Tag: Relationships

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art Auto Biography Brooklyn Christmas Dogs Fashion Film Gay NYC Photography politics Queer Whitstable

2013 Roundup

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I felt both overwhelmed and liberated in 2013.  Simultaneously.

I spent the past few hours un-subscribing from 100 mailing lists from whom I receive emails begging for money.  All perfectly decent causes, gun control, black theatre, saving the ocean, climate control, Unicef, the world wildlife fund, democratic causes, mercy for animals, slow money…

I un-subscribed from cook shops, travel companies, furniture stores and fashion lines.  I spent a few moments each day erasing my name from the lists I added myself in the hope of being better informed, no more Gawker or Huffington Post or the Daily Beast.

It was an odd year.  It was unusually diverse.  I continued writing my film tho I stopped talking about it.  I met thieving producers and film industry liars.  I spent time with weed smoking Susan Sarandon in the back of her ping-pong club.  

Away from the film I travelled to Martha’s Vineyard, to Des Moines and over the Rocky Mountains.   I travelled by car all over America.  Los Angeles to New York and back again… three times.  I was constantly surprised by American kindness whenever I found it.  

I fell in and out of love with AA.  In and out of love with the gays tho… mostly out of love.

We are presently finalizing our divorce.

During the past months I began a strange adventure with a young man who I tentatively call my boy friend.  I began to dream again… of better things… even though I am still cautious and burned.  Erring toward single at all times.

I wrote a great deal but never published a word of it.

I wrote indignant things like this…

I am queer.  They are gay.  They are white and affluent.  They want to get married and join the army.  They want to assimilate.  That’s what they say.

When you question them… when you ask them what assimilation looks like… they still want to keep gay pride, gay bars, gay apps, gay film festivals, gay morality.

They want the gay section in the bookshop, the ‘gay voice’ section in The Huffington Post.  They don’t really understand what assimilation looks like because most of them are too comfy not assimilating.

He said, “This is all about your internalized homophobia.” I smiled.  “It’s not internalized, it’s externalized.”

One can devote ones life to betrayal.  Betrayed by parents, family members, institutions, schools, by loved ones even the country of ones origin.  I have felt a smidgen from all of the above.  Yet, I forgave my family, my school, the class system, my beloved country.

Because I wanted to be free.

I huffed and puffed about the NSA, I applauded Glen Greenwald and Chelsea Manning and Ed Snowdon.  I stopped worrying about who could read whatever I was writing privately or which ever websites I was wacking to because there is nothing private.  Not any more.

I met literary heroes on Fire Island like Andy Tobias and had breakfast with John Walters, I spent sultry nights on Cape Cod.  I started Anger Management classes and enjoy them tremendously.

My counsellor asks things like, “Where in your body to you feel the anger first?”

I began to identify the genesis of my anger and feelings of uncomfortability.  It usually starts with a demand for money from a worthy cause.  A picture or video of a screaming rabbit as it is having it’s fur pulled off or a pile of euthanized dogs waiting to be incinerated.

It was the hopelessness that infuriated me, the cruelty, the stupidity, the hypocrisy.

I came to conclusions in 2013.  That I do not, have never had, am not interested in… A CAREER!   Careers, I realized, are… for other people.  For those who may be interested in a legacy.  I stopped calling myself a film maker and started telling people, if they asked, that I do… nothing.

I understood that wherever I found myself both good or bad I was meant to be.  It was all for a reason.  A reason that would one day be revealed to me.  That my life was a series of choreographed moments. The life of a narcissist.  That the cameras I learned to love whilst in the reality show had always been there and had never gone away.

In 2013 I never gave up.  I waited patiently.  I didn’t worry about the future nor was I enslaved to the past.  For this I was grateful.

Occasionally I hankered to go home but knew that after a few days in Whitstable I would find my life shrinking and darkening.  I did not go home.  Though, I spoke more to my Mother this year and was curious about my nieces and nephews.

Finally the JB entanglement came to an end one nondescript day in November.  I wanted to write to him and make amends for the mess I had caused.

But I wrote this instead… it was never sent.

An apology is owed.

I was wrong to lie to you.  I was wrong to lose my temper.  I was wrong to fight you.  I was wrong to have asked for money to be paid when you owed me nothing.  I was wrong to have blamed you for any part of our unhealthy association.  The blame must fall squarely at my feet for everything that went wrong.   The moment you came out I should have politely walked way… I did not.   I was advised by everyone I knew and cared about… to walk away from you but chose to ignore their good suggestion.   I should have thanked you and walked away.  I regret very much that I did not.  I am extremely remorseful.  Due to my weakness of character I initiated a drama that harmed you and caused distress to your family.  I should have walked away.  The moment you told me you were gay.   I know that you are happy now.   I know that your happiness will continue.

It took two years to own up.

2013.  Un-subscribing to websites, making amends, keeping my side of the street clean, owning up, anger management.

Let’s see what 2014 will bring.

As the years pass by, unrelenting, amazing, fulfilling, desperate, happy, sad.

Even though I have filled my homes with art and furniture and friends and the lingering smells of delicious feasts… even though I have made films and plays and paintings…. all I have ever wanted, really craved… was peace of mind.

I’m getting there.  Slowly.  A Happy and Prosperous New Year everyone.

Categories
Gay Health Love Poem Queer

Pink Pig

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1.

It is dawn again. Dawn in the desert. The smell of the earth and the dew. The sounds of the chirruping birds.

The pervasive silence of the long black night coming to an end.

My night blindness is getting worse. I sat on my spectacles so am guessing, largely… where the keys are.

The days get hotter and hotter. The sun beating down relentlessly. The lawn toasting, the dogs roasting, the mountain tightens around us as it bakes.

Hot days in Dorset/ hot days in Malibu. Hot days on the sleepy ocean, lapping around me.

Coffee, editing, read the daily news. It sure looks bad in Syria.

We cruise down to the beach and play in the surf. We are tangled at night in the white linen sheets. We read side by side in silence. A familiar smell, a beating heart, the man I want but do not need.

He asks what we are. Nothing. We are nothing, I say. He struggles with ‘what it means’ to love another man.

My struggle is over. I am too old to give love a second chance.

He sees me thinking. He will read this and tell me to talk to him as if talking will solve everything. Just shut up and make love to me. Stop asking me what it means. Don’t expect me to know anything. Work it out yourself.

I don’t really care.

For all the terrible, meaningless cruelty I am still besotted with him. And, like the parent of a missing child, I wonder daily about his safety. Even though he is undeserving of my worry and considers my concern an intrusion..

I continue to fret about him, however violently I have tried to expunge the memory.

2.

I am mostly happy. I know you don’t believe me. I know that you think I am lying to you about my happiness.

Well, if you could see me… if you were the one laying beside me… you would understand.

Island Wall. The tiny cottage there. It was enough. It was perfect.

Now I lay my head down and it is enough.

Perhaps, you say, you could be happier? How much happier?

Facelifts, apparently, make women happier.

Then I realize that you are confusing your own thoughts about getting older with what you think happiness is. How can anyone be that old and be happy? How can anyone have so little and be happy?

Then, you try convincing me that I should want to be young again. Forgetting, of course, that I was never young. Always old. Always.

I have a spectacular ability to get on with what I have and be happy with it.

I don’t want more. Even in the jail. I found comfort. I found solace.

So, you think I am unhappy because you do not know what happiness is.

Could you imagine a happy person killing themselves? I could.

Come death.

3.

I had another dream about the DA. This time my thumb was in her mouth. She was sucking my thumb. Pressed down on her tongue. Like a calf. Her big brown eyes looking up at me.

Whenever I dream about her, her cheap gold jewelry tinkles like ice cubes in a crystal glass.

4.

I am writing my screenplay. Finishing it. I am enjoying a social life. I let the man beside me massage my neck.

I understand that I am in love with struggle. Struggle is sustenance.  It feeds me everything I need to live. I am alive when I fight to survive. I am alive when I feel myself emerge victorious. Even though you could not imagine what I experience as victory.

I dream that I am walking by my primary school in Whitstable. The black, tarmac playground is always empty. The lawn is green. The classrooms, I assume, are full.

I remember the boy who ate coal, the butcher’s son. He looked like a pink pig. Fat, pink, bespectacled. He drowned you know. You knew that… didn’t you? When he couldn’t take it anymore.

5.

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives.

Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrogered sea.

And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.

Categories
Fashion Gay Love

Your Life Now

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New York. May 2012

There you are. Finally. For all to see.  Like bumping into you in the street. That’s how it felt.  But you were where we met…virtually…on the internet.

Peony, the rain, the winsome songs.

If we had bumped into each other in the street, I think I would have felt the same. I left the page with a sweet smile on my face. I felt proud of you. I know how exciting life must be for you.  And if I had bumped into you in the street and you had told me that you were in love…inevitably you wanted me to know that you were in love and inevitably I crumbled.

I am indeed that cliché you despised so badly. 😉

I called Robby and he listened. I called Joan and we looked into your life and we all agreed that it was swell.

So…

The end of the film needs rewriting.  All the world can see your love. Ironic huh? Now you know how I felt when I wanted to publicly celebrate what we once had, when I wrote about us.

There you are, together…pressed together. In love.  You looked great. Your hair well cut, your pants the right length.  Your boy friend looks extraordinary and familiar. Celine is a great brand.  I know you didn’t put that Tumblr page up for me but you knew I would see it. You knew I’d have an opinion.

It was a perfect way to let me know.

If we hadn’t ended things so badly and we’d met in the street…I would have hugged you. I would have thanked you. I would have smiled gently. I may have shed a tear.  I loved you very much…you know that. But, we knew what we had was fleeting…needed to happen for you to set yourself free, free for this relationship that you celebrate so publicly today.

The metamorphosis is complete and you have emerged fully into the world…a beautiful young man capable of great love and glamor…and your underwear was chic as all hell.

I know that you will make something amazing one day…something I would have never guessed.  A film or a book or a room or a garden. You are capable of all those things.

Of course I still love you. But not like that.  This is all I ever wanted, to know you are happy and to share your happiness

By publishing your life so publicly I am relieved…even though I cried, I cried because you were there on the street telling me what I needed to know.

That you are happy and in love and…of course…beautifully dressed.

PS I bought the book.

Categories
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.

Categories
Film Gay Money NYC Queer

Fire Island Pines

Fire Island Dawn

NYC streets once again. I am staying until Sunday then I am going to Fire Island for a few days. I love it there at this time of year. Wandering around the deserted Pines, exploring the unoccupied houses.

I imagine that everyone who had a house there when Joe and I lived on Bay Walk… well they must have long gone.  Tommy Tune, David Geffen, the kindly big guy whose name I can’t remember who lived opposite. The lesbians next door who never really approved of Joe.  Joe would call out to Geffen when we saw him on the board walk, “You’re the best looking billionaire in the world.” Geffen would smile and pass on by.

Joe and I spent an entire winter together in that house on a deserted, frozen Fire Island. Nobody does that. Just the deer to keep us company. Standing silently in the snow, staring at us in the house going about our business. Warm, well fed.

I can tell you stories if you want?

It must have been this time of year that I was there with my difficult boyfriend Jamie Page and Bryan Singer and Brandon Boyce turned up with a bunch of friends (including a very young John Krokidas).  It was wild. I remember laying in bed, listening to men running over the roof.  I was drinking and taking drugs in those days so Fire Island… the gay bit, suited me just fine.

One bright, spring day I remember walking from Cherry Grove through what they called The Meat Rack or The Judy Garland Memorial Park. Why did they call it The Meat Rack? Why did they call it The Judy Garland Memorial Park? This well trodden scrub grew on the bay side of the island separating Cherry Grove and The Pines.

It was prone to mosquitos and cruising.

At night, after the dancing was over or the drugs were leading the way, the gays would high-tail down the boardwalk into the swampy thicket, the vacant dunes.

The sea pounding on the sand, night birds singing in the moon lit wood.

Here the revelers would remove the very little that they still had on and laze naked, like nymphs, will o’ the wisp. Smoking cigarettes. Checking each other out with the slightest blaze of light.  I only ever went to watch this very unique sexual theatre. Even when I was totally fucked up.

Being a terrible prude I did not let them touch me because they were patently no use. They were so inauthentic. I need men to retraumatise me…not play act. Easily resisting their insistent hands and breathy suggestions. As dawn broke over Fire Island, piercing its way into the meat rack, I would watch men grope and kiss and suck and fuck, often unable to cum as they had taken so many drugs.

Dawn breaking over their ripped and muddy underwear, their blood-shot eyes (as if they had been crying) their blood and cum and shit…like so many rape victims shamefully dragging themselves away from the scene of the crime.  It amused me that the very same men who would not go near me as they danced in drug induced congas around the stinking dance floor would be all over the ugliest trade in The Meat Rack.

As we know, after a few drinks one is not so choosy.

After a sack full of cocaine/crystal/mdma these men didn’t give a flying fuck.

Occasionally straight men would meander down the beach to The Pines, try a little something different from what was available in heterosexual Ocean Bay Park. Turning up in baggy khakis and polo shirts. We knew what they were there for. What they were looking for.

I would dream of these doe eyed nuggets turning up for me to mine.

I remember walking back from Cherry Grove one day and wandering into The Meat Rack for no better reason than it was a shorter route for getting to The Bay than walking along the beach and traversing the island…anyway, it was usually deserted during the day, mid-week, off-season.

I didn’t expect to see a soul.

I had a bag of groceries. I was 31 years old. I saw a young, blond man…no more that twenty. His sun bleached, tousled hair, baggy shorts and flip-flops betrayed him. When I said hello, the fear in his eyes, his deep voice confirmed my suspicions. A straight boy on the turn. I set the groceries by a tree and without a word I touched his face. He bit his bottom lip and let out a tiny gasp.

I let him undress me.

Boys! I had a body in those days. I looked fit! I loved the gym.

He tentatively touched my chest and ran his fingers over my biceps of which I was very proud. Guiding his hand into my shorts he cupped my balls and kissed me. He loved me so.  He was pleased to suck my nipples, he did it gently like a calf. His soft white skin, the delicate filigree copper hair on his forearms.

I pushed his fringe from his forehead so I could better see him sucking my cock. He was passionate and greedy.

I am benevolent.

Looking up at me with his flawless blue eyes. I smiled down at him, pulling the back of his neck toward me so as to better fuck his throat. He gagged slightly, his thorax constricted around my penis. The effect was very pleasing. He pulled away, a string of saliva briefly attaching us. I rolled my cock over his distended cheeks. Flushed from the recent choking.

Thanking him for his attention to detail as he set too again, as he sucked and kissed my balls working his way toward my ass.

I knelt on the leafy, forest floor and he spread my cheeks so he could better lick, probing me with his tongue. I let him work on it. Licking me, pulling my balls and cock between my legs. He ran his hand up my back. I pulled myself up so I was no longer kneeling, his face completely obscured by my thighs…as if he were being born out of my ass. A fully grown boy being born out of my ass.

He stopped for a moment and said, “Have you got anything up there for me?”

Realizing that this perfect boy wanted to eat my shit I pulled up my shorts, gathered up the groceries and didn’t look back.

Be careful what you pray for.

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Categories
Malibu

Bougainvillea

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The huge hedge of Bougainvillea that separated the house from the garden is all but gone.  It has taken Robby and me two days to chop it down and cart it to the compost at the end of the drive.   The house now feels as it is floating above the forest of specimen trees and succulents.  Uninterrupted views all the way to the hot tub and the drive.  More importantly, as one enters the garden, the full glory of this house, this post and beam gem can be fully appreciated.

On Sunday, after my AA meeting and wander around the Palisades Farmers Market,  Anna popped by.  We ate a particularly foul, tasteless lunch at the newly refurbished Malibu Inn (at my suggestion) and then we walked the length of the Malibu Pier which, I am ashamed to say, I have never done.

It really is very beautiful.

Nicely decorated shops and restaurants, fisherman (mostly Mexican) fishing on both sides.  A seal lazily swam on it’s back looking up at us.  The water around Malibu is teaming with life.  Seals, Dolphins, Whales.  At the end of the Malibu Pier are two elevated rooms which might be perfect for hiring.  I suddenly thought that rather than have a birthday party at my house this year I would have my party there.  What do you think?  I didn’t celebrate last years mile stone so this is maybe a perfect opportunity and location.

Whilst in the Malibu Inn the beginning of a rather bizarre incident began to unfold.   One that caused some consternation later on that evening.  A rather jolly, good-looking young man handed me his number.  A usual occurrence here in LA.  Especially if one has been on TV.  Whilst serving us he had overheard Anna and I talking about the entertainment industry.  I took the number and we started texting, agreeing to meet after he had gotten off of work at 7pm.  I asked if he had a car and if he could get up here or if he needed to meet on the PCH.

When he arrived at the house (shrouded in marine layer) we chatted for a few moments, whilst chatting he must have received at least 10 calls from his parents wanting to know where he was and when he was coming home.  “Perhaps you had better go.”  I said.

We continued our conversation regardless.  He wanted, of course, to be an actor.  An actor who wants to be in action films.  He mentioned that he had thought about modeling.  He is a great looking guy but, I told him, maybe a little too short for modeling.  He told me that he needed money to finish his tattoo and move out of his house.  He wanted to be free of his family.   I sympathised and told him to work harder at Malibu Inn.  When young men start talking about how much money they need I disconnect.

Then, I noticed that there was someone looking at us.  A man on the terrace looking in.

I opened the door and there was a man (my age) with a friendly looking German Shepherd and asked him what he wanted.  I noticed another person scurrying up the path.  A woman with long black hair.

He said gruffly, “I’ve come to collect my boy.”

I demanded an explanation.  He explained sheepishly, losing some of his bravado, that he was the young man’s father and rather than the young man having driven himself to the house as he had implied, his father had brought him.   I suddenly felt rather set up.  As if I was part of something that had been planned rather than being as spontaneous as I had first thought.

“Why didn’t you come in?”  I asked him.   “Rather than skulking around the garden.”

“You should conduct business meetings in your office.”  He chided.

“This wasn’t a business meeting.” I snapped.  “It was personal.”

I asked the young Malibu Inn man if he was OK and he nodded, his face reddened with embarrassment.  I asked his ‘father’ if everything was OK.

“For the time being.”  He said.  The inherent threat was not lost on me.

They left.

I heard them stall their cheap car on the steep drive, spinning their tires on the damp concrete.

My next door neighbour Jerome was in so I stopped by and told him what had happened.   The more I thought about it the more I realized that this may very well have been some sort of opportunistic venture on their behalf.  They must have thought that being a self-proclaimed sex addict that I would ‘try’ something.  Not realizing that I only really respond to sexual advances rather than initiate.

I suddenly felt quite vulnerable.

Thankfully the twins arrived home.  It was a spooky night, the man emerging from the mist.  The strange boy who needed $150 to finish his tattoo of a skull in the shape of a dollar sign.

Spent most of Monday taking down the last of the Bougainvillea.  Breakfast on the PCH.  Dinner with friends.

Categories
Health Malibu

February

Madness, when it comes upon me is a grueling mystery to solve.  For months now I have been gripped with what started out merely as a broken heart.

When one begins to feel the onset of ones own brand of insanity it is always impossible to make sense of the confusing depth and range of emotions.

In the midst of the maelstrom it all feels so incredibly real.  Yet, as we are well aware, once sanity returns:  FEELINGS are not FACTS.

Regardless of how and why I experienced such a destructive wave of emotion I could only wait, as one does, for the storm to end.

It was galling that I had not suffered a comparable emotional torment for many years, fourteen in fact.  As you have read on these pages, when I first got sober I had the same misery, the same terrible sense of powerlessness that has overwhelmed me every day since last January.

There is no way to prepare for such misery.  One can only pray that it passes.  That it passes swiftly and without too much damage being inflicted on either myself or others.

I have learned so much these last few months.  Learned the very good and the very bad about myself.   It is so incredibly lonely when one is gripped by such furious indignation.

After the storm inevitably there is the wreckage.  After the storm, picking up the pieces of everything that has been smashed and knowing that it is impossible to mend what is so utterly broken.

Salvaging first and foremost ones dignity.

On this occasion I know that I have done irreparable damage to myself.  I used to have hope and I no longer do.  The reserve of hope that I was born with is exhausted.

In many ways I have been returned to that moment last January before we met when I had everything to look forward to.  It is now up to me to start again.  Start building, start a positive dialogue with myself that may include some sort of sanctuary.

My body is wrecked from these past few months.  Fighting, fighting, fighting.

Fighting what was growing inside me, fighting the feelings, fighting my true intentions to be a good and better person.

I have no idea what comes next.  I know in my heart, in the pit of my stomach, in my soul…that I will never attempt to have another relationship.  I seem truly incapable of that basic human connection and unable to deal with the associated feelings of inadequacy that swamp me once I meet any person I value.

I dare not take that risk.

I know that all familiar avenues others take for granted are now closed to me.

When I was a child, the only way I could express my fury at the world was to smash everything in my room.  Everything I held dear.   It was my only option.  There was nowhere to run, no place to hide.

And what of him?

Well, I hope and pray that he is already living a wonderful life, that he has great and extraordinary beauty ahead of him.  I know that he is capable of things I can only dream about.  I finally expunged his name from this blog and worked hard to uncouple him from me in the virtual ether.  His ‘bit of fun’ turned into a nightmare for us both but I am determined to forgive him…the alternative will merely drag me into further insanity.

He is not the problem.  He must be part of the solution.

If I am truly over this catastrophe then I must love him as much as I must love the unfair world around me.  He is a stranger now.  He will remain a stranger.

For what once felt so beautiful, as I predicted, must now be an inconsequential blip.

To this end I must accept any and all of my own shortcomings.  I must see my part in this drama.  Own my part in it.

I must let God take back the reigns.

There are other more important lessons to learn, adventures to be had…but I will not learn any of them unless I can truly forgive.

Categories
Malibu

Blogging…

Keeping what is in effect a public diary can have it’s glories and it’s defeats.  Ups and downs.  Well, we have all recently witnessed the downside.

When Jennie K was having a hard time with crazy stalker monsters contacting her she turned off her comments option.  I am considering doing the same.  What I realize now though is just how much the comments mean to me.  I enjoy that so many of you check in with me every day and it is those people who I imagine when writing this blog.

I have been thinking about the comments by Tres Triste.  It is most odd that he/she insinuated that I take down the pictures of Jake.   I mean, why should I? I have pictures of most of my friends in this blog.  He was not only my friend but also my lover.  The only reason that I hadn’t posted pictures of him before was that I had effectively climbed into his closet.  When I crawled out gasping for air I realized just how manipulated I had been.

It’s odd to think that someone who supposedly doesn’t know Jake would consider it an affront to his dignity to have his pictures on my blog.  Our holiday pictures.  I am guessing that Tres Triste thinks he would be ashamed to have his pictures associated with me.  Well, that may very well be the case but I am not buying into his shame.

30-year-old men are not children.  In fact, most 30-year-old men have children of their own.  They have responsible jobs.   They cannot claim to be naive adolescents.   They make decisions about who and what they want to do and then face the consequences of their actions.  As do I.

There is a beautiful line in the Stevie Nicks song Landslide that he might consider when he thinks about her, he could consider it..so might she.

“I’ve been afraid of changing because I built my life around you.”

Did you think I was thinking about Jake when I considered who or what I built my life around?  Well, I thought about drink and drugs and my lost daddy.  I thought about him too.

“I’ve been afraid of changing because I built my life around you.”

Every decision I take or make has a consequence.  It is up to me to think that through.  When he contacted me the outcome was clear.  When he kissed me he departed, once again, from his monogamous commitment to his girlfriend and would have to face a consequence.  We must never, ever underestimate the consequences of our actions.  Wether he was cheating with a woman or a man he was cheating.   As for him claiming youth as an excuse for his actions?  Honey, 29 is no youth.  Look at the lists of men killed in Iraq..most of them are younger than 29.

We are all naive about some things.  I was naive about Hollywood.  I was never naive about life tho.  I think I have always lived in the light.  It was his desire to crawl back into secrecy that finally made me ditch him.

I have no truck with secrets.  You know everything because I want it to be that like that.

There are moments when I think of him..but not in any way other than one might miss a drink after being a heavy drinker.  We had communicated almost every day in some way since we first met.  He is in the fabric of my being.  He rested in my most sacred heart for many months.  I am slowly washing that man out of my hair.

I was his most ardent supporter, his rock when he needed me.  I was on his side. I thought I could be there for him as he matured into an out gay man but I could not.  I regret having made that committment to him.

I return again and again to this question:  why didn’t he tell the truth sooner?

There is no reason in a liberal household in the modern world for a man not to be true to his nature.  To tell the truth about who he is.

It is a conundrum that has no end because only he can answer that question.   Frankly I am not interested, any longer, in anything he has to say about anything…so…I am left with the question.

I am left with the Manhunt account too.  It amuses me but I must tell you I am a little bit too eager to see who and what messages have been left for me.  A little bit too eager to meet new men and a little a bit too eager to revisit the site again and again.

Must keep this in check.  The paths wont get swept if I don’t.

I write every morning just before I start my day.  Presently I am looking over the ocean in Malibu. It is going to be a beautiful day.  Yesterday I swept and hosed the drive and the paths.  I wanted the garden to look beautiful for Jenny A who is presently staying in the guest apartment below.

I spent almost all of yesterday pottering around the garden, scrubbing the terracotta tile in the gazebo, weeding and generally decluttering the house.  I have a different attitude to being here since I last lived here.

Jenny arrived and we walked down to the new road with the dog.  We came home and Eric arrived for dinner.  We lit a huge fire and listened to Herbie Hancock and drank English tea.  I cooked and everyone went to bed.  It was simple.

We discussed Jenny’s cancer.  She was only given a 38% chance of living.

She said, “They gave me ten years to live.  Of course, that was five years ago..now I want another five years..”

Jenny saved my life.  It was she who I called this week 14 years ago to tell her that I couldn’t stop doing coke. It was she who took me to my first meetings and it was she who eased me into the recovery community.  I will always be thankful for that.

Our relationship has had its ups and downs.  We didn’t talk for two years after having a huge fight on a dusty road in Mexico but true friends always come back to each other.  Eventually.

Categories
Malibu Rant

Susan

I have known Susan since I was 13 years old.

We used to giggle together in Quaker meetings and she and her wonderful family became the mainstay of my adolescence.

For her, I will always have a place in my heart.

She called me today from Oxford, where she lives, and we chatted for an hour or so about our lives.

It was so reassuring to hear the voice of an old friend who, even though we have only dipped periodically in and out of each others lives, as the decades passed we maintained a life long love for each other.

It was wonderful to catch up and maybe she will come visit me here in LA.

As you are aware I have still not made any definite plans to deal with the lumpy ball tumor situation.

I have been avoiding doing anything about it.

The emotions I have been going through with Jake seem to take my mind off the critical decisions I have to make.

The bottom line is this:  I must go to London and sort it out.

I can’t afford to begin the surgery here and so have no option but to go home.  As soon as I move out of my place I can think clearly about taking the next step.

I reread JB’s letter this morning and feel a little less angry with him.  He is not a monster, more like a confused kid.

I have to learn to be more compassionate.  I have to learn to forgive.  I MUST remember that he has been through a great deal.  Anyway, I did as he asked and removed all mention of his last name and occupation.  It was kinda cruel to have done it in the first place.

I have had an online tantrum and now it’s time to try to put the pieces of the smashed vase back together and hope that we can go our separate ways without derision, scorn or hatred.

I have said and written things that although true were insensitive and unkind.  He is just a regular guy with a broken heart.  He wasn’t to know that being friends was the last thing I could ever imagining happening after we stopped being lovers.

Resentment, shame and fear (as usual) shape my relationship to the rest of the world.

This morning I tried to be of service to another recovering addict.  It made me feel a great deal better about my own situation.

I really, really loved and cared for that timid man.  He was quite unlike anyone I have ever loved before.  Everyone that met him was delighted that I had found such a normal, sweet man.  I think that we had, when we weren’t fighting the best time.  We laughed a great deal.  We shared a number of the same interests and in a perfect world where two unencumbered men could come together, unfettered and unaligned we could have made something work out.

It is not a perfect world.  It is an imperfect world riven with complications and aberrations.

It seems that only the very few get to share their lives with those they love without catastrophic problems.   I wish I could be one of those people but I am not, I will never be, I can never be.

That is why I committed to being single.  To being alone.  To relish and respect a single life.

I am a single man who will not hanker after my own death… because being single is perceived by so many as a crime against humanity.

Categories
Gay Love Rant

You’ll Never Really Know..

After Joan Didion‘s husband John Gregory Dunne died she wrote perhaps the best book of her entire career A Year of Magical Thinking.

I have been told that there is something incredibly liberating after the death of a loved one…as there definitely is after the end of a relationship.   One can suddenly see everything so very clearly.

The only thing I miss about being in a loving relationship with another person is to check in, to share, to make sense of a troubled world.

Someone who is committed to listening as I am committed to listen.

Since last weeks end of relationship prose I have not only felt creative again but quite by chance have found what I was looking for..to be at peace.  It was without doubt the answer to the most nagging of all my prayers.  Was I, could I…am I even capable of making a relationship work.

The answer has to be a resounding NO.

I am not sad about this conclusion, in fact I have found much peace from finally answering this most perplexing of questions.

You will have your own ideas about this but for the time being I tell you I have found my equilibrium.  It has been a very bumpy ride.  Not just the past eight months but the past 50 years.

You see, he thought I was like the man he met on the TV…but I had been edited that way.  Compassion and kindness are only a small part of who I am.

I want to write this blog entry just feeling the breeze on my face.  Listening to music.  There were days when I could not feel a thing I was so distrusting of him and full of fear.  Within weeks of meeting Jake I found it hard to trust.  Looking over our long email correspondence it is obvious that I become toxicly paranoid with those I say I love.  I have felt the same with others..this is nothing new.  You have said that he was too young.  Well, I am not the sort of man who worries about age appropriateness.  But I am the sort of man who frets about appropriateness.

I am blighted with the most gayest of disabilities: always wanting something better then..when something better comes along..strangling it to death.

There is a stigma attached to those of us who finally throw in the towel and accept singularity.  Yet, my grandmother was a widow for 40 years.  She owned her aloneness and for that I am very grateful.  She was not a particularly loving human being, prone to complaint and curmudgeonly conversation yet she taught me that she would rather be alone than have someone in her life who would not compliment it.

I am sick of feeling guilty for the crime of being single.

My mother’s greatest fear for me was that I would die single.  Well, baby, most people do.  There are retirement homes crammed with human husks who will die today alone.  They are unlikely to be missed, there is no hope of an obituary.  They will die oblivious that they have been processed (three score years and 10) through the mill of modern humanity.  Born, worked, reproduced, ate, died.

I stayed with Jason and Jennifer last night.  Their marriage is tight but they bitch and complain like any couple.   I watched this morning as Jason was thrown out of the piano room.  He moped around for a little while then seemed to forget all about his gripe.  I know from recent experience that this is no easy task. When I look back at the time I spent with Jake we seemed more often than not to be locked into some kind of squabble.

So, where have I found this peace and acceptance?  Well, knowing, owning, accepting that I will be single for the rest of my life dovetails beautifully into the work I have been doing in therapy.  The search for sex or relationships, the intrigue and flirtation and unrequited love has all been set aside. In doing so I have a clear head, clear enough to begin writing the chapter of my last years.

I am not and never have been lonely when alone.  I have only ever felt lonely when I am in a relationship with another and they are not there.

Some people have few or no friends, are not connected to community, do not believe in God (I remain nondenominational) and most crippling of all:  they are not creative.  Without doubt I am most excited about how creative these years will be.  If it is only me and my writing then I may as well marry my pen as soon as possible.

To say out loud that one has accepted absolutely ones destiny as God intends it is indeed the first hurdle to making sense of the rest of ones life.

Without Jake constantly in my head, without the fantasy of the great dark man, without the perpetual search for sex or sexual complication I can avail myself of some peace.   I am more than middle-aged.  I used to sneer at my Grandmother because it seemed to me that she had given up but the truth is:  she had only just begun.  A healthy relationship with one’s self takes as much time and energy as a healthy relationship with anyone else.

I have given up so much, things that others take for granted to get them through every day: drugs (prescription and recreational), alcohol, television, white flour, career, and now..romance.    You’d think life would shrink..but quite the opposite seems to be happening.

The house in Malibu is set above the glorious ocean.  The land around begs my attention.  Sometimes I do not get further than the first step outside the house.  Some days I cannot leave my bed.  This is not the sort of life I want.  If I am going to be single forever then I must start engaging with the land as I planned many months ago before I met Jake.

I am sure that some of you will think that I am just giving up for no good reason.  Well, I am very sorry, I don’t buy your dream  that there are ‘plenty more fish in the sea’, that there is ‘someone for every one’ etc.   That is your dream.  My dream is that I can be alone without resort to catastrophic thinking.  I have lived on borrowed time for as long as I can remember.  Everyday should be a delight!  By cluttering my life with suspect romances I have only served to degrade the quality of the one thing I truly own.

I am grateful that I met Jake because in 8 months he has done more for me than almost anyone could have.  Without realizing it he held a mirror to my face for long enough so I could see in startling detail just how ravaged I had become.

Relationships make me so unhappy.  They bring out the very worst in me.  I don’t like sharing my bed or my head with anyone.  If I don’t like me when I am in a relationship how could anyone else?

In the night I think of him but as I have said many times before it is not him. It is the ghost of what never was.