Tag: Men who have sex with men

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Gay Rant

i am not gay

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1.

Nope.  Not any more.

I AM NOT GAY.  I am OUT.

Unambiguous?

My New Years resolution: don’t call me gay.

I am The Other.  I am simply… Out.

I have resigned my gay membership.  I renounce the word GAY.

The Other is different from you.  He is neither superior nor inferior.

He is not alone.  He is out.

2.

Are you kidding?  I still like sex with men… but I’m not interested in being gay.   Do you understand what I’m saying… gays?  Yes you.  I’m talking to you.   I’M TALKING TO YOU!  Yes you, the gay in the bar, on the street, editing his Grindr profile.

Let’s face it.  This separation will work out just fine for both of us.

I loathe you and you hate me.

I know, amongst other things, what galls you… you (particularly) don’t like when men in their fifties own up to having a rich and varied sexuality:   I’ve been called a ‘dirty old man’ by more gays than I ever have by straights for wanting or having beautiful younger men in my bed.  The gays write it anonymously.  They post it all over the place, whenever they can.  As If I should be ashamed?

You, you who have cornered the market in nihilism, immorality, homogeneousness, bitchery, selfishness, self-aggrandizement, self-obsession… in fact anything with the self prefix… apart from self-awareness.

I am peeling off the parade.  I am letting the party wend its way elsewhere.

2. (a)

They told me at Triangle House in LA when we were making our documentary about older gay people:  they say that old gay people end up going back into the closet because… it can get ugly… it can get dangerous.   They say that gay men are more likely to end up homeless than in any other demographic… because they have no community.

You gays are the very worst at hating yourselves.  But you reserve more venom for the elderly homosexual than any other group.  It is a sickening idea to many young gays, that we (the elderly) exist.  Some young gay people believe that past 50 our penises shrink appropriately into our bodies.  Retract.  In old age we become like wrinkly Ken dolls with smooth, pink groins.

No longer a threat to anyone.

I thought that when I became old… I would start wearing women’s clothes.

Where do young gay men learn how to be dignified old gay men?  I learned from older men in AA how to be an older man.   The respect that AA old timers get, applauded for their contribution to the community of AA stands in stark contract to the respect that older gay people don’t get from younger gay people.  Unless, of course, they are famous… or comical freaks… or rich enough to buy the boys they used to get for free.

Young gay people don’t want to be reminded that the party comes to an end.

2 (b)

So, today…

I resign my membership.  I am no longer a true believer.  I’m handing back my awards, my medals, my history, my pride.

It’s yours not mine.  Take it.

I renounce: gay pride, gay film festivals, gay beaches, gay basketball, gay bars, the gay ghetto, the gay plague, gay marriage, gaybies, gaydar.com, gays in the military, gay cruises, cottaging, felching, gay news, gay voice, gay face, the gay sub section in the book/video store/Huffington Post.

So help me God!

I’m praying the gay away!

The terms of this divorce:

You can keep it all.  The gay plays I made, the gay films I directed, the gay art I painted/etched/sculpted.

Take everything I ever made in your honor.

If you don’t want it?  Burn it.

2 (c)

When I offered our award-winning film catalogue of gay films to The Legacy Project (the gay and lesbian film preservation project) based out of UCLA… the gays turned it down.  Even though AKA  had won the LA Outfest audience award and opened (and closed) many gay film festivals all over the world with all of my films.

The Legacy Project said no to the free gift.  They wanted me to disappear.  They don’t want any evidence that I existed.  As a man or an artist.

“He’s trouble.”  “He’s angry.”  “He’s a parasite.”

Gays!  Look at what you’ve become!  Examine, for just one goddamned gay second…. the mediocrity!  Your righteous indignation! Your mock elegance!

Being with you is like drowning in cold tea.

3.

I don’t drink or take drugs.  Tom blew weed into my face.   He put vodka into my virgin mary.  That’s how the gays bully one another.   Try wearing something unusual when your companions  just want to be invisible.

“Who does he think he is?”

Their artificially deepened voices.  The plaid shirt, the super hero tee.  The cloak of invisibility.

INVISIBLE.

Tom asked incredulously, “What are you wearing?”  A man who wears nothing but ugly jeans, ill-fitting t-shirts.

Tom has an ‘opinion’ about individuality:  He doesn’t believe in it.  These gays are terrified of being seen.  Gripped by the politics of invisibility.   At least that grotesque, lying freak I used to date… he and his boy friend have some sartorial audacity.

Even if it is TOTALLY misguided.

Who are these gays?  These invisigays?

Like Tom, they may appear normal.

4.

How can a gay man expect to age with dignity when nobody gay wants to age at all?

I saw it in LA… my destiny. If I chose to take it.   At first, Adam looked just like any other confident gay man claiming to be 48.  His gay parties are the talk of the town.  Richer than most of his friends, though not very well connected … not to the real gay power in LA.

I mean, David Geffen wouldn’t be seen dead at this piss elegant, graceless house in the Hollywood Hills.

Adam invented the heart valve.  At one of his parties (to his chagrin) I photographed every single one of his guests.  A snap shot of LA gay life.

He has never been elegant, he has never been a great beauty.  He will never be tall.  He is, however, manicured, botoxed, his teeth reinvented, his flawless skin, his demeanor… (that only great wealth lends you).

It was at that last raucous party I attended (as a plus one) I saw him upset (rattled)… why?

He looked like an old, vulnerable man.

“What happened?”  I asked the gays.

They told me imperiously (as if it were obvious) that the young, chiseled boy he imported from NYC just wanted him for his money.   Adam looked… beaten.  Crest fallen.  His frail hands shook, the delicate skin around his eyes failing.

The gays stood around helplessly as their host fell apart.  They stared into the plastic cups of vodka.  They played with their nipples.  The pimps and the whores waited silently by the sodden beer pong.  He turned the music off.  Finally, he threw everyone out.

They lined up on the steep drive.  A hideous parade of grotesquely young boys, graded online or in public bars for their sexual prowess, their social fallibility, their youth.

The man who invented the heart valve, it seems, suffered from a broken heart.

5.

Take the gay man who gave up his 160k surrogate child for adoption because she had a small birth defect on one of her legs.

Yes, you heard me.

When we interviewed the doctor who makes hundreds and thousands of gay dollars from the gayby industry… he told us that the gays want perfection.  Nothing less will do.

Take it all… this gay culture.  This gay community.  Take it.

Take the video of Bryan with 25 Bel Ami boys jacking off over him.  Moisturized with Czech sperm.

Or the man/boy with the huge cock who they pay to sleep with a hooker and unbeknownst to him… tape him.

This tribe of entitled, elitist gays clinging to gay marriage and their smart phones.

6.

I had lunch today with a 30-year-old man/boy who just came out.  “Why did it take you so long, ” I ask, “To tell the truth?”  He said, “I didn’t… (he paused dramatically) …I mean I still don’t… I don’t want to be gay.”

“That’s ok,” I reassured him.  “You can describe yourself however you want.”

When, as frightened teens, blooming… prepubescent boys… infants… when we understand that we want to fall in love and fuck and suck and slide into another man… what choices do we have?   To describe ourselves?

Gay is the only way.   And if you don’t know what you are.  The gays will tell you exactly what you are.

The gays are so prescriptive.

He’s gay, they claim conspiratorially.  They claim anyone ‘hot’ is gay.  They all know someone who had sex with Tom Cruise or Hugh Jackman.  “He’s fucking his ‘assistant’.”   Oh Yes!  He’s had sex with a man… he’s gay.  He’s experimented… he’s gay.

Prescriptive.

6 (a)

Hollywood does not lend itself to morals.

CAA agent Kevin Huvane.  When you first meet him, he shakes your hand and pulls you toward him.   Trying to pull you off-balance.  The first time he met me… it worked (I was rocked) the second and third times I was prepared and we set to a gay tug of war, an argy bargy, him attempting to pull me and me attempting to pull him.

The fourth time I let him pull me onto him.  I crashed into him.  His tiny frame overwhelmed by 6′ 2″ me.  He landed in a heap beneath me.  “Oh sorry,” I said.  “You pulled me toward you.  I lost my balance.  Sorry… Kevin.”

He’ll put you on a ‘list’ they told me.  “I’m on so many lists.” I murmured.  “More lists than Cathy Griffin.”

7.

After claiming on the Dr. Drew show that I wanted to make healthy decisions about sex.  Somebody wrote to me or about me:  If Duncan Roy doesn’t like gay sex… he isn’t gay.  He wasn’t far from the truth.  At first, I was outraged by their attempts to isolate, malign and lambaste me.   They had tried for years.  Without success.  Every time they try… they fail.   This last time… the jail.  What the hell did they expect?  That I would buckle?

Those who throw rocks at me are seldom innocent of that which they accuse.

8.

The Gays, have become so… bourgeois.  Do you understand what that means?  Let me refresh your memory:

Marked by a concern for material interests and respectability and a tendency toward mediocrity.

When I was young… gays like you knew their place.  They stayed in the closet.  I mean.  Coming out of the closet was brave!  Now anyone can do it and become a fucking hero.

9.

Gays… why are you killing yourselves?   You kill yourself because you can’t take a joke, because you can’t hold your liquor, because you can’t say no to crystal… because you don’t want to be gay.  I don’t remember young gay people killing themselves in the UK.

It gets better?

What gets better?

Better than death?

10.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled when any oppressed group gets a bit of equality… but what will the USA gays do with their equality?

I’ll tell you.  They will make it even harder for the rest of us to be different.   There is a hideous conformity to which these young gays feel they must adhere.   Gay life in the USA.  A blushing desire for ‘straight acting’ has become a tsunami of heternoramativity.   The foundation on which this miserable gay monolith now stands.

Who are you?

A greek god, perfectly muscled, forever young… dressed to be ignored, as bland a personality as he can effect.  He is Peter Pan, he is Hercules, his personality as glittering as the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

Do you care about anything other than marriage equality?  No.  He eats what his parents eat.  He would vote republican if they could only find it in their neo con hearts to see that the gays are perfect conservatives.

So.  We are divorced.  I am no longer gay.  I’m OUT.  I’m out of here.  I’m out but I’m not gay.

Happy New Year!

Categories
Gay

Bitter Old Queen

NA 13

When I first started going to gay bars in Britain in the late 70’s we drove (with those lucky enough to own cars) twenty miles to Margate, a larger town near my home in Whitstable.

Margate is famous for being the birth place of conceptual artist Tracy Emin.

Margate was a derelict, regency ex-holiday resort.  Butlins had closed, Pontins was on the way out.  British people wanted to go to Spain where sunshine could always be assured.

The sweeping, majestic Palladian mansions were being torn down or turned into multi occupancy dwellings for the unemployed.

The crowd at the gay bar, run by morbidly obese Shirley was divided in two groups.  Two distinct crowds:  older, local men who had stayed local and younger men and boys who were using bars like this to spring-board into a metropolitan gay world.

The older men were routinely described as ‘bitter old queens’ by the younger men and there was indeed something bitter and suspicious about these older men that intrigued my teenage self.

Always the contrarian I hung out with them rather my teen peers and learned about these older men, their lives and their failed ambitions.

Older provincial gays who had been mocked, beaten and subjugated.

In Britain Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1965.

To me those old queens seemed incredibly brave for staying loyal to their home town communities.

To my younger ‘friends’ these men were simply stuck or foolhardy for not moving to the big city where their gay dreams could come true, their gay lives could be lived fully, openly and without fear.

My interest in them proved fruitless.  They may have been older but they were not very wise, stripped of ambition by soul rotting low self-esteem.

They wanted to be like everyone else.

I wanted to be different.

They mocked me as they had been mocked, they chastised me as they had been chastised, they still do.

Those older gay men waiting for younger gay boys to emerge from the shadows.  Supping gin and tonics.  Bacardi and coke.

Hanging around the local ‘cottages’ (public restrooms) waiting for straight boys to unload.  Playing an endless game of cat and mouse with law enforcement.

“So and so was sent to prison for cottaging.”  So and so would emerge a year or so later, jaundiced, older looking.

It seemed to me that these men had every right to be bitter.  They had every right to harbor resentments against a cruel society that deemed them criminals even after they weren’t.

The swinging 60’s, the sexual revolution, the progressive explosion, the post war boom really only affected my generation who grasped hold of the bucking bronco and held on for dear life until, of course, AIDS came along in the 80’s and we were all thrown far, far away.

The AIDS pandemic.  Fear in men’s eyes.  Disco dancing queens learning to dance to a different tune.

If I had taken pictures of those old gay men in the late 70’s they would have looked defiant, like those pictures of native Americans by Edward Curtis.  They were fat and badly dressed, their teeth were rotten, they were working class, they were left behind.

So, it amuses me now when I am described thus:  A Bitter Old Queen.

The advent of gay marriage, the normalcy of children for gay men (if they can afford it), the regular inclusion of gay men in prime time TV shows.  All of these changes have heralded a new acceptance, a new normal, a new peace of mind for young gay men.

Or has it?  A new generation with a new set of fears and anxieties.  “Will I ever earn enough to buy a surrogate child?”  “Am I pretty/handsome enough?”  “Should I be totally hairless?”  “Is my penis big enough?”   “Am I ‘straight acting’?  Will I get married?

A generation of gay men comparing and despairing.

What of us?  My generation?  Those of us who survived the great epidemic.  It seems that many gay men still feel left behind.

Shamed.

Last week I met a 55-year-old man who told me he was recently diagnosed with HIV even though he had, he assured me, never indulged in risky behavior.

He told me that older gay men were being revealed to be HIV positive because of a latent strain of HIV that only makes itself apparent after the age of 50.

A strain that has been there all the time, undetected.

I was shocked.  Perhaps I hadn’t dodged the bullet after all.

The man way lying.  I researched the claim.  There was nothing.  I asked my friends on Facebook if they had heard of this anomoly.  They had not.  They scoffed at the idea.

No, I reasoned, this man is a well-respected gay advocate.   As it turns out you can be a well-respected, well liked gay advocate and not be at peace with your HIV status.

Being gay for many men remains a hard task.

If I ever think of my ex boyfriend I still wonder what is was that kept him in the closet for so long.  Even now, after the revolution.  Why he created and maintained such an illusion? Risking his girlfriends health?  Lying to his family?

Then I wonder if we are all illusionist?

How easy is it in 2012 to tell the truth about being gay?

There seem to me like there are so many dirty little secrets that we hold onto.  That we continue to live shame based lives… even the youngsters, even when there is no reason to hide?

I wondered what we were striving for?  To join the military, to get married…

I got to thinking about David Petraeus resigning because he had an extra marital affair.  Adultery is illegal in the military but would those rules apply to serving gay men?  Would we, once married, be held to those same strict hetero rules?  Is this what we want?

Today I posted something about Israel.  Like most Europeans I find myself erring toward the support of the Palestinians.  I find the Israeli treatment of these falsely imprisoned people abhorrent and ironic.

What is the difference I ask myself between The Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza?

My American gay friends react with comments like:  all muslims are terrorists.

Just like I was told when I was a child that all homosexuals are pedophiles.

Those older, less educated, less principled, men were from a different time.  Embittered by circumstance, godless, hopeless.  Drowning their sorrows in great vats of beer, their greasy faced pushed against the window of life without ever joining in.

“No kissing at the bar, dear.”     Shirley would tell her clientele.  “No kissing at the bar.”

Categories
prison

Brothers, Sisters, Mothers and Fathers

Spent the greater part of yesterday removing redundant blog entries from this blog.  Bloody hell, what a waste of time.

It was frankly embarrassing re-reading all that shit.  All that fury, that indignation I had for him.  It was just so embittered and…not very well written.  Beware the curse of resentment!

From 11am-3pm I sat with a journalist discussing my ongoing legal story.  They are sending a photographer.  It’s a cover story.  The last time I had this much interest from the press I was making movies.  Now I am doing something for the greater good, I have been handed an oppertunity to help others and I am grasping hold of it.  Nothing will unseat me from doing the right thing.

I left something of myself in the jail. I left that Duncan who deserved no respect.

Do you understand that darling? Do you remember when I was serious, contained?  You found it so attractive?

Everything from my old life, pre jail has become irrelevant.  The artifice, the indulgence, the decadence…it was a worthless occupation.  Chasing infamy?  Even the places I used to visit daily are of no interest to me.  The people I know there, the people I knew…caught up in their own peculiar madness, their preoccupation with power and prestige.

I remind myself to be truthful, to be kind.

The people I have been meeting since leaving the jail, the activists, the lawyers, the human rights advocates…I am humbled by their brilliance, their focus, their dedication.

Lastly, as I was sitting with the fiercely intelligent man who interviewed me yesterday I remembered something about the jail that impressed me.  Something peculiar to the gay dorm, peculiar to that community of trans and gay men.

On the streets, elder trans women ‘adopt’ younger trans girls as their daughter.  These  relationships were strengthened in the dorm, references to ‘my mother’ or ‘my father’ baffled me.  At first.

Family connections emerged, not bound by blood but by commitment.   Young gay men needing advice, support, succor and council turning to those they respected.  Adopting one another as mother and daughter.  Father and son. Letting those about them know that familial ties now existed, that they were to be honored.

My son is fighting.  My daughter wants a dress. My mother has had bad news.  My father’s husband is being released.

As we ate together at night.  These ‘families’ helped each other practically:  feeding each other, sharing the loaves and the fishes.  Sharing the support, the love, the strength, the gossip.   That which may not have existed from real parents, from blood brothers, from those who we take for granted…from whom we were born.

Many young black men from Compton, Watts and Inglewood had spent their formative years co-opted into gangs.  The Bluds and the Crips.

Their coping skills would horrify you, you my dear readers…but kept them alive.  Murder, guns, retaliation, fighting to the death were common for most of the young black men I met.  Frequent.

On top of all that, against that barbaric backdrop they had to deal with coming out.

More of this later.

Categories
Gay Health

It Gets Better? Better Than Death?

Yesterday a pair of young film makers turned up at the apartment to work with me on their well written but unfocused script.

The man was leaving as they arrived.

They said, “Wow, he’s gorgeous.  Where do you meet men like that?”

Not in clubs or bars, not grindr or Manhunt.  I meet men like that as we pass in the street.  He said, “You looked mean.”  I am…I suppose.  I do.  Keep the fuck away from me.

Anyway, the film makers sat down and we talked about their script.  It was revealed, during our conversation, that one of these young men had recently found out that he was HIV+.

This is the third time I have heard this story, or one like it this past month.  His sex partner had not told him the truth about his HIV status before he agreed to have unsafe sex.

He had been lied to.

I was shaking with rage.

Like J risked J’s life when he was fucking HIV+ artist Pal S behind her back, like X had been lied to…these innocent folk had made bad decisions based on the lies they were told.

On each occasion the liar had tried to make it the victim’s fault.

” You shouldn’t have believed me.”

“You must have realized.”

“I can’t talk about this right now, you are complicating my life.”

“What kind of straight man doesn’t play sports?”

He is 25 years old.  A young man dealing with a huge problem.  He told me that he feels like he has ‘gone back into the closet’, that ‘no one could possibly love him’, that he is ‘damaged goods’.

“How do you feel about the guy who infected you?”  I asked.

“He’s evil.” he replied.

“Misguided?”  I suggested.

No, I told myself, not misguided.  I knew he was right.  Deliberately infecting or risking the lives of others…is simply evil.

My phone rang, I made a plan to see a friend the following morning.  

The boys looked at me askance. What?  I said.  “I’ve never seen anyone make an arrangement like that on the phone.  We text each other.”  I felt suddenly dislocated from life.  How come I didn’t know?

The kid with HIV is now at the mercy of the pharmaceutical companies who stand to take millions of dollars from him as he tries to stay healthy.

The same companies who promote their products in our gay publications… paying top dollar to do so.

Look at the pictures.  Strapping, healthy boys living with HIV.

Big Pharma shaping this generations attitude toward HIV as a manageable/livable with disease… just like diabetes!

Turn your back on health education, embrace ignorance and a life shackled to Big Pharma.  Enslaved at 25.  My heart bled.

“I never knew anyone who died of AIDS.” he said.

When this young man was being bullied at school for being gay he may very well have been reassured by the biggest deception of all:  It Gets Better.  Dan Savage‘s message of false hope.

It is another gay lie.

We don’t treat each other very well.  We don’t talk about not treating each other very well.

They stop bullying us…we start where they left off.

If they don’t damage you…we will…with my lies and infected sperm.

It’s not getting better for the young man I met yesterday.  It’s getting a whole heap worse.  Straight bullies didn’t lie and infect him with HIV.  Gay men did.

Gay men lied to three of my friends…confirming that it is not just an HIV epidemic, it is an epidemic of lies, betrayal and life threatening denial.

Uneducated, shamed, arrogant, drug fucked gay men with no principles.

Just like Jake.

The only reason I have to come back to NYC so frequently is to meet Jake in court.  Prolonging the inevitable.

Forced, yet again, to indulge his tantrums, his ego, his selfishness.

Without me in his life to define him as the victim…what is he left with?  Without me and his appearances in court…he returns to the mundane fixtures and fittings of the life that was…if one can call it a life?

Yet, when I am here in NYC, I make the most of it.  Happily wiling away the days, finishing my novel, seeing movies, hanging with my buddies, walking the dog, enjoying the humid nights tangled in your arms.

When he left this morning we both said, almost in unison, ‘I don’t do goodbyes’.   I don’t.  He had his bicycle over one shoulder, he didn’t look back.  I can still smell him on my fingers.

I will have a shower when I get back to LA.

Categories
Gay

The Way We Were

19 Years Old

If gay marriage had been an option when I was young would I have made different sorts of decisions?

Would I have behaved differently?

Would I have looked for a serious relationship with another man to whom I would have proposed, married and had children..rather than leaping from one man to another…exhausting each and every one of them?

If that narrative had been on offer, as it is now, would I have married Joe or Matt or the beautiful Dane?

Joe and I were as good as married but it was a marriage of convenience.

If I had believed that a commitment between men was possible or respected or had some kind of future, perhaps I wouldn’t have wasted other opportunities.  I may have stuck around.

Did I even trust the love that dare not speak its name?  The legitimacy of love between men?

When I hear a man say, ‘I love you’ it turns me on.

Tell me that you love me.

I will make love to you.  Be part of you.

When I was a young man I felt hopeless, convinced that this strange love was simply…pointless. That to say ‘I love you’ to another man…meant nothing, could never mean what it meant when I loved a woman.

But you’re gay!  Did she know?  This woman.

One woman in particular.

When I fell in love with PH, it was a surprise to everyone…me included. She was so beautiful. She was so beautiful and she wanted me. There are very few things I do not write about here. She is one of them. Our relationship that spanned half a decade.

After years of enjoying a gay life I saw the world renewed. I looked into her eyes and I never wanted to forget her face. Every time I left the house I would memorize an indelible snapshot of her.

When we were in love every record played on the radio meant something. Holding hands in the street and never once a strangers savage glance…my love blossomed. Without the withering contempt of strangers my love blossomed.

Do you know what I mean? Whenever I held a man in my arms in a public place I felt the withering contempt of others. Have you ever felt that? It soured me. What other people thought.

Biracial couples know what I mean.

The artist, Marc Quinn said to me when he saw me and Phil together, “I knew you weren’t gay.”

That was then. This is now.

Before he and I stopped speaking he told me that he had met a man in Central Park and kissed them. They held him in their arms. He told so many lies yet somehow this lie was forgivable. He told me that it had happened before I met him…but I knew from the look on his face how new and exhilarating it had been.

An experience that he wanted to share but was too afraid of hurting me.

Well, we may never know how it might have been if I had the luxury of marrying a man.

Time has past, now I am too old to fall in love and make a man my husband.

Darling PH, even though we are estranged at the moment because of what happened last summer with him.  I want you to know that had you not been in my life I would never have experienced a brimming heart.

You trusted me and nurtured me and protected me and loved me unconditionally.

Watching my young gay friends emerge into the light, they have a different sort of gay life on offer.

During the past 50 years life for gay men has changed radically. When I was born homosexuality was still a criminal offence. So, I was lucky to have grown up without my sexuality outlawed.

This generation of gay men are freer than any generation before them. I salute the work we did to make a more equitable life for them.

Occasionally I am pissed that the young don’t recognise the sacrifices we made..but I am also aware that I seldom give a thought to those who fought for me to live a free and abundant gay life.

As much as I hate to remind you, these rights and freedoms could be taken away just as easily as they were given. We must not take our good fortune for granted. There are dark forces at work against us.

It’s election time!  Here they go again, debating my future, my expendable rights.  Using their disdain for our lives to get votes.  Championing gay hate to ‘motivate their base’.

Listen to what they say about us.  The cruel rhetoric they use.

I am tired of being the liberal hot potato thrown around at times of national debate/election.

Gay marriage, gays in the military, hate crimes, equality.

And finally mr/mrs republican candidate…what do you think of the gays?  Is this the kind of America we want to call our home?   We want our country back from the niggers and the faggots!

We are once again the devil’s proof of an evil, liberal America, a decadent America, a democratic America that Jesus would never sanction.

Apparently, like abortion, we must be outlawed.

I am sick of having my nature, my rights, my existence used by others in some heartless polemic.

Read my lips:  My rights are non-negotiable, un-repealable….mine to keep.

If you vote Democrat I am not proof positive of a better America. If you are Republican I am not responsible for every natural disaster.  I am just what I always was…alive. Doing what I always did…living. Hoping like I always will…that you leave me and my sexuality alone.

Some woman on FB reassured me that Jesus loved me but hated my sin.  The sin of homosexuality.  The Jesus I was taught about on Sunday mornings in St Alphage church Whitstable never really hated anyone.

All he wanted was a fair and equitable life for us all.

Categories
Gay

Fuck You Rapture

Quite by chance I have fallen in with a bunch of super cool, inclusive gay men.

Men who achieve.  Men who live fun, proud gay lives. Because of them I’m really enjoying my life here in NYC.

Don’t for one minute think I take any of it for granted. I know that a life like this can vanish as quickly as it appears. I’m really enjoying the opportunity to connect, feel supported and breathe.

There are many different tribes of gay men in NYC. There are so many of us here.

As usual I couldn’t stay in bed past 7.30am regardless of who is slumbering beside me. I need to get on with the day.

The apartment is being decorated so whilst the painters set up their ladders and pull down the light fittings we went for a long breakfast in the occasional sunshine. Sitting in the sun, eating scrambled egg. Reading the newspaper. Looking at the cute Saturday runners jogging by in their silky shorts.

Took subway uptown and by chance saw an old friend, an actor from my Dorian days. This is exactly why I loathe and love the Subway, you never know who you are going to bump into. Trapped in a subway car.

Anyway, we picked up his suit that needed altering and met up with the boys for lunch. Lunch from food trucks at Madison and 26th. Everyone seemed obsessed with this RAPTURE shit. I think people were half expecting it to be true. The storm clouds didn’t help.

Thankfully it didn’t happen. Or maybe it did?

My dog and Zack’s dog didn’t really connect.

Kaolin joined us in the park. He is so funny. We went shopping for shirts and other essential items for a wedding next weekend in Los Angeles. I bought a vase in ABC as a thankyou gift.

Walked home with Kaolin. Had nap then met Ian in an Indian restaurant on 27th. Delicious. I ate goat. Talked about Michael Jackson and how he had to take the stand during the Michael Jackson trial.

VIG 27

Birthday party at Vig 27. Very lively, good people. Met the sex columnist from Time Out, we bonded with over our respective health issues. We talked about gay men, how they behave.  Our self-destruction.  A daily fascination.

We talked about Dan Savage, he applauded Dan’s It Gets Better campaign…which, as you know, I think is a load of baloney.

It Gets Better? Better than death maybe…but not much better.

I had agreed to stay until 4 but bailed at midnight.

Stumbled, briefly, into The Eagle.

It is far too early in the year to wear white linen pants. I did anyway.

20110522-092450.jpg
Realness: Pony, Kaolin, Zach, Lil Dog and me in Martin Margiella
Categories
Rant

The Penguin


Torrential rain.  Lightening.  Veselka.  East Village.  NYC.

Every day in NYC is unusual.  Most every day in LA is usual.  NYC, Paris and London are cities where one is forced to expect the unexpected.

So it was that yesterday, after I walked the dog, I made my way to China Town to find sulphur soap.  I popped into the Family Court to get a feel of what to expect next month.  Another tawdry location.   It takes a long time to file a petition.  It can take all day.  The Penguin must have sat in there for a long time.  It would have given him ample time to reflect on his shortcomings.

Again I had to walk up Varick St risking bumping into him.  The Subway at the back of my building must surely disgorge him every single working day.  I had a late breakfast with Pierre.  I met with my lawyer who was on sparkling form.    This evening we discuss strategy with the very expensive litigator.   The expensive, mean litigator.

The Penguin is forefront in my thoughts.  I spoke to Jill and Drew the day before yesterday when I was feeling less stable.  Thankfully I feel good again.  Apparently it often happens that TV people are ensnared by crazed fans.   Drew was so helpful.

I sat in the steam room for an hour.  On my own.  I lay naked on the black marble, sweating and groaning in pain from the searing heat then, enduring a different agony, under the icy cold shower.  My heart pumping.  I lay resting under thick, white towels.

I had lunch with handsome Philippe and at 6.30 I met Ross at cafe Gitane fresh from his weekend in Barcelona.  He is such a funny little dude.  We ate their ‘signature’ avocado on toast and I drank hot chocolate.  A drunk, homeless man started talking to us.  He must have been 70 years old.  He shook my hand.  He told me that he respected those who could care for a dog.  My patience for humans is worn quite thin.  My compassion for any dog is evident.

I had my head shaved at the barbers on 9th Street.  Boris trimmed my beard a little too extremely.  I look like a Spanish conquistador.  I wanted to look good for my trip up town.

UP TOWN!

I have not been north of 30th Street for many years.  Remember when I first lived in NYC I found myself on Columbus and 86th.   The day I arrived was the only time I ever saw a man raise a firearm in anger.   That was years ago.

I took a cab.  That part of town looks less salubrious than it did when I lived there.  A bit broken.  Dinner with an Armenian friend of my lawyers at a greek restaurant on Columbus.  Lamb shank.  It was passable but nothing special.  We had a nice time.  After dinner he showed me his apartment: a few rooms carved out of a giant mansion that was once very beautiful.  Thick architrave,  cornices,  creaking stairways.

I fell asleep on his bed whilst he collated his resume.  Woke up at 1am.

On a whim I decided to walk home.  I walked via the Ace Hotel.  Thumping music.  Pretty boys.   Pretty girls.

82 blocks to contemplate.   An 82 block contemplation.

I thought a great deal about what The Penguin and I will say in court.  I was torn between two stalls:  pity for the boy and derision.   The more one finds out, the more one realizes that he mixed a catastrophic cocktail of deception/desire and would not stop until he got what he wanted.

He chose the wrong man to fuck with.  His timid, delicate, winsome, coquettish facade masking the hard assed sociopath that lay within.  He compartmentalized his life: home, family, perversions/drugs/drinking.

If only I had been like the others and just seen things his way.  Poor boy, trapped in a heterosexual relationship that he didn’t know how to escape from.   That girl paid half his rent so he could live an East Village life, cheat on her with endless men.

My heart bleeds for him.

I kind of blame his hapless parents.  No…I do blame his parents.  They are not idiots.

Then, when I am done being angry, I imagine how embarrassed he must be that the whole world knows that he chose me of all people to come out to, to tell that he loved.  To be involved with.   What an idiot!

He doesn’t want you to see the picture I have of him sucking my cock.  My fat white cock in his mouth.

At least with most/all of my ex’s they were equally abnormal.

He wants to re-write the past so I am no longer in it.  The Penguin will even attempt to censor this blog, challenge my first amendment rights.  Tricky, if you work for a publishing house that must surely enshrine the values of FREE SPEECH.  Nice press angle…for me.

Dinner conversation inevitably turned to him.

Almost every gay will ask if his ex gf suspected that he was cheating on her, then congratulate him for an excellent piece of deception.

The view that all women are essentially worthless to gay men, indeed maybe even a threat…is a view commonly held but very rarely articulated.  The Penguin’s relationship with his ex ‘best friend’ (how do you treat your ‘best friend so?) was an excellent example of how gay men abuse women.

He had no regard for her.

One might say that all men who cheat are the same…but I am not interested in what heterosexuals get up to.  I am interested in the way gay men treat women.  Since interviewing so many of them for our film I understand better that gay men still have little or no respect for women.  They treat them like brood mares when going through the surrogacy procedure.  They are expunged from the surrogacy story.

They might have fag hag friends who dote on them but to me that is the most lethal symbiosis.  A no win situation.  Like marrying Jesus.

By the time I got home it was late, late, late.  I took the dog to the park.  I cadged a cigarette and smoked it.

The Penguin was bullied as a child for his short stature and beak-like nose.  His fingers are fused together, resulting in flipper-like hands.  He waddles like a penguin when he walks.  He was forced as a child to always carry an umbrella by his over-protective mother.   In keeping with his pretensions of being a refined gentleman, he prefers to wear formal wear.

Categories
Rant

Please Like Me? Please?

I sat in my therapy group this morning at 7.30am.  A gay man in his early thirties shared his addiction story (drugs and alcohol).  He caught my attention when he said that he didn’t come out until very recently because he wanted people to like him and he feared that if he told those he knew that he was gay they wouldn’t.

Pathetic.

If I had heard his story a year ago I might very well have sympathized with him but I sat there remembering that this was Jake’s rationale for not coming out until the end of his twenties.

The desire to be liked has never really interested me, being disliked is far more rewarding, one always knows exactly where one stands.   Yet, I think that this desire to be liked may be how a great number of people think.  It seems imperative that they are liked even if they have to live a total lie.

To be liked?  It seems so desperate.  I guess that pathetic JB is getting a whole lot of sympathy from family and friends but especially from susceptible gay men as he miserably tells his tragic story.

Poor Jake knew that he was gay when he was 15 years old, brought up by kindly, understanding liberal parents (why didn’t he tell them?) went to Ithaca University upstate New York (I know out gay men who were his contemporaries) couldn’t come out at Uni apparently because it was a macho uni..he told me that if he had gone to NYU he would have come out earlier….blah blah blah. He then decided to work in the film industry which, as you imagine, is sooooo homophobic.  Couldn’t wouldn’t tell a fucking soul…OH..WAIT…he did tell a soul..he told all the men he was fucking because an ‘on the down low’ gay guy is MUCH sexier to fucked up gay men than just a regular gay guy.  He learned that very quickly.

When he finally came clean, came out, thrown out of his East Village porn performance pad he was GENUINELY disturbed that her friends, their neighbours didn’t see it his way.  Where was the fucking sympathy? Where’s MY SYMPATHY!!!

Even though she tried extracting the truth he STILL couldn’t tell her everything.   He continued lying to her even though she gave him ample opportunity to tell her the truth.

Listen, I sit in those therapy rooms listening to men who get caught cheating every single day.  How pathetic they become when their world of lies and intrigue is blown apart.  It is almost FUNNY how wronged some of them think they are.

I sat in that room this morning loathing that stranger telling his story.

Poor guy, he wanted to be liked so he lied to everyone including his parents and his girlfriend etc.  It was horribly familiar.

Fuck you lying addict gay guy.  This arrogant raconteur, this self-obsessed, manipulative, entitled asshole.  I was just amazed that in this day and age he expected us to feel sorry for him.  In 2010 are we still feeling sorry for people who want to be liked so much that they pathologically lie to the whole world?

Jake lied and lied and lied.  He took risks with his own and his girlfriend’s health.  He set aside his career and his ambition, and when he finally came clean blamed his ex gf for ruining his life because she threw him out of the house.

Want to know something even more damning?  He urged me to see it his way.

Most gay men would…but I didn’t.  For all of you, like Tres Triste, who want to blame me for his misery just give a thought to how I bullied him into telling that poor girl the truth.  Yes, I bullied him into it…because what he was doing to her was cruel and dangerous and one day she will thank me because he would have married her.

Think about HER.

Those of us who bravely told the truth when we were young about our sexuality were made to pay the price.

Before this morning I really hadn’t given Jake much thought.  I don’t bother imagining his life now because it doesn’t take much imagination to figue out exactly what’s going on.  Jake is an addict and his life’s trajectory is obvious to any of one of us who identify as addicts.

The asshole who commented that I was dragging Jake into my fucked up world forgot, it seems, that Jake in fact dragged me into his fucked up world.  A world of lies, deceit, false promises and a desire to be liked at all costs.

That pretty girl squandered her twenties (as well as finding true love) on him, she should sue the nasty little liar for what he stole from her..because it can never, ever be replaced.

Thankfully the $2,000 that he owes me can and will be replaced.

Can you imagine waking up on the eve of your thirties expecting to marry the man of your dreams only to find out that every moment of every day you shared with him was a total lie?

Apparently it was her fault for not realizing that he was a lying.   After all, he didn’t have any interest in sports.  At the end of October that poor girl has to move out of her home, has to find somewhere else to live.  Just because he wanted to be liked at all costs.

The gays will love him.  They’ll understand.  As long as he’s cute and puts out and doesn’t have any emotions.  Oh yes, he’ll fit in with the mediocre, middle of the road, bourgeoise gays..just fine.

It’s still fucking hot here in Malibu.  90somethingdegrees.  I feel a bit tense.  I feel a bit miserable.  I feel a bit powerless..hence I end up blogging about Jake.  Somehow blogging about him makes me feel better.

Finally, the guy who shared this morning told us that he is HIV positive because he was taking meth.  Oh GAYS!  The gays don’t seem to think about condoms when they are high on meth which is great for the drug companies because every expendable gay with HIV is worth $3,000,000 to big pharma.

Categories
Gay

Really Gay

What kind of man is a gay man?

My newly out friend is delighted that other men don’t realize he is gay.

Isn’t that just the same as being in the closet?

Driving to Hollywood last week Andrew said, “That was a really gay hand gesture..”

I said, “That’s because I AM really gay.”

Gwen, when she saw my white cashmere scarf said, “That scarf makes you look really gay.”

Once again I replied, “That’s because I am really gay.”

In the same way that I have a range of sexual possibilities open to me, I also have an evolved behavioral panoply.  I can be as masculine or as effeminate as I want to be..I am, after all, not playing the role of being a gay man.  I am a gay man..and occasionally I will be aggressive and dominant (traditionally masculine) or on other occasions when I am having a laugh I can prance around my place in imaginary heels lip synching to Lady Gaga.

I can be anything I want as long as I am authentic.  I am not going to affect a deeper voice, a darker personality, limited hand and eye brow movements simply so other men will not realize that I am gay!  It’s exhausting to lie like that.

Whatever I am, I am not striving to be, as Iago said,  not what I am.    Authenticity is key.  I didn’t come out of the closet to start pretending all over again, to start fooling my gay brethren.  To fool their gaydar.  I came out to be who I am.  Not what you want me to be or feel shame about my feminine hand gestures, my flamboyant scarves.  I don’t believe in shame!

FUCK SHAME!

If you think fooling other gay men is where it’s at then you are only fooling yourself.

Equally, gay men who think they are wonderful at divining who is gay are in fact utterly useless at figuring out who is gay because everyone can do gay stuff..I mean..man on man stuff.  Casting a spell like a bad fairy is not ‘gaydar’.  The prisons are chock full of men fucking men who are not gay.

On the whole gay men flag their gayness depending on the tribe that they belong to.

This is exactly why I have stuck with straight identified men..it’s just another tribe of men who fuck men.

Mainstream gay culture,  just like the straight mainstream, is not to my liking.  Frankly, my dears, the mainstream bores me to tears!  Normal+Common=Get Me Out Of Here.

Mainstream Gay Culture:  Ripped bodies shown off in tight tee shirts, tribal posturing, childish Peter Pan excitement, arrested development, intensity over intimacy,  endless flirting and sexing up of every single situation.  What are those huge muscles for?  Pumped up like Greek warriors for no good reason.  All form and no function.  It’s just drag dear!  Those boys can’t fight to save their lives!

If you are coming out today or thinking about it..just remember that you have hidden your true nature for a long, long time.  You may not really have a clue who you are.  All I urge you to do, as best you can, is be true to yourself.

I am in a foul mood, trying to overcome this ghastly malaise that has beset me.

Categories
Dogs Gay Money Rant

Drug Companies Profit From Gay Self-Hate

Eating cheese and pastrami with lashings of piccalilli smeared over the top.  The inside of my mouth is burning.  My lips are burning with desire.  Not really.  My lips are just bored.  I am waiting for the mail to arrive so I can walk to bank and get on with the day.

I just scaled Mount Runyon with Sherpa Lil Dog, we saw two gorgeous yeti and had to: Alert! Avert! Affirm!    It’s simply no good for me to gaze longingly at the perfectly honed abs of my fellow Runyon climbers.

Yesterday I realized, after chatting with a friend of mine with HIV that the average drug company will make over $2, 000, 000 out of a single person with HIV during their life time.  Where is the incentive for those drug companies to educate gay men about staying negative?   Anyway, I am fast realizing that the sexual health education that gay men need is nothing to do with safe sex and everything to do with self-love.

The drug companies have no compassion for gay men, no desire to educate an underclass with no real rights, who are despised by most Christian bigots and have so little respect for themselves that they routinely get infected with HIV and become another $2, 000, 000 meal ticket for big pharma.

Pharmaceutical executives must be rubbing their hands in glee when another gay man converts from positive to negative.

This has to stop.  We must start educating the next generation of gay men to love themselves enough to make good sexual health choices.

I got to thinking about my friend Amanda and how we recently hit a bit of a rock.  I think deep down, even though she has gay men around her to dress her, she really has no respect for gay men. For many people we are clowns who have no right to complain or behave as anything other than grotesque queens.   We are, to her, useless absurdities.   Her notion that it is somehow ridiculous for us to have children, for us to have politics, opinions, etc.  She’s not alone; I think many people are outraged by all of that and more.

Whatever I may have written about gaybies in the past I now see gay men having children as a delicious act of rebellion.  It confronts homophobia head on.