Tag: New York City

Categories
art Health

Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980

I have spent the past day or so in bed.  The dog is less sick, eating again.  We have to get his drain removed.  He is wearing the Elizabethan collar but hates it.

My left leg is getting better…my right ankle isn’t.  Robby stayed over last night.  Today he watered the garden, filled the hot tub, went to the supermarket and ran around the house as I finally caught up on all the various tasks that could be accomplished from my bed.

Jen and Jason were incredibly helpful.  Anna brought supper.

Surrounded, as usual, with love.  Occasionally it is hard to recognize just how lucky I am.

Robby and I have a wonderful relationship.  We talk and play and the more I know him…the more I trust him.  In fact, I might trust him more than any person I know right now.  He has been a perfect antidote to JB. I feel hopeful again because he brings me love.

Crippled and confined to the couch he was pottering about the house making everything look good.

We were talking about how private one needs to be in life.

He is a tentative soul.

He wondered why I write every personal detail here in this blog.  Make public what most people keep private.  Something that delighted Jake until (of course) he was part of it, part of the narrative…then it wasn’t quite so alluring.

Learn this lesson:  If you don’t like your private life being scrutinised…avoid public figures…you will lose your anonymity.

The reality guy who killed himself this week?  He had no idea just how pernicious reality TV really is.

We mused about what remains private and what should be public.  I am quite clear why I write everything here.

If, like me, you have lived an audacious, notorious life then for every eager friend there is a fool desperate to pull you down.

It is best to live without secrets.  Many years ago I was taught that we are as sick as our secrets.  What does that mean?   If you are cheating on your wife you will be defined by your deception.  If you are lying to your friends you will be hindered by self-doubt.

If I have made mistakes, told a lie, cheated a friend or been generally disreputable then I write it here.  My part in what ever unfolding drama is worth noting. We tend to focus on who to blame and rarely acknowledge our responsibility.

Keeping my side of the street clean.

That is why I have struggled so badly with you-know-who.   It has been incredibly difficult to own my part.  I don’t want to admit my short comings.

I make him responsible.  I blame him.  I say:  He lied to me.  He cheated.  He duped me.  He did drugs in front of me.  All of this is true…of course, but has to be balanced with:   I am responsible.  I lied to him.  I chose somebody inappropriate.  I allowed myself to be duped.  I had no boundaries.

When I point at him three fingers point back at me.

What is the answer?

I aim to be ashamed of nothing.  This leads, inevitably, to peace of mind.

You, dear reader, know everything!  There’s nothing I’ve not written about.  You know every insane thought, every defect, every leak and misery.

You know everything…so I fear nothing.  Not one of you has anything on me.

When you live a lie you are vulnerable.  I don’t want to be vulnerable.

Back to NYC next month to see JB in court but it’s fashion week and I’ve been invited to a slew of fashion week events.  Robby will be in town so we can do some fun shit.  I love that boy.  Jenny will be there too and wants to come to court with me.  Before we vanish to The Hamptons.

There is a great deal to do these coming autumn/winter months.

LA will be hosting Pacific Standard Time the culmination of a long-term Getty Research Institute initiative that focuses on postwar art in Los Angeles.

Through archival acquisitions, oral history interviews, public programming, exhibitions, and publications, the Research Institute is responding to the need to document the historical record of this vibrant period.

Between October 2011 and February 2012, a major exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum will present a survey of postwar painting and sculpture in Los Angeles.

It will be a great deal of fun.

In tandem with PST,  Art Platform—Los Angeles, the west coast cousin of The Armoury,  is collaborating with Pacific Standard Time to organize an extraordinary series of events and services to highlight this historic period and unprecedented weekend of art in Los Angeles.  Rather wonderfully I am part of their VIP Programme.

Tonight Eric is bringing supper.  The little dog will get better.  I am willing him to.  Help me think him right.

Categories
Gay Hollywood

Patti Labelle

Apart from astronomically good but addicting blog figures, rancour toward Jake and a gopher issue (he/she is presently tearing up the vegetable patch) I am very well indeed.

I am enjoying ranting against JB’s lawyer, leaving vile reviews about his restaurant on Yelp and Tripadvisor. Who would have thought Ross (of all people) would have been a slasher?

There’s twitter consternation. Some guy who thinks I should give a shit about my character on the show. Apparently his friends, over a cocktail in the local gay bar, think I lured Derrick into my web with ‘shiny things’. They have built an entire world around my one appearance in one episode of The ‘A’ List.

I love TV. Perhaps I should get one?

My twitter friend wonders why I am asking Restraining Order advice from my blog readers. Babe, I am not asking advice…I’m asking for shared experience and so far I’ve had really useful responses.

Thanks everybody who took the time to tell their stories.

A woman wrote asking if I thought her BF might be gay. Send me a picture.

In the real world…far beyond planet Jake. I am having a laugh.

Joe is staying here from NYC so we are having a very cozy time at home. Six foot of pure Jersey muscle. I will post some pics tomorrow of his perfect bod, great ass and sweet smile.

Met Sharon at The Chateau with Joe and Henry. We sat in the sun, enjoying Arnold Palmers, giggling. We hung out at Urth Cafe on Melrose. We changed for dinner. I met CC with her friend Patti LaBelle who was more than complimentary to me. In fact, she said things that made me blush.

She asked my age and I mumbled it. She said proudly, “I am 67 years old.” But you are Patti LaBelle, I thought. You can be 100 years old and you’ll still be a superstar. The rest of us struggle with getting older.

CC was with gay boys who wanted to go to The Abbey but I really didn’t want to go. Joe would have been mobbed. He has that look that gets him mobbed in gay bars…I really didn’t want to share him.

So we stayed put and Russell Brand sat nearby and then Leo Dicaprio rolled in with his buddies.

Home by 3am.

On a serious note. Those of you who sneered at my ‘Palin and her ilk’ prediction…take a look at Rick Perry. The newest warrior of Christ who wants to be President of The United States. If you thought Palin and Bachmann were bad…read this.

Again, we may laugh at how absurd it is that these people would want to lead the free world or be elected in free and fair elections to do so…but that’s what the intellectuals did during the Weimar Republic. They laughed at Hitler. They ignored the desperation of the beleaguered German people desperate for change…any change.

Change they could believe in.

Obama hasn’t delivered. Rick Perry and people like him just might do the trick.

Stop laughing. This is NOT A JOKE.

Categories
Rant

The Truth Will Set You Free

Only three weeks until I am yet again due in Family Court to fight the spurious accusations, lies, falsehoods from that dwarfish, dishonest man who lied his way into my life, my wallet, my heart and my underwear.

This vile fame-whore will rip me out of paradise.

Some cheap liar who had devoted every day of his 30 years to deception.

When he saw me on TV he merely saw his next victim.

Someone else he could use in his war against a woman he said he loved.   Risking her health, her sanity.   Someone I heard blaming for his shortcomings.  He was so angry with her that she didn’t see things his way.  A woman who had blindly believed in her man, who will never do so again.

The bigger problem when you let a liar into your life…you end up never trusting.

Every man I have subsequently met I have looked upon with suspicion.

If YOU have had experiences of spurious restraining orders or false orders of protection let me know by emailing me on [email protected] or leaving a message here.   If you want to come to court in NYC and support me on the 8th September 2011, let me know.

If you want to cover this story for your gay publication…let me know.

If you have been fucked over by an ex, lied to, cheated to, infected with HIV by someone who said they were clean…if you have never had recourse to get revenge.  Let me know.

Men or women.

Let me know.

If you are sick of keeping quiet about the way gay men…men treat each other or women.

Let me know.

Dan Savage‘s It Gets Better campaign may save teens from killing themselves, but what next?  We don’t treat each other very well.  Sometimes I think that Better than Death is not good enough.

I used to have compassion for that man.  I used to make excuses for him.  I stayed up waiting for him to call.  Worrying about him.  I urged him to tell her the truth. I convinced him that the truth would set him free. Until recently I thought he should be forgiven.  Some people can never be forgiven.

He may have learned his lesson, maybe he tells the truth nowadays?  Regardless, he has unfinished business.  We need to deal with it.  Some day soon the truth will be revealed.

Orders of Protection are well-known for inflaming benign situations, creating malignancy where there was none.  He has done just this.   The cells of resentment, hatred and revenge are multiplying before my very eyes.

Hey..and before you lecture me about how stupid I was to fall for him.  That he was just a 30-year-old kid…look at the men who are killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Teenagers. If you think that love has logic?   Take a look in the fucking mirror and tell me you haven’t done the same.   Before you advise me to let go of my resentment, tell me why I should.  This may be eating me alive but that’s better than being dead.

He could have killed me.

Before I get advice from angels…take your own inventory.  Your own moral pulse.

P.S.  No, I don’t have HIV but I hear plenty stories of men who have been cheated out of their negative status by lying queens.  Just another thing our fucked up gay community wont talk about.

Categories
Gay

Duncan Roy The ‘A’ List

Regardless of why I decided to get involved with Derek or The ‘A’ List I’m glad I did.  Our pretend boyfriend scam…it was fun.  Even though I have been portrayed as a smelly old man.

Pretending to be his boyfriend was absurd.   A joke.  I don’t know if that comes across on the show?  That we were faking it?

Occasionally I throw myself back into being ‘gay’.  I don’t have a very gay life on this mountain.  Most queens are totally appalled that I live here, so isolated, away from the urban gay idyl.

Tom calls it my Shangri-La.   Some men love it and for those I hold a special place in my heart.  They get it.  The dream of self-sufficiency, off the grid, chickens and home-grown vegetables.

When I pull off my country clothes (albeit RRL) and slide into something leaner I am dressed for the city.  Whether it is WeHo or Chelsea, Soho or The Marais I am there to be seen, acknowledged and play that peculiar game of being ‘gay’.

I can live two distinct lives, maybe more?

In England my snooty friends called me a chameleon, meaning to insult me.

Surely being able to change ones color to blend in…is rather good?  To adapt and change as the situation requires.

In England, my England I learned to speak with a different accent, merely to be heard.

I am a cock sucking homosexual but I wonder if others see it that way?  What kind of gay am I?

Perhaps my lack of interest in sex makes me less gay, less human?

Remember when I was on Sex Rehab and admitted that the sex I had with men was traumatic?   People wrote to me and told me that I wasn’t gay.  “If Duncan Roy doesn’t want gay sex, he isn’t gay.”

They tried to throw me out of the gay club…for having an opinion.

Meeting the cast of the ‘A’ List was memorable because they have become, in their own way, icons.  For good or for bad.  I met most of them just once. At least three of them have admitted drug and alcohol problems.

I really liked Austin and his husband Jake who I could very easily imagine seeing here or in London.  They are good people.  I like Austin’s authenticity.

The worst of the bunch has to be…Derek.  As you will see tonight (if you can be bothered) I enjoy ribbing him on camera.  I used stock lines, old jokes that an overly sensitive American queen did not find very funny.

When the food arrives I say, “That looks like something that came out of your nose.”  That’s funny isn’t it?  I used it before and my friends laughed.

We hung out a few times but really, his lack of sophistication, curiosity and insight were wonders to behold.  He seems so incomplete.  Derek’s consumption of alcohol masking a sadness at his core…like so many untreated addicts.  A problem that a huge number of gays share but have no intention of resolving.

Derek has no business to be anywhere but where he was born.  Like so many gay men he has been forced into New York by small-town prejudice and an insatiable desire for cock.

A bland, mid-western bag of meat and bones.

He had no truck with history, our history, any history…he knew nothing of the city where he lives, of commerce, politics or God.   Eking out an existence with appearances at provincial gay clubs and gay pride.

Derek lives every moment in the moment, no awareness of where he had come from and no interest in where he is going.

Did he read Eckhart Tolle?  I’m kidding.

The power of now and only now and God forbid that you make me consider anything other than right now.

I am without context.  I am without past or future.

Damn!  This Queen needs a drink!

He is the antithesis of everything the other was.

I looked at Derek as one might a monkey in the zoo.  The gay zoo.  Trapped like a miserable, half naked gogo boy in his techno cage.   Evidence of his genus.  The sub species of gay to which we must all aspire.

Cocktails with orange slices perched on the rim.

Moisturized, combed, overly tanned.  The shrill laughter and meaningless conversation hurt my ears.

I can’t imagine what the viewers of the ‘A’ List will make of me but…we’ll see.  I am old.  I am not Peter Pan.  I have a beard.  I live on a mountain.  I have no sexual traction…time has eroded my usefulness to the gays.

It was an adventure into a life I have only the barest knowledge.  A sociological exercise.  Ripping open the wasp’s nest.

I hung out at bars and in clubs.  I questioned who I was and the choices I have made.

When I was approached I politely declined.  When they spilled their drinks on me I didn’t say a word.

Categories
Rant

The Scarlet Empress

My 500th Blog!

Such delight and disdain it has caused.  Such heartache and joy!   Thanks readers.  Thanks.

Duncan x

There’s almost too much going on inside and outside of my head.

Firstly, the garden.  Every day for the past few weeks I have worked in the garden.  Pulling tons (literally) of weeds and leaves out of the flower beds.  Reclaiming the paths.  Defending the vegetables from the gophers and rabbits.

I have planted Datura and Hibiscus.   Salvia, basil, onions, beans and tomatoes.

A bumper crop of plums this year!

For the first time in 4 years I managed to get to them before the birds.

Have hooked up a pump to the spring water reservoir.  It’s located at the bottom of the garden, now watering parts of the estate I can’t usually justify irrigating with expensive, potable water.

The previous owner built the two huge tanks.  Until last week I just hadn’t gotten around to buying the small, inexpensive pump.  Absurd isn’t it?

Having this free supply of water means that I can clear part of the garden and lay turf which in any other situation would be immoral, irresponsible.

Everything in a tropical garden has spikes or thorns or needles.  My hands are cut to ribbons.  Robbie has been here twice this week helping me and his arms and legs, poor thing, are shredded too.

Dinner last night with Anna and Jeff at Nobu in Malibu.

Apparently I was mentioned in passing by Derek in the ‘A’ List last night.  I can’t imagine that I will escape lightly from this situation.  I am perfectly sure my posing as the ‘Mister Big’ will make me the laughing-stock of Gay New York.

Whatever.

The weather in Malibu is perfect.  Hot as hell in the sun but a delicious sea breeze blowing onshore.

The crows are hunting chicks.  They bombard the trees. Tiny dead chicks on the paths.  So sad.

I took the picture at the head of the post last weekend at the Piette’s.   Their house is soooo depressing.  Even though it’s located on the lake and the twins are living there now.  It’s so dark inside at night.  Gloomy.

You know what?  I should be getting on with something else.  I should be leaping all over my novel.  I should be writing the film.  You know what it’s about don’t you?

Two gay men want a baby but end up with an old man instead.

This was one of the videos Charlie and I shot when we were researching our film.

Trans Alexis, The Scarlet Empress, must be in her 80’s.  She was at Triangle House, a home for elderly gays and lesbians in Hollywood.  Getting old is a pain in the ass for everyone but elderly gays seem to find it particularly difficult.  Most of the men and women at Triangle House have endured homelessness.  Old age, as they say, is not for the faint hearted.

Lesbians, apparently, don’t seem to end up so isolated but gay men do.  Lesbians are often dialed into an extended family of other lesbians and are less ageist.

Anyway, I’ll write more about Alexis and our film which maybe should be a documentary.

I don’t know.

The elder gays we met were really quite wonderful.  The gay men we met who had surrogate children or were going through the surrogacy process were less wonderful.  Downright awful in fact.

Robby is on his way over to help me in the garden.

Is Toby right?  Do I live in the past?  Am I addicted to what was rather than what is or what could be?  Fuck.  Maybe he’s right?

Amy Winehouse is dead.  It comes as no surprise.  She was an out of control drug addict and alcoholic.  She dies alone.  She died an addict.  I am sorry for her family.  It is always the family that has to pick up the pieces and go on living.  Amy did not choose life.  She sneered at the prospect.  She thought she could get away with a dance with death.  She failed.

I will remember her like this:

Categories
Gay

Happy Birthday Me

Here are some of the pictures Dan took last week at my party…I will add them as and when they arrive.  I am having my LA birthday party tonight….should be fun.

Lady Rizo

Lady Rizo sang Lilac Wine, Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend and a Brittany Spears mash up.

Devon, Aleksa and Me

Aleksa came with her husband Devon…straight from the set of Boardwalk Empire

Dan and Stephen

Dan took all the pics but thankfully had one of himself.

Ian and Bradley

Ian Drew and Bradley from US Weekly…who told me yesterday that I am indeed in the upcoming A List.

Rob Roth who sang ‘I’ll Melt With You‘ rather wonderfully and the legend who is indeed Chandler Burr.  The performance artist and NYT scent editor…

Duncan and Robby

This trip to NYC changed darling Robby’s life.

Sweet friends from LA Jess and her lover.

Victoria Whitbread and her friend Tom with Dee Mansfield who flew from Hong Kong for my party.

Yaniv, Michael (GLADD) and Cyndi Stivers who started Time Out NY

The Black Soft

Chase and Joey from The Black Soft came and not only performed their new song for me but totally wowed their new audience.

Zach and Alex

Joan, Lady Rizo and Joe

Greg Lucas and David Stillman Meyer

Kaolin, Friend and Zach

Lady Rizo and Donovan.

Duncan, Charlie Parsons and Tom Desanto

Jeff and Robby

And over to you LADY RIZO!!!

OK, that’s it!  More tomorrow from tonight’s party.

Categories
Gay

The Invasion

I am flying to LA today.  My work here is done.  I will be in LA for the rest of the summer.  There are tomatoes to look after.  Twins to tend.  Well, not all the summer…I’ll be back.

I am going to have a dinner for my actual birthday next week.

Yesterday I returned to the city from Fire Island.  I woke at 7am and after my rather wonderful encounter with Neil we cleaned the house, made breakfast and fought our way to the ferry through the invading drag queens.  Do you know about this Fire Island tradition?  Every Independence Day the trannys of Cherry Grove invade The Pines.

That’s it really. A bunch of trannys get on a huge boat, one full ferry boat after another, land in The Pines and start drinking…and drinking.   During all the years I lived on Fire Island with Joe I only ever saw the Invasion once and that was as I was leaving on a ferry for higher ground.

The train to Penn Station was all fucked up.  When I arrived in NYC I hung out with Alex and Toby at The Soho Grand.

FJ invited me to his apartment to see the fireworks but we decided to walk to the river with the people and watch what turned out to be a remarkable display.  Bumped into various friends including Alexei Muniak from LA.   Ate middle eastern food and chocolate.

I really wanted to see the fireworks.  Last July 4th Jake and me were flying over the very same fireworks on our way to Paris.  I remember quite clearly being very fearful.  Before we left I sat him down and told him how worried I was that when we came back I would miss him badly.  I was really scared.  He said, “We’ll deal with that then.”

We never dealt with it.  It festers in me to this day.  In September I return to the city and we will yet again face each other in court.

Is this the way he ‘deals’ with things?

Categories
Gay

Neil Sedaka

7am 4th July. Yesterday I must have walked between The Pines and Cherry Grove a dozen times.

I woke up in The Pines and fell asleep exhausted in Cherry Grove.

Benoit and I went to a ‘media’ party in some huge house on the bay. What differentiated it from any other party was not immediately apparent.

The half naked men and boys looked identical to all the other men and boys at similar parties elsewhere.  I was introduced to the new editor of the Advocate. He too was half naked. He looked at me suspiciously and so he should. I have no interest in him.

By 2 in the afternoon everyone was trashed and the toxicity began to get to me. I kept thinking to myself how much fun Jake would have here. How he would fit right in.

Later that day I met Stephen Macias my ex manager. He is a truly vile individual who fully took advantage of my Hollywood initiation. I will write more about that at a later date.

He looked good for someone with ‘issues’. He told me proudly that he attends Barry’s Boot Camp in LA.

I saw Mark Beard the muralist. He paints all of those Homoerotic murals in Abercrombie and Fitch. He looks like a scull on a stick. My ex Joe helped him buy his huge studio in Hells Kitchen.

Mark’s boyfriend Jim still looks great.

I hung out with Zelcho, Caroline and Todd. We ate lunch at Cherry’s. I kissed a beautiful man who I met waiting for the water taxi.

I thought more about Jake every time I felt uncomfortable. I damned myself because I had inadvertently let one of these people into my life. One of these party boys. Even though when I met him he was merely a party boy in waiting.

Later that night Caroline cooked a delicious dinner and then we met Benoit and his friends at The Top of the Bay ostensibly to listen to Neil Sedaka sing but when we got there Neil looked frail and left with his friends.

He was being bullied by an Easter European woman. He asked her, “Do you like me for me or because I’m a famous singer?”

We chatted for a while about his children and grand children and West Hollywood where he still lives with his wife of fifty years.

Benoit’s politician friend told me his coming out story. Outed at 30, left his wife. Lost his important job in politics. I asked why he hadn’t come out sooner (read get honest) and he said that he didn’t want to lose his family.

Earlier in the day I went to the AA meeting at the Fire House (6pm) where I listened to group therapy and not one word of recovery. The good looking men only listened to the other good looking men and chatted amongst themselves if the speaker was fat, old or ugly.

On several occasions I wanted to get back to NYC. Every man on the boardwalk held a cup brimming with a lethal amount of alcohol. By mid afternoon many men were staggering or slumped or glazed.

The little dog chased a young buck with velvet antlers.

As I sit writing this Neil Sedaka sat with me and told his life story. He is such a delightful man.

I applauded him for not performing last night.

He told me how Elton had given him a second chance. He told me how he had filled the Albert Hall two years ago and he asked if I had ever been in love so I told him about Jake.

He said, “It’s rich material.”

We talked about Carol King, Sinatra, Elvis and Joni Mitchell. It was compelling stuff for 9am on a balmy Fire Island morning.

20110704-092403.jpg

Categories
Gay

Transformers: Dark of The Moon

I can’t really write about yesterday morning.  Needless to say I will.  In time.  Maybe tomorrow.

Had lunch at the Mercer Kitchen with a friend.  There were many, many tired looking servers/shop assistants etc., in New York the day after Pride.   Grimly going about their working day at the mercy of rotten hangovers.

Only one of the twins arrived from LA.  Miles had to stay home and guard the fort.

Robby has never really been to NYC before; you should have seen his face!  He was delighted.  He had such a big Robby smile.  We wandered the East Village and as much as he complained that smokes were triple the price you could tell that no amount of money spent on ciggies was going to ruin his NYC state of mind.

We took the subway to 42nd Street.  Excited to see Transformers 3.  3D.

Tom’s film will have grossed more than 3 billion dollars by the time all is said and done.

I am not going to review the movie.   He’s my friend.  Watching a friend’s movie is not like going to the cinema and just sitting down and watching a film.

I am already invested.

OK, I’ll just tell you a couple of things.  Frankly the film was a bit confusing: the transformer goodies and the baddies melding into one heap of scrap metal with no clear battle, no defining heroic moment.

Even the casting was confusing; I thought John Malkovich was Gary Busey.  What has he done to his mouth?  His teeth?

There were too many quips and not enough story.

The special effects were remarkable and keep the tension levels high.  Somehow watching any well-shot fight captures the imagination even though in this case one might not know what they are fighting about.

The lead girl, a Victoria Secrets model, was appalling, all lips and hair and pout.   The camera fetishizing her lithe body.  The director forcing his camera into her face, her mouth.

Shia looked worse for wear and has certainly lost that youthful vulnerability that carried him and us through the first of this blockbuster franchise.

The parents who amused us and grounded us in the first film have become irritating non-secateurs.  Great actors and not so great actors deliver cheesy lines that segue into another well-crafted fight.  The disparity causing some general merriment in the room

Regardless of what Transformers has become Tom’s initial idea had integrity and poise.   It is important to remember that.

For the second time in as many days I wished I could have gotten fucked up.

This is getting crazy.

Everybody falls in love with Robby.  Robby, quite rightly, drowning in positive affirmation.   I am proud of the way he handles himself in these situations.

My big birthday party on Thursday night, there are people flying from Hong Kong, London and LA.  It’s going to be a blast.  I am really looking forward to it.  100 people.  Entertainment.  Hootenanny.

I have now re-written the end of the novel and await notes.

Determined that my party will neither depress or stress me.

Categories
art Gay

Sol Lewitt

It is 6am. Monday morning. The day after NYC Gay Pride. I am sipping strong black coffee like a man who has a hangover and a job. I have neither.

There is a great deal to do today. Mostly unpleasant. The Transformers 3 party tonight. The twins are winging their way to New York. Robby called me late last night. I was too tired to talk. I wonder if he changed his mind?

Let’s talk about yesterday.

I can’t remember what I did before 12. It is lost.

At around one o’clock I wandered down tenth street to see the parade. I thought I might meet Tom and pals but they had other plans. I had a great day on my own and not on my own.

I made a few out reach calls.

Let’s face it…that’s what I like best. I like being on my own or with strangers who don’t know me.

I carried the little dog in my arms through the drunken crowd. I saw Dan Savage on the first float. His very own apotheosis. I watched Andew Cuomo, recently beautified by the gays for the bone that he threw down at us…like a fake holy relic. The body guards around him formed a tight cordon. It was funny that he should be so frightened. Needing that many body guards. We need him to guard us. Protect us. His appearance in the parade was unashamedly about his re-election.

Those about me thought that what he had done for them was wonderful.

“It’s a start!” They explained to me as if I were retarded. I have given up trying to explain my position. I just look at these men and smile weakly.

I remembered being in the Sydney Mardi Gras. How many years ago? 1990. I was covering it for the BBC. I made a BBC Radio 4 documentary. I was entranced. I should fetch out my old diaries. I should try and find that material. I don’t have any record of anything I made for the BBC.

Mardi Gras. Being in the parade. From the street looking up at the millions of faces staring down at us from every window on Oxford Street. I remember taking ecstasy and wandering into the rancid, hot bathroom and watching men fuck each other. I stayed in Sullivans on Oxford Street just like I always do when I return to Sydney. Where I will be this winter.

The parade and the party afterwards. I accepted the decadence. It was as if in that sinking ship…we had no option.

I did not question our behaviour then because it was my behaviour.

If young documentarian Duncan chanced upon yesterdays parade. Given that ship is no longer sinking? What would he learn about being gay in 2011?

Well, if I was as fucked up as I was then I might have come to the same conclusions. I was just chasing a drink, a line and some tail. Loving the attention that a young gay man gets.

The attention has waned.

I thought about Paul Keeting the Prime Minister of Australia being so publicly inclusive. Letting us know that his government included/represented us too. It was the first time in my life I had ever heard a world leader positively acknowledge my existence.

Keeting reminded fellow Australians that the LGBT community paid taxes, were less likely to cause trouble or end up in prison…he then signed an anti vilification bill into law which really felt like it was real. It was. It made people think about what they said to us and how they treated us.

Yesterday, every elected politician in the state made an appearance in the parade. The police were cheered heartily as they are every year in every GLBT parade and I wondered why? Even as I was wondering why I felt the same wave of emotion that everyone else seems to feel.

I bumped into Jeremiah Newton.

He took me briefly to a tranny party in an apartment overlooking the parade. I thought of Diane Arbus.  The apartment was very dark and decorated crudely with red plastic. The ceilings covered in rainbow flags made of cheap gauze. It was too depressing. There was some sort of tranny chaser sitting on his own in the kitchen under the flourescent light. He directed me to the chicken pasties. I ate some jelly beans.

I left.

I bumped into a beautiful couple I had met on-line in Los Angeles. We ate a very late lunch at Westville (not east) and fed the Little Dog a huge chicken breast. The food seemed better (cleaner and fresher) at their West Village location.

We separated at around seven. I will see them again.

That night I thought I might watch the fireworks or go to a club. If I had been drinking or taking drugs I might have. But not drinking and not taking drugs somehow lessens the experience of being gay.

Of course I thought about Jake in that melee. What a perfect gay man he most probably is now. Drugging, drinking, fucking. Selfish, self obsessed. And I wondered if I was jealous that he could do those things and I could not. I wondered if I was missing out on being gay? I wondered if I could still be dignified and take a drink.

I thought about taking a drink a great deal at Gay Pride 2011.

Dan came home and we rearranged art on the freshly painted walls. He showed me a picture he had hidden in his office that he thought might be Sol Lewitt. He doubted it. I knew the moment I saw it that it was real but we shucked the frame and there was the neat signature.

Consequently it is off to be reframed in something more befitting.

That’s how important art work gets lost. People forgetting, not knowing. Not believing.

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