Tag: London

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Queer

Two Women From Manchester

On the Phone

As the elderly gray-haired gays tittle-tattle at Joe’s Coffee shop on Commercial Street, making snide comments about those they like and those they don’t… like so many teenage girls, bullying, name calling and whispering. The lesbians remain dignified and polite.  They say good morning or make easy conversation. They comment on the weather or ones choice of croissant in such a way that improves the quality of the day.

Not all lesbian are like this of course but my experience here in Provincetown is irrefutable.

We chanced upon a lesbian memorial at Herring Cove a few nights ago, a memorial for a woman who died last October.  There were photographs of her set around the fire on sticks.  I sat with her wife of 30 years and she reminisced.  She told me their story.  I wondered how she would cope on her own.

“Oh, you get used to it.”  She said.

I didn’t believe her.  Dude sat on her lap.  She loved Dude and Dude loved her.  We ate her Red Velvet gluten free cup cake and sprayed ourselves with insect repellent.

Memorial

Last night I stopped for a slice of pizza with Brent and Derek, my crime fighting buddies.

Derek

We’d had a long day, I was up at 5am.  I’d spent an hour or so on the phone with lawyers.  I spent time answering emails.  I filled in forms and scanned them.   I made time to have a pair of sandals made here:

Sandle Workshop

Like most days I walked the dogs in the graveyard with Benoit.  I walked the dogs on the beach.  I walked the dogs to Joe’s coffee shop.  I walked the dogs to the West End and back east again.  Dude is still fat.  The Little Dog is lithe and eager.

Dude in a Grave

I found a beautiful dusky gray/mauve tamarisk at Captain Jack’s Wharf.

Tamarisk

Brent and I poked our noses into John Derian’s home/shop.  His little shop of curiosities.  He sells French glass cloche and rattan and decoupage.  Who buys decoupage?  Everyone apparently.

I ordered the slice of Pizza and sat with Derek.  It was delicious.  As I was leaving, I heard a Northern English accent.  Two elderly women from Manchester… eating the largest pizza I have ever seen.  They looked embarrassed.

They said, “This is too big for us, d’you want some?”

I overcame my English reserve and sat with them and ate their pizza.   They were retired PE teachers from Bolton.  They had lived together the past 15 years.  They had a small house and garden and took the bus into central Manchester which, they assured me, was very safe and had loads to do.

I wanted to know what they were doing with their retirement.

They said they went to concerts and the theatre and sat outside ‘weather permitting’ enjoying Manchester’s ‘cafe society’.  They rode their bikes and looked after their cats.  Mostly they travelled, this year they had been to The Galapagos and seen the giant tortoise and snorkel with penguins, they had taken a safari in Africa and showered out doors under the stars.  They had visited a brother in Sydney and driven to Melbourne along the coast, like I had with that beautiful boy… all those years ago.

I found myself talking about getting older.

“Old people aren’t the same as when I was growing up.” I wondered.  “Yes,” they said, “Not the same at all.”

“They retired and spent time just waiting to die.” I said.  “Yes.” They nodded in unison.

I told them about my grandmother who was widowed when she was in her 50’s and at that very moment became an old lady.  Cut her hair short, permed it and let it whiten.   She died when she was 96.  I didn’t cry.  My mother did, she sobbed like I sobbed when the big dog was killed.  She was inconsolable, as was I about my dog.

I thought a great deal about my grandmother, chatting with these dear old lesbians.  I wondered how she could have lived so long feeling so miserable, stuck in one town, complaining about this and that… isolated from all her daughters (how can a mother hate her own daughters?) other than my mother.  I remembered just how much she didn’t want to die.  She was terrified.  I wondered if my uncle Norman killed her.  There was little love lost between them and he was with her at the end.  She would have been too weak to fight.

We said our goodbyes and good nights.  I’m sure I’ll bump into them again.  I hope I do.  I wish I was an old lady.

The light is beautiful here today.  The sea is sparkling.  I want for nothing.  Happily looking over the Atlantic, the Cape swinging around me teaming with life.  Lobsters, basking sharks, oysters, cod and herring.  I had fish and chips for lunch yesterday.

Here are my finished sandals:

New Sandals

 

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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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Queer

The Fascist State of Gay USA

02 Nazi rally, 1937

1.

Homosexuals were separated into two distinct groups during the Third Reich.  

The first, an elite corp who acquiesced to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and found favor with Adolf Hitler.  Adolf conveniently turned a blind eye to our ‘degenerate’ ways (like Margaret Thatcher 50 years later) whilst simultaneously enacting anti homosexual legislation.  

The other group of homosexual men and women were less fortunate.  The thriving LGBTQ ‘out’ community were rounded up and sent to the concentration camps where thousands were murdered, raped and experimented upon in barbaric clinical trials. They were the butch dykes, the fairies, the trans.  They refused to keep quiet or give in to the newly established master race and paid dearly for their rebellion.

During the past year I asked 100 gay men if they had lived in Nazi Germany would they have joined the Nazi party?  Not one said yes.

We delude ourselves that we are more anti-establishment than we actually are.

I asked 100 jewish gay men under the age of 30 if they could imagine a white homosexual elite sending LGBTQ people to the gas chambers.  86% could not imagine a gay Nazi sending anyone to the gas chambers.  They could not imagine what a gay Nazi looked like.

Ernst Rohm, the head of the SA (the Brownshirts) – the forerunner of the SS – was gay, as were several other key figures in the SA such as his deputy Edmund Heines.  

Röhm’s chiefs, men of the rank of Gruppenfuehrer or Obergruppenfuehrer, commanding units of several hundred thousand Storm Troopers, were almost without exception homosexuals. Indeed, unless a Storm Troop officer were homosexual, he had no chance of advancement.

Hitler was aware of Röhm’s homosexuality.  Hitler and Rohm were so close they addressed each other as du (the German familiar form of “you”). No other Nazi enjoyed that privilege and their close association led to rumors Hitler himself was homosexual.

Röhm was the only Nazi leader who dared to address Hitler by his first name “Adolf” rather than “mein Führer.”

Rohm was instrumental in the rise of Nazism.   When Hitler decided to do away with his great friend it was with a heavy heart.  Nothing could or would get in the way of Hitler’s ambition to rule the world.  Roehm’s parochial mindset was his undoing.

After the night of the long knives Roehm was sent to prison where he was given the option to commit suicide or be executed.  When the time came he stood in his cell, his chest puffed out.  He was shot point blank.  He was 46 years old when he died.

Rohm and his homosexual gang of bullying Brown Shirts believed that they were invincible.  They allied themselves to Hitler and disgracefully purged their own. Rohm’s story might have some relevance today as the Fascist State of Gay takes shape in the USA.   Buoyed by Presidential support, organizations like GLAAD and the HRC use bullying rhetoric and bullying behaviors.  Our unelected gay officials go unchecked, unchallenged by the establishment who are wary of being described as ‘homophobic’ and dissenting LGBTQ accused of ‘self loathing’.

We have become quietly consumed by the Fascist State of Gay.   Look around you.

Capital_Gay_Pride_parade_in_Albany_New_York_2009

Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia.

Rainbow flags are everywhere: symbols on clothing and public displays.  The rainbow flag flies proudly over businesses, lights up the Empire State Building and thousands upon thousands line the streets during every ‘pride’ manifestation.  

I wondered if the Rainbow flag was my flag and what it represented.  

Truro cornwall gay pride parade 23.08.08

I reimagined these Gay Pride parades like the great communist militaristic rallys during the 1970’s and the parades of other fascist regimes.   Buff, bare-chested boys for all gays to aspire.  Overseen by the gay white elite, like the polit bureau… or Hitler surveying the perfect blond youth of Nazi Germany.

The gays have, within a very short time, achieved huge and enviable human rights gains.  Yet, within the broader gay community there is a disdain for the recognition of other human rights.  Gay white men seem fatigued when asked if they support the rights of women, people of color, undocumented workers, the freedom of expression for all.

Despite Glenn Greenwald (a gay white man) championing the causes of both Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowdon these human rights heroes have found little favor within the larger gay white male community.  My friend and writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis dismisses Glenn Greenwald as ‘unattractive and unnecessarily combatative’.

Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the fascist state of gay believe certain human rights can be ignored because of “need.”   They (like the general population) look the other way, approving of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

Within a very short time the gays have forgotten that all the above were once used against… us.

The Fascist State of Gay, using organizations like GLAAD, identifies Enemies/Scapegoats as a unifying cause. The gays are rallied into a patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious.

Gay white men believe in racial purity.

I asked 100 white, gay men under the age of 30 years old if it was reasonable or unreasonable for others to state on their Gay Dating App or Gay Hookup Website a specific racial preference (no Asians/blacks/Latinos etc.)  85% of those interviewed stated that they thought it ‘reasonable’.

I asked 100 white, gay men under the age of 30 years old if it was reasonable or unreasonable for others to state on their Gay Dating App or Gay Hookup Website a preferred  ‘interest’ in men who had penis’ over 10 inches long.  92% of those interviewed thought it ‘unreasonable’.

To the Fascist State of Gay the end of DADT was a profound victory.  They believe in the supremacy of the military.  Soldiers and military service are glamorized/sexualized.

Within the Fascist State of Gay there is rampant sexism.  Women are degraded, trans derided.   Fascist cults tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid.

The Fascist State of gay seeks to control mass media. Sympathetic media spokespeople and executives.  Encouraging self censorship, the ownership of certain ‘gay’ words that only gays are privileged to use.

Within the Fascist State of Gay there is rampant cronyism.  Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to positions of power and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability.

Powerful anti establishment voices within the LGBTQ community are silenced, those with alternative views… alienated.

I asked 100 gay men if trans Chelsea Manning should be pardoned for leaking classified documents.  5% said yes.  42% said no.  53% didn’t know who she was.

I asked if those who knew who she was thought her a hero or a traitor.  Most gay white men who knew her name described Chelsea Manning as a traitor.

Denver Nicks, one of Chelsea’s biographers, writes that the leaked material, particularly the diplomatic cables, was widely seen as a catalyst for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010.

When we were young (foolishly imagining a gay Utopia) we fought for an inclusive gay community under the rainbow flag…  evolved from years of brutal struggle.  Sadly, our community is anything other than inclusive.  The dream some of us had has been highjacked by naturally right-wing, affluent, gay, white men who merely tolerate others in the unwilling LGBTQ coalition.

2.

A Long Time Coming.

On the morning of London Gay Pride, 1983 I was taken by friends to a small party near The Houses of Parliament.  The men I met were drinking champagne. They were closeted, openly right-wing and sneered at the ‘herd’ gathering across the Vauxhall Bride to celebrate their gayness.

I remember them laughing at the bull dykes, the fairies and the trans.

These men were powerful, public school/Oxbridge educated men holding important positions in government.  Civil Servants, Member’s of Parliament and to my surprise, lurking in a corner, an ex Prime Minister.

One of the men at that small party was Michael Trestrail, the Queen’s personal protection officer who had resigned the year before after being ‘outed’ by the press.  Apparently he had taken a liking to me.  The others boasted about him… as if his proximity to the Queen and his infamy would persuade me to have sex with him.

I asked him about his resignation.  He seemed less than eager to talk about it, lunging at me for a wet kiss.  I recoiled.

Many of the men in the room like MP Harvey Procter (even though he later resigned for having sex with underage boys) would stand mute beside Margaret Thatcher as she enacted laws based on her loathing of homosexuals… unless, of course they shared her right wing values and kept their gay lives to themselves.

Not one of those gay men would challenge Thatcher.  Like Ken Mehlman in the USA (who stood by the Bushes deferring to their homophobia) they ignored the plight of the many to line their own pockets.  

It is the first of the tenets of fascism: OBEDIENCE.  As Andy Tobias wrote in his best selling book The Best Little Boy in The World a self loathing gay man will do whatever it takes to go unnoticed by excelling where ever he can.

Rights, it turned out, were reserved for the few not for the people.  Realizing these men were scoundrels I drank their champagne, laughed at their views and kept my pants on.  Recognizing a dog in the manger I was quickly sent to join my own kind drinking beer and playing tug of war behind The Royal Vauxhall Tavern.   As it turned out, these men did not forget my appearance at their party and caused, wherever they could, as much trouble for me as they were able.

Right wing gays in the UK have nothing on the right wing gays in the USA.

Purity.  Military.  Obedience .

I have always been a thorn in the side of the establishment.  Last year, if I needed any further proof, messing with the right wing velvet mafia proved very dangerous.  Critical of their business practices and on the precipice of revealing fraud and sexual unmanageability they had me arrested and switches flipped deep in government that held me illegally in LA County Jail.

I was told by one powerful man within the Democratic Party the media mogul ex boyfriend of the man I accused of defrauding me had seriously considered ‘putting a bullet in my head’.

The white male gays, emboldened by the repeal of DOMA and DADT are not interested in creating an inclusive LGBTQ community.  They would prefer that bisexuals did not exist, that the trans put on men’s clothes/owned their penis, that the lesbians do their dirty work and the queers sent to prison.

Their Utopia, under their rainbow flag, does not include us.  It is a terrible sham, and sooner or later we will wake up to what is happening under the pride banner.  Acts of rebellion may become forcefully suppressed… like the flash mobbing of San Francisco Pride in support of Chelsea Manning.

The relationship between the gays, the establishment and the corporations is ideal for all involved.  Every gay man infected with HIV will, during his lifetime, generate a million dollars plus in added revenue to big pharma. The gays (white males) are avid consumers and have been embraced as ideal capitalists.  They are good at being good, they seldom break the law. They are clear about their message.  They have, in terms of human rights, leapt over those of the blacks and women.

Nothing will stop them.  Except maybe… their hubris.

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Alcoholics Anonymous Hollywood Malibu Queer

Kay Saatchi/Nigella Lawson

Kay Saatchi and Tim Willis

If a woman, an individual woman multiplied by billions, does not believe in her own discrete existence and therefore cannot credit the authenticity of her own suffering, she is erased, canceled out, and the meaning of her life, whatever it is, whatever it might have been, is lost. This loss cannot be calculated or comprehended.  It is vast and awful, and nothing will ever make up for it.

― Andrea Dworkin, Right Wing Women

I never met Nigella Lawson, not yet. She is still relevant.  She is the battered wife.  The super woman who drowned her sorrows in cocaine as her former husband lay dying of cancer and her ex husband allegedly emotionally brutalized her.

I only meet women like Nigella when they become irrelevant.

In my distant social orbit, light years from the warming sun of acceptability, circle the flotsam and jetsam of international society. Isolated by ignominy, the ex wives of current politicians, media titans and corporate mega moguls float in and out of the rooms of AA, expensive treatment centers in the Arizona desert, The San Fernando Valley and Malibu.

Aping the lives they once had with limitless funds, they buy a few stems of bruised tuba rose* from the same florist who once filled their many mansions with exotic blooms.  Sumptuous bouquets placed on valuable escritoire, on silvered night stands, on grand dining tables.

She stands briefly on the threshold, looking at her guilty feet, apologising for the frugal fist of sweet smelling flowers.  The florist looks on piteously knowing that her younger, more glamorous successor can spend whatever she pleases.

The lonely ex-wife arranges a slim vase in her well-appointed but humble apartment in Pimlico moments from where she and her spouse once lived on Eaton Square.

These frosty, cast off ex-wives, their faces wet with angry tears, looking to half-baked sober life coaches in first-rate treatment centers to recalibrate their lives. Drinking away their sorrows, dumped by men whose power they loved and whose money they spent.   Yoga, sobriety, macrobiotics, spending, using, crying… nothing seems to work because all these women want is the sweet taste of revenge.

This week, one very lucky ex-wife gets her dues. She waited patiently on the sidelines of her ex-husband’s life to witness the crushing downfall of her Nemesis.  Today, American born, Kay Saatchi is not only back in Charles’s life but has had the delicious pleasure of helping dispense the woman who caused Kay pain beyond description: Nigella Lawson.

Kay is delightful.  I’ve met her on numerous occasions in Los Angeles.  Of course she’s delightful!   A man like Charles Saatchi wouldn’t marry an idiot. Kay is everything a powerful man would want, she is elegant, super smart, she has exquisite taste.  Kay, nowadays, is sober.  Yet, when Kay was drinking, she had an unpleasant habit of blacking out and talking gibberish about Charles.  She couldn’t and wouldn’t stop.  Even her best friend wouldn’t know how to stem the tirade.  Her life, it seemed, could only be nothing… without Charles.

She would disintegrate into a seething mess of Charles Saatchi resentment.

The only hook Kay had in her ex as she watched in increasing horror as Nigella used Charles as a spring-board into her own rock solid career as international domestic goddess… was her/their daughter Phoebe who Kay moaned constantly was ignored by her father.  When I asked Phoebe if her father ignored her over Christmas dinner a few years ago… she denied it, looked sadly at her drunk mother and told me that the only problem parent… was Kay.

Now, things are different.  Kay is sober (unlike Nigella) and Kay’s undying love and loyalty for her ex husband has been rewarded by his begging Kay to help oust Nigella.  Kay will never be Mrs Charles Saatchi ever again but she has made herself indispensable to him during his time of need… once again firmly cementing herself back into his life.

Kay Saatchi

It is hard to explain to ordinary people the intoxicating effect of unlimited cash, how women like Kay, Nigella and now Trinny Woodall would willingly get involved with brooding Charles Saatchi. A man who throttled his ex wife in public.  A man so ruthless he recruits his vulnerable ex-wife to destroy his current wife.

Do yourself a favor and read Andrea Dworkin’s Right Wing Women: the politics of domesticated females.  Money and power are everything to some women.  It defies logic and rationale. The patriarch, the provider, the batterer… do what ever you will to me and for me… I am yours forever.

Today the harsh glare of media scrutiny lights up every dark corner of Charles Saatchi’s famously private life. Appearing every day at the trial of his former employees, The Grillo Sisters.  It must be a painful time for secretive Charles.  During the trial there was constant mention of the grown women (who were no more that indentured servants) as ‘family’ yet, as Deborah Orr points out in the only pro Grillo piece on offer this week…

“You cannot insist that someone is in your family, then cry fraud when they behave as if they are.”

The rich are different.  They like to live beyond scrutiny, they operate without care for consequence.  Partially, this week, on a micro and macro level justice was done.  For servants like the Grillo sisters and for ex wives who crave revenge.

* Princess Diana‘s favorite flower.

Categories
Queer

The Problem With Pride

FDF 3

President Obama has third graders announce LGBTQ pride month at the White House.  Whose idea was that?  Even POTUS looked a little incredulous.  Obviously I don’t have any problem with 3rd graders manning the barricades but… perhaps we can have kittens next time… or puppies… or fluffy yellow chicks… or a new born foal?

The gays are in Pride party overdrive.  Circuit parties, sex parties, pride events, bear parties, underwear parties, mourning parties, party parties.

When Joe and I lived in The Pines on Fire Island we went, over the years, to various high-octane, drug fueled, over lubricated, semi-naked circuit parties.  Yet, however many drugs I took, however great my body was… I still felt alienated.  I still experienced a strange, out-of-body disconnect from those men around me.  You see, I remember thinking quite clearly that they… GOT IT… and I didn’t.  I thought back then… they understand something more about homosexuality than I did… than I do.

Don’t get me wrong… I wasn’t looking down my nose at them.  I wasn’t feeling superior.  I would love to have connected with those men.  Like I used to feel connected (high on E) in my mid twenties exploring London (straight) club land.  The same heaving mass that miraculously included me.  Joyfully, willingly abandoning self, self consciousness terminal uniqueness and dancing as one with a thousand others.

That is what I felt then.  This is what I feel now:  To have ones life defined by gay circuit parties is simply revolting.

Some people prepare for weeks for Pride, in the gym, tanning, organizing parties, getting the right tickets for the right events.  Making sure the drink and the drugs are pre-ordered.  Leaving nothing to chance.  The last ‘pride’ parade I attended I saw a drunken man defecating in the street. It was not the enduring image of LGBTQ solidarity after which I was hankering.

There is a hideous disconnect between the civil rights we demand and the public face of ‘pride’.  A parade of semi naked gyrating narcissists.  How can anyone take that seriously?  Pride simply reinforces the difference between me and them:  I do not drink or take drugs.  I am not driven (compelled) by my homosexuality.

The parade terrifies me.  Aesthetically.  The corporate floats lack ingenuity and wit.  The rent boy/sex worker float lacks class.  The thongs, the swagger, revealing the lie of Pride.  The near identical bodies in various hues.  Searching, begging for tiny differences between each naked, muscular physique that may determine the uniqueness, the individuality of just one of these men.  Of course, I am excited to see so many out men.  But they are all the same.  I look at them and, as much as I want to be, I am not attracted to them.  I am not attracted to their essence… to their remarkable lack of ego.

The Pride parade is a celebration of sexuality.  First and foremost.  And I, absurdly, want to fall in love.  You see, I proved it.  They wanted sex… and I didn’t.   I wanted to fall in love… and they didn’t.

“I want to tell you how much I love you.”  I whispered.

When I have sex.  I tell them to say… I love you.  It turns me on.  “Even if you don’t mean it.”  I was useless then and I am useless now to those gay men at those gay circuit parties because I didn’t want to have sex.  I wanted to fall in love.  I didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t and they knew it.  They could see by the look in my eye that their sexuality terrified me, baffled me.  I wanted to fall in love.

That man I loved.  After he came out… he told me about the sex he was having with many, many men.  He was really good at meeting strange men and having sex with them.  His priorities shifted.  When we were together and he was in the closet he told me he loved me, he was emotional… the moment he came out he threw his emotional interest in men away.  In favour of sex.  I wanted to fall in love.

It was my fault.  I had this sex genius at my disposal and couldn’t work out how to use what he was brilliant at.  When we made love I felt the same disconnect.  Out of body.  Away.

Pride is a tough word to have appended to any celebration because it means so many different things to so many different people.  That’s why I love the LGBTQ Mardi Gras in Sydney, it doesn’t have PRIDE  in the title.  Mardi Gras is everything you want it to be because Mardi Gras mean nothing to me.  Means everything to me.

Mardi Gras implies celebration.  It doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t.  Even though it eschews the word Pride, on the several occasions I attended… I felt really proud.  Proud to be just like them.  Just like you.  I looked for the similarities and not the differences at:  The silly Mardi Gras community events, the Mardi Gras parade, the film festival, the theatre festival, the LGBTQ city art tours… even the leather cruise… something I would never usually do seemed fun and interesting.

It was a gathering of the LGBTQ clan and made no mistake by calling itself something it isn’t.  The parade and the party.  Mardi Gras was so different from London Pride.  London Pride in the 1980’s, was a sombre affair.  Men and women.  Simply being seen.  It was originally held during the miserable months of the British year.  Overcast skies.  Rain.

London Pride has evolved from a bunch of angry gays and lesbians marching through Westminster (Margaret Thatcher’s back yard) denouncing the infamously homophobic Section 28 to right now and a profoundly different landscape for the LGBTQ community.  We have enthusiastically embraced the Blair (credit where credit’s due) government’s equality overhaul and the introduction of legal parity for all citizens of the UK regardless of gender.

London Pride is a deserved celebration… but it was earned.  It’s not my cup of tea.  But it was earned.  If it isn’t your cup of tea… what is?  What does this old queer want?

Well.

Somewhere between the seriousness of a civil rights march and the celebration of Mardi Gras there is a parade I want to attend.   There’s a parade I want to join where all men and women are respected and nurtured regardless of age, sexuality and religion.  Let me know if you find that Parade because I’ll be there… to hold your hand.

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Categories
politics Queer Rant

Clément Méric: We Cry For You

black-1.2

It is a black day for the international LGBTQ community.

Clément Méric is as good as dead.  His brilliant, 18-year-old queer brain mangled by right-wing thugs on the streets of Paris.

He is presently kept alive by a tangle of opalescent tubes.

In Russia activists are targeted by government sponsored bullies.

In London intellectuals are beaten to the ground by members of the EDL.

In NYC a black man is shot in the face and killed.

Trans people are murdered every day all over the world, often without investigation.

Have you heard?  There is, amongst the general population, a perceived inevitability about LGBTQ equality.

Some amongst us are becoming complacent.  Bloated on the success we think we have.

Basking in the support we think we get from the President.  In fact we are silenced by him.

His words over deeds have silenced us.

We must speak up.  Continue to challenge. Continue to be seen.

We must not shirk our responsibility to queer martyrs like Clément Méric.

Speak up. Heckle.

ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) is only now being widely discussed after the petulant FLOTUS was confronted by GetEQUAL queer activist Ellen Sturtz.

I congratulate Ellen.  Finally, a voice for the queer poor heard over the screaming voices of the queer rich.

As the Great Recession continues in so much of the USA, ending workplace discrimination (especially for trans people) is essential.

Listen to me or you can take the mic, but I’m leaving. You all decide. You have one choice.

FLOTUS

Remember.  As we strive for parity there will be those with equal and opposite views.

There will be violence.

There will be those who will kill an 18-year-old queer boy because they can.

African-Americans had to face nearly another century of lynchings before the Civil Rights Movement was powerful enough to push back strongly against violent racists.

The women’s movement of the 1920s, side-tracked for a generation until the 1960s, with so many needlessly broken lives and life expectations as a result.

Queer people are being attacked all over the world: Paris, Moscow, New York, London by increasingly emboldened haters.

As we demand equality in the workplace, the home and in the establishment these attacks will become more frequent.

We must, whether we like it or not, form a true LGBTQ alliance not only in name but in practice.

It is too late for fear to drive us into the shadows. We are out. We are visible.

We need to be more fearless and more visible.

LGBTQ.

This means YOU.

This means ME.

Reading about Clément Méric this morning, looking at his sweet, boyish profile… I began to question my own behavior.

I have, of late, let resentment toward the gays shape my own kind of homophobia.

For those of you who have read my blog these past couple of years the provenance of this loathing may seem understandable.

Today, I need to jettison those resentments.

If I truly believe in this fight… I have to accept those I detest as my queer brothers and sisters.

Categories
Queer

Kill The Faggot

My Pink Shoes

1.

Mark Carson was a black man and a gay man. He did not have the luxury of invisibility.

When he was shot in the head yesterday, he was already walking away from the man with a gun.

He was killed moments from where Joe and I lived on 13th Street in the West Village, NYC.

He went down fast.

This story is peculiarly American. It includes race, guns and queers.

The narrative is so familiar I am no longer shocked.

In London a white queer couple are walking home arm in arm. They are beaten to the ground.

We can kid ourselves that our ‘visibility’ has somehow made things better, that Glee and Will and Grace have improved LGBTQ functionality but frankly… that’s the lie we tell ourselves to get by.

To walk the streets.

Holding my lovers hand in the street is still an act of rebellion.

2.

The rate of HIV infection is still epidemic, around 45-50,000 new cases every year, 60% of those are gay or bisexual men.

AIDS education has not served to change the attitude in the general GBTQ population to bring those numbers down.

That is the cold hard truth.

No use dragging in references to children in Africa. The causes are preventable here amongst Americans.

The immune defense systems of many people are compromised and therefore vulnerable to deadly viruses such as the new strain of meningitis.

I fully support my GBTQ community, but I must also defend and uphold the bare truth:  people in America want what they want when they want it.

They don’t care to understand that they are living off the principal instead of the interest.

3.

When Jake and I were in Paris we sat on the Terrace of the Hotel Mama Shelter.  We were dining,  holding hands and kissing.

During a tumultuous and difficult relationship it was a moment of tender kindness.

From a window high above where we were lounging a man called out:  “Pede!”

Jake didn’t speak French.  He, thankfully, did not understand that we were being insulted.  “Faggot!”

I expected something to be thrown.  A shot to ring out.  My life felt threatened.

I wrapped my arms protectively around him.  Just in case.  I loved him so.

If you are queer.  You know what I am talking about.

If you are black, a muslim… anything other than a straight white male. You know what I am talking about.

You know that feeling very well.

4.

They want to march the street tonight.  They want to hold a vigil for Mark Carson.  They want to fight back.  But, what exactly are you fighting when you fight back?

The young men who want to hurt us, to kill us… are just doing what they understand: they are identifying the enemy and bringing it down.

To some they are patriots.

They are heroes from another age.

They do not understand our rarefied world because we have not done enough to explain it to them.

What do they know about us?  We may seem like a grandiose secret society… like the Scientologists or The Masonic Order and like any other secret society… we pose a threat.

We have done nothing to make our position clear except demand to oppress by joining historically oppressive institutions: the military and marriage.

They may have every good reason to hate us because they think we have everything and they have nothing.

They think we are rich, successful, they think we are celebrities… or connected to celebrity.

In this TV Quick world they see us living a dream. Why? Because we have sold them this in an attempt to seem ‘normal’.

5.

Dinner at Nobu. What a mess. Had to concentrate solely on my dining companion and not get side tracked by huge black eyebrows drawn onto Botox faces, short men with pony tails and overly developed biceps.

The creamy snow crab was delicious.

The crowd was not.

6.

My friend Benoit Denizet-Lewis has brought down Abercrombie and Fitch… a gay empire.

The morbidly obese, trapped in their mid west homes, are lifting their fat fingers and tapping one key at a time… declaring their outrage.

But, the rest of you… the gays… Mike Jeffries is gay… what did you expect?

Jeffries made a fortune from Bruce Weber’s homoerotic (bordering on pedophilia) A&F ad campaigns and the gays kept their mouths firmly shut.

What did you think that Weimar Nazi imagery was all about?

Did you see those highly collectible A&F catalogues now owned by all my gay friends?

Who complained that there were no fat models, no wheelchair bound kids frolicking in Bear Pond?

Now that Mike Jeffries is old, his face scarred with reconstructive surgery his very common gay obsession with youth and beauty is suddenly in bad taste?

HUH?

Perhaps fat people should stop eating if they want to wear hideous A&F clothing.

As for the guy who gave the stuff to homeless people. WTF? Ha Ha Ha. Not funny or clever or LIBERAL.

7.

Why isn’t the LIBERACE movie being distributed in the USA?

Why can you see this movie in European cinemas and not here?

I am told that very powerful gays here in Hollywood scuppered it.

It was they who described it as ‘too gay’ (camp) and inappropriate for audiences in the USA who might think we were all like Liberace.

In this ghastly straight acting world… we don’t want straight people to get the wrong idea.

God forbid… sportsman might not want to come out of the closet and be heroes.

7.

Today, at Gjelina, we sat next to 3 good-looking, rich, straight Russian boys on vacation from Moscow.

We charmed them. They thought I was so funny and sweet.

As we left I drained the smile off my face. I touched one of them gently on the shoulder.

I said very seriously, “When you go home can you tell your President to stop killing the gays.”

They laughed. They thought I was joking. After all, I had three beautiful women friends for lunch.

“No, I mean it… it’s really got to stop and it’s up to you.”

They looked foolish and embarrassed and that was good because the last thing you need when you are a rich, white Russian on vacation in LA are liberals making fun of your country… your government and you.

Most gays wouldn’t have bothered. But that’s the way you change the world.

Let them know it’s not OK.

8.

The 14-year-old son of state Sen. Brian Hatfield has been charged with four counts of first-degree child rape and four counts of first-degree child molestation in Lewis County.

The boy is accused of assaulting an 11-year-old boy from November 2012 until Feb. 14 of this year, when the younger boy’s mother interrupted an incident.

According to the police report, the mother informed detectives Hatfield told her on several occasions that he was attempting to ‘enter his son into therapy’ and would also be contacting authorities in Lewis County.

The mother stated that she knows that this has ‘not occurred’.

Neither parent called authorities at that time of the alleged incident and the mother said she had not ‘witnessed any physical contact’ between the boys.

Her son informed her some contact had occurred, but the boy later told detectives he didn’t reveal the full extent of the ‘abuse’ at that time.

The two boys had no further contact after the February incident.

Was this the love affair I remember when I was 11?  

Is this pubescent messing around or… rape?

Homo sex demonized by frightened parents?

There’s something so wrong about this story and it’s not the sex.

8.

Marriage equality would not have saved Mark Carson’s short life.

The cloak of equality he may have worn later on in life was not his to wear.

Joining the army may have paid for his education… but would not have saved his life.

Marriage equality would not get him to the hospital in time.  It would not have paid the hospital bills if he had lived.

Marriage equality would not have stopped the deathly glances of those who disapprove or those who thought he might rob them because he was black.

I am praying that Mark Carson took the bullet intended for this old faggot.

Mark… I shed a tear for you today.

This is What Homophobia Looks Like
Beaten in London Walking Home

Categories
Gay Los Angeles Malibu NYC Poem Queer

A Lie in The Manger

Stormy Malibu

1.

It started with a short message and ended up with a whole bunch of choices I never expected.

Not in my wildest dreams.

I’ve read what you had to say. Now it’s my turn.

Stepping away from the mess. It’s not so messy. It seems like it was planned.

This pantomime. Look at the cast of unusual, freakish characters. Look at them.

Boys and men, trans and women.

Young girls. Yes. They are here too.

So you wrote me a poem. No title… of course.

2.

We were connected .

When it expires we are expired.

The order? It was a good idea. It was a great way to formalize the end of our association. I can only imagine that you feel much the same way I do.

I wish we had never met.

Don’t you shudder whenever you think about it?

I understand why you needed to rewrite the narrative.

I took advantage of you?

You had far more to lose by telling the truth.

When assigning blame, I take full responsibility. I should have walked away.

Everyone I trusted advised me to do so. Everyone I trusted.

I didn’t.

Instead, I pinned my hopes on you. I found your interest in me all at once baffling and inspiring.

A romantic relationship was impossible.

Because I am a broken, sick man. Incapable of intimacy.

You sold me:

A big fat lie.

Yet, we never talked about my lies. Yes, I lied to you about almost everything.

Lies I had held onto for a very long time.

This man is a liar. Just like me. Did you ever think that?

So.

The last time I checked, and that was some time ago, you seemed very happy wearing your new clothes, your relationship, your job and your family.

I am delighted. You will make a much better job of being a gay than I ever could.

It seems to be an exciting time for a young gay man in the USA. Equality on the horizon, no AIDS.

Your ability to form and maintain relationships will mean that you’ll have everything you always wanted. Everything you ever dreamed.

The questions I wanted to ask… I have no reason to ask.

The truth set you free and I am very proud of you… even though I have no desire to set eyes upon you ever again.

May 6th 2013

3.

When did you have time to write that? Was it really meant for me?

Did you wonder if I should reply? Did you think I could?

There are no words left.

4.

It’s 3am.

The storm rattles the house, thunders down the drain pipes. Torrents of rain over the mountain. Hammering down onto the wide, new leaves.

Wide awake.

Make some toast and lime marmalade. Boil some eggs. Stand naked in the warm rain.

Categories
Queer

Not Gay. Queer. Thx.

Int 2

Occasional unfinished notes on becoming Queer.

There’s a difference between gay and queer.  Just like there’s a difference between chocolate and carob.  It looks the same, and used the same but tastes completely different.

Queer: sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary

The older I get… the queerer I become.

I’m not even sure what it means.  But I’m sure that gay no longer describes what I am.

I am not a married drone operator living with my husband and three surrogate children who secretly wishes he could vote republican… and did… once… because nobody was watching.

Nope.  I’m not that and I’m not headed in that direction.

I remain teachable.  My wagon remains unhitched.

Listen, I’ve got a secret I want to share with you.  One I don’t think I’m meant to be sharing.  A secret that might very well discredit my public shift away from gay toward queer as my description of choice.

My description of me.

I feel so let down, betrayed, dishonoured by gay men.  Yes… you.

One day in early December this year I will write the genesis of my change.

This intellectual menopause.  This change.  This perestroika.

Remember:  from the very first play, to the very last film I have sought to make entertainment that re-examined, revealed, remade the gay experience.

I have won endless awards doing so.

My crowning moment was being nominated for a British Academy Award.

Betrayed:

I was used to being told by straight people that if I wanted a career I should stop telling gay stories.

I was not expecting this:  Gay people told me the same thing.  In fact, they (with vehemence)  told anyone talented and gay to live the lifestyle but don’t expect to tell stories about it.

They said,  “You don’t want all your hard work… marginalized.”

They said, “You don’t want to miss out on the big bucks.  You don’t want to end up like Derek Jarman?  Do you?”

My heart sank.  That’s exactly what I wanted.  Back then.  When I relished telling people I was gay.

Derek Jarman.  He was the only film maker I thought worth aspiring too.  That’s how it was back then.  1985.

So, I found him.  Sought him out.

We met on The South Bank in the shadow of the Royal National Theatre.   Denys Lasdun‘s great, neo-brutalist monolith

We sat outside overlooking the Thames.  Gray clouds scudding over the greatest city in the whole world.

Gusts of cold grit blown over us.

He bought two cups of badly stewed tea served in thick Styrofoam cups.

I handed him the Caravaggio catalogue I had bought after seeing the show at the Met in NYC.

“How can I help?”  He asked.

I said, “I want to make a film.”  I was embarrassed.  I was star struck.

He said, “You will. But, you want my advice?  Remember this: Never take no for an answer.”

We talked about Tilda Swinton who nobody really knew back then.

He told me about a young tousled man he met in the street.  A builder.  The builder came up to him on Shaftesbury Avenue and said, “You’re that gay film maker, aren’t you.”

Well, he expected the worst.  It wouldn’t be the first time he had been beaten by a stranger but he looked him in the eye, straight in the eye and said, “Yes I am.”

Ten minutes later the beautiful young man was naked, towering over him.  Blowing a load.

That’s a queer story.  It’s not gay.  For a start, a gay wouldn’t have told the truth.

Secondly, a gay would have been too scared to take a big straight acting blue-collar worker back to his prissy apartment.

The gays.  God.  You were right.  It wasn’t worth it.  Making those plays, those movies.

Yet, I’m still here.  Sitting in my huge bed in California.

Good taste and tenacity will always make you enough money to enjoy a great life.  Where ever it may take you.

The gays betray each other.  They have no respect for themselves or each other.  Perhaps it was me?  Perhaps I had unrealistic expectations.  You know, mutual respect, support, honor?

I remain curious.  Even though I am sure of what I am.

P.S.  Tilda Swinton saw my film AKA at Sundance.

My agent threw a party for her and me in some crazy restaurant.

We talked a great deal about Derek that night.

He was right.  I never took no for an answer.

I begged and I borrowed and I stole to make a moment in my life that no one can ever take away from me.

Not even the gays.

Categories
Queer

The Viper in Me

Little Dog

Meeting you once.  That was enough.  I don’t need any more chaos in my life.  That’s what a moment with you was.  Whoever you are.  Was that your real name?  Did I tell you my real name.  Isn’t that the point?  

A community of liars, reinventing themselves for a wet, dark moment under the covers.

That’s what they don’t want you to know.  So many lies they tell.  They want you to believe we just are like you.  We are just like you behind the elegant front door.

The bronze gargoyle.

No women to temper our worst excesses.

Dawn.

Again.

Those yellow, silk satin curtains were bought for me by Jean Paul Gaultier on Nothing Hill the day after the IRA blew up the City of London. They are pretty threadbare at the edges.

I don’t care.

He picked me up at the Market Tavern in Vauxhall.  He sent the bar man over with a pint.  Paid for.  Caught my attention.  I had no intention of kissing him.  Making love to him.  Instead I took him to the crater in the City of London where the Irish Republican Army had blown up the streets.

We took a cab to Notting Hill and bought those yellow silk curtains.

Certain that no one would believe the story.  Still very drunk.  A pall over my forehead.  We sat in Tim’s kitchen so I could, at a later date, prove that we had been there.  I sat my god daughter on my lap.  My jeans must have stunk of beer and cigarettes and sweat.

I think he was probably into fisting.

I can feel it. You are falling in love with me but I’m not interested. I can’t pretend.  I can’t love you back.   You may as well back away from the beloved.  As you know, there’s a viper beneath the skin. Your weakness disgusts me. Those eyes looking up at me expecting so much more. Those big brown eyes offending me. I imagine pushing you down the stairs.

Lawyers, lovers, movers, electricians, renters, plumbers, real estate agents, judges, baristas.

Visitors:  from England.  My home town.  I think you forget that my home town will always be there.  Always.  The softer landing.  Regardless what you do to me.  What you take from me.  How you silence me.  The months are passing quickly.

If you send me home.  My mouth is wide open.  A siren.  From Whitstable.

Oh, Whitstable.   I am coming home.

Leaving behind these savages.  I would rather face my demons there.

Savages, blowing up there own people.  Blaming the boys.  The muslim boys.  Demonizing islam.

It’s a drill… wait… no it’s not. There is a third bomb… wait no there isn’t. We’re looking for a dark skinned man… wait… actually two white ones. We need help identifying them… wait we’ve had one of them on a list for years and we know where he lives. Ok, we found them but we killed one… no wait his brother killed him… wait… no he didn’t. We captured the other one after a firefight but he shot himself… wait… he didn’t have a gun.

Savages, without opera.  Savages, white and clean.  Chained to their guns and their christianity.  The lies they tell:  the deficit.  The heroes they claim.  The heroes they abandon.

The gays are picking out their black shirts, their golden hair and musculature.

Being in jail radicalized me.  Hanging with the Trans hookers. No longer gay.  This queer, with other queers.  Behind the women and men of colour, of indeterminate physicality.  Liberty leading the people.

There is so much outraged.  Outrage!  A line has to be drawn.  Robby, my darling ally.  Now he is Dustin Lance Black‘s boyfriend, well… he had to be jettisoned.   The trophy boyfriend.

I really loved him.  Like a son.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/e7HJTCvzLXQ]

There he is with the gays (black and white) at the White House.  Looking uncomfortable.  His hair slicked back.  His beautiful flaxen hair.

Meanwhile his ‘husband’ Lance Black, is a grand marshall/special guest star/nazi youth at San Francisco Pride.  The same organisation that abandoned Bradley Manning last week.  Turned their back on a world hero in favor of an illusionist.

Lance is a man who writes about history rather than participates in it.

A bunch of Iraq gay vets (murderers/terrorists) took it upon themselves to complain and the corporate Pride org buckled.

It was a sad day.  A terrible, sad day.

One day films will be made about Bradley Manning and we will wonder, with a degree of homo incredulity, how Lance Black and the organizers of SanFrancisco Pride found themselves on the wrong side of history.

Hairless, blond Lance with his hairless, limp, blond husband.

So the argument rages.  Is Bradley manning a hero?  It seems that if he is… not many gay people agree. He broke the law they caw!

Well, did he?  Whistle blowing (as it turns out) is an honorable, protected act.

Executive Order 13526, Section 1.7 pertaining to Classifications Prohibitions and Limitations clearly states that:

In no case shall information be classified… in order to: conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error; prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency… or prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.

Thus, what Bradley Manning did when he disclosed cables that revealed extreme corruption and major breaches of diplomatic goodwill was, in fact, quite honorable, and he deserves protection under the Whistleblower Protection Act.

My friend Robby is part of a homosexual elite.  Able to shape and destroy lives.

The bitter and resentful gays turning on their own.  They daren’t turn on straight people.  Why? They still want to be straight.

Meanwhile a black man comes out and the gay, white elite are thrilled.  It’s embarrassing that they have no black friends.  It’s embarrassing that they have no black friends on Facebook.

Thank God!  A black man, playing basket ball.  He’s making it seem so comfortable.

Fuck HRC.  Fuck GLAAD.

I am understanding now.  Who those gays are.  They never wanted to put up their hand and tell the world they were different.  I did.  They wanted to be teachers pet.  I didn’t.  They wanted to be perfect.  Nope, not me.

Their only act of bravery is telling the world they are gay.

Astonishing. These absurd gay men screaming about how Bradley Manning broke the law. We who were born criminals… born gay, who every time we kissed or made love also broke the law. Would you have suggested abstinence until the laws magically changed? Did we deserve to go to jail for being gay, after all… we knew the consequences? Who do you think broke the law on your behalf to fight police and break windows at Stonewall? Sadly. it turns out, not many gay men. They were hiding in the back of the bar whilst the trannies broke the law. The gays are still hiding in the back of the bar whilst honorable men like Bradley Manning fight important battles against iniquity and injustice. By dissing Manning you merely collude with, support the illegal actions of the US military. Make your choice, but remember those of us who fought on your behalf once upon a time did so without regard for the law. Bradley Manning may or may not have broken laws. Without doubt, his actions helped liberate millions and hastened a US military withdrawal from Iraq. You must honor him.

Let’s face it.  It wasn’t gay men fighting the police and breaking windows the day Judy died.  The gays were hiding in the back of the bar or running away.  Terrified of breaking the law.  Terrified.  They are still hiding in the back of the bar whilst others do their fighting for them.

One day, there will be men owning up to not wanting to be gay, staying in the closet because… they will say… ‘I’m not like that… look at what the gays have become…’

This week I purged myself of white, elite gay ‘friends’ on Facebook and I wished I knew… what I could do next.

For more about how we are evolving… read this: Steven W. Thrasher’s great piece in Gawker today.