Tag: New York

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Gay Love Malibu

Am I Weak?

I had no idea yesterday was Friday. I thought it was Wednesday. That’s how disorienting the mountain can be.

I have been trapping squirrels. Peanut butter and Weetabix. My secret weapon. The little dog at my side. Spent the rest of the day under the deck clearing dead leaves.

Paid water bill in Malibu, picked up some milk.

Dinner with friends. Crappy Cafe Habana. The rudest waitress on the planet.

Cold mist over the mountain. The weather is totally fucked up.

Apparently The ‘A’ List is very amusing.  Ian had an advance screener.  I probably don’t come off very well.  Never mind.  I am, according to Ian…referred to as ‘smelly’.   Watch the show on Logo, Monday night.  More will be revealed.

Because you love me (huh?) an anonymous ‘friend’ out there decided to send a recent picture of Jake.

Please don’t do it. As you are well aware, it just inflames the situation.

I don’t want to see him or hear anything about him.  I am at peace with him. Want the best for him.

I forgave him for writing that horrible email, for lying to me.  His lies, in retrospect, were perfectly understandable.  He was in a terrible situation.  I forgive you for being selfish and insensitive….for doing what perhaps all your non-sober friends would think perfectly reasonable.

I forgive you for wanting me to be something I never was.  I forgive you because you didn’t know.

What is my part in all of this? When everyone around me was warning not to get involved I ignored you all. I ignored John. I ignored Mr. P. I ignored Dr. D and my therapist Jill.  Instead of going to meetings and connecting with dependable friends I sank into my addiction. Acting out with a straight identified man.

Regardless of what he morphed into…he was not mine to love.  It is indeed very alluring to be told that you are loved but I am old enough, experienced enough to have seen it for what it was.  I chose not to.

I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger. I’m sorry for bruising you inside and out. I’m sorry that I couldn’t stop myself from loving you. I’m sorry that I was insensitive and selfish. I’m sorry for shouting.  I’m sorry I lied.  Most of all, I was wrong to have waged this war against you, not least because I have done myself irreparable damage.

I was wrong.

I was weak.

I fell for him…as many will.

You are a beautiful, sexy, romantic, intelligent man. Above all…you are curious.  If you are not already, you will make someone very happy, very proud.  You will make some equally honorable man a great husband, you will be a good father.

I wanted you for myself. In a different narrative that wouldn’t be so bad. But you had just come out, bravely left one life to make something brand new.   I should have been a support, a conduit.

Peace comes from acceptance and forgiveness.

I hope one day you will find it in your heart to forgive.  I don’t need to know that you have.

My Whitstable mash up…I was his age when I made that video and it reminded me of what sort of man I was. Unprepared. I was unprepared and willful.

I imagine that he is out there doing his best to be honest. Living in New York, working every day.

Connecting to his new gay life.

I hope he marvels at his good fortune: his new gay life. The opportunities it affords. With marriage and babies and freedom…it’s a great time in New York to be a gay man.

Both Zach and Dan told me that I should stop writing about Jake.  Zach told me that it made me sound weak.  Well, that maybe.  Weak or not, it’s time to move on.

At some point soon I have to remove (yet again) any reference to him from this blog. Any photograph, his name etc. It just has to be.  Not because I am being forced but because it is the right thing to do.  As if it never happened. As if we never happened.

This blog and his name written here ties him to me as much as I have strapped myself to him like a suicide bomb.

So, Adieu my friend.

I am writing this at The Country Mart in Malibu waiting for Karim as he stands in line for our lunch.

He is off to Patmos, Paris, Antibes and Athens for the rest of the summer. Places I love.

Some of those places we visited.  I will cherish those memories.  I will overlook the problems.  I will keep quiet now about what we loved most because only we know.

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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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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
Travel

Illegal Alien

I am in Sierra Blanca, a two-horse strip of nothing near El Paso Texas.  I should be in Marfa looking at art but life has a remarkable way of getting in the way of ones intentions.

Yesterday started off badly and ended up even worse.

We woke up in the New Inn Willcox.  The four of us.  Grumpy and tired.

We set off for Marfa, ended up in Las Cruces by the Rio Grande.

This tiny, charming place made famous by the forests of pecans and pistachios planted around the town.  There was a small street market where we baked in the midday sun.

I found a dedicated AA meeting-house.

Bagel was worried by our travelling through these southern border towns because his Swedish passport was well out of date.   We scoffed.  We weren’t going anywhere near the border.  Yet, the proximity still scared him.

After lunch everyone was in great spirits, the road was clear, we were making good time.   Lively, intelligent conversation.  That was until we were funneled into a homeland security border control and everything went to shit.

Big time.

We were routinely stopped and asked if we were US citizens.

None of us are.

Of course within minutes they discovered that Thomas’s (Bagel) passport was out of date and he had over stayed his welcome in the USA.

Then, to my horror they told me that my passport had problems and I too was detained.

Detained.  For the next twenty hours I underwent a harrowing scrutiny.

I must say however that all of the border control agents, the ICE patrol guys and every single official I came into contact with was courteous, kind and helpful.

Quite unlike any British police officer..except the detective I met last summer with the sociopath.

These men and women have a tough, demanding job but, from what I saw, within that tiny little office at the edge of Interstate 10 there is a good family atmosphere.  They seem to mainly deal with cannabis infractions.  The sniffer dogs leaping on anyone with weed in their car.

Each dog is an official agent and has it’s own badge.

Just as I was leaving they brought in ten young goth men and women.  Their tattoos and piercings at odds with the uniformed officers.

Again, I only saw the agents be utterly polite, once going out of their way to fetch an elder lady a wheel chair.

My situation was more complicated than Thomas’s as he had simply over stayed.  So, after many, many phone calls I was released with my passport re-stamped correctly.

Thomas was not so lucky and is now languishing in an alien holding camp with a thousand other illegal aliens.

Of course all I worried about was the Little Dog who had to sit in a huge cage whilst they were processing me.  He looks a little traumatized this morning.  If I had been traveling on my own they would have called the pound.

It does not bear thinking about.

So, here we are.  In El Paso at a cool coffee-house near the convention center hooked up to the internet waiting for 6 o’clock to roll around so we can visit Thomas.   The Dane is obviously worried about his friend so we are obliged to curtail our trip.

This means that I will be in New York for the premiere of Transformers 3 and other choice events.

I have a great deal to achieve this coming week.  I have hospital appointments, friends arriving from London and LA for my birthday party.

I am just thankful that the border immigration folk expedited my passport problem.

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Rant

This Little Piggy

Good God, such an incredible day. I didn’t make it to the island.

The beautiful Dane visited instead. We have a good thing going. He is incredibly sanguine. For a Dane that’s pretty damned unusual. He sweeps back his long hair, looks directly into my soul with his grey/blue eyes. When we hugged goodbye I could feel his heart pounding in his chest.

He saw that I had been hurt, that I was angry. He wanted to know what had been happening. I didn’t tell him about the recent past. I don’t want to sully this sweet arrangement with anything sour.

I went to AA meeting after he caught his train. It wasn’t a great meeting. A Brit with an attitude.

Spent the afternoon arranging my birthday party. After last years miserable fiasco in Whitstable with him and his anal leakage. This year I am going to push the fucking boat out. So, today I started planning. In a few short hours: Venue booked, performers booked. Dinner for thirty then a good old fashioned hootenanny for 50 more after dinner guests. Aleksa and Devon, Amelia…it’s going to be a blast. Publicist, photographers. Just like it should have been last year.

New York!

This evening I went to a bar called KGB on 4th Street to my friend Anthony’s poetry reading. He is definitely going to read at my party. He was fantastic.

On the way home I stopped in at This little Piggy on 1st Ave which sells, of course, roast beef. I stood at the bar stuffing myself with beef, drinking orange soda and tapping my foot to Frank Sinatra. To top it off he didn’t charge me because he recognised me from Sex Rehab. Ah, the spoils of war.

I am home now, just jumped off the phone. Amelia and I…plotting and schemeing.

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Death Gay

Catastrophe!

The past few weeks have been really interesting.

Annoyingly I’ve not been able to write about most or any of it and will not be able to in the foreseeable future.

As I have said before, as life gets really interesting the blog becomes less relevant.   Real life interrupts blog life and for that I am very grateful.

Eventually, when I am allowed, I will explode all over the blog and tell all but for the time being I am keeping my BIG MOUTH SHUT.

I am having to be covert.

Presently staying with friends whose main morning preoccupation is to read really bad news out loud off of the internet.  The corruption, the greed and the misery we create around the globe gleefully read out loud to their increasingly cynical children.

Frankly, there is no reason for a young child to have the worst possible news read out to them first thing in the morning as they prepare for school.  Scares them.  Scared me when I was a kid.  All that bad news about nuclear weapons.  I had a recurring nightmare about the atom bomb exploding.  On my own walking home from junior school up Windmill Road, Whitstable just in sight of my family home…when the atom bomb detonates.  A blinding light then a fierce, hot wind.  All I could think about was that I had to get home.  Of course, there was no home to get back to.

Right now my friend is telling her 8-year-old, “Brain damage is linked to cell phone use…”

Like a fairy story.

They had a lunch here on Sunday for two German friends.  A well-known actress and her film industry husband.   Within two minutes of arriving he announced the death of Perry Moore a man I knew in passing from New York.  Perry produced the Narnia films.  Years ago Toby Mott, Noreena Hertz and I had lunch with Perry and Tatum O’Neal at Freeman’s on Rivington when it was hot to have lunch there.  Perry and Tatum were both very drunk and weirdly abrasive.  Terry Richardson joined us for coffee.

Toby Mott, Noreena Hertz and? NYC

I was not shocked to hear about Perry’s death as it was somehow gay inevitable.  His father sadly telling the press that his son was on fine form the day before.  Well, nobody ever expects the death of a healthy young man, no father ever expects to bury his son.

Unless, of course, their son leads a double life.  We live, as gay men, lives away from our loved ones. Compartmentalized, fine one day..dead the next, slumped in the bathroom…oxycotin overdose.   It is too familiar to me.  So sad.

It would not surprise me if Jake ended up like Perry.

Anyway the German made some flip remark about Perry dying and gay people in general.  He didn’t realize that I was gay.  He didn’t realize that I was half Iranian so later made equally racist, inappropriate remarks about Iranian films winning the Berlin Film Festival.

Sometimes you just have to take the bullet so…I challenged him.  Within minutes he was threatening to punch my fag lights out.  His wife apologized for his behaviour.

They left.

Scratch most white Germans and a jackbooted Nazi goose steps out of the wound.

Samia Saouma my Lebanese ex-friend, gallery owner who lives in Berlin and is arguably one of the chicest women in the world was once applying her lipstick in the back of a cab when her white driver told her that she was a rag-head whore who should prepare for her next trick out of his cab.

Nice.

Recently I took down a whole heap of posts from this blog.  Blogs about him.  Removed until they had no internet traction.  Yesterday I reinstated them without his name attached.  Self censorship is not a good thing.  I also reinstated the Angry Reader blog that obviously came from ‘you know who’.

It amuses and disturbs me in equal measure that he would think that every achievement, everything of which I am proud he considers worthless.  This coming from a man who has achieved NOTHING before he was thirty years old (17th May) when I, in comparison, achieved so much!  Much more than anyone ever predicted.

By the time I was thirty years old I had written and directed plays, opened a restaurant, renovated houses, travelled the world.  Christ!   I did all that as well as being mentally ill, making enemies, etc. etc.

Achievement is not to be judged by others but rather owned by oneself.

I know that he gets drunk, stoned and lonely.  I know that deep down he would prefer to resolve rather than reload.  Time will tell.  Time, as I have often quoted, is the greatest distance between two people.

I know that the we he suggests laugh at me has always laughed.  They want me imprisoned or dead.   They condemn me and they condemn my friends for being my friends.

He, on the other hand, may be surrounded by friends, family and lovers but at the end of the day he has to face himself, as we all do, in the mirror.  I saw him wrestle with his conscience.

At that moment when I was most proud of him I should have just walked away.

As for the film?  It takes shape before my very eyes.  Working with CP in quite a different way than I have before.   That’s all I can say.  That’s all I want to say.

I still have no interest what so ever to meet, engage or have sex with any man.

Oscar party week.  I am not involving myself until Saturday.  Kick off festivities with Sharon…we will do the do…the merry dance.   Still, if I am honest, I can’t really be bothered.

I want to make my own film now…not celebrate the achievements of others.

P.S. Tatum O’Neal wouldn’t remember me.   She and Melanie Griffith once broke down together in an AA meeting.  Crying about the relationships they had failed to have with their children.   Meg Ryan looks like Melanie Griffith.  They must have had work by the same surgeon.  Meg Ryan wouldn’t remember me either.

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Travel

NYC Again

Flight back to New York on one of those huge two-story Air France airplanes.

Spent the past few days looking at the remaining films on the BAFTA shortlist so I can vote fairly.  Without doubt my favorite film this year (so far) is Social Network.

I love the editing, the music, the photography, the script…THE TENSION…the performances…especially that they made Zuckerberg borderline Aspergers.  It must have been the first American film I ever saw that addresses or hints at class war, that white protestants still abhor/distrust jews, etc.  It was such a heterosexual film.

(funny aside..sitting in SHLA last year listening to a bunch of jewish talent agents discussing the dearth of jews in the British film industry)

I remind myself that because of Facebook I met Jake.  So modern.

Now he has vanished from the internet…apart from what I write about him here of course…and his job…if he still has it.

As hurt as I am, the more I recover from him the more I want him to have all the riches life has to offer.  Just like I used to..when I first met him.  Whatever he gets…peace of mind may always be beyond his reach.

His troubled, beautiful head.

Now we live in the same city.

The reality is, it’s a small city so the chances are we will run into one another.   Not like living in a huge city like London…mind you I’ve only ever seen Richard Green once in tiny Whitstable since we stopped talking and that was twenty years ago.   So, it’s possible but unlikely.

Lots to think about.  I am not going to drive my stuff to NYC.  I am going to pay to have it moved.  Just take everything that’s presently in storage and the beginning of this new art collection.  So many exciting new opportunities!

I really don’t want to go back to LA but I suppose that I must.

The past few days in Paris have been so much fun!

Jessie, my very successful actress traveling companion is usually quite frugal but currently inspired to be profligate by her accountant who routinely tells her that she doesn’t spend enough.  Remedy: she ends up in Paris and spends a fortune on the Lanvin spring collection and bits from Collette.

On the other hand, I was uncharacteristically reserved having bought a great deal of art and stuff in the UK…anyway; I have far too many clothes.

Lunch at Costes.  Our waiter…James.  What a dream.  EVERYWHERE we turned there were dreamy French men.  Yet, as much as you might think…it was good to just look, to appreciate.   I didn’t need to own any of them.

Jessie and I met a very handsome, young, aristocratic, redheaded boy who organized a huge dinner for us with his equally handsome, aristocratic friends.  One of them told me that I had been ‘stained’ by the United States.   Of course…this is perfectly true.

After dinner we took our redhead to The Baron, which, as you are very well aware, is a very cool/exclusive club.  Jess, wearing a new Lanvin dress, danced until dawn…literally until dawn.  I think the redhead wanted us to seduce him but neither Jess nor I have the kind of relationship that can sustain a threesome.

I woke late on Sunday morning to the Gifford attempted assassination news and I was shocked back into the politics of my adopted home.   It made me so angry.

Jess doesn’t really know anything about American politics…why should she?

On Sunday we decided to walk from the Hotel Amour in Pigalle to the Tour Eiffel..we let the dog off leash in the Tuilleries and he scampered after the pigeons whilst we enjoyed the view.

Crossed the Seine at the Assemblee National, walked past the brand new Musée du quai Branly, dedicated to indigenous art from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas.  Commissioned by Jacques Chirac and designed by Jean Nouvel the building is unbelievably gorgeous even though the gardens looked a bit scrappy.

A hop skip and a jump later and there we were at the Eiffel Tower.

I hadn’t realized that there was a small lake almost directly under the tower.

We walked back over the river to the Trocadero and sat in Carette, drank hot chocolate ate delicious macaroons…my favorite being the raspberry.   There was so much to see.  Young people jumping up and down on the back tire of their bicycles, break dancers from Senegal, all sorts of kids, all very well dressed…kids dancing and singing and providing a lively, entertainment which was both unexpected and free.

We both remarked just how much freer the French are.  Free to enjoy their lives.  As much as I am loathed to admit it the English are becoming more like the Americans…plagued by petty resentments and very controlling.

I am sure that the French have their problems too but hey, I can’t understand enough to engage with their shit.

Sitting there I was reminded of an incident years ago…with John Jermyn, latterly The Marquis of Bristol.  Frustrated by the traffic and eager to get to the other side of the Seine he drove in his Range Rover down that huge flight of steps through the Palais de Chaillot that lead from Trocadero to the Eiffel Tower.

I don’t remember being arrested.  I wasn’t driving.  I was also in the car when John tried shooting a man from his range Rover on the Place de la Concord.  That was scary.  John died of aids and heroin.

We walked back up the Champs Elyse and through Place Vendome until we were safely home.

We loved staying at the Hotel Amour.  The staff are super cool and very friendly, the food was excellent, I LOVED my little room.  They treated the little dog like their very own little dog and there were Kiel’s products in the bathroom.

Unlike my time in France with Jake, Jessie would open her purse and gladly pay her share.   In fact, as a most lovely gift, she paid for our chocolate and macaroons at Carette.

The entire trip proved to be a most wonderful surprise.

Sunday night we had a quiet dinner with our smooth skinned red-headed boy.  I was in bed at 11…my legs were killing me from having walked so far (nearly 7 miles) and the magical night before at The Baron.

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 Whitstable

Bucolic

It certainly is.

Balls not withstanding.   The heavy snow and cold conditions don’t stop me from getting in my little car and driving to Canterbury.

We are only seven miles from one of the most beautiful Cathedrals cities in the world.

Meandering through the snowy Kent countryside listening to BBC Radio 4 I arrived, parked inside the Roman city walls and walked down Palace Street looking for a man to unlock my iPhone.  The ancient and the modern.

I love Canterbury, I love the tiny medieval streets, the busy shops.  I ended up buying a cell phone…as it looks as if I maybe here for longer than I anticipated and I have to keep in contact with the hospital.  I bought the correct adaptors and leads etc for my lap top so I no longer need to pop into Georgina’s and use hers.

The economy seems really good.  Really good.  The shops are packed with paying customers.  We are well out of recession.  It’s like the British are embarrassed to let the American’s know that our economy is just fine.

The average British person really doesn’t have a clue just how bad things are in the USA.  No idea at all.  They don’t know about the unemployment, the foreclosures, the corruption or the burgeoning right-wing tea party movement.  They are oblivious to Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck.

One day very soon they will wake up to a very different America and a very different world run by ignorant, xenophobic thugs.

Even on a wet, cold, miserable Tuesday in Canterbury people look quite unlike those you see not shopping in sunny Santa Monica.

All of the little restaurants and gift shops are packed with customers in Whitstable too.  The Whitstable shopping equivalent: Venice CA the shops on the main drag Abbot Kinney are still boarded up.

If things are fine why is the government hell-bent of dealing so aggressively with what is evidently a self solving problem like the deficit?  THE DEFICIT!

This British government is forcing austerity upon the nation because?  Because the people have had things so good for so long?

This country is not falling apart, seems very stable and prosperous from what I can see..but under the guise of the DEFICIT reduction plan this new government stealthily returns to Thatcher type fiscal/social conservatism.  The class havoc deliberately caused with unnecessary job reduction ends up merely furthering their class war aims.

Governments like drama.

British Governments, like Hollywood studio execs, cause problems so that they can be seen to fix them.  The people, our British people, unlike the sleepy time/weed brained/prozaced citizens of my adopted home the USA…we will get off our angry asses and break some windows.  Make our voices heard.  No, you bloody can’t start charging our children for a university education…something you had for free.  NO.

Thanks to the bankers to whom we are already indebted in so many, many ways we can give extra thanks that we can now officially add the innocuous word deficit to the list of things we are encouraged to fear.  Along with Asylum Seeker, ASBO, global warming, that millennium bug thing (remember that?) and, of course…terrorist.

DEFICIT=TERRORIST.  Something abstract and confusing to be frightened of.

In the UK everybody complains about their gas bill and it’s true that utility bills here are out of control…a recent price hike of 40%.  Where the people have no option the corporation steps in and gouges whatever it can.  Same as the Insurance industry.  The law states that you must buy car insurance so the insurance industry just demands what ever it likes from whom ever it likes.

You want to know about the hospital?   The German oncologist was very nice.   Do you need to know more?  We wait for further test results.  Who could have foreseen that a jolly German oncologist would make his way center stage into my life.

I actually feel a great deal better already.  I just trust European doctors more than American doctors and they agreed that me coming here was the best possible thing to do.  Not having to worry about paying a huge amount of money to anyone anytime soon for what should be a human right sure takes the pressure off.

After it was all over at the surgery I came home and lay down under a pile of blankets and fell asleep.  What with the Jake stuff this has not been a great year.  Not one of my best.  Not a great vintage.

The little dog just hates the snow and who can blame him?  His little paws are soaked in cold water up to the ankles.  He tags along after me very bravely.

last night Carol cooked a delicious dinner here at the house and we greedily scoffed baked potatoes, ham and a delicious salad made of crunchy endive and baby tomatoes and watercress.

Seeing Charlie tomorrow and others in London.  Going to risk the roads in my little car.

Oh yes…I read yesterday that somebody somewhere in the US press demanded that Obama get some ‘backbone’.  How dare anyone ask President Obama to have ‘backbone’ when his constituents lack any kind of skeleton what so ever.

In Obama the liberals chose a limp shield made of skin (albeit black) and gristle behind which to gripe about their own inertia.

Categories
Health

NYC/Paris/Whitstable

I am in Whitstable.  It is really cold.  The water-butt is frozen.  I slept under two comforters.

Carol woke me this morning with a fresh lemon and ginger infusion and a big plate of steaming porridge.  Ate another breakfast at Copeland House with Georgina.

It’s later on Saturday morning and I am laying under a blanket at George’s house.  Feel very beaten up.  I managed to wear myself down so badly that I now have bronchitis.

Terrible cough, phlegm, headache.  Best thing is: I am at home so everything seems very dealable with.  I am so glad that I don’t own anywhere here.  It’s so much nicer crashing at Carol’s or laying here on George’s sofa.

My head is too painful with real pain to concentrate on anything else.

Whitstable.  Last night.  Sitting with Georgina and her grand-daughter Poppy eating shepherd’s pie.  Do you remember Poppy?  Poppy!

Carol and Marc dragged me out to a small town on the other side of Canterbury to watch a ska band.  Even though I felt pretty bad it was nice to be included.

Feels safe here.  I arrived from Paris on Friday morning.  I rented a car, drove to Calais on the A1 toll road (20 euro).  Ferry to Dover (120 euros) then drove to Whitstable.  Dropped in at Wheeler’s, Dave’s and Carol’s place.

There is a cute gay boy running the new coffee shop.

Dumb man that I am…I decided to watch Brokeback Mountain again on the flight to Paris.  I could scarcely get through the first few moments without having to change channels and watch Friends reruns.

Went back to it and still cried buckets.

I left New York the night of the 25th.  I’m good at that…finding half empty flights to Paris when everyone else is settling into American public holidays.

Remember when we left for Paris on July 4th?  That seems like it happened decades ago.

Why did it take me so long to leave NYC and why didn’t I write about it?  Well, we didn’t go because the Little Dog wasn’t well and vomited all over the place so it wasn’t prudent to go anywhere.  Anyway, the vet advised me not to.

I was offered a very kind room in a very beautiful hotel to rest my weary body…for free.  They really looked after me.

I stayed on 10th St for a few nights.  During the day I would practice what it would be like to live in NYC again.

I sat with friends outside Mud, I hung out at the Derby and Joe’s Pub with Amelia.  I made many, many new ‘friends’ on line and met with them at obscure locations.

After a few days of being in the city I totally forgot about Jake unless, of course, I found myself on 1st Street or outside the Judd Foundation or on the roof at Soho House which is cleared away…just like the memories I have to clear away.

I no longer thought that any man who resembled him was him and instead marveled at how many men there were who might be him.  Cute, short, hairy men with winning smiles.  On occasions, as the days passed, I realized that I told too many people about him…that it was obvious to them that I was having difficulty letting him go.

When they asked if I was still in love with him it was difficult to say no without crossing my fingers.

The emotions are far more complex and seem to exist on a far deeper level than I ever planned which is why I took time away from my blog because it just riles me and I find myself posting things that I regret.

I had a number of dates with really extraordinary men but one in particular made my heart sing.  I ate dinner at Mary’s Fish Camp in the West Village and met some good gays.  A producer, a stockbroker, a TV anchor and a journalist..I found myself thinking: Jake would like these men.

He would get a kick out of these intelligent, ambitious men.

The anchor  (Don Lemon) was a cool black dude who said that in his opinion Obama was frightened of white people.  Which explains, he said, why Obama is such a loser.   The anchor’s bf of 3 years was 20 years younger.

I don’t know how I felt about that.

Aleksa P and I had supper in Chelsea.  She talked candidly about how much fun it is for her making Boardwalk Empire.  I told her that I get hundreds of people a week looking for references in my blog to her hairy armpits.  She showed me how shaved they were with a wry smile but lamented how she must start growing them again soon.

We talked about our absent dads and how this shapes our view of ourselves.  We talked about her gorgeously happy marriage.  We laughed a great deal.  She showed me the pictures of her in Vanity Fair and I felt as proud as any dad could ever be.

We talked about Jake.  She was sad for me.

Brokeback: I had forgotten that Ennis and Jack had that fight.  That their fight had more to do with their love and their frustration and how much they would miss each other.

Dressed as cowboys their fight seemed more romantic than ours on the King’s Road.

The last night in NYC I met a man who I could imagine being with.  Just like that.  I have no idea if it will turn out like I want it…but we connected.  I am excited to see him again.  One thing is for sure:  I ain’t writing about him. Not any time soon.

TSA pat-downs are really thorough.   At JFK the rather good-looking man who inadvertently (or maybe not) held my balls whilst looking for what ever they are looking for looked up at me and I said seductively, “My balls have been held by a lot worse.”