor of the biggest meat market in the whole damned universe.

Categories
Hollywood

Adele

After a day of resting my poor foot Andrew and I decided to go to Hollywood.   Not particularly searching for a party but interested by the prospect.  We met my friend Samantha and her super cute actor friend for dinner.

Hollywood seemed unreasonably quiet after the VMA’s last night.  The Chateau looked busy, Sunset Tower was rockin’.  The SHLA  just right.  I have no idea where everyone was…but where ever they were I wasn’t with them.

We did, however, bump into Adele with whom I was uncharacteristically star struck.

She was surrounded by burly security men and has a booming, luxurious speaking voice, a huge presence.  Like a tiny field mouse I told her how wonderful she was and she in turn asked if I had any Marlborough Lights.

My briefest brush with Adele.

Now, I am kinda sick of being told that I am name-dropping every time I tell you who I meet or bump into.   It’s Hollywood!  The town is packed with names.  I am a small town British boy who, at those moments, wonders how he ever gets to have so much fun.

Whenever I tell you about who I meet it’s not to self aggrandize.  I thought you might be interested?  No?

I saw this:  a very drunk woman wearing Christian Louboutin shoes being hauled into a limousine by her uniformed driver.

Vomiting over the very same shoes that would have paid most of my utilities for a whole month.

The driver looked understandably perplexed.

There seems to be some confusion about my state of mind at present.  Just to clear things up: Despite my imminent trip to NYC to see Jake in court I am actually very content, happy even.  Part of that happiness comes from being at peace with the idea that…I am unlikely to ever have another relationship.  Ever.

Why?  Because I am impossible…that’s why.

That doesn’t mean I want to have a million hook ups…I don’t.   Let’s face it..I have always loved the fantasy more than the reality.   A real person by my side?  I can’t do it.

I know lots of straight batchelors my age.

As I said the last time I wrote my blog, having a boy friend would be like working in an office.  Do you know what I mean?  I am not that guy.  Unemployable maybe?  Probably.  Unloveable?  Well, probably not…but incapable of having a relationship.  Incapable of accepting love.

I am listening to Adele.  Remembering what it felt to be in love.  Thank God that’s over.  Like sticking your hand in the fire.

When I was a kid my Grandmother and I found a diamond brooch.  She handed it to the police.  All my life I couldn’t understand why she did that.  Now I do.

Meeting Jake was like finding that diamond brooch in the street.  It wasn’t mine to have yet I did not want to give it up.  It was beautiful and sparkled in the night.  But what’s a man to do with such a thing?  I couldn’t wear it.  I had to give it back.  Unwillingly.

So, I am happy.  Can you understand that?  I don’t think you can.

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