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Monday Night AA Meeting

My friend Bryan asks  me to lead the huge Monday night meeting held at the cream colored, concrete church or Rodeo Drive.

I agreed to address the cult.  You know how I feel about LA AA.

I spent the larger part of the day at home, packing.   I bought a coat from RRL.   A beautiful navy pea coat with brass buttons and a dramatic pleat in the back.

At lunch time I have a conversation with a financier and discuss tax credits.

Before the AA event I nip into Venice where I meet an actress.  We drink hot chocolate and discuss the script.   She has good ideas.

She has good casting ideas.

She is generous and interesting and interested.  She doesn’t get recognized.

I drive with the Little Dog to Beverly Hills.  Outside the church I notice people I know from the past… smoking.  People with small amounts of recovery.  Limited time in AA.  People who can’t stay sober for longer than a few months.

Leading the meeting means that I have to direct the format of the meeting as written then tell my story.  The story divided into three parts: Experience, Strength and Hope.   How it was and how it is now.

Well, you are meant to have a great story.  I don’t have a great story.  Not this year.

Inside the hall my mouth dries, I can see the bloated face of a gay film producer who just cannot stay sober and will die drunk.  His equally incompetent sober friends will mourn his death.  They will say things like, ‘Peter struggled so hard to stay sober’.

They will cry for the duration of the memorial then they will scamper like hairy children to another miserable dying addict who can’t stay clean or sober.

The same people are found laughing at the back of meetings.  Unable to take anyone seriously other than themselves.

Peter has four pitiful months.  He mocks my struggle or the struggles of people like me because he has never had more than a few months clean.  He will never know what it is like not to drink for a decade or more or what tribulations that incurs.

I didn’t tow the party line. I told them what was going on.  A public flaying.

I flayed myself.

What am I doing here? I thought.  What am I doing here telling these people my secrets?  What the hell do I do this for?  I sipped at my bottle of water.  I wore my new spectacles.

On the way back to Malibu I listened to NPR.  They were playing Bridge when I got home.  Eating marzipan mice.

The speaker of the Ugandan parliament has promised she will pass the so-called “Kill the Gays” bill in the next two weeks — she called it a “Christmas gift” for the Ugandan people. 

How will she achieve that?   There’s one born every minute.

Categories
Gay Travel

Austin/New York

 

Last night I slept in a bed.

The previous nights I slept whilst they drove the car. Thomas in detention. The Dane miserable and grumpy because his best friends New York life had crumbled to dust. Lucie just trying to make the best of a bad lot.

I left them in Austin and settled into the four-hour wait for my flight to NYC.

I had nothing better to do so decided to get my hair cut. I walked through the oppressive heat to Birds Barbershop under the freeway at the ghetto end of 6th Street. Walking less than half a mile from the city center Austin’s miserable underbelly reveals itself.

Firstly, and most oddly, dogs are not allowed in barber shops in Austin so the Little Dog sat in a shady spot outside. Lara was assigned to cut my hair.

I asked for a number two buzz all over my head and beard.

Lara, less than five foot tall began shaving my head. She told me to uncross my legs. She told me to sit straight in my chair. She told me to put my feet on the foot rest. Then, when things were obviously not finished she announced that she had finished and how did it look? It looked terrible. It was perhaps the WORST hair cut I had ever had.

I told her to re buzz it so it might at least look even. She said, “I’m not comfortable with that.” As if she had been taught in some barber class how to avoid unwanted advances.

She picked at the mess of her own creation with a pair of scissors. Then she started trimming my beard. The past few days had been so exhausting I just let her hack at my face.

I paid the $25 and walked away.

In Austin airport I sat next to a thirty something French man who I ended up in bathroom stall. He has a huge, uncut cock.

My plane unloaded in Charlotte but the plane to Newark was cancelled. Charlotte airport is just packed with army boys. I could live in Charlotte airport.

Finally, after resigning myself to a night at the Novotel in Charlotte, I found a flight to Newark. On the plane East I completed the end of my novel and started sketching out the associated film idea. Because I now know the story so well it was easy as all hell to write the treatment. In fact, it may be one of the best things I have ever written.

As I sat in Charlotte thinking about the curious French man with the beautiful penis Dan texted me to say that same-sex marriage was now legal in NY state. I had two opposing thoughts, it struck me that even though the gays would celebrate this change in the local law it is actually merely a sop to us.

So? So? I thought angrily. This isn’t going to help Zach and his Scottish boy friend. If they get married immigration will not recognise their union, no one official anywhere is obliged to recognise this marriage anomaly other than the states where segregation is outlawed.

Then I wondered if Jake celebrated the change in the law, whether he owned that this vote applied to him. I thought about him getting married to a man, taking that man to his parents house. If he could stay loyal and monogamous?

I thought about gay marriage and just because we can…should we?

Arrived in the East Village just after midnight. Walked dog. Slept really well.

Party tonight and Monday night.

I have boring admin stuff to do this week. Then…thank God…I have my party.

Categories
Rant Uncategorized

OK, I Went Too Far

I went too far this time.  Vile beyond description.  Going quietly insane here.  Not so quietly.  Very publicly insane.  Somebody wrote to me imploring me to get help.  I don’t really know how.  The feelings are so overwhelming.  This has nothing to do with anyone currently in my life or recently out of it.    I was reading over my blog pre January and it’s like reading a different person.  I have become madder than the maddest man in madland.  Totally unhinged.

You can read what he/she said at the end of the DEAD WEIGHT blog.  For some odd reason it cut through everything and made sense.  I took notice.  8.43pm on Monday night I am taking notice.  I dread the morning when the fear sets in.  The fear and loathing.

You have to believe me I am battling with terrible demons at dawn.   Lost and empty.

Trying to juggle everything so I can get back to London and go to hospital.   Perhaps it’s just time to let the balls fall where they may and leave.

What he/she said about Jennie and the big dog was accurate.  I make myself vulnerable and then I punish those about me who see it.

Listen, I’m not trying to excuse myself.  Today there are no excuses for my behaviour.

I’m just trying to work it out.  Trying to navigate my way back to sanity.

There is no therapist.  I just have to accept what is happening and go home.  It’s time..but I’ve said that a million times.  It’s time to buy goats or leave a situation or..well..there are millions of examples of just how I say I want to do something then I never do it.

Rather flagellate him I flagellate myself.  This wasn’t how it was before.  I can read the difference between me then and me now.

I would really like to cry but I can’t.  Too many tears shed for nothing.

It’s amazing that in less than three weeks I will be celebrating a sobriety birthday.  Huh.  Perhaps I should just say I have one day.

The pain in my balls and back is getting worse but I think that this might just be in my head.

What would it mean if I just took one drink?  If I could drown these terrible feelings of loathing (and self loathing) I am overcome by?

A day off.  I want a day off from Duncan Roy.