Categories
Dogs Gay Malibu Travel

August Recap

I’ve been fretting.  Fretting about Gaza, Israel, Ferguson, bad white cops, arming black people, traveling, Alcoholics Anonymous.  I’ve been fretting about one beautiful man.

The Alcoholics Anonymous shit is the usual shit.  The same characters, the same stories, the same mental illness.   I sit in those rooms wondering why I’m there, if I belong to a cult?  Yet,  I never think about drinking.  I mean, I’m not looking for an excuse to drink.   That’s the very last thing I want to do.

Palm Trees Los Angeles

You see, it was one of those weeks when I heard that someone in AA killed themselves.  Someone I heard speak, someone I had spoken to.  Someone I had lunch with, someone I had hope for.  Then he blew his brains out.  No obituary, no news report.  Just another recovering alcoholic who couldn’t take it any more.  I thought about how we collectively accept the plaudits for keeping each other sober yet when a man kills himself it was his problem.  His solution.  Never our responsibility.   He had a six-year-old son.  He dressed very well.  Now he’s dead.

Since getting sober 18 years ago I have known many, many men and not so many women to kill themselves in the rooms of AA/NA.   It is never easy.   Yet, I have become desensitized from these terrible deaths and I hate myself for it.  I’m sorry.  I really am.

This week, I ate a great deal at Gjelina in Venice and these men graciously served me.

Benoit being Read to by Armistead Maupin

Last week I drove to San Francisco to see my friend Benoit Denizet Lewis read excerpts from his book Travels With Casey. After the reading we had dinner with Armistead Maupin and his charming boyfriend.  I told Armistead that I hadn’t read his famous book Tales of the City until I got to The Men’s County Jail.  I found a dog eared copy there. It was a first edition.

That night we stayed in an odd 50’s hotel/ex-motel off of trendy Chestnut Street.  The following day we drove to Napa and had lunch with Gene.  After lunch we wandered the giant redwoods in Muir Woods.  On the way back to San Francisco we watched people flying kites on Stinson Beach.

On my way home to Los Angeles I met up with my Whitstable friend Ben Clayton in Berkeley, we ate brunch then  sauntered all over the UC Berkeley campus.  We talked a great deal about home.  We talked about our mothers.

 

Back in Malibu I picked a huge bunch of bananas from the banana trees at the end of the garden, I harvested (and continue to) an abundance of figs and lemons.   I sold the bananas to my friend Nicolle the pie lady at Gjelina who bruleed them.

 

Yesterday, I went to the Norco Rodeo with Stuart Sandford.  Norco is an hour from Los Angeles.  It was the whitest event I have ever been to.  White people everywhere eating nachos and swilling beer.   The men wore cowboy hats.  The women screamed when the obedient bulls tossed their riders into the sand.

[wpvideo ZOjX9dz0]

 

We wondered if there were other gays there.  The nearest gay on-line was 3 miles away.  I took pictures of cowboys.  I ate tri-tip sandwiches.  I was looking for bucking bronco Cody Gaines who I met the day before on Malibu beach.   Cody lives in Texas.  Cody loves Jesus.

Cody Gaines

Mostly I have been amusing myself in the garden.  I have been sweeping paths and mending lights and restoring order.  The dogs have been lazing all over the house during the day, finding patches of sunlight to flop into.  At night they spend too much time protecting me from deer and raccoons.  Go to sleep!

 

Michael came to visit from NYC.  He was sweet and charming.  I met the guy with a beard… and here’s a better picture of Stuart.  Stuart Sandford is a very fine artist.  He lives and works at the Tom of Finland House in Echo Park.  My friend Martin arrived from Provincetown.  He’s staying for a few days.

 

All in all it hasn’t been a bad month.  It’s just these past few hours.  I needed to sit down and write a gratitude list… and this is it.  You see, I woke up today and I’m not a hounded black teen on the streets of any city USA.  I’m not a hounded Palestinian in the ever shrinking patch of land they call home.  I’m not a fatherless 6 year old… and lastly, I didn’t blow my brains out this week because I couldn’t take it any more… and for that I must be grateful.

Latex Bondage Wear waiting to be washed at The Tom of Finland House

Latex bondage wear ready to be washed from the dungeon at The Tom of Finland House, Echo Park.

Categories
Gay NYC Queer Travel

Provincetown Changes

Penny Arcade

Gay men in Los Angeles told researchers that they believed a culture that focuses on one-night stands and partying, that emphasizes perfect bodies and good looks, that prizes material possessions, that sees gay men tearing each other down as they compete for attention and that pressures gay men to fit in or conform is bound to create unhappiness, stress and unhealthy behaviors.

The word on the street in gay resort/haven Provincetown?  The straights are coming, they are coming thick and fast, young affluent heterosexuals buying property, renting holiday apartments and day tripping.  I was reassured by a cool, 31-year-old, straight person yesterday that this was the heterosexual ‘tipping point’.  Of course (if true) the reasons are obvious.  The older more affluent crowd of gay men and lesbians who bought affordable homes here twenty years ago are simply not that interesting to a less ghettoized younger gay crowd who go to Fire Island or Mykonos where a good gay thumping time is assured, where they can find an affordable share for the summer… anyway, the drag is so much better the closer you get to NYC.

Provincetown Garden

Young straight men and women who used to actively avoid hanging in gay ghettos… or felt uncomfortable no longer have any reservation.  This, my dears is one of the more unexpected changes that comes with ‘integration’.  Our gay communities, gay clubs and gay bars will dilute as we become more heteronormative.

How do the gays feel about straight people buying into the gay and lesbian ghetto dream?  I hear grumblings from some, but what can they say?  We can’t restrict straight people from joining the party?  Before the great shift, the Obama ‘evolution’, the Blair/Mandleson equality bill I would regularly challenge straight people who came to our clubs and bars, wondering why they were there… if they understood why gays and lesbians created safe spaces for themselves… now apparently we all live in a safe space… together.

If the war is won do we abandon the notion of a safe space, a gay bar, an LGBTQ community? Is that what we were fighting for?  As it turns out, gay men are still living shameful and secretive lives… safely hidden from prying eyes.  No longer behind the blacked out windows of the gay bar but on the internet where we can fully reinvent ourselves as muscle-bound avatars, 10 years younger than we really are.

The gay bar, meanwhile… becomes a themed experience for enlightened neo-liberal heterosexuals.  After all, gay men don’t need to meet one another in real life when we can meet on-line, reducing our interaction before a sexual encounter to the barest possible exchange of relevant facts.  Hung? Looking? Party?

The same heterosexual land grab is happening in the Fire Island Pines gay community.  Straight people are buying and renting homes at a faster rate than gay people. Of course… the truth is, we never really owned the lions share of Fire Island Pines… it was always owned by straight people.  Three heterosexual families who control The Pines real estate market.

In San Francisco‘s iconic gay area The Castro we are facing extinction in our natural habitat, bought out/selling out to silicone valley billions.  What are we left with?  Our sad LGBT ‘pride’ parade: a blinded corporate-sponsored dinosaur serving only the breweries and distilleries, no longer a political defiance… no longer worth a pilgrimage by those newly out yearning to see gays en masse… the gay parade and all it seeks to celebrate merely adds to our woes, confirming the worst about who we have become.

Little Dog

How long will it take for Provincetown to lose its unique identity and become just another Cape Cod town? The Pines,  just another beach community on Fire Island?  How long will it take for our history to be lost, forgotten or ignored by apathetic gay white men who have no interest in those who came before?  The heroes who fought decades of violent oppression, the ‘gay plague’, who demanded equality… how long will it be until their names are erased?

Do you know who they are?  Harvey Milk… and…

The politics of invisibility.

As the quality of our lives collectively ‘improves’, as we ‘integrate’ due to the passing of progressive equality laws why are we still facing a crisis?  Why do gay men continue to struggle with life-threatening health problems at alarmingly high rates compared to straight men — alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, suicide, and sexually transmitted diseases.

Gay and bisexual men are still most impacted by HIV/AIDS and syphilis, they suffer higher rates of substance abuse, they are more likely to drink heavily later into life, and they are more likely to commit suicide and suffer major depression and anxiety and bipolar disorders.

Gay men with mental health problems are more likely to use illegal drugs and commit suicide. Or regularly using drugs and alcohol can lead to risky sexual behavior, which increases the likelihood of getting infected by an STD.

Our health problems, in other words, are feeding into each other, we’re literally killing ourselves through suicide, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS at higher rates than straight men.  Let’s say that again: We are killing ourselves at higher rates than straight men through suicide, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS.

Some gays are quick to point to the stresses of living as a gay man in an overwhelmingly straight world — one that passes anti-gay laws and constantly spews homophobic rhetoric — as a reason for mental health and substance abuse problems. With that argument, they are coming very close to saying that we are powerless victims who have little control over our own lives and choices, that homophobes have more power over us.

That’s a ridiculous notion — lethal and self-defeating.

Since homophobia still exists and is not going away any time soon, the victim theory, if embraced, dooms us to a life of external, homophobic stressors that forces us to drink too much, commit suicide too frequently and get depressed too often.

The quote is from the LA Weekly.  You can read it HERE.

 

Categories
Queer

Secrets: A Letter From Queer America

Painted Map

Written for Beige in the UK and published today.

My inaugural letter from America is sent at a time when American secrets and lies take center stage.

I’m staying in Petrolia, Northern California, eleven hours from my home in Los Angeles with Daisy Cockburn, the daughter of Emma Tennant and political journalist and contrarian Alexander Cockburn who sadly died last year.  I am writing at his desk overlooking his wild and beautiful garden.  Alexander Cockburn, like his friend Noam Chomsky, would have slammed the US government for the actions of the NSA recently revealed by Edward Snowden.

Whilst I am amused by the audacious lengths government will go to hold onto its own secrets while harvesting yours… he was not.  Like this present generation of internet babies… I have never valued secrets.  I am an open book. I have always believed that everything I am is yours.

Do you remember the biggest secret you had to keep?  You know, the queer secret?

When I realized I was different, that my sexual/social narrative did not correspond with those around me, I was baffled as to how I should make the difference known.  I was just a child.  I did not ‘come out of the closet’. I didn’t understand why I should make a big emotional announcement. I decided that I wouldn’t tell anyone. My actions would speak louder than words.  It was up to them, those around me, to frame the reveal. Not me.

It was obvious that being queer, telling people that I was queer during the 1970’s… was like letting off a bomb. It was an act of terrorism.  For some, it still is.  Holding my lover’s hand in the street… a rebellion.

So, instead of having a difficult conversation with my secular loved ones about my sexuality, I spoke openly about my same-sex desires, my plans and my heroes.  They looked askance but they got used to it… or else.  I was a teenage whistleblower.

There is nothing more honorable than being a whistleblower.

This month, two extraordinary whistleblowers are top of the news.  Queer hero Bradley Manning and straight hero Edward Snowden.  Manning is currently on trial in a semi-secret military kangaroo court and unlikely ever to be released. The other brave whistleblower, Edward Snowden, a fugitive in Hong Kong, unlikely to see his country of origin ever again.

My gay brothers and sisters in the USA have, on the most part, turned their back on Bradley Manning citing his law breaking as treasonous. Maligning his motives, distancing themselves from his gay story.  Manning’s narrative is bound up with the recently abandoned DADT, a messy ‘coming out’, Manning’s extreme family poverty and the witnessing of cruel and illegal horrors that no man should ever see.

Manning has unwittingly created a schism in the LGBTQ community, cleaving the queers from the gays.  The queers have on the most part embraced Manning, his activism and conscientious objection. The gays have not.  The Queers had Manning elected as a San Francisco gay pride parade grand marshal in late April, but the LGBTQ board quickly rescinded the ‘honor’ after a white male gay outcry.

Queer supporters of Manning held demonstrations, crowded a Pride board meeting and packed a community forum all with the hopes of seeing Manning reinstated as a grand marshal. The Pride board has not budged.

Why are the majority of USA gays so repulsed by Manning?

Perhaps if Manning had been a muscular, army guy of the gay-for-pay porn star variety so popular amongst the gays, they may have ‘evolved’ a different point of view.  Manning is not that guy. He is small and slight and wan.  He joined the army to get an education and ironically ended up educating the whole world.

He is lauded by Michael Moore, Vietnam Vets, heterosexual politicians/presidents and liberal intellectuals all over the world.  His actions are widely credited with hastening an American withdrawal from Iraq and the Arab Spring.

To many across the world Bradley Manning is a hero.

Yet, the gay establishment ignore Bradley. He is routinely ignored by the HRC and GLAAD. He is viciously bullied on anonymous gay, online discussion boards.  GLAAD would rather honor a homophobic, straight film director rather than one of our brave own.

Many of the USA gays who publicly hate Manning are upper middle-class, affluent white men.  They seem embarrassed and angry by his openness, his honesty, his despair.   They call him impertinent, arrogant and narcissistic.  Yet, had Bradley Manning been a bone fide journalist with a fancy ivy league degree he might have become a hero… or like Edward Snowden who currently enjoys the support of over 100, 000 people on the White House petition page demanding a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs.

There is no such petition for Bradley Manning.  Bradley was not well-educated… he’s a white trash gay kid with ideas above his rank.

His detractors, formerly closeted gay men, have their own relationship with the truth.  By necessity, after years of experience, they have become slick liars, natural spies, covert experts. In their every day life they create the illusion of perfection: socially, physically and sexually. A tribe of American gay men who have an overwhelming urge to be over-achievers.  They are clean-cut and conservative in appearance, they throw themselves into their jobs with the same fervency they got through school.

They champion marriage and the military rather than the end of LGBTQ jobs discrimination.  They have no interest in helping others in the coalition of oppressed minorities cobbled together by President Obama because they do not consider themselves an oppressed minority.

Why should they?  They are white, affluent and male.  What’s not to be proud of?

Since I arrived in the USA I have (rather proudly) been subject to not one… but two gagging orders imposed on me by white gay men.

Both ex-intimates, both terrified of having their secret gay lives revealed.  Professional white men, a 32-year-old and a 45-year-old.   The younger man works for a famous publishing house and is perhaps the most interesting because he supposedly respects the first amendment.   The other, a rich businessman caught lying and cheating.

The former was well ensconced in his comfy closet when I first met him, about to be married to a women, living a double life. When I found out about his deception I told him,  “Either you tell the woman you are deceiving… or I will.”

When I tell white gay men this story they are outraged.  They blame the deceived woman for being dumb.  Their thinly veiled misogyny revealed.

“How stupid of her to not realize he was gay.”  they scold.

One Saturday morning two years ago he told her he was living a double life.  After he came out of the closet he had a great deal of sex with many men then settled down with the man he intends to marry.  Free from her sociopathic ex she is now in love with an honest heterosexual.  Of course… he demonizes me.  She probably does too.  No good deed goes unpunished.

Like a lot of over-achieving well-closeted gay men, the publisher operated under the “Best Little Boy in the World” syndrome, a term from Andrew Tobias’ seminal coming-out autobiography of the same name, published in 1973, describing a certain type of middle-to-upper-class gay man.

Gay men are still terrified of the truth: personal or public. Their worst fear when growing up was having their gay truth revealed.  We all want to control the message.  Nobody wants to be told that they are queer ahead of their own declaration.

Many gay men still behave like small boys grappling with who and what it means to be gay.  Scarred by shame, they loathe any queer person who draws negative attention to him/herself in case it tarnishes them or the gay corporation.

They loathe Bradley Manning for outing the nation.

When gay men are ready to tell the truth about being gay they demand recognition and plaudits for doing so.  A heroes welcome for coming out of the closet.  Yet, after this initial flush of candor, their honesty only extends so far.

Beyond the great revelation there is a darker side to being gay that the gay white elite doesn’t want you to know.

They have gone to extraordinary lengths to make you think we are JUST LIKE YOU.  They are still placating their heterosexual parents, school mates and the straight friends who don’t mind them being gay… as long as you don’t do anything gay around me.

The gays don’t want you to know about the meningitis epidemic, the continuing HIV epidemic, they don’t want you to know about their loneliness, their propensity for STDs, the unreasonably high gay adult male suicide rate, the sexual unmanageability, drug taking, racism, sexism, classism, narcissism and ageism that blights the gay ‘community’.  They don’t mention how they routinely commodify women’s bodies/reproductive labor so they can have children. They don’t want you to know just how hard it is to be straight acting, to be ‘masc’ or to find themselves remotely attractive when they look in the mirror.

They don’t want you to know that for many LGBTQ… it doesn’t get better.

Manning broke the first rule of the white gay American elite:  Don’t rock the boat.

The gay businessman’s gagging order expires early next year and he will, inevitably seek to extend it.  The publisher will do the same.  The problem is:  as they know all too well… the truth is eventually revealed.

I met a man.  A medical doctor.  He was well put together, handsome, the president of a large gay organization that supposedly represents the interests of the gay community.  Our trusted servant. He couldn’t stop crying.  Under his well cut trousers he had a permanent needle in his leg for jacking meth. He begged me not to write about him.

I couldn’t make that promise.  He is the perfect white gay American metaphor.

In modern America secrets both public and personal are simultaneously considered defending and deflowering at the expense of the constitution. At both micro and macro levels this secretive bipolarity has come to define my stay in the USA.

 

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Categories
Queer

Last Days in Petrolia

IMG_5082

My final days in Petrolia.  I’m home now.  The exhausting 11 hour drive.

Stopped in San Francisco for lunch.

We must have climbed the steep hill to Alexander Cockburn‘s Tower ten times a day, getting ready for Daisy’s first paying guests.

By the time we were finished it looked magnificent.  Beating rugs like Victorian chamber maids.  Oiling the redwood kitchen.  Making beds with fresh white linen.  Sweeping cobwebs off the windows.

Giving succor to the inner butler that lurks within.

Here is the sculpture that decorates the path:

Here are the fossilized fish that decorate the bathroom:

Here are random pictures I failed to publish earlier:

Categories
Queer

Petrolia

Daisy

I promised that I wouldn’t write about where and who I was staying with… it feels like I am boasting.  But… here I am staying with Daisy Cockburn on The Lost Coast.   We met thirty years ago at Phil H’s house on Langton Street, Worlds End, Chelsea.

Daisy’s house/compound, filled with unusual and beautiful things collected by her father Alexander Cockburn, leaving his only child this house in Petrolia.  Alexander was a disruptor, a magnificent political writer.  Alexander died last July after a long illness.

Collecting the most extraordinary ceramics, eclectic paintings the decaying house is a warren of red wood improvements and additions.  James built a tower on the hill… I’ve not yet visited.  The ceramics are mostly by LA based ceramist Jim Danisch.

Daisy’s mother is the writer Emma Tennant.  Her cousin is Olivia Wilde.

I drove from LA.  Through San Francisco.  The last 60 miles along perilous roads in the dark.  Tarmac Roads that suddenly give out to treacherous gravel.  Past the magnificent redwoods that even in the dark… are extraordinary.

I slept in a huge bed built on a wooden platform.  I slept like a giant redwood log.  At night, I can hear the Mattole river moving quickly over tiny gray pebbles.  This morning we all… dogs too… swam in the cold clear water.

More pics tomorrow.

Categories
art Fashion Love

Blondie V Philip Glass

Here is something beautiful for you:  Blondie and Philip Glass

Categories
Rant

The Transit of Venus

The Transit of Venus

A black spec traverses the sun..not to be seen again until 2117. I will be long dead, long forgotten.

Yesterday, I sat with the producer of the Italian film and made my pitch. Novel good. Script…wanting.

An admirer sent a Balenciaga dog collar for the recovering Little Dog. It is a little too big but he doesn’t seem to mind.

The swelling has gone in his leg. He has a red rash all over his swollen belly and chest. The bite marks on his paw remind me that a big rattle snake and the Little Dog came face to face.

Robby is in San Francisco with Lance.

Having an assistant forces me to be more industrious. He takes notes, emails…arranges appointments and reminds me where I am meant to be and when.

I spend less time looking at the phone and more time focused on my dream.

We travel in an elevator with Casey and Ben Affleck. We sit with Salim Akil and discuss his film…Sparkle.

We go to a screening of Prometheus on the Fox lot. The film doesn’t make any sense. The rambling musings of an elderly man unconvinced by humanity.

A crazy bloke from Whitstable reminds me why I have no reason to be there. He is trapped, I am not.

I meet with a production company to discuss a comedy show idea. TV, they say, it’s the way forward.

We drive downtown to pick up my passport, we eat in the car. We drink coffee and meet friends. The sun is shining. I stop in to see Jennie at the ACLU and we talk about lentil soup.

I speak with the detective about my lap top. It sickens me. I say, “Are your family proud of the work you do?”

Dinner at home then crash at 11pm.

I have promised a young man that I will wait for him…so I will.

I am convinced that (like Venus) I have a short moment in the sun, before I am plunged back into darkness.

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Categories
Malibu

Found Objects

I loathe art made of ‘found objects’ with the single exception of Kurt Schwitters.  If you don’t know who he is…look him up.

It is such a beautiful day here.  I am wandering around the garden in awe.

I have terrible pain in my body.  I know what it is.

I want to steal the chairs from next door.

I want the pain to end.  Have been plagued with memories of Jake.  Not least because I am writing the script about him.   The script is really good.  There’s a great deal of tension.

I know he has a boy friend he loves.  But I know he struggles with wanting sex with multiple partners.

I miss his beautiful face.

I am jealous that he is out there having a life.  I hope he is ok.  I miss him.  I want to cry.

I wish I were dead.

Robby came over this week and we almost had sex.  It was so erotic and sexy.

Categories
art

jekyll/hyde

Stephen Petronio and Hamish Bowles

Yesterday:  an interesting day of fascinating contrasts.   At 5pm I had the first of what I am sure will be many conversations with the mean (read aggressive) litigator.

Regardless of what I now feel about The Penguin I don’t really want to see this strange litigator man unzip his Penguin belly and scrape out the rancid innards.   But, I suppose, that’s what has to happen if we are going to get me some settlement.  Evisceration.

I woke up feeling like Dr Jekyll and went to bed as Mr. Hyde.  Or vice versa.  One wonders, when one wakes up, who will be driving the bus.  Will I be in a good or bad mood?  Will I feel vindictive or conciliatory?

Earlier in the day I had a brief conversation with CP who thought I was grumpy and urged me to go to a meeting.  I went to the 12.30 University Place AA meeting and felt markedly better.  Good call CP!

Derek Lloyd Saathoff and I met with ‘A List’ Executive Producer at Elmo.  Charming man.  He drank lychee with vodka which was a somethingtini?  Can’t remember the name.  I drank 5 double espresso.  It was the first time I had publicly stated or engaged publicly with D.   I will, unless told otherwise, start writing about this oddly satisfying, burgeoning ‘fake’ relationship.

By the time we got to the Joyce Theatre to see the premiere of Underland we were all over each other.   Well, he was all over me.  He is a really good kisser.  Though, I must admit…public kissing is not really my thang.  In this rarefied NYC milieu we seemed to know just about everyone.   Kim Light, Hamish Bowles, Cyndi Stivers…and others.

Stephen Petronio’s Underland is a vividly surging work, inspired by the dark, bittersweet songs of Australian balladeer Nick Cave.  Dancers hurl through space with razor-sharp precision, fiercely energized one moment, sensually lyrical the next.

After party at Hotel Griffou organized by old friend Mandie Erickson.   “Everything I touch turns to gold!”  She poked me in the chest.  Delicious dancers from the show and glamorous men with names like Tito and Phillipe.

Derek drank two cocktails and became immediately drunk.  I pushed him into a cab and went back to the party.  What a mess.

The food at the Griffou was excellent though the roasted cauliflower made the dining area at the back smell like farts.

Stephen Petronio on good form.  I told him that the show obviously reminded one of  Michael Clark’s work from the 90’s and he told me that they dated for 4 years.  I didn’t know that!

I refered to Stephen’s BF but was corrected…”My husband…”

Hamish and I discussed the Balenciaga show in San Francisco.  He seems really happy with it.  More space and access to better gowns.  I will make the effort to see it and take my poet friend Randall Mann.

A sparkling night out.  D home early to bed as has to work final day today.

Dropped in at Bowery Bar on way home.

[wpvideo 2MgHXX7U]

Categories
Health

Let’s Start Again Shall we?

Laying in my bed with this fever..seems like a bad time to start cleaning house but that’s what I find myself doing.

As the New Year approaches we all attempt to make changes in our lives, commit or recommit to breaking old habits and focus on what we know is good for us.

Looking back at this eventful year…wasn’t it just?  Of course I think about you-know-who but how I think about him must change.

Already I am wondering why a man I knew for so little time and spent even less real-time became so bloody important to me.

That’s a question I need answering with the help of a therapist.

I can dress it up as a huge romance..or I can tell it as it is…two addicts clinging onto one another for safety.   So few words to describe something that has bugged me all year.

My abandonment issues, separation angsiety…all makes sense.

Jake lingers in my nutty mind because in March I will be carrying the can for the both of us in court.

As irritable as I am about the court date..March 25th (I will be really pissed as the date approaches) I am in the sort of mood where if I were a King I would be pardoning all manner of prisoners.   The prisoner I am pardoning today..is me.  I deleted my Manhunt account, my Adam 4 Adam account and lastly..my Gaydar account.    I must say..it’s a tremendous relief.

All I have to recommit to is my porn problem…which is not as bad as it was but still figures in my fantasy life.

The great thing about AA or SAA or any 12 step programme is that we can always start again.  You know as well as I do how topsy-turvy everything has been these past few months..how thrown off course I have been.

Wandering up the High Street today, a light rain on my face, even though I am really sick..I felt happy.  Incredibly at ease with everything.

I am not in competition with anyone.  Not for a better time, not for a bigger house, not for more money or a better job.  I have quite enough of everything.  I always have.

You know, I am going to tell you something:  I have been praying hard for Jake to be okay.  Praying for his career, his love life, for adventure and peace of mind.

Would I want to be him?  No.  Would I have wanted his life thus far?  No.  Instead of hating him I have been getting some perspective.  Sure, I wasted a great deal of time on that young man, and it feels like not much has been learned..but I am sure that as time passes I will think differently about that.

I can see that not many people anywhere, how ever rich they are..are very happy.  On the face of it Jake had everything a young man could possibly want but just pick at the surface and there’s nothing there.   Happiness is so elusive for so many.  The folks I know here in Whitstable are especially grumpy.   They drink too much, they feel trapped, they are ignorant of so much…yet they live in harmony.

I sometimes wonder if it would have been better for Jake to stay in the closet..if you want to call it that.   They were happy together.  They were soul mates.  He just wanted a bit of cock on occasions…or did he?  For as much as he dismissed what he wanted from me as a ‘bit of fun’, I know for sure that he wants to be loved.

I never really understood what it was about his Father or Mother that made him lie to them.  Were they hideously judgemental?  Homophobic?  Unlikely as his dad is a psychiatrist.  Most probably they are as entitled as he is.  What happened to little Jake?  Precious Jake?

I chatted with someone Jake knew at University last week.  I asked if it was a particularly macho anti-gay university…as Jake had described it.  My friend laughed out loud..he said that it was like going to the Castro in San Francisco.   Ithaca is a private upstate liberal arts college.

He must have lied to me all the time.

He must have been really unhappy.  I hope he gets happier.

Hanging with Tom the other day…he’s happy…his wife and kid seem happy too.  That’s something to aspire to.  I have always wanted the mince-pie, brocade and topiary sort of comfort he has and then I look around and see that I already have it.

As you may have noticed…the blog didn’t go private because there doesn’t seem to be a way on WordPress for me to do that.  Oh well.

BTW, it’s that time of year again where I get to vote for who will win this years BAFTA for best film, director, etc.   I realized, as I was voting for the best male actor, that I knew every one of them personally and had slept with two of them.

Strange but true.