Tag: Meg Ryan

Categories
Rant

$5 Walking Fee

Gabe Paradise Cove
“Don’t pester old film makers about your film making.   I don’t care about your process, your poverty or your inertia.   All I care about is that you make a film.   Just do it and make it good.”           Duncan Roy  June 2011

So,  here I am again.  Good morning hipsters!  I spent an hour in the garden at 7am weeding and watering.  It looks just dandy.  Then I came in and within two minutes I had broken a sugar bowl, a cafetière and jammed my fingers into a draw.

I AM ONE CLUMSY QUEEN.

Yesterday Gabe and I went to Paradise Cove Beach Cafe on the PCH for lunch.  We were charged $5 each for walking from the PCH where we parked into the restaurant rather than paying $3 to use their car park.  I thought they were kidding.  A $5 ‘walking fee’?  Rip Off USA.  It made me so mad.  Gabe just looked bemused as I let the manager have two barrels of shit.  In turn the manager just looked at the crazy man and  rolled over like a puppy.

He offered us a beach side table, a waitress with psychiatric training and a refund.

A $5 walking fee?  How can they get away with that shit?

We ate their mediocre ribs, drank their weak tea, sat on their grubby beach.  Thankfully we sat next to an attractive married couple from Hollywood who really were worth meeting.  He sells sex toys on-line.  They were like a gay couple.  Hot tub parties and three ways.  I really liked them.  She said that when they have a baby they might calm down a bit.

Gabe sat on my lap and held my hand, massaged my fingers.  It was so sweet.  We were the only gays on the beach.  The out of towners looked at us suspiciously.  Yet again I felt uncomfortable.  Fuck!  When I was with the Penguin/Matt/Jamie I didn’t care.  Because, I suppose, when I was with them I didn’t care what other people thought.  It was just us…and as I have said before:  I would have defended my love with my life.

After lunch we investigated the pier, the peace paddle (some hippy event) we talked for ages to a lady who had worked in India on an ashram who now sells South Indian food from a food truck.  She told us dolefully how the city of LA is targeting the food truck community (there are 500 of them) with all sorts of horrible rules.  What ever happened to American innovation being encouraged and celebrated?

(Even the sex toy guy is despondent about how small businesses are treated.  He is moving his cash to Brazil.)

Food trucks are a recessionary necessity.  A perfect response.

The previous day Anna and I had been on Abbot Kinney.  The first Friday of every month the streets has a kind of street party.  The galleries open late and every thirty feet there is a food truck.  It was so much fun.  We bumped into Meg Ryan and her friend Laura Dern.

Anyway, we ate all sorts.  We struggled through the crowds.  Some man who thought he knew me.  Said, “Hey!  How are you?”  I let him think he knew me.  At the end of the conversation he realised who I was and the meeting came to an abrupt ending.  This happened in Ojai too.  It seems to happen more and more.

Last night I was talking to a young film maker and gave him the advice quoted at the top of the page.  Very Ayn Rand of me.

Today I am hiking with Tom.  Gabe is coming over to relax.  Miles has recovered from his binge.  Cooking dinner for us all tonight.

I feel rather wonderful.  Having fun.  At peace.

Categories
Gay

Amanda Lepore

Amanda Lepore
Amanda Lepore

Another beautiful day spent walking the city streets, meeting friends old and new.

There is so much happening that I am finding it almost impossible to remember where the day begins and how it ends.

Let’s see…hmmm.

Woke late. Walked to Mud for my daily cup of their aromatic coffee. The cute Brooklyn guy was serving in his pixie hat. “Milk, one sugar?” I nod.

Walked the dog drinking my coffee . We stare at squirrels in the trees. This daily Mexican Standoff between The Little Dog and the squirrels.

At 12.30 I go to NYU AA meeting. A very drunk man sat next to me. I was a bit worried that he was going to vomit on my leg. He left early. People cried who had known him sober. We can get very complacent. He’s a good reminder of what can happen. Men like him keep me sober.

The Big Book of AA was written for people who can’t stay sober…not for people who can.

After the AA meeting a young gay new comer wanted my number. I congratulated myself for NOT giving it to him. I know what these boys want. Don’t think I went through all I went through this year without learning something. He can offer his sad ass to some other sucker. Listen, I am not that guy. I may sound like a sage when I speak in AA, I may look like a caring person on TV…but let me make this perfectly clear for anyone who may be listening…those are mere aspects of my personality.

I AM NOT THAT GUY.

I am not boasting when I say this…well..I might be…but, I am looking pretty damned good. I am strong, svelte, confident, happy. I am pleased to tell you that I have welcomed myself back into my own body. It’s great to be back on good form. Caustic humor, acerbic wit..all evidenced yesterday both at lunch with Peter Evans, then with my new cub friend (friend of Brendon’s). All afternoon sitting by the pool..receiveing people like the stately homo I have become.

Hung with actor friends Matthew Rhys (Brothers and Sisters) and Anatol Yusef who plays Meyer Lansky in Boardwalk Empire. Anatol and I are talking about doing the Wayne Sleep bio pic together. Anatol….playing Wayne of course. Meg Ryan as Princess Di.

Anatol and Wayne could be twins. Those two boys were separated at birth.

Joke. That was a fucking joke wasn’t it? It was…wasn’t it?

Dashed home for a quick shower, took dog to park for a poo and a wee…met charming green-eyed boy who made small talk about wanting a dog, then met Zack et al at The Bowery Bar for the final Beige party night ever. I wore the jacket that Hedi Slimane designed for me when he was at Dior. I wore slim pants and patent leather boots and a black tee shirt. I looked fucking GREAT.

We arrived at 8.30 bribed the hostess, tranny person to get us a table but I didn’t sit at the table once. I felt like the Belle of the Ball. I was chatting with dozens of super cool gay men. Flirtatious yet dignified. It just felt great, validated. Comfortable. Some of the men we met at Ken Mehlman‘s apartment were there. Amanda Lepore was sitting in a booth getting her fake tits out. I have met her so many times in so many different locations. Miami, LA, Paris…with David LaChappelle mostly.

There were so many people. It was jammed. So many, many people I remember from years and years of going to Beige.

I must admit that I have never felt at ease at Beige. In the words of my friend, “This has always been a bit of a cunty crowd.”

Last night it was my crowd.

I left just as the party was getting messy. I walked home. Happy as the day was long.

I have been off kilter for so long. Last night, it was different. I felt great, I felt like I deserved the compliments.

That’s a change isn’t it?

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Categories
Death Gay

Catastrophe!

The past few weeks have been really interesting.

Annoyingly I’ve not been able to write about most or any of it and will not be able to in the foreseeable future.

As I have said before, as life gets really interesting the blog becomes less relevant.   Real life interrupts blog life and for that I am very grateful.

Eventually, when I am allowed, I will explode all over the blog and tell all but for the time being I am keeping my BIG MOUTH SHUT.

I am having to be covert.

Presently staying with friends whose main morning preoccupation is to read really bad news out loud off of the internet.  The corruption, the greed and the misery we create around the globe gleefully read out loud to their increasingly cynical children.

Frankly, there is no reason for a young child to have the worst possible news read out to them first thing in the morning as they prepare for school.  Scares them.  Scared me when I was a kid.  All that bad news about nuclear weapons.  I had a recurring nightmare about the atom bomb exploding.  On my own walking home from junior school up Windmill Road, Whitstable just in sight of my family home…when the atom bomb detonates.  A blinding light then a fierce, hot wind.  All I could think about was that I had to get home.  Of course, there was no home to get back to.

Right now my friend is telling her 8-year-old, “Brain damage is linked to cell phone use…”

Like a fairy story.

They had a lunch here on Sunday for two German friends.  A well-known actress and her film industry husband.   Within two minutes of arriving he announced the death of Perry Moore a man I knew in passing from New York.  Perry produced the Narnia films.  Years ago Toby Mott, Noreena Hertz and I had lunch with Perry and Tatum O’Neal at Freeman’s on Rivington when it was hot to have lunch there.  Perry and Tatum were both very drunk and weirdly abrasive.  Terry Richardson joined us for coffee.

Toby Mott, Noreena Hertz and? NYC

I was not shocked to hear about Perry’s death as it was somehow gay inevitable.  His father sadly telling the press that his son was on fine form the day before.  Well, nobody ever expects the death of a healthy young man, no father ever expects to bury his son.

Unless, of course, their son leads a double life.  We live, as gay men, lives away from our loved ones. Compartmentalized, fine one day..dead the next, slumped in the bathroom…oxycotin overdose.   It is too familiar to me.  So sad.

It would not surprise me if Jake ended up like Perry.

Anyway the German made some flip remark about Perry dying and gay people in general.  He didn’t realize that I was gay.  He didn’t realize that I was half Iranian so later made equally racist, inappropriate remarks about Iranian films winning the Berlin Film Festival.

Sometimes you just have to take the bullet so…I challenged him.  Within minutes he was threatening to punch my fag lights out.  His wife apologized for his behaviour.

They left.

Scratch most white Germans and a jackbooted Nazi goose steps out of the wound.

Samia Saouma my Lebanese ex-friend, gallery owner who lives in Berlin and is arguably one of the chicest women in the world was once applying her lipstick in the back of a cab when her white driver told her that she was a rag-head whore who should prepare for her next trick out of his cab.

Nice.

Recently I took down a whole heap of posts from this blog.  Blogs about him.  Removed until they had no internet traction.  Yesterday I reinstated them without his name attached.  Self censorship is not a good thing.  I also reinstated the Angry Reader blog that obviously came from ‘you know who’.

It amuses and disturbs me in equal measure that he would think that every achievement, everything of which I am proud he considers worthless.  This coming from a man who has achieved NOTHING before he was thirty years old (17th May) when I, in comparison, achieved so much!  Much more than anyone ever predicted.

By the time I was thirty years old I had written and directed plays, opened a restaurant, renovated houses, travelled the world.  Christ!   I did all that as well as being mentally ill, making enemies, etc. etc.

Achievement is not to be judged by others but rather owned by oneself.

I know that he gets drunk, stoned and lonely.  I know that deep down he would prefer to resolve rather than reload.  Time will tell.  Time, as I have often quoted, is the greatest distance between two people.

I know that the we he suggests laugh at me has always laughed.  They want me imprisoned or dead.   They condemn me and they condemn my friends for being my friends.

He, on the other hand, may be surrounded by friends, family and lovers but at the end of the day he has to face himself, as we all do, in the mirror.  I saw him wrestle with his conscience.

At that moment when I was most proud of him I should have just walked away.

As for the film?  It takes shape before my very eyes.  Working with CP in quite a different way than I have before.   That’s all I can say.  That’s all I want to say.

I still have no interest what so ever to meet, engage or have sex with any man.

Oscar party week.  I am not involving myself until Saturday.  Kick off festivities with Sharon…we will do the do…the merry dance.   Still, if I am honest, I can’t really be bothered.

I want to make my own film now…not celebrate the achievements of others.

P.S. Tatum O’Neal wouldn’t remember me.   She and Melanie Griffith once broke down together in an AA meeting.  Crying about the relationships they had failed to have with their children.   Meg Ryan looks like Melanie Griffith.  They must have had work by the same surgeon.  Meg Ryan wouldn’t remember me either.

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