Categories
Dogs Rant

Malibu

The house by day is magical.

Jason and Hillary, quite separately, popped by and both brought lunch.  Hillary arrived with a friend’s dog called Willy who decided to pee on everything the moment he came indoors.

Hillary made a delicious gazpacho and Jason brough chevre and smoked salmon.  Three mad brits eating an Enid Blyton lunch in our tree house over looking the ocean.

I ate bread which I bitterly regret having eaten today.  I am bloated and my tummy aches.

The house after dark can be a little noisy.  I lay in the dark listening to the raccoons squabble, the coyote’s howl and the owls hoot.   The little dog had a restless night, so, of course did I.   He was up and down the stairs shouting at anything that disturbed him.  After an hour of this nonsense I closed the windows and he slept peacefully.

It was meant to be in the 100’s all week but by last night in Malibu it was colder than Whitstable.  I am sure the firemen are very happy as there have been so few wild-fire warnings.  Everything is very damp in the morning from the thick mist that rolls off the sea.

Jason left and Hillary and I decided to take the dogs for a long walk along the length of the new road (Rambla Pacifico) that leads to the PCH.  The house is now walkable from the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) and since they started building the Rambla Pacifico extension empty lots are now for sale, lot owners who abandoned their lots 26 years ago are on the mountain with contractors discussing driveways and bedrooms with ocean views.  There is a certain excitement up here which cannot be ignored.

I applaud myself for paying so little for this house.  I just KNEW that one day the road would be built..who knew that it would be so soon?

Apparently I am not the only resident who regularly walks the muddy track which will one day be our new road/life line.  We saw a man armed with shopping bags marching over the hillocks.  Everyone is so impatient to feel less isolated.

It is only a few weeks until the rainy season starts so they must get a move on and finish this project.  The worst that could happen is that heavy rains come before it is finished and all their hard work is washed away.

If only Malibu would buy the road so it can be used by everyone rather than a select few.

Watched TV until midnight…yes there is a TV here and fell into bed.  I watch home improvement shows and laugh gently at how cheap and ill-conceived the ‘improvements’ are.

The Lil Dog was exhausted from running after Willy all day and his long walk but not, apparently,  exhausted enough.

P.S.  The despicable Glenn Beck is holding his reclaim America from anyone who isn’t white rally today in Washington.  For those of you who underestimate the ambition of people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin I urge you to take notice of their message.  They are determined to undermine the goodwill and inclusive character of this great country and, my friends, they will succeed just like their right-wing predecessors.  They will use all the usual tactics:  fear mongering, false patriotism and the invocation of their malevolent God.  These men and women are not clowns, we cannot afford to grandly sneer at their absurd antics.  For as the liberal elite laugh in their grotesque faces they are gathering speed.  If we are not very careful it will be soon too late for those of us who believe in freedom to stop them for we were too busy laughing.

Categories
Love Rehab

Are You OK?

Are you OK?

We say that to each other in the UK all the time.  It doesn’t really mean anything, it’s just the way we check in with each other.  I check in with you and you check in with me.  Even if I am not OK I thank you for asking.

When I taught him, the companion, what it meant he played at asking me if I was OK but the effect was still the same.  I felt good, checked in with, placated.

Americans, when you ask them if they are OK, worry that something looks wrong with them.  It worries them, disrupts their day.

So, don’t ask an American if he/she is OK unless you think that there is something wrong.  You’ll do more harm than good.

It’s Monday morning.  I have just been to therapy.

The weekend was a delicious blend of fun, laughter and me feeling better than I have for 8 months.  I am just so happy.  Happy doesn’t necessarily mean well-behaved. I have been delightfully rude.

Ivan Massow is in town, such an unpleasant man who was the ‘source’ in the Caroline Roux article about me for the Guardian.  The source who was too scared to be openly vicious about me.  Anyway, there he was yesterday having lunch, slimeing all over my straight friend Ben.  Who in their right mind gave that man the ICA to run?  WHO in their right mind thought he should stand as Mayor of London? Crazy!

Anyway, supposedly he is sober so I am trying not to hate him too much.

Thankfully he is losing his looks.

Saturday spent nearly all day in Malibu.  Lunch in the Lumber Yard with Jon Aubry.  I went to bed early Saturday night.

Breakfast on Sunday with Will and his dog Rocco.  Stephen popped by at about 11 and then lunch with Sharon Swart.  Delightful.  She attended a flower arranging class and brought to lunch a huge bouquet of roses and hydrangea.

Sunday night Michael and I went to a party in Silverlake.  There was a performance piece for us to watch.  Three 10 minute sections of a larger work about a man accused of burning down his house and killing his daughters.  The first part was indecipherable.  The second and third part, although messy, were much better and had good, strong ideas.  The director asked what I thought..so I told him.  Bad idea.  Nobody wants to hear the truth.

We were meant to meet Jamie Lee Curtis after that party but we did not.

Taka came by late on Sunday.   He is a funny one.   Editor, Japanese..chatty.

Oh, before I forget..the new Malibu renters arrived on Saturday and are very happy in the house.  They are the SWEETEST people from the UK who loved the house the moment they stepped through the door and from whom I have not heard since..no news is GREAT news as far as renters are concerned.

I made a ‘to do’ list for Monday that includes all the boring stuff I have been putting off for weeks but essential if I am going to stay on top of things.

I went to therapy on Saturday morning and shared my good news.  My only worry about therapy is that I am surrounded by so many miserable, desperate men.

It’s now Monday morning and I am positioned at my ‘desk’ at SHLA.  Papers and briefcase open and ready for action.  My list of things ‘to do’ is already half eaten.  THICK lines scored through the things already done.

Listen, I have no idea why I am so happy but one thing is for sure..it has nothing to do with anyone else.  In fact, I was briefly annoyed by the actions of the other last night but after a few seconds ceased to be.  There was a time in the very recent past when the other could ruin my entire evening by being snippy.  Not anymore.

Whenever one has a meaningful relationship one tends to ignore when things don’t add up.  Denial gluing disparate parts of one story into something believable.

I am not annoyed with him..a little disappointed in me.

Disappointed that I have been so desperate to make our relationship work.  Just writing that down makes me feel sick.  That I would have done anything to make another man love, want and care for me.  For the past 8 months I have devoted my time, energy, love and money to a stranger who bust his way into my life after seeing me on TV.  It is a testament to my own low self-esteem just how much I was prepared to ignore in order to feel loved.

I am grateful that I fell in love and really got to know a man, be seen by another man. You may think that I have been foolish but in fact the last few months have been some of the best of my whole life.   I miss him.  I do.  But what I miss doesn’t really exist.  I miss being cared about, thought about, fantasized about, included and lastly, but most importantly, I miss being loved.

Every decision I made these past few months has been inspired by my love for him. Consequently I now have to make decisions based on my needs, my desires and my career.

I have vowed not to work out our stuff here in my blog so I won’t.

All you, my readers, need to know is that I am ok..are you ok?

Categories
Gay Rant

Middle Ages

Before I start today’s rant I must just share with you how beautiful it is in Malibu.  The house is calm, the colours are peaceful and dreamy.  The misty canyon is slowly clearing to reveal the ocean below.

Unusually there is a TV and it’s nice to hear it babbling in the background so I don’t feel so alone.  I woke up too late this morning to go to my therapy group.  Thirty minutes too late.  Perhaps all I need is a TV and a little dog to be happy?  I have been wondering since I returned from Europe what or how life will deliver next.  Obviously if I were in NYC I would be enjoying the tail end of my relationship with him.  Oh, I don’t know.

The insurance man came yesterday to discuss the burglary that happened here in Malibu before I left for Europe.  He was polite and thorough.   A friend popped by to take me to lunch, a young Japanese actor.  We ate at the new Cuban place nearby.

I spent the afternoon imagining how the house might look if I made the essential changes I want to make before I put it on the market this autumn.  I drove down to see how the new road is progressing.  They have already carved out the route and huge yellow earth movers are shifting tons of debris from the 26-year-old slide.   It excites me to see the changes.  Driving up Rambla Pacifico is really beautiful overlooking the northern Malibu shores, past vineyards and the vast Santa Monica mountain range.  As I have said before, the road makes sense of why these homes were built here.  I was sure when I bought the house that one day the road would be repaired so seeing it happen gives me a huge sense of relief.

Went out for dinner with friends last night, they had an elderly black labrador who the Little Dog fell in love with and tried humping.  He had such fun!  Running around their lawn with his new girl friend.

Something funny happened yesterday morning after therapy.  One of my co-conspirators (kinda famous) came up to me and told me that if I ever saw him in public that I shouldn’t speak to him.  That my fame as a sex addict might reveal him as the same.

The news on the TV is all about missing boys, bigamy and bombs.  For many people just like me yesterday’s great news was the over turning of the morally reprehensible proposition 8.  A federal judge declared California’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional Wednesday, saying that no legitimate state interest justified treating gay and lesbian couples differently from others and that “moral disapproval” was not enough to save the voter-passed Proposition 8.

Even though marriage has been small part of my long story I have never really considered marriage between me and another man a possibility.  If I stay in Malibu on the side of a mountain I am never going to meet anyone.

Meeting someone.  Why has that become so important to me?  Why have I abandoned my desire for glorious isolation?  I suppose the very fact that for the past few months I have felt connected to someone has woken in me the desire to share what I have and learn to be a pair rather than a single.  Of course this happened rather too late in the day.  I miss him because he is intelligent and funny and warm and forgiving and when I am with him I feel complete.  A rare combination.  NYC is not far away but I will stay away because he has to make sense of his new life.

I must spend the morning putting the house together for new renters.  The last renters left the house looking beautiful.  Some people just leave a really nice feeling in the house.  It is easy to remember only the bad renters and forget the good ones.  I have been jammed solid with renters this year and most of them were appreciative and delightful.  For that, this morning, I am very grateful.

Categories
Dogs Gay Love

i Can’t Help You

Stone

All day the Little Dog has been sick.   He is listless and miserable, his little black nose hot and dry.   I checked his gums but they seem ok.  I get scared that he might die.   The past few months would have been utterly unbearable without him.

At about 7.30 he perked up and has been right as rain ever since.  Leaping all over Eric when he arrived for hastily put together dinner.

He is snuggling in my lap as I write.

I think about the darling big dog.  My darling big dog, I miss her more than I ever did.   I still have daily, violent memories of her broken, bloody body.  Searing into my mind.    Replaying the last few moments of her life before that evil truck scraped her across the road.

My fingers angrily bang the letters of those words onto the page.

I CAN’T HELP YOU.

I blame the man driving the truck.  He did it on purpose.  He didn’t stop.  Bastard.

At moments like this I soothe myself with memories of home.  I think a great deal of England-green and pleasant land.  The Kent countryside, the buses to Canterbury, Georgina, The Goods Shed, etc. etc., I nightly drive through Clowes Wood in my semi conscious state..naked..shameless.

I remember a recurring nightmare:  I am a young boy naked in the schoolyard.  I have no idea where my clothes are or where I lost them.   I hide behind the half door in the toilets as the other children are called to class.  I stand naked in the schoolyard covering myself, the cold wind whipping grit into my eyes.  The other children sitting warm inside at their desks.

Last night as he was with me in my bed I lay thinking of how I might get home safely.  How can I get back home?  For all that raucous, interminable thinking we slept soundly.

I’ve not written a word these past few days.  Full moon blues I call it.   I lost interest in my blog as things calmed down with my (ex?) and my new friend holidayed in Italy.

I had to deal with a moving traffic violation issue that meant going to the Superior Court twice this week.  The judge was very fair and funny but going through a stop sign still cost me $550.  I have opted for community service.  The art auction last Sunday seemed to vindicate my ability to pick the winners.  Things sold mostly at the upper end of the estimate.  I bought a beautiful candle stick by a potter whose name I have forgotten.

Prevaricating.  Stifled.  Tongue-tied.

The point is:  I can’t really write down any of my true feelings.  I am in shut down mode.  I can’t do anything, move anywhere, release myself..rant or rave.  The malaise seems to affect every area of my life.

After the headiness of New York I’ve fallen into a sharp decline, my confidence at an all time low.    Dinner with friends last weekend I simply couldn’t hold my head up, my libido, my enthusiasm, my recall deserting me.  She was a very cool next generation producer.  CAA agents greeting her at our table.  Hugs and kisses.  Fast track.

I say to myself, “I am on my own with no one to focus on, no one to say that I love.”    It feels like a terrible waste.   I had some real hope!  Hope that I could travel the world with a man I was excited by.  How those dreams crumble into dust.  I am fractured by time and distance.  I am in the wrong city, in the wrong country, on the wrong fucking planet.  I am desperate for a change of circumstance.

The road that leads to the Malibu house is weeks from being repaired.  It maybe the very metaphor I am looking for.  The road to the house is being repaired so I can escape my verdant prison.   Yet every day I do my best to make it more like paradise.

I want to write about The Great BP Catastrophe but I can’t.  I want to write about anything other than me but each time I begin I am stopped by something inescapable.  I just don’t care. I don’t care about anything.  I am exhausted..spent.

Beaten by the sheer force of inequity:

BP, miserable pictures of delicate Pelican eggs smeared with crude oil.  The watered down banking regulations that caused Wall Street a collective sigh of relief. Congress about to pass an additional $32 billion to pay for war in Afghanistan yet it struggling to justify a $23 billion bill to forestall the layoff of nearly 300,000 teachers next year.

What kind of country are we?

Categories
Gay Rant

The Storm Passes

The storm is well and truly passing.  The stack of unopened mail on my dining room table can be opened.  The Malibu house is now rented for the time that we were going to be there.  The bathroom floor can be mopped.  The thick LA dust over the marble side tables can be washed away.

I can now turn my attention to Kristian once again.  So many beautiful tributes to him on the internet.  I like that they have recast him as a film director who also made TV.  He would be liked to remembered like that.  I have not yet scanned the pictures of Kristian and I.   They are very sweet.

I will bake another walnut and banana cake in his honor.

I have a few really important decisions to make which may very well mean that I have to go home, my tail between my legs.  Home to London.   I don’t feel bad about that.  I have had a total blast in LA and as this blog is proof life seldom gets boring.

There was a time before I met Richard, Jamie, Joe, Him, Matt-a moment before we met and that moment has to be reclaimed.  Before the note arrives, the stare across the busy club, the man at the top of the ladder, (I can’t remember how I met Jamie) the men who I have been most moved by.  I showed Him pictures of Matty and could not remember what it was to love Matty.   I can just remember driving in the pea green sports car down the M2 motorway to Whitstable and wondering if I could let him go without damaging him.  Like letting a fish go after you have caught it, removing the hook from its delicate mouth and setting it free.

I still remember Richard of course.  Richard Green,  the great love of my life.   Twenty five years ago he was at the top of a ladder outside the Oyster Company in Whitstable.  He was wearing tight white shorts and for five exquisite years we explored the world.  Tempestuous, glorious years.  Of course I never slept with him.  Even my mother knew that I loved him and was disappointed for me when he would flirt with girls in front of me.

He would drag girls into the bushes at country dances and return with stains all over his dinner jacket!

Sometimes I would arrive back at my darling cottage and he would be asleep on the sofa.  A window broken.  I didn’t care.

You know I have 50 intimate pictures of Him and Matty and  Jamie but I don’t have one picture of Richard Green.  Not one.  He is middle-aged now-like me-older and fat and by all accounts a miserable bastard.  But if we walked in through that door right now I know that we would begin where we left off.  We would have a huge amount to say and do.  He was utterly fascinated by the world and I was his willing side kick.  He was a perfect love because I had no interest in sex or relationships with other men-I had him and he was enough.  He was enough.

Isn’t it funny that I would include Him in the list of those who meant most to me.  I think that might change as time passes.  I would never have been able to trust him.  The next man he meets will not know his story will trust him and love him.

It is a perfect spring day in LA.  I am seeing Michelle later and hanging with Frank.  I like Frank.  Not like that!  Not so soon after the last fiasco.   Now, it’s Runyon time with the little dog.

Categories
Uncategorized

New Blank Document

My apartment looks like an art gallery, paintings neatly stacked and waiting to be sold.  Everything here is for sale.  I am slowly getting ready to move back to Malibu and all that entails.   As I have written previously, my pack rat collection of more stuff is getting me down.  It all needs to be sold.

Last night I decided that I couldn’t see Mr. Darling NYC ever again, that it was doing me in.  Yet, for all the hopelessness there is still an unavoidable truth-we love each other.  What am I meant to do?  Just walk away from what may very well be the best thing to ever happen to me?

I am prepared to wake up alone every morning until he can wake up with me. I loathe waking up alone, alone is not good for a man who obviously has so much to offer.

I long to try something I’ve never had..lover man oh where can you be?

We both have so much.

Up until now I craved a companion on my terms.  After our conversation today I now crave a lover on our terms.  As he was quick to point out-this is not just about Duncan Roy.  My beautiful boy has feelings too, feelings that until today I was ill prepared for.

HE DOESN’T WANT TO MOVE TO LA.

So what of Malibu?  I would move anywhere if it meant we could be together.  I looked online at houses in Upstate New York, London and Paris.    After our long and emotional conversation I understood just how selfish I had become.  Yet, sometimes you just have to go with your heart.

This morning, after writing yesterday’s sensible blog, I woke up alone and angry.  Angry with him, angry that our fragile love affair could be so easily tossed aside, unless of course I fully appreciated his situation.  I shouted at him.  He burst into tears.

He is lost and terrified of loneliness.   And that description could so easily be mine.

His wracked, desperate sobs silenced and shamed me.

After he tearfully described his fears I knew that things were not as simple or solvable as I had kidded myself.  The thrill of romance will not solve this problem.  Resolve, strength and patience on my part may be all I can offer him.

I prayed for guidance this morning.  God can and will set me straight.  Even if it can’t keep him..straight.

I love a married man.  A married man loves me.  Send in the fucking clowns.

I read a really great blog called Love in The Time of Foreclosure.   The blog charts the ups and downs of a couple facing the loss of their house and staying in love.   Adversity, so it seems, keeps people fighting for what they believe in.

It’s odd how much one can learn about oneself when love is at stake.   I have not really been in love since Matt and I broke up 10 years ago.  The sort of love that makes one desirously wild with anticipation.  Delirious.  Desirous.

Listening to him cry made me love him more.  After all, when one is craving authenticity to hear another man cry is as about as authentic as it gets.

I usually write my blogs when I get up in the morning.  I breach the surface of the new day with a description of the previous day but this evening I am sitting at home with The Little Dog listening to old tunes and eating Swiss chocolate.   Somehow, my darling man crying has settled something deep within me.

All of me, why not take all of me, can’t you see I’m no good without you. Take my lips I want to lose them, take my arms; I’ll never use them.  Your goodbye left me with eyes that cry.  How can I go on my dear without you?