Tag: New York City

Categories
art Gay

Hamish Bowles

Dinner on Friday night with Ian Drew at Essex and Beauty.  Large, noisy new restaurant..a bit too blingy for me but the food was excellent and paid for by the restaurant.

Try the steak tartare on the thick, tasty rice cake.

Thanks.

After dinner we went to a miserable East Village gay bar where men sat beside each other trying to snag other men elsewhere on Grindr.  Their faces lit up by LED screens causing them all unwittingly, with their ghostly green visage, to look like that Ingres portrait of Napoleon.

Napoleon by Ingres

Ian finished his drink.  We left.

It has been startlingly cold.  I love the cold.  I get to dress up!  Hats, hats, hats.  Coats, waistcoats, velvet scarves.   I love my burgundy velvet scarf.  Last night I wore my Dior cape.  It did not pass unnoticed.

Dressed accordingly, the Little Dog and I, walked to Soho House and began to write my film.  Then, oddly, I had another really great idea for a film (or novel) inspired by my new, young HIV friend.    It gushed onto the page like a waterfall.  First, second and third act.   Beginning, middle and the end.

Met and flirted with Brendan Fallis who is super cute.  Steam room buddy.

Even though I am having a great time, I still irrationally fear bumping into Jake.  Consequently there is something utterly ruined about these New York streets.  Like after a blitz or something.  Strewn with emotional rubble.

There seems to be a Jake clone on every corner and every time I see a man who looks like him I shudder.

I think of the special moments we shared here.  Making love in the Jane Hotel.  Reaching out and touching him in the street.   Kissing him for the first time this time last year in the back of that bar on Third Avenue.  Then the sadness comes.  The questions, the feeling that I have been punched in the stomach.

If I’m hurt…can you imagine how badly that girl feels that he deceived for 7 years?  Poor love.  I hope she got herself back on her feet.  Found somewhere nice to live…met a nice guy.  She’s lucky she escaped.  If he was beginning to do meth when I met him he’ll be HIV positive in no time at all.  What a fucking cliché.

Hurt people, hurt people.

Yet, I exist in two completely different spheres.  The reality of my life outweighs the fantasy.

As if to prove a point I had dinner with Federico, my artist friend from Palermo.   We ate at Westville.  The food came late but the conversation was very lively so it didn’t seem to matter.   Then, my NYU poet friend Anthony joined us and we headed west to meet Hamish Bowles.

Hamish greeted me warmly.  We’d met a couple of times many years ago.

Hamish is the real deal.  The man Patrick Kinmonth and Issie Blow wished they could have been.

My fantasy about Hamish: that he went to Eton, life served effortlessly to him….couldn’t be further from the truth.

We actually had rather a lot in common.  He too lived in Kent during his formative years.  Went to a grammar school in Canterbury.  We would have been knocking about Canterbury at exactly the same time…probably both very horny gay teenagers wondering where we could get cock.

Like Fenton Bailey he succeeded in spite of everything.  In spite of his difference.

Hamish is primarily an academic, but his glamorous day job is the European Editor at Large for Vogue.  He is a respected authority on both worlds of fashion and interior design.

In April 2001 he was appointed creative consultant at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, with responsibility for organizing and mounting the internationally renowned and critically acclaimed Costume Institute Exhibition, “Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years—Selections from the John F. Kennedy Library Museum”.

Hamish has a huge collection of haute couture that he lends to museums and galleries all over the world.  The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Fashion Institute of Technology, and The Museum of the City of New York in Manhattan; the Palais Galliera and The Musee de la Mode, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Museum of London in London among others.

Recently he curated the Cristóbal Balenciaga show at The Spanish Institute.  Opened by Queen Sofía of Spain entitled, “Balenciaga: Spanish Master,” the show examines the work of Cristóbal Balenciaga and his Spanish influences.   60 pieces of clothing and accessories including some from Hamish’s own collection and many unseen publicly before.

Balenciaga

I am going to see the show on Tuesday.

We discussed Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre, he had just seen at a private screening for Anna Wintour.  You’ll remember that Jake and I met Cary this summer in Whitstable with Mia.  Hamish said that, although a bit slow, he loved the film and cried all the way through.  He reported that the costumes were perfect and historically accurate.  He said that Mia’s performance was excellent.

Discussed Michael Bessman’s house that once belonged to the Baron de Meyer.

I cried all the way home.  I couldn’t help myself.

I should be really happy.  Deep down I am.  I just need to learn how to consistently mine the joy I know is there.

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Categories
art

Billy Childish

Billy Childish 2/1/2011

I spent the morning writing lists.

Decided NOT to go to Florence as I couldn’t make the bloody SNCF website take my frigging credit card.  So, I booked into Dean Street Town House and decided to spend some days in London instead.  After all..London is by far a more exciting city than Florence.

By Midday I had made all manner of plans with various friends.  Toby Mott, Tim and others.

Whilst in town have resolved to throw myself into AA meetings, which I have been loathed to do since I arrived.

The day could have ended there but, on a whim, decided to pop in on artist/writer/rocker/father of two Billy Childish who is enjoying something of an art world reprise.

The day would get not only very much better but also very expensive.

I have known Billy since we were at Medway Art College Foundation Course in the late seventies.   Another one of my up and down explosive relationships…but I have always been a great supporter of his and he me.  An unlikely friendship.

When I lived in Whitstable I would spend most Sunday afternoons with Billy and his Mother June.  Delicious roast chicken lunch every Sunday.

For the longest time I thought that he would end up like artist and dandy Sebastian Horsley:  successful once dead. Thankfully that has not come to pass.

Billy’s monumental new work has become monumentally well received.  After a sell out show at the Basel Art Fair and a major New York exhibition in an important gallery planned for the end of the year I can perfectly understand why he seems so confident.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwb6v2tkqRA]

These new paintings are unbelievably beautiful and really hard for the Art Establishment to ignore.   The new work has an impeccable provenance.   Obvious influences include German Expressionists: Erich Heckel, Kirchner, Nolde.

Dreamlike reworking of earlier paintings as well as bold painterly portraits of Billy’s great heroes (Jean Sibelius) and when I was there, an epic series of paintings reworking images from the Battle of Wounded Knee.

Billy has been cruelly left out in the cold for nearly thirty years.  The art world added insult to injury by choosing to patronize the second-rate antics of Tracy Emin over her acknowledged mentor and ‘inspiration’.

I remember introducing Jay Jopling to Billy in Whitstable one Sunday afternoon and was shocked by Jay’s indifference.  Jay told me after the meeting that he thought Billy ‘aggressive and tricky’.

It brings a tear to my eye to see him finally and rightfully accepted into the fold.

Today I filmed him painting in his studio.

People ask him how long it takes to paint a painting.   “What can I say?”   Stabbing at a ten foot high canvas with his charcoal.   “An afternoon or thirty years?”

The new work is huge.

Of course it’s huge!  He is no longer restricted…physically…no longer painting in his bedroom.  He is being acknowledged.  He has a huge studio.  His wings no longer clipped.

These paintings are important.

We talked at length about Tracy Emin his long time ex girlfriend…who, when he saw her the time before last, rudely told him that she could not be bothered to hang out with anyone who ‘hadn’t realized their potential‘.

Tracy!  What a pompous cow!  Liar to boot.

Anyway, since the upturn in his fortunes she is suddenly very friendly with Billy.  He will, by far, crush her with his fame and fortune….even though he has no intention of doing either.

Tracy is a silly girl…she believes in her own greatness whilst all the time using made up stories to fuel interest in it.    Tracy, you mad cow…listen to me…we all realize our potential sooner or later…sometimes quickly…sometimes slowly.

I have a huge collection of Billy’s work.   Beautiful things.

Julie, Scout and Billy 2/1/11

Categories
art

I Love Whitstable

I love Shoreditch too.  I love Soho.  I love rioting students.

I love (particularly) the paint splattered Rolls that the parasite Prince Charles and the hag Camilla were caught in the other day by the ‘off with their heads’ militant protestors.  hahaah.

I am really loving being home. It has settled something in me.

After my fuck session (which will do me for some time I might add) I wandered happily all over Shoreditch.

I stopped in at a number of cool looking shops:  like the funky Japanese run clothes shop that sold padded linen overwear, the odd man’s pop up shop that sold Swedish soldiers head-gear and ‘vintage’ socks.

A shop that sells second-hand mens socks.  Eww.

I dropped into White Cube and resisted calling Jay.  The show was spectacularly lame.   The entire space devoted to a 37 year old artist called Rachel Kneebone.  Lamentations 2010 is the name of the downstairs show.  Huge white porcelain tangled/mangled/reconstituted genitals on huge marble plinths set against slate grey walls..beautifully lit.  The usual soulless, inchoate nonsense you might expect to find in White Cube.  They reminded one..obviously of the Chapman brothers and their obsession with the dark, chaotic imagery of the unconscious.

White Cube

Jay is already showing new artists who cannibalize existing White Cube artists.  Apparently Kneebone is expressing the ‘trauma of death, loss and grief’ and shown differently these works might very well have achieved her aim but so elegantly displayed they had the guts knocked right out of them.  I went upstairs to see the rest of the show but was told to leave as I had the dog with me.  I wasn’t leaving the Little Dog outside so I left.

I wandered around.  I met a man in the street who offered to blow me but I hadn’t showered that morning after a night of sex… I declined more for his benefit.

I found a wonderful shop called Labour and Wait which can be found at:

Labour and Wait

This charming store is really worth a visit.  I thought, when I found the 1940’s lilac, enameled milk-boiling pot pictured below:  Oooh, I thought, my friend Marilyn Phipps would like this.

As if by magic..who did I bump into today?

Marilyn Phipps!

Marilyn has the most wonderful home in Seasalter called The Battery.

The Battery, a nineteenth-century naval building, is a huge, bright blue, wooden house that sits right on the Whitstable beach and faces onto a 120ft secluded sea-front.  The Battery is a shrine to Forties ‘utility’. The kitchen was put in during the Forties when the house was used as a holiday retreat for disadvantaged children.

Marilyn has carried on the Forties theme throughout the house. The two huge wooden doors between the dining room and kitchen were made in the Forties for Ramsgate post office. The kitchen walls are lined with teapots, sugar shakers, vinegar jars, and salt cellars.

A huge kitchen clock was bought locally and the chunky table was already there.

The Battery can be incredibly hard to keep warm. Marilyn solved her problem by installing an enormous wood-burner for the dining room. She painted it midnight blue, making it more abstract sculpture than functional heater…she calls it The Beast.

The Battery has a fascinating history and features in the book Wooden Houses. It was built as two big wooden sheds at the end of the nineteenth century.  The first housed two cannons, the second was a drill hall for sailors, and during WW1 it was a convalescent home for wounded soldiers.

Marilyn still get’s people visiting who remember it from their childhood holidays in the Forties, saying they had the happiest time of their life here.

Wait!  Did I tell you that they found a strangled woman in the room I was staying in at Soho House NYC?  I can’t wait to stay there again.

Categories
Gay Health

Shoreditch House

‎”During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” –George Orwell

Sitting high above Shoreditch listening to German film producers discuss the “Vest Village”.

A beautiful black girl is swimming in the pool.

I am drinking coffee, eating poached eggs and listening to Haydn’s cello concerto.

It is a beautifully gray London day.  The bitterness has vanished, no longer raw…swept out of the city northward to snowy Scotland.

As per all of the subscribe requests.  When I go private on the 21st I think you will be prompted by the site to apply etc.  I’ve no idea…does anyone else know?

Last night student demonstrators separated the royal cars from their out riders and scared the poor Duchess of Cornwall.  Good pictures on BBC website.  Nasty old cow.

I have spent the past few days in Worcester with Tim and my God daughter Immy.   Drove up North after a busy Wednesday in London.   I had lunch with Edward (a new collectible) and Andrei my young friend who is currently studying political science at Cambridge.  Andrei is not gay but has been voted his colleges GLBT representative.  How is that for inclusive?

I met Andrei on a train when he was 17.  Of course he wants to make film but has decided, very sensibly, to go to film school when he is 30-when he has something to say.

After our lunch we met Charlie in Soho who was very impressed with Andrei but not so with Edward who he had met three times before but Edward never remembered.

Edward flies to NYC today.  Startlingly handsome, intelligent, elegantly dressed and really enjoying his young gay life.

Edward has just turned 24 years old.

He is being flown to NYC by a rich American he met briefly at a party last weekend.

Remember those days?

Thank you Freddy for doing the same when I was a little younger than Edward.

After lunch/tea I drove to Chelsea to be formally charged with Common Assault.

The kids who I had the screaming fit with this summer after Jake’s iPod went missing (he lost it in a drunken black out)…anyway, those kids refused to drop the charges so I will have to go to court and deal with it.

Any fine I may pay I will sue Jake for half of.

Sex Rehab is showing on British TV so I am beginning to have people come up to me here.  It’s fun.  Not as intimidating as I thought it might be.

Worcester is a pretty cathedral town in the Midlands.  I am sure that it very pretty in the summer.  Nowhere in England looks that good on a miserable wet winter evening.  Had a great time with Tim.  He seems to be getting on very well after his triple heart bypass.

Andrei

Last night I met Edward for a quick drink in Soho and then manhunt date number 19 turns up.  A BEAUTIFUL french man with green eyes.  We quickly made our way to Shoreditch to his ex council apartment and fucked for a very long time.  One of the better parts of my inheritance from Jake.  My new-found ability to fuck.

We fucked and fucked and fucked.

I still think about Jake when I fuck.

We had a really amazing time.  This morning he asked if I wanted to see him again.  I said yes but I meant no.  He knew what I meant.

Hospital on Tuesday morning.  Not thinking about it.  9.45am.

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Categories
Gay

This is Nearly at an End

Dear Readers,

So, many of you have followed this blog since the beginning.  I don’t mean this time around but when I was writing in 2005/2006 before I shut it down.

I shut it down last time for the same reasons I am going to shut it down this time: because it suits me.  There is no pressure, no threat, no coercion from anyone in particular.  Not from slime ball or his slime ball family.  Not from anyone.

Even though my friend Sharon Marshall thinks I will never get another boyfriend when they read this..the truth is, I wouldn’t/couldn’t get another boy friend with or without this blog.

There are a host of other reasons not to be my boy friend other than what I have written here about Jake or others.  There are plenty of published reasons not to have anything to do with me what so ever.

I will list some of them:

ex con

Celebrity gossip

appalling reputation

don’t drink or take drugs

elitist

bad temper

Well, the list just goes on and on.  The blog merely let people know how shameless I am about all the above.

Those same people refuse to acknowledge any triumph I might have had.  It is as if I were only ever bad…well, my dears, you get what you pay for.

Nope, the blog is going private because I decided that on the 21st December 2010 I would cease to publicly blog.  It was on this day last year that Jake contacted me (see below) and my world was blown apart.

It was on that day that a man with shady intentions hijacked my life and for all the love I felt and all the hate I endured I wouldn’t have it any other way.   I am grateful to have been able to share with you what he and men like him try to get away with.

It is QUITE RIGHT that he is shamed publicly for doing what he did.  What he did to me and his girl friend of seven and half years is far worse than any crime I may have committed.

Ask any woman who has been lied to.

He will never face a court for what he did but he deserves to.

I am moved that so many of you shared your own stories of being cheated on and lied to.  He described you as sycophants.  I describe every one of you as my friends.  I want you to know that you have helped me tremendously.   I don’t know what I would have done without every single one of you.

Each anonymous message of support.

As of the 21st December I will set this blog to private and if you want to read what I have been up to you will have to subscribe.  This will please the 1000 of you who routinely log in every day.

Jake, only a few more days until your name, as you wished it, will be divorced from mine.  Your picture, as your Father wanted, unaligned to me.  How dare they ask me to remove pictures of him from my blog?  As if he deserved anonymity?  For all the world your ‘silly mistakes’ will be erased.  Your head resting gently on my shoulder.  How you must hate that picture!

I might remind you that this time last year I was really happy, enjoying my after sex rehab life.  Enjoying watching the show with Jennie at our new apartment in Hollywood.

But all of that came to an abrupt end.

The day before you wrote to me you were reading my blog assuming that my life as an out gay man could be yours.  That the people with whom I consorted, the locations I inhabited you might have.   You didn’t want me Jake.  You wanted my life.

Your pathetic half Persian therapist will never get the measure of you Jake because she is being paid by your parents to make it all better.  You need moral guidance.

So, this time last year I am in NYC interviewing agents, David Vigliano etc. and little Jake B the virtual Literary Agent in Arlo and Esme on 1st Street wondering why he is so damned shy and awkward.  Thinking it had more to do with me being on TV than what was actually going on..that he wanted me to fuck him behind his girlfriend’s back.

He told me later that he wanted me to take him downstairs and fuck him in the bathroom.   Now I know, of course, that the sweet little pussy I came to love had been shagged senseless a million times by Pal (amongst others) and his HIV cock.   His dear pussy that I loved, was just another New York City whore hole.

Without doubt my relationship with Jake prolonged a long-held misery that I had worked very hard in rehab to overcome.

I am an artist (try taking that away from me) and, though many will not agree, this last year or so of blogging has been my art, my catharsis, a continuation of the greater conceptual art of being in a reality TV show.

In no time at all every mean thing I have written here will be forgotten.

In earlier posts, where I have been vile about people, those gripes and recriminations vanished.  Time is a great healer.

Time will hush the screaming, resentful voice that propels us.

Resentment sucks the life out of a memory until it cannot be remembered.

Sorry Sharon, frankly my dear I don’t give a shit who reads about me or my life or what they think of it or, more importantly, how it might alienate me.  The damage is already done. It was done years ago.  When you came to Sydney to interview me about Hurley.  When I was sent to prison for over spending on my credit card…

This is what he wrote:

Hi Duncan,

I’m a literary agent with xxxx, based in NYC. Introduced to you courtesy of VH1. Read your article in The Daily Beast, which I savored for the honest details behind the show–none of which come as a surprise. Anyway, your article led me to your blog. I love the honesty in your writing (plus it’s also refreshing to see someone from a reality tv show who can form a coherent sentence), and I get the impression that you’ve been through a lot in your life. At the risk of sounding just like the opportunistic reality tv producers you’ve worked with, I will admit that a reality program is often a good platform for a book–but more importantly, you have an interesting story, voice, and you know how to write. I figured it was worth a shot reaching out. Perhaps you are already sufficiently represented on the publishing side, but either way I am wondering if you have thought realistically about writing a book.

Warm Regards,

Jake B

Dear Jake,

I am presently meeting agents with a view to representation. I have met with three so far and have not yet made any decision.

I and flattered that you contacted me and do feel free to call me at your convenience.

Hi Duncan,

Nice to hear back from you and sounds good…I’ll be in touch very soon.

Best,

Jake

Categories
Health

Ear Bar

Joe and I would go get dinner (usually steak) and very drunk in the Ear Bar on Spring Street.

Originally called the Bear bar..renamed when the B fell off.  One of the oldest existing taverns in the United States and one of the few existing examples of Federal architecture in New York.

I have wanted to get very drunk these past few nights.  I have wanted to blot out everything in my fucking pea brain with a huge amount of wine and beer.

Marc bought a bottle of Montepulciano to drink with the pheasant.  It smelt divine.

Woke up feeling so sad.

I am in Whitstable until Thursday then I have to get up and make a move.  Must go stately home hopping.   Must see the insides of huge and beautiful homes smelling of nutmeg and fir.  Must sit by roaring fires.  Must flay myself socially once again.

I am so disappointed.  So sad.  even though I know he isn’t sometimes I think I can hear him calling out to me in the night and I wake up and I think I can’t ignore him..he might need me.

Everything is just fine in Los Angeles CA.  Ashley called yesterday after her jaunt with Christina Aguilera’s husband in Miami.   I can’t wait to see her, speak with her properly about everything.

Up and down on this fucking roller coaster.  Up and down.

Categories
Health Rant

Guilty as Charged

Plagued with appalling thoughts and feelings.  Has more to do with going home than anything else.

Fatigued.

Have to go to vet to get the Little Dog a certificate to travel and the tick and worm treatments that are mandatory for our trip to Europe.

Yesterday in terrible funk.   Had breakfast with Dan in East Village.  Lunch with Pierre in Chelsea.  Late tea with Amelia and Andres at Gitane then walked North to see Wendy Asher’s curated street art show back in Chelsea.   The gallery belongs to Robin William’s son.  The art was terrible.  The guests?  Rich women from the Hampton’s.

An LA show in NYC.  Perched precariously at the edge of some aesthetically inchoate oblivion.  Will sell out.  Doesn’t deserve to.

I wandered around the city in a daze.  Dreading bumping into Jake.  In every coffee shop there seemed to be short, bearded men who looked just like him diligently working at their laptops.  Every single time I saw someone who even vaguely resembled the poison dwarf I felt sick.  Is this what being in NYC is going to be like?

I have not felt like this since I was in Sydney 13 years ago after Jamie and I split up.  Foreboding.

I am perfectly sure he is delighted by my unending, nauseating apprehension.

It is like being gripped by the throat.

How did I deal with it last time?  I kept praying and praying to be relieved of the obsession.

When I think about this coherently I know that this has more to do with my fear of going home and what awaits me there.  Not only do I have to deal with my balls but I also have the tail end of the iPod situation to deal with.

Everything is such a MESS.   Remember how buoyant I felt before I met him?  I was sexually sober, looking for a book agent (or rather, they were looking for me) mind cleared of rancid thoughts….now look.  I think I need to go back into rehab.  This is almost WORSE than before.

One stupid Facebook message later and there he was, this dull barbarian invading my life.

I keep trying to persuade myself to take action.

Somebody asked yesterday how I could possibly fallen so hard for ‘somebody so patently unsophisticated’.  Exactly.  But as I have written a million times before…love has no logic.  Nor does hatred…so it seems.

What formerly delighted me now sickens me.

He would like you to believe that he is a seasoned world traveller, close to glamour, sophisticated and erudite.   I imagine that his new friends think he is all those things but when you hang out with kitchen salesmen upstate then you can be pretty much what you want to be.

If you look at his public Facebook pictures they are designed to deceive you into believing that he is one thing when he is most patently not.  The truth is that the picture of him by the Oscar is totally fraudulent (under his suit he is scarred by poison oak) and the pictures taken of him in Peru and the South of France were taken by people who loved him and over whom he ran roughshod.

Cheating and lying.

Wearing my hat,  taking my time when all he wanted was his new friends.   I took many pictures that month we were away but he didn’t take one of me.  Not one.

Rather pathetically he is seen in one picture stroking his cat in his old apartment with his gf.  The caption reads ‘the good old days’ or something equally, utterly bogus.   The good old days for him maybe…as he was living a totally double life literally risking the health and well-being of the woman he told he loved yet lied to every single fucking day.

Oh yeah, go on Jake be sophisticated and fabulous at other people’s expense.   Charm them with your lies and your cock.  But just remember that I am out there keeping an eye on you.

I gave you the chance of making this good but you declined my offer.

On August the 21st I offered you a kind goodbye and you spat such venom at me…after everything I did for you.  After every late night call.  After being there for you.

Every time I tried to break it off you came crawling back like the SNIVELLING prick that you are.  I showed you my most vulnerable underbelly and you stabbed me in the heart.   Nobody will treat me like that again and, if I have my way, you will never treat anyone like you have treated me and your ex gf.

You may be laughing in all those pictures designed to ensnare other men, you may have a host of sycophantic friends around you who believe that you are a good guy, a naive innocent…but sooner or later your machinations will get the better of you.  Just you wait and see.

Categories
Dogs

Veselka

NYC November. Beautiful day. Breakfast here in Veselka the polish restaurant on 9th Street then apartment hunting. I hope I don’t bump into him. I really do. I don’t know what I would do. Not angry with Jake today. Being back here in the thick of my life but laying on a bed where we had once been. I am getting over this so damned slowly. I keep wondering how many lies he told me? Who is this guy Richard Brooks who writes to me? His friend?

I remember him telling me that he would hang around his old apartment at night looking up at the window. Wishing that he was inside. That was when I gave a fuck. Now his behaviour just seems creepy and weird. A lonely drunk on the corner of a windswept street looking up at the window of someone whose life he had effectively stolen.

How would he feel if I hung out on the corner of his street in Westchester? Ewww.

Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to live such a lie, so complete, so utterly avoidable. Then I remember that for a few years I did..when I changed my name.

What must it feel like to wake up on the eve of your thirties and know that your conflicted life until that point had not been lived at all. Avoiding ones nature. In opposition to ones own nature?

Part of me wonders if Jake and I shouldn’t attempt to say that kind goodbye I so badly wanted in August but he dashed..then..the questions I need answering (haunting) one can’t imagine he would answer truthfully. He is such a fucking liar.

Sometimes I wonder if we will ever forgive one another? If that is possible?

I am looking at places in Gramercy Park and both East and West Village. Two bedrooms so I can have people stay. I am going to have what I want.

I left LA early yesterday morning. Ashley drove me to the airport.

I arrived in NYC yesterday afternoon, made my way into town, walked the dog. Met a man from off-line. Joan and Joe picked me up at 7.30. We had dinner in the West Village at the Little Owl. Met Amelia at the opening (soft) of the Derby. It was very shrill in there. The whole place needs calming down. Amelia very disgruntled. Used to having an audience of adoring fans she stands there miserably belting out songs for noisy, unappreciative diners.

Walked home at 2am and stopped in at the Phoenix. Sat with a friend.

Life becomes immediately full when I get here. January 1st I will be here full-time.

Categories
Malibu

14 Years Sober Today

There were many times when I was with him that I wanted to drink.  Not because I wanted to get drunk but because I wanted to be where he was.

I didn’t want to feel apart from him.  I wanted to share his experience.  Our experience as he experienced it.  Making love after a couple of glasses of wine.

Wanting so much to feel that warm glow that I remember being ever so slightly tipsy affords me.

So glad I didn’t.  Could you imagine giving up sobriety for him?  For anyone?  I shudder when I think about it.

The desire to fit in never really goes away.

So, yet again, fate has been kind.  I’m lucky to have escaped without totally ruining my life.  I’m telling you if I was drinking now I would never be able to deal with half of what is being thrown at me.

Even though we have been estranged.  My relationship with AA has really been the best thing that ever happened to me.

Even though I don’t want to believe it.

My relationship with LA AA has been particularly beneficial.

Going back to my 7am meeting in the Palisades.   That’s why I’ve been waking at 5am, write this blog then schlepping down the mountain to that little room.  It was the men in that room that persuaded me to move here to California.  After a couple of years of getting involved I stopped going.  The personalities there started to annoy me.  I stopped listening.  So, this time, I have been pretending I don’t know anyone.  Like it’s my first time.  Listening for the similarities, going back to basics.  Relearning the language of AA.

It has been a time of great reflection.  AA birthdays always make one think of how life might have been if I hadn’t stopped drinking.   Good God.   I was always so angry.  Every day.

My anger is so destructive.  I wonder if it has anything to do with that massive head injury I suffered when I was a kid?

Even though you might not believe it, I really hate me when I am angry (really hate me) and as you have seen these past few months I am not well served when I get angry.  Letting myself down like that.  Love, it seems, not only brings me sorrow but makes me very angry.  Angry is not the man I want to be.

My real father was a very angry man.  Not my step-father.  My real father was pathologically angry.  My step-father was just frustrated by me. If I hadn’t been around he would have been much calmer.  Probably.  There I go again, letting him off the hook.

So, I shall be off in a minute.  Making my entrance again with my usual flair.

I had my Manhunt date Number Seven last night.  It was lovely.  Let’s see what happens.  I told him about the blog and (you wont believe this) I decided that after this entry I wouldn’t write about what happens between us.  Do I wish I hadn’t written about Jake?  No, he deserved it.  To be written about.  But, I may have learned my lesson.  Some things just need to be not written about.

I’ll tell you this before I keep my mouth shut:

We walked up Abbot Kinney in Venice.  We ate at all the food trucks.  It was really, really sweet.

The house is now officially on the market.  First viewing today.  I am in two minds.  Part of me doesn’t want to sell.  Part of me is desperate to.  I will never have the opportunity to own such a gorgeous house ever again but buying a small place in NYC is perhaps a better idea.

Jerome popped by yesterday and said, “You have too much stuff.”

He’s right.

I spent a great part of yesterday getting rid of half of my books.  I now have a much leaner library.  Dictionaries gone.  Thanks internet.  Thanks Kindle.  Thanks new technology.  Thanks spell-check.

I am not the sort of person who hoards crap.  Everything I have is beautiful and could probably sell for exactly or even more than I bought it.

I love heavy, white linen.  When the house is rented I put colored sheets on the bed.  Now I live here full-time I have stripped off the dark green sheets and remade the bed with my freshly laundered, white Irish linen.

It is still dark.  Waiting for the dawn.  The light on my desk attracts moths.  Tiny little moths.  I crush them and put them in the bin.

A HUGE cricket just landed on my desk.

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.

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