Tag: San Francisco

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Gay Hollywood

Date Night

My date last night was perhaps the first proper date that I had ever had.  We were meeting to see if we could sustain more than a moment of initial attraction.  Isn’t that what a date is all about?  I had been looking forward to it all week not least because I am so eager to get over the hesitant, unwilling Mr. NYC…should I start using his name rather than some acronym?

Whenever one is transitioning from one relationship to another it is almost impossible not to compare what was with what is on offer.  So, in order to beat that particular demon we talked about last loves and expectations.  Frankly it was wonderful to just be in the same room as a man who one found attractive rather than the constant yearning of the past 6 months.   The more I sat with this strange new boy the more at ease I became and the more attractive he seemed to me.  But unlike the last I would have to work a great deal harder to capture this butterfly.

For a start-I am not and will never be his physical type.   If we have types…I suppose I may surpass types.   I am the charismatic, art collecting, goat rearing, F150 driving, Vivienne Westwood wearing anomaly so getting to have dinner with me is just about me and who I am.

Of course he knew more about me than I him as my life is flayed all over the Internet.   He looked at me with curious blue eyes.  At times he was deliciously coy. This man/boy is incredibly well-educated with a compelling story and good connections.   A bit deaf-or maybe I was mumbling.  Our recent experiences with men have confused us.  I urged him not to let these last encounters destroy what we love most about men…anyhow it is the very essence of jade that is peculiar to gay men and is as attractive to me as rat poison.   It is true to say however that we are both a little bruised by recent loves, a little reticent.   I want to meet men unfettered and with abandon.  It is my aim.

He is a recent émigré to LA so enjoying all that the city has to offer.  Irritatingly, unable to stop myself, I began a tirade against my adopted home and found myself saying things to him that I didn’t even believe anymore-it’s just easier to gripe about Los Angeles rather than take ownership of it.

Of course he is strikingly good looking…a willowy boy, tall, and slim like an 18th century romantic hero.   An extraordinary gait.   Floppy blond hair and the most beautiful nose.  He drank one glass of white wine, which scarcely seemed to affect him at all.   We ordered three courses because I knew that today I was going to go on a diet and start my gym training with David at Gold’s in Venice.

Rabbit good.  Bratwurst bad.  Cakes divine.

I have no idea if I will kiss his neck or sweep the blond hair out of his eyes.  I have no idea if we will meet in Paris or drive to San Francisco on a whim but there’s a chance that we may and if we don’t, well…I know I made good choices tonight.  Good for my brimming heart.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q4foLKDlcE]

Categories
Dogs Gay Money Rant

Drug Companies Profit From Gay Self-Hate

Eating cheese and pastrami with lashings of piccalilli smeared over the top.  The inside of my mouth is burning.  My lips are burning with desire.  Not really.  My lips are just bored.  I am waiting for the mail to arrive so I can walk to bank and get on with the day.

I just scaled Mount Runyon with Sherpa Lil Dog, we saw two gorgeous yeti and had to: Alert! Avert! Affirm!    It’s simply no good for me to gaze longingly at the perfectly honed abs of my fellow Runyon climbers.

Yesterday I realized, after chatting with a friend of mine with HIV that the average drug company will make over $2, 000, 000 out of a single person with HIV during their life time.  Where is the incentive for those drug companies to educate gay men about staying negative?   Anyway, I am fast realizing that the sexual health education that gay men need is nothing to do with safe sex and everything to do with self-love.

The drug companies have no compassion for gay men, no desire to educate an underclass with no real rights, who are despised by most Christian bigots and have so little respect for themselves that they routinely get infected with HIV and become another $2, 000, 000 meal ticket for big pharma.

Pharmaceutical executives must be rubbing their hands in glee when another gay man converts from positive to negative.

This has to stop.  We must start educating the next generation of gay men to love themselves enough to make good sexual health choices.

I got to thinking about my friend Amanda and how we recently hit a bit of a rock.  I think deep down, even though she has gay men around her to dress her, she really has no respect for gay men. For many people we are clowns who have no right to complain or behave as anything other than grotesque queens.   We are, to her, useless absurdities.   Her notion that it is somehow ridiculous for us to have children, for us to have politics, opinions, etc.  She’s not alone; I think many people are outraged by all of that and more.

Whatever I may have written about gaybies in the past I now see gay men having children as a delicious act of rebellion.  It confronts homophobia head on.

Categories
Dogs Gay Hollywood Queer

Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

I needed to stay in home alone tonight.  I feel sad.  Sad about Kristian, sad about my friends who died this year and sad that once again I am on my own:  the vacuum left behind after a wonderful weekend with a great friend.

I have always had and certainly will continue to have a serious problem with goodbye.  Saying goodbye permanently or even temporarily brings up huge feelings of loss, vulnerability and then the anger-the anger overwhelms me.

The genesis of these feelings: I was ripped from my mother’s breast and put up for adoption.  These are primal fears of life and death.   The most profoundly affecting goodbye after my mother’s abandonment was the death of my Darling Big Dog.

When my dog was violently killed the resulting anguish unleashed a torrent of sadness, a great wave of misery that may have resulted from not ever having said goodbye-ever to anyone I loved.  I did not go to my grandfather’s funeral nor my grandmother’s.   I have rigorously avoided any ritual goodbye and for that I am a lesser man.

Whenever I leave a party I just slip away as if saying goodbye will somehow humiliate me.

The same feelings overcome me now after the deaths of three friends in as many months.  Yet the very act of writing about them lends me immediate solace.

The end of relationships causes me unrelenting heartache.

Stoically accepting the end of a relationship?  No, not for me.  Nearly all of the relationships I have had have ended badly.  I never, it seems, get to write that scene in the movie of my life where two people say a dignified goodbye.

The end of my relationship with Joe ended thus:  I knew that I was going to leave but it took me 2 years to end it and when I finally did I tried to do it with tenderness and compassion but he was so angry that he made my life miserable for a full year after I left him-ending up in court fighting over property.

In my mad head I forget that I have choices, the choice to remember that the past no longer runs the show, choices to say goodbye without the reenactment of traumatic and ruinous scenarios.

Today I waved goodbye to a new friend who has come to mean a great deal to me.  Whether there is any romantic future between us is really not up to me-unless I behave in such a way that he would never want to see me again.   This morning I began to get angry, angry that he was leaving but knew that it was for the best.

Even though I was only momentarily angry-until I could identify what was going on in my mad head and break the cycle of abandonment and despair by telling him that I would miss him, that I was feeling sad, that I had no mechanism for making those feelings go away…and by telling him the truth I was freed from behaviors that would alienate him from me forever.

I will say goodbye to Kristian this week, say my heartfelt adieu.   His death has brought up all sorts of STUFF.   I sorted out pictures of us today and will post them as soon as I can.

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