Tag: New York City

Categories
Rant Self Sufficiency

New York 2010

Having a blast here-so far away from the trials of Los Angeles.  No car, no worries, just me and a small suitcase and whole lot of hope.

Now, deliciously, I also have a pair of pink and black leather shoes that only I and a handful of truly stylish, brave friends could wear.

Thank you Comme des Garçons, thank you Rei Kawakubo. Thank you style Gods.

How many of you look at charlieissocoollike on You Tube?  Real name Charlie Mc Donnell.  I love him-no, not like that.  He’s only 19, fresh, funny and talented.  My friend Mr S Fry made a charming end credit for him.  I will write more about Mr Mc Donnall soon but do check out Charlie’s Duet with Myself.

Did I tell you that I had TERRIBLE food poisoning after our delicious lunch at The Standard Grill?  The rabbit ragu served with the ‘home made’ pasta and chanterells did me in.  I have not vomited for YEARS.  I mean, hanging over the pan and violently chucking up the entire contents of my belly whilst simultaneously shitting my white comme des garcons under pants.

I love NYC.

I don’t expect much from life.  I really don’t.  But I get so little in LA.  Like so many people I may end up being one of it’s finest victims but…I doubt it.  I am heading east.  I’ll tell you all sooner or later why.

The goat project has been put on hold until I have some more spare cash.  The film I want to make is ready to be born so I will just make it.  I may just be in it.  I am all a quiver about making a new film.  Can’t get it out of my head.

My friend Joan thinks that I am all over the place but that’s how it has always been-all over the place.

I tweeted today about being grateful.  It’s easy to complain about life, then when it gets better forget to be grateful. I am sitting in a warm, well decorated room overlooking the Hudson River, my belly full and friends to see.  What more could I want?

I am really glad that I came to the USA for as long as I have.  I have learned so much from you people.  Good and Bad.

More facts emerging from the Kristian Digby funeral fiasco.  Kristian’s mad mother apparently very dismissive about KD at funeral to his visibly upset father.  Friends and some family members and work colleagues unable to attend the funeral-asked to stay away.   Real friends got together at tree in Torquay and buried box of memories.  One friend reporting that Kristian’s coffin was dragged into church rather than carried respectfully.    I will repeat my earlier assertions:  Kristian’s mother is an insensitive hag who ruined great portions of her son’s life.  The truth will out Mrs Digby.

Met some PR type gay in Soho House the other night.  Single. attractive but after ten minutes of conversation..really ought to have stayed in the closet.  BACK IN THE CLOSET for you young man.  He told me I needed to filter what I was saying-we were talking about politics.  What a fucking boooooar.

Finally, did I mention to you how much I loathe Sophie Dahl?  How she went out of her way to ruin my experience of LA?  That poor sweet crooner husband of hers will see straight through her conniving ways sooner or later.  You can’t marry a woman 8 inches taller than you-why?  Because you never get to look her directly in the eye.

There’s nothing more exhilarating that an unresolved resentment don’t you think?  One day I will recount the entire sordid story for your delectation.

Jake and the Virgin Jake and Duncan Jake Jake Jake butt Jake in bed Jake in Bed 2 Jake Bauman Soho House

Categories
Gay Rant

Jane Hotel

Staying in Soho House before moving to Jane Hotel.  Soho House is like coming home.  Hand written notes and presents from the manager Pierre.   The burgers we ate last night were delicious.  The staff are kind and considerate and incredibly helpful.

I had bad news and good news yesterday.   The bad news was about going home-the good news was about staying home.  I am being deliberately obtuse.

God, it was a very long day.  Up at 4am for my 7.15am flight.  Up in the air for 15 minutes then turning back mid air with instrument problems-something to do with the altitude meter.  I don’t know.   It meant that we didn’t take off until 1.30pm so I got to know my fellow travelers very well-too well.  I also became acquainted with the appalling customer service on offer-or not on offer-from American Airlines.  American Airlines, shit service, shit planes, vile attitude.  My fellow travelers were so incensed that airport security had to be called.  I, on the other hand, did not lose my temper once. I was a paragon of virtue.

Arrived in New York at 9.30pm, Soho House by 10.30pm.

Slept turbulently in my huge bed, the tossing and turning on the airplane revealing itself as I slept.  Full of fear, dreaming my house in Malibu was burning-the second apocryphal dream about that house.  The last included a bunch of women.  My nightmare was so bad a few nights ago my screaming out actually woke the neighbors.

Sophie Dahl’s cookery show is a sham-so say the Brit TV cook clan.  Not really surprising-she must be one of the most inauthentic people I ever met.  What the hell does she know about cooking?  I threw a dinner party for her, Zoe Tryon and Alecia Moore (Pink) at my house last year.  Sophie was sulky, bad tempered and rude.  Gosh, how the vile are rewarded.

Apparently one should never invite just women to a dinner.

Staying in Jane Hotel on Hudson.  Very basic, but lots of fun.  Full of cute young Spanish boys, half naked in the corridors on their way to the shared bathrooms. My room has a bathroom.  Elevator smells of disinfectant, the corridors of fresh paint.  The restaurant downstairs has been designed to look a little like it was very old but actually just looks unfinished.  The ballroom is charming as is the Moroccan influenced bar.  I have a corner room over looking the river.  I like a view.

Dinner with Joan and Joe last night at Kenmare.   All round disaster.  Food had to be sent back; my chair was pummeled by wait staff that seemed to lack any basic spatial awareness.  The vegetables were simply inedible.  The steak over cooked.  The pudding… instantly forgettable.

Lastly, why are there so many insipid, suburban gays?   When I was growing up all the gays I knew were sophisticated, arty and fabulous-it occurred to me that the dull gays might have tended to stay in the closet.   I wish they’d stayed there.

These beautiful days in NYC were spent with Jake but I wasn’t allowed to write about it.

Categories
Death Gay Love

Normal People

Dinner with Anna in Los Feliz.  We discussed how focused one has to be to make a film… how determined.  More importantly… we both really have to want to make film.   Neither of us are motivated by studio films.

I am in perhaps the most ideal position ever to make another film yet without a script that I really believe in what’s the point?

The same goes for my book.  I don’t want to write it.  I was writing it with him and now he has gone so my interest has burned off like the marine layer over the Malibu Mountains.   Oh fuck.

The problem with the last script?  It is really two films crammed into one… like Siamese twins I have to very carefully separate them.  This requires me being meticulous and I can’t summon the interest.   Where did all the energy come from before?  How did I muster the enthusiasm?

I have lost my enthusiasm for film, for love, for life.

I have been asking normal people about falling in love.

It seems that most people believe that they are worth loving.  I have never felt like I was worth loving.

Tonight I saw a gay couple leaving the restaurant.  One of them was much older than his boyfriend.  My heart sank.  They looked so happy.  Both of them probably believed that they worth loving.  They didn’t come from a damaged place, they hadn’t had their childhood ripped apart by shame, violence, lies, resentment.  I hope not.  I really do.

I wouldn’t wish my early years on my worst enemy.

I wanted to kill myself as soon as I understood that it was possible.  I tried when I was 12, then again when I was 17 and finally gave into the interminably slow suicide that alcohol and drugs offer the committed self hater.

I have a few amends to make in NYC.  To those I sidelined when I met him.   I did a terrible thing.  We both cheated… it wasn’t just him.   I can make a thousand excuses but I am sick of making excuses.

At dinner (crispy crusted pizza) Anna and I discussed pornography.

In search of that authentic moment in the narrative.  Isn’t that why so many people go to such dark places on the internet?  Looking for a moment that is indisputably real?

How could any man ever measure up to what I see there?  Whilst love makes a fool of me I seek solace in pornography.  I prayed again tonight for some sort of deliverance from the obsession.

Send me somebody kind I say-but would I know how to let them love me?

Oh, I have been loved so much-so often.  So many men.  Yet, until recently, I thought that anyone who loved me was a fool.  If I couldn’t love me how could anyone else?  So I thought again about the long sleep-longer than the one I have been awake for.

Down the dark corridor.

Categories
Death Rehab

Wake Up!

Kristian’s death has affected me more than I might admit.   Rather foolishly I had a picture of him on my phone that lit up every time somebody called.  I deleted it today-I was making myself sadder than I needed to be.

Found myself looking at pornography last night-late-trying to soothe myself-trying to throw a warm blanket over my feelings.   It didn’t work.  I still woke up this morning overwhelmed with fear.  I wrote to John:

5am.  Waking up in huge amounts of fear.  Crushing, overwhelming fear. Think I may have come to the end of the line. Cannot go on.  Making bad decisions.  Can’t face anything.  Financial ruin facing me.  Nowhere to run to.   Don’t trust anyone. Obsessed.  Looked at porn this morning to try to sooth me-did not work.  Nothing works.  Do not see any more life ahead of me.

As dawn broke over the mountain I expected those particular ghouls to vanish, yet, those pesky demons lingered all day-like they were waiting patiently to claim me.

My father died when he was 53.

Found myself looking at pornography..

Now, that sounds like it happened to me rather than me searching around for that perfect porn moment.  Porn is like research, it’s scholarly, frustrating, intense.

Feeling desperately sad.  Not sobbing like when the Darling Big Dog was killed.

Cannot listen to Kate Bush or Soft Cell (remember listening with him) but rather strangely listening to the Spice Girls, which softens the edges-like having a wank.

Throwing the towel in.  “Goodbye my friend.”  Remember when we were best friends with Matt Rowe who wrote all those huge number one hits?    “Goodbye my friend.”   Remember New Years Eve at The Mercer Hotel in NYC with Melanie Sporty Spice and Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman?  Odd mixture that night?  What a night.

So I’m chatting with a friend about his childhood and he tells me that his father was sent to prison when he was 11 years old.  The only way he knew how to deal with the shame was to lie to his classmates.  He knew where his father was but told his friends that his father was on a business trip-he told lies because the truth was far too complicated.  Gosh, I related to that.  Lying to make life easier:  My father is on a business trip.  Telling palatable childish lies leading to a life of fantasy, pornography, disconnection.

It took me so long to let the truth set me free.  Now I try so hard to tell the truth.  Lyle brought word from England that I had a terrible temper.  Oh yes, I remember that.  My temper was a daily occurrence for so long.  Before I went to Sex Rehab I really had no idea why I was so angry-after sex rehab I fully understood why I was angry and the mechanism that controlled it.  So, to all that I shouted at and screamed at and made cry-I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong.

Sorry to repeat myself but..

When Kristian died suddenly a door opened into a world I considered closed to me.   I had considered suicide for as long as I can remember but never seriously.  Death, after all, is a very long time.  Suddenly there are enough fun people in the after life that I might have a good time.  Giggle with.   I am not scared of death-I was just scared of being bored when I got there-now with Kristian dead-death seems like a realistic option.  Holding the door open for me.

I am looking for clues for what might keep me alive?  What can I believe in?

This morning I heard John talking about being asleep and how much of the time I have been asleep.  I fall asleep when I first meet some one-a deep sleep.  I always thought that it was because I felt comfortable but now I see that it was to escape intimacy or worse that something might happen to me.

Moths in my clothes, little dog pawing at me…home sick for Whitstable, for Battersea Park..can we walk there together you and I?

Selling art-legitimate source of misery?  My friends didn’t want to buy my art.  They want to buy art from a legitimate source.  Funny.

Lying.  It’s a choice.  To tell the truth or lie?  It seems obvious doesn’t it?   Well, these muddled days, as Michael Moore reminded us when he picked up his Oscar, are ‘Lying times’.  Within a relationship there are all kinds of lies but I don’t want to tell HIM lies.  I just want him to know the truth.

The silence in the Malibu Mountains, the thudding base from the music playing in the apartment above my Hollywood apartment.   Both the silence and the interminable base making my head ache.   My head aches.

The questions that haunt me:  How could he have taken such a risk?   How can he be calling me to join him there and why am I listening?

One day I will write about FULL DISCLOSURE-a most unsavory practice.

I love you MR DARLING NYC-you are keeping me alive,  your love and your perfect smile are keeping the worst of these terrible demons from driving me to the gates of hell.

Enhanced by Zemanta
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?