Tag: Sebastian Horsley

Categories
Los Angeles Queer Rant Whitstable

The Deserving Gay

Jim Lande

1.

What used to be a trickle of exceptionalism that marred a tiny portion of the white gay male community has recently become a lethal torrent.   Perceived ‘equality’ has revealed the true nature of many, many gay white men.  No longer humbled by their treatment at the hands of an unfair, homophobic society they have sprung ahead of the pack, claiming that a ‘seat at the table’ is not good enough… instead we must build, decorate and chair the table… governing any meeting it may entertain.  Moreover, we don’t really want to share the table with anyone other than really, really good-looking gay white men who all agree and never get angry.

Being gay is like joining a cult.

At gay AA… the greeters don’t greet you unless you are ‘hot’ or ‘famous’.

A Provincetown celebrity (aren’t they all) posted a picture of his smiling mug along side two other grinning, bearded gay men.  All three based in Provincetown, on perpetual vacation, they look for all the world as if they are happy.  As if they are care free… as if trouble seldom blights their gay paradise.  Great pic!  They may very well use the pic and pics like them to lure boys on a well-known gay hook up app.  In gay paradise everything is perfect.  That’s what they insist you believe.  Of course… scratch a little beneath the surface of any gay man and one releases the foul odor of resentment, addiction, crippling narcissism and judgement.

I mentioned to Jim Lande who posted the pic that everyone seems so happy all the time in Provincetown?  He replied, “Only for the deserving.”   Of course, we know what that means.  Jim means there is no room in a perfect gay society for an opposing view, an ugly mug, for poverty, for people of color, for mental illness…  the deserving are hand-picked from the glut of meat delivered weekly to Provincetown, Fire Island and resorts like them.

Jim describes himself as a Boulevardier, a bohemian… he compliments a video I posted of Sebastian Horsley my great friend… I remind him that Sebastian was a bohemian, Jim is just a gay man wearing a velvet jacket… there’s a difference.   He retracts the word bohemian from his description.  He attempts to shame me for going to a boarding school that helps kids who have been abused.   It’s the gay go to punishment:  SHAME.   Did you read that?  This exceptional, best little boy who worked in government all his life spying on the good people of the United States is doing what the rancid gay does best… he is trying to shame me for something I could not help.   I had no say.

Jim Lande is trapped in Provincetown, posting pics of his amazing life, his amazing friends… he posts endless reviews of the film he helped fund, Love is Strange by Ira Sachs.  He describes Ira as a ‘Hollywood Darling.’   Blighted by gay exceptionalism… he reminds me how much money he is going to make, the awards they will win… the plaudits they receive.

2.

Dan spends his summer hop-scotching across the world from gay resort to gay cruise to gay sightseeing.  He travels in a pack of identical men.  The same age, the same color, the same body weight, hair distribution, the same dietary obsessions… the same unresolved traumas.  He is the ‘deserving’.

I met a young man on-line the other day.  We had the briefest moment of intimacy.  He is ‘desperate’ to be in the film industry.  He is ‘discreet’ which is short hand for: I’m careful who I tell I’m gay and what I’m into because it might ruin my career chances.  He’s not scared that straight people will find out, little Austin is scared the gays will judge him, the gays will shame him.  He doesn’t want gay men to know anything.  He is secretive, sneaky and as a result… thoroughly unattractive.   He has built himself a hybrid closet (like a panic room) protecting himself from the gays.

(The actor I dated this summer was secretive, sneaky and lied about everything.  The gays live in a shadowy world of fantasy, make-believe and lies.)

3.

The society photographer boasts that the boy who loves him is ‘disposable’, he boasts that he fisted him… when I ask the boy what happened… he tells me that the hardest thing about the photographer were his fingers.    We seldom talk about erectile dysfunction.  Anything other than a hard cock renders a gay man utterly useless.   You know, the gays hate me writing my blog.   They write snarky notes insisting that I correct tiny details… (“I’m not a director I’m a producer”)  as if any one cared!  

4.

On Facebook I am pretending to be an old Whitstable codger, enjoying a thread on Julie Burchill‘s Facebook page.  Julie hates all Muslims, her page is rife with anti islamic rhetoric.  If you disagree with her POV you are immediately branded a ‘jew hater’.  She says, “I think I may have mentioned a FEW times that I am a Gentile Socialist Zionist? Why would people come here just to get cross? If you don’t like the tiny democratic state of Israel, surrounded by fascist fiefdoms, fuck off to one of the thousands of Jew-hating Facebook pages? Cheers!”

Her fans scream with joy!  Her fans ecstatically revile Islam.  Her fans start out by reminding us firmly that they are not racist (they don’t support the British National Party) then, without irony, they go on to say how much they hate all Muslims and want to kill them.  I suggested meeting one of these crazy women to discuss exacting revenge on the Muslim population of Chatham…. amazingly she private messaged me in the hope of exacting revenge on Muslims!!!

Then it got pretty scary… these people are fucking INSANE.  Julie has no idea what her crazed followers are capable of.   She really needs to take that seriously.   Whipping those guys up the way she does may lead her to some unsightly trouble… exactly the same trouble other radical preachers have, facing the same criminal charges.  You need only one crazy person to do something dumb and cite Julie B as their inspiration…. well, you know the rest.

BTW what exactly is a ‘gentile socialist zionist’?

5.

The only person to spout that kind of anti Muslim shit to me here in the USA was a white gay Producer who told me he believed (as a patriot) that all Muslims should convert or be eradicated from the earth because they didn’t like gays.  I said, my deceased father was a Muslim and several of my 12 brothers and sisters too.  He didn’t care.  He still thought they should be murdered.  Whilst I can sort of understand Julie’s naive zeal as a pre op convert to Judaism I found this Christian hatred and rabid insistence to kill millions of people based on their beliefs… utterly stunning.   Mind you, this guy has always been a person to be suspicious of, he tells everyone who will listen that he will help anyone he can… any way he can… but when the time comes… he is nowhere to be found.

Categories
art

Billy Childish

Billy Childish 2/1/2011

I spent the morning writing lists.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today I filmed him painting in his studio.

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

The new work is huge.

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

These paintings are important.

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

Tracy!  What a pompous cow!  Liar to boot.

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

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

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

Julie, Scout and Billy 2/1/11

Categories
Auto Biography Death Gay prison Rant

Sebastian Horsley Funeral

1983, the year I met Sebastian

Is it possible to believe in God and still take drugs and drink?  Is it possible to believe in God and sleep with hookers?  Is any of this possible?  Obviously it is.

Sebastian will be buried on Thursday, July 1st 2010.   There’ll be a horse-drawn cortege from Meard Street to St James’s Piccadilly where the service will be held.   Stephen Fry will be speaking,  as are others.  Stephen very kindly offered to say a few words on my behalf.

Rachel Campbell-Johnstone wrote to me yesterday inviting me to the funeral, she said,  “We are mountaineers roped together heading for the summit of beauty.”   She warned us that the funeral will be filmed.

Remember, I was 23 when I met Sebastian.  That was 27 years ago.  He was still a teenager working for Jimmy Boyle in Edinburgh.   Our show, Pornography, a spectacle, invited by the Richard Demarco Gallery would play in Jimmy’s cold performance space where Sebastian and I met for the first time.

I would later work for the Demarco Gallery and meet Joseph Beuys, the greatest conceptual artist of our age.   There was a fascinating dialogue between Beuys and Boyle..then styled one of the most dangerous men in the United Kingdom.

The dialogue was initiated by Richard Demarco whilst Jimmy Boyle was serving a sentence of life imprisonment in Barlinnie Prison for murder.  Beuys went on hunger strike because of Jimmy Boyle’s removal from the Special Unit, Barlinnie to Edinburgh’s Saughton Prison where he was no longer able to continue making art.

Sebastian claimed in his book Dandy in the Underworld that he was sleeping with Jimmy and I have no reason to doubt him.  I would have too if I had had my chance.  There was something wildly attractive to me about ex cons and hard men and dangerous criminals.  Remember I had been in prison the year before I met Sebastian and developed a nasty habit for sex with brutal straight men.

If anybody was going to fuck me he was going to be a man who deserved me.    He was going to be a man who knew what he wanted and how to take it.

My cell mate Tommy Cowling, married with two children from Hoxton, East London was the most beautiful man who ever lived.  When the lights went out in our cell he said, “I’m asleep now, you can do what you want to me.”  For nine long months we did exactly that, everything we wanted when the lights were out.   He could make me cum by just rubbing his stubble over my soft face.

Perhaps this is another reason why I spurned the soppy men that I met in gay bars and gay clubs?  Perhaps this is why I would rather have my head buried in a squaddies (soldiers) groin, the smell of wet pussy on his cock than a nice boy from The Abbey.  Prison spoiled more than my reputation.   It proved, if any proof were needed, that straight men with furious urges, hard and hairy bodies and urgent desires were far more interesting than living in the half-light of shameful, gay London, Paris or New York.

This is all a matter of taste of course.  My desires cannot be compared to yours.

Yesterday something a little untoward happened.  At Anna’s birthday party she rolled me a fag and it had a few crumbs of weed in it.   I was as high as a kite for a good few hours.  Everything was totally wonderful.  I had that gorgeous feeling of euphoria and masterful abandon.  I hadn’t felt that feeling for nigh on 14 years.  I demanded to speak to Jake because I wanted to know how the experience of me being high would affect what I thought of him.

He was complaining that it was late and he wanted to go to sleep…he was blithering on about how people might think he was some sort of man whore if I compared his experience of being gay with men who died of AIDS in the 1980’s.   Obviously, I didn’t mean that.  I was trying to be nice.

Fuck it!  Go and be a man whore.  All of you!   Go and be whores.  It doesn’t matter to me.  I was sucking squaddie cock and getting fucked in the back of cars by East End builders.  LUSH.  I didn’t wait around to have a gay life.  I emerged from the womb searching for the most perfect penis to suckle on.

Anyway, as I did not deliberately get high I am not going to reset my sobriety time.  I still believe in God but I’m not going to be so fucking pious.

I will miss you Sebastian Horsley.

Categories
Death Dogs Malibu

Eclipse

The Big Dog

7am Friday morning Los Angeles.  It’s time to come clean.

This week last year was the last I would spend with my Darling Big Dog who is now buried in Malibu.

I miss her so much.

The occasions when I just breakdown and cry for her are fewer nowadays but it still happens.

If it weren’t for the little dog I don’t know how I would have survived the darker days this year, the dread comes upon me but I have to get up and go on because his needs come first.  He is a little dog, he comes from a damaged place and I made a promise to him..

The dread.

There is, I hear, something quite magical about drowning.  There is a euphoric moment just before death that could make a long swim quite an attractive prospect.

Up and down, up and down.   The trip home will, I know, keep me balanced and sane.  So much to do and see.   Spoke to my travelling companion last night.  He seems well and happy.

Yesterday I woke at dawn and filled my time until I could legitimately start the day.  The little dog sleeps as I potter around in my bathrobe and read the news.   I am going to climb Runyon this morning.

Over in Malibu I saw another huge snake in the garden but it was hot and angry so I didn’t fetch my shovel.  Anyway, I still feel guilty for killing the last one.  So may people asked why I didn’t keep the meat and eat it.

The problem with changing your life so completely is that you are left with a huge hole where your life once was.  Sex Addiction meetings are not enough to keep me happy or secure or in touch.  Gratitude lists look paltry when written down.  Even meeting up with my friend and mentor can’t seem to shift the immense longing I have in my heart that periodically casts such a deep shadow over me.

My happiness eclipsed I look to the usual suspects to shine light into the darkness.  Sadly their batteries are dead.

Listening to loud and uplifting music can go some way to making life better.   My choices may seem suspect, Elton et al.   I can’t listen to Joni, her obsession with lost love merely plays into the pessimistic thoughts I am already prone to when the sun stops shining.

Dentist yesterday.  The dentist gave me a lecture about flossing and I lectured her about the perils of white flour/sugar/rice etc.   I don’t think any kind of doctor here likes being told anything because they are so used to dispensing advice and usually remain unchallenged.  She tried to scare me with apocalyptic visions of the bone around my teeth falling away that can only be solved, she said, by spending thousands of dollars and endless hours in the dentist’s office.

I think I will ignore her advice and see my lovely dentist in Sydney when I am there this winter.   Oh yes, I am going to Sydney this winter.   I decided this morning.

After seeing Sebastian this week I thought a great deal about my father.  Dead, maligned,  reviled..much like I expect I will be.

Another Sebastian to think about, my friend Sebastian Horsley who has finally become the glittering star he always wanted to be.  I knew it.  In death he has become the man they wanted him to be.  Death becomes him.  In death we can acknowledge the fantasy of who he was rather than the stinking reality, the crazed drug addict.  I will remember him for twenty-seven years from Edinburgh to London.  I will remember him struggling to stay clean, vulnerable, and helpful to other heroin addicts.   How can I forget?

I stopped in on Andrew yesterday.  He had a square, roughly glazed vase of white hydrangea mixed with other tiny, yellow flowers.  The mere act of filling the house with flowers lifts the spirits.  They have hung huge photographs and his found chair collection grows weekly.  I fell asleep on the sofa and when I woke up he was gone.  When did I stop appreciating these tiny gestures of good will?  When did I stop buying flowers?  How did my house get so full of other stuff?  That’s why I like going to the Malibu because I have stripped out all of the mess.  I am left with an African seed pod on a porcelain plate.

My Darling Big Dog

When did I start forgetting that aesthetic?  The aesthetic that Patrick taught me when I was Andrew’s age?

Meanwhile I am dealing with the birth of a monster.  One I can scarcely contain.  One I have done my level best to avoid for many years.   The goblins hold a cracked mirror to your face and all you can see is the ugliness.  Not the age, (because I am sure of my age) but how very ugly one is.  My confidence stems from this:  that when I look into the mirror I appreciate what I see and hope that others may see me just as I see myself.

OK, off to Runyon with the Little Dog.   Time to go now.   Time to get on with the day.   Busy, busy, busy.

Categories
Love

Jenny A

Lunch with Jenny A at Joan’s on Third.

I tend to avoid anything flavored with Tarragon because it is most often over used.  Used correctly it is the most delicate and fragrant of all the herbs providing a backdrop for other flavors to make themselves heard.

I ate the three-salad combination plate..chicken with Tarragon salad, butter bean and mozzarella salad and snap pea salad.  Gorgeous.  But what was more gorgeous was hanging with the perennially elegant, devilishly witty and endlessly talented Jenny.

I am still off all food made with anything bleached, processed or enriched so am shrinking daily.  I wore McQueen pants, a black tee and Maison Margiella sandals.  The first time this year I have felt confident to do so.  I knew that I looked fucking great and that, my friends, is all your favorite ‘uncle’ requires of the new day.   Elegance.  Who better to dress to impress than darling Jenny.

As you may have divined I am well and truly out of my funereal dirge and feeling very happy, resolute, fearless.  This is all it takes?  Lunch with Jenny to slough off the past few months of misery?  Well no, it was Jenny plus some really good advice, some incisive questioning and hey presto I can deal with anything..including this bloody city.  Jenny left LA a few years ago to set up shop in Todos Santos, Mexico as the purveyor of the most magical B&B in the whole goddamned world.

Incidentally, it was Jenny who I called the day I took my last drink more than a decade ago.  A drink I shared, rather ironically, with Sebastian Horsley and his then girlfriend Rachel.  It was actually a little more than a drink.   Excuse my coyness.

That last night of debauchery in Kensington included falling in and out of black taxies, vomit on the streets, blazing eyes, insulting the host of a very dull party.  The next morning waking up under that cloud.  I called Jenny.  I had been to her home on many occasions where she graciously served alcohol but never drank a drop herself.

She asked if I was ready to stop, that it was about time.

I had a wrap of something in my wallet and knew that I wanted it.  She told me to call when I was ready to get sober, to renounce drugs and alcohol.   It was October 1st 1997.  I was ready.  I put the wrap into the trash and like nuclear waste held it at arm’s length as I threw the trash bag into the street.

After chucking out the last of the alcohol and drugs I set about cleaning the filthy multi million dollar house, fixing the dent in my car, changing my telephone number and putting my life back together.  I slept in clean sheets.  I went to bed when I was tired.  I ate delicious food that I could taste.  In order to escape those whose best interests it was to keep me drunk I booked a ticket to Sydney Australia where I went every day to 12 step meetings for the next six months.

It was magical.   Sobriety is like magic.  That New Years Eve I was three months without a drink,  I did the unthinkable I sat in the Sydney Opera House enjoying The Magic Flute sober.

I have never had a dud New Year’s Eve in sobriety.

Jenny and I share many of the same personality traits..both good and bad and during the past twenty years have helped each other emotionally, practically and spiritually.   In fact, it was she who very generously lent me her beautiful home in Notting Hill when I made my film Clancy’s Kitchen.   Black finger prints not withstanding our friendship remains as strong today as it ever was.

A truly glamorous Brit with red hair and high cheekbones she wanted to know who and what and when..processed it and spat out wonderful advice.

Just for the record: this is what I am grateful for this sunny LA day in 2010:

My health, my life, my little dog, my great friends, my sobriety, food on the table, my trip to Paris, my upcoming birthday, my view, the new road to the house..

Actually, I am grateful for rather a lot.  Now, that’s the way to start the day?  I think so.  With a gratitude list.  Perhaps that’s how I need to start my blog rather than the list of all that is wrong in my life.

For a while I forgot why I got sober!  I didn’t get sober to mope around, to complain about shit or live in fear.   Good God!   Dr Jenny laid me on her couch and reminded me of what I needed to hear.

As a result I challenge those thoughts of obsession to come to me.  Every time my head is clouded with unwanted thoughts I say, bring it on.   There is only so much pain I can endure.  Rather than fight the thoughts or submerge them in drugs, alcohol or orgasm I let them consume me for a few moments and they vanish a few seconds later.

It’s odd that when one is obsessed with anything by simply trying to marshal those thoughts one merely feeds them.   By letting them wash over me like heavy rain the storm passes.

This too will pass.

Joan of Joan’s on Third sat with us for a few minutes and told us about an armoire that she had seen in Paris three years ago that she thought was going to be perfect for keeping her linens.  Sadly, the shopkeeper told her that the beautiful piece was already sold.  For three solid years Joan lusted after that armoire, looking at pictures of it on her phone.

When she finally returned to Paris a short while ago Joan popped back into the store to find that miraculously the armoire had not been sold after all, delighted she opened the door and upon closer inspection saw that it was full of safes and totally inappropriate for linens.

Of course she didn’t buy it.  She said, “I was obsessed with it because it was unavailable and I hadn’t looked inside.”  Which is exactly how I get obsessed…with that that is unavailable and because often..I haven’t looked inside.

I dreampt that I drank a pint of amber-colored beer.  It was cold and sparkling just like I remember it.   It was delicious.  In my dream I noted that it had no effect.  That I was as sober at the end of the pint as I was when I took the first sip.  Oh, if only that were true!

I am determined that nothing will get in the way of the good time I am planning to have in the UK during this next few weeks.  I am going home to celebrate with old friends who expect me to return from this stinking hole triumphant!  I am triumphant.

I have been weakened of late and it does not suit me.   Who says that happiness depends on me being loved, being rich, being anything else than what I am?  Who wrote that bullshit?  I really have no right to anything other than this very moment.

For fuck sake I have survived on my own for nearly five decades.  Why the hell am I so inclined to believe that I can’t do that anymore is a totally mystery.  Who the hell is running this insane asylum?

I have an adventure, life’s adventure to complete here and nothing is going to get in my way.

I think some of you were rather hoping that at this point I might do what my other less determined friends have done..and kill myself.   No such luck!  If the fags don’t get me,  the pancreatic cancer might but never, never expect me to do myself in.

There’s too much to look forward to!

Categories
Love

A Prayer

Some people come into your life and teach you just what you need to know just when you need it.

Some people take what they need and leave like thieves in the night and one must be willing to sacrifice all that one has for those who have very little.

They would not steal unless they really needed it.

Friends come and go.  Those you have loved with such great passion eventually fade away.  Old friends die, but remain eternally in one’s heart.

I am grateful that I have had a life enriched by so many.   Each and every one of you, whether you like me or not continue to add new dimension and colour to a life less ordinary.

I tread water so that others may not drown.

Can you help me please?  Can you show me the way?  Can you be wise for me?

Occasionally my Wikipedia page is vandalized.  They always do the same thing.  They take down all my achievements leaving only the acts for which I am notorious.  They underline every cruel adjective ever tossed my way.  They remove every kind word or deed.

They want you to believe that I am only bad.  That I am only capable of cruelty, vileness and loathing.

I wonder what sort of fool does that?    I know some of you have found it very hard to forgive me for merely surviving against the odds.  I know that you would like me to end up like Sebastian Horsley: alone and dead and cold.  Frankly, when the time comes..who cares?

Chatting with Toby Mott yesterday we concluded that Sebastian maybe more interesting dead than alive. We agreed that the British art establishment ignored his life but will embrace his death.

However I may be rewritten on the pages of Wikipedia the truth is I am all the things I have been described, good and bad.  Yet, in my eyes, neither as good or bad as the next man.  Why is it so impossible for those who seek to devalue me to own that this might be true?

We are all made of devil and angel.

I may have made errors of judgement, lost my temper occasionally, owed some people some money but I have never raped or murdered anyone.  I have never committed treason, nor have I been part of any radical conspiracy.

I have been a bit of a cunt but who the fuck isn’t?

I have no desire for legacy.  When I am dead and gone the sand will cover the place where my footprints once were.  The tide will wash away any evidence that I even existed.

God save me from mediocrity, from suburban thinking.  God help me stay curious about everything forever and sensitive to those I love.

You know, I have never understood why people treat love so casually.   When I first feel a connection with someone, when I feel that love is in the offing I am not only inspired but convinced that new love must be treated like a precious thing, as fragile as a Ming vase.  If we are truly capable of romantic love then we must treat it with respect.  As relationships grow the vase morphs into an old leather football that can be tossed around if needs be.

Time, familiarity, endurance, perseverance all serve to strengthen love.

I have prayed these past few months to be delivered from the worst that love has caused in me.

Have my words far outweighed my actions?  It is easy to say that you love someone but maybe the word should never be spoken.  Love should be like a silent film.   If I truly love you, if my love is pure then you will know it and honor it.

Long chat with my mother yesterday.  She sounded happy.  The Women’s Institute keeping her busy.  My brother’s baby will be christened on August 1st.

Categories
Fashion

Sebastian Horsley RIP (though unlikely)

Not sad about Sebastian.  Not sad about anything.  Loads of messages from friends re. Sebastian.  I had long chat with PH this morning about the trip home and how amazing it is that we survived at all.

I have been miserable about turning 50 in three weeks but better to be turning 50 than turning in my grave.

It was such a tonic chatting with my darling PH, she has always been there for me.  Always.  Anyway, that’s just the way I need to start my day with a bit of loving validation.  Suddenly I feel like I can cope with ANYTHING.

Held here in sunny LA aspic.   Suspended in solid jelly.  I can see out and they can see in but I’m waiting for the jelly to melt around me.

Last night’s dinner with friends was delicious.  We played a few games of backgammon after.  When John realized he wasn’t going to beat me he ran off leaving his wife to try her luck.  Nope, she didn’t win.

My diet means that I can wear clothes I have not worn for a few years.  Last night I wore a pair of crisply pressed silk Prada pants and my Comme cardi.  Lovely.

From the 26th floor I stared out over LA as dusk fell.  The car lights on Sunset Blvd snaking for miles East, white and red.   A huge black cloud from the west hastening the night.

Really making an effort to get out of the house.   I am not sitting indoors for 12 days.   Interminably long days.  Perhaps I should just take the car and drive across the USA?   Actually, that isn’t such a bad idea.

I could stop off in Nashville and see Joan!  How about it Joan?

Very exciting European prospects ahead.  I am particularly looking forward to seeing my friends and walking the streets.  July is always such a glorious month in London.  Did I tell you that I ran into Orlando Bloom at breakfast the other day?  Now, he is a sweetheart.  Sat next to Alanis Morrisette at Cholada on PCH.  That’s the extent of my starry life here in LA.

I am so happy she called.  So happy.

Categories
Death

Cancer of The Heart

Sebastian Horsley my dear friend this past twenty five years has been found dead in his Soho apartment.  Heroin overdose.  Good God.  How many more friends will I lose this year to the disease of addiction?

He struggled so hard to stay clean and sober.  Endlessly failing, endlessly trying again.  He had the sweetest soul.

Hopefully I will be in London for the funeral.

Too many friends found dead on their own.  A ghastly yet familiar story.

The truth is, he should have died years ago.  He cheated death a million times.  I will miss him but somehow this particular ending for Sebastian was inevitable.

From an earlier post:

Sebastian lives on Meard Street in Soho. On his front door are the words, THIS IS NOT A BROTHAL, THERE ARE NO PROSTITUTES HERE which is total lie. There are always prostitutes there..in Sebastian’s bed.

Recently, I took a genuinely normal boy to meet Sebastian-my very sweet friend Chris Parker the TV actor from Eastenders. Chris is utterly charming. Previously I had taken him to The Colony in an attempt to delight him with a glimpse of an alternative London. My experiment failed. Chris thought that the Colony, the great beating bohemian heart of London was horrible. He didn’t like it. He looked scared. He was not interested in the art or the characters dressed in huge jewels or zoot suits. Those people in that tiny room shocked him, he was unaware of the history of that room. In that room the greatest art dramas had been played out, that Francis Bacon held court there, destroyed the confidence of his boyfriend publicly in that room. Go see the film: Love is the Devil if you want to know more about The Colony.

So, Chris and I are shopping in John Pearse on Meard Street. I bought a pink linen shirt. You know who John is? He made The Sargent Pepper uniforms for the Beatles. John owned a shop on the Kings Road called Granny Takes a Trip in the 1960′s. As we were on the same street, on the spur of the moment I wickedly decided to introduce cautious Chris to Sebastian. Chris is 5’10″. When Chris met Sebastian, 6’5″ tall wearing a lurid cerise tie, his raven black hair swept into a huge bouffant in his rooms in Soho, he was struck dumb.

Chris looked at the pictures of the crucifixion, the limbless woman and the sharks. He was visibly distressed when he saw the nails that been nailed into Sebastian’s hands during the crucifixion. He was appalled when I told him that Sebastian had fallen off the cross. Chris noticed the gun by Sebastian’s bed. “What is that for? Is it real? Why do you have it by your bed?” Sebastian, picking it up to show us the real bullets said, “I don’t believe in unprotected sex.”

In his own words:

“When I was young I thought the recipe for happiness was devastating good looks, a blazing talent and a colossal income. I was right. As for love? The rich think that the most important thing in life is love. The poor know it is money. It is the only thing poor people do know. Given that money is the root of all evil, they should be very virtuous. But they’re not. No, they just moan, groan and drone, looking for a loan. Why don’t they just get rid of such luxuries as food, clothing and shelter, and give us all some peace? Give me the luxuries of life and I will dispense with the necessities.  Fancy a fuck?”

Categories
Gay Hollywood Love

Indelible/Irrevocable

Had a great night out with my friend Ryan.  We headed over to Tod’s shoe store on Rodeo in Beverly Hills for a party that a bunch of worthy LAers  were throwing to welcome Jeffrey Deitch the new MOCA director to a bunch of LA’s finest.  Jessica Alba, Kate Beckinsale, Angelica Huston etc etc.

Met up with Miggy and her girlfriend and their charming journalist friend from the Sunday Times who had seen the sex rehab show.  He seemed really impressed. It is so odd to have left something indelible in the life of another.    It is even odder to have people come up to you who are well known (famous even) telling you how much you have helped them.   Ended up chatting to Gavin Rossdale about our friend Sebastian Horsley who is best known for crucifying himself in the Philippines-with real nails in his palms.   He then fell off the cross.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0n_ys40CrM]

Leaving something indelible stayed with me throughout dinner at the 101-where we ate the Thursday Fried Chicken Special of course.

I was going onto another party but bailed after dinner,  I need to be on my own.  To get used to it once again.

Indelible, irrevocable-something irrevocable.  Changing somebody irrevocably.  I may have done that too often to count on the fingers of two hands.

This time I am changed irrevocably.   Something has shifted in me.   Most of the people I have gotten close to recently have in some way been associated with or saw the sex rehab show.  My generous NYC friend, my recently ended relationship and Jennie, let’s not forget Jennie.  I think it maybe time to reconnect to those I knew before.

I think that even though these new friends know my story they don’t really take how seriously I believe in the power of recovery.   I really do believe in the tenets of AA.  I really do.

I came so close during the past month  to using alcohol and drugs because I so desperately wanted to fit in with my new friend.  I told him that I would take drugs so our sex life would get better.  I thought about taking a drink.  I seriously considered it.  But if I had what would I have been left with now?  Nothing.  No relationship, no sobriety, absolutely nothing.  At the end of the day all I own is my sobriety and my name.

There are fire trucks outside the building.

So, I pass through to the other side.  Where I am on my own again.  With out recourse to long, late night conversations.  I am on my own and happy to be so.

The other burgeoning relationship in my life is with a young man who came to me for help with his sex addiction.  He came along at just the right moment.  To help him recover from a masturbation addiction.  He checks in every day and God, yet again, is doing for me what I refuse to do for myself.  Rather than drowning in self-pity I am helping a man less fortunate than myself and so, yet again, I am changed, refocused.

I had a short text exchange with the other this evening and rather than making me hanker for him it just made things easier to deal with.  My darling New York boy is on his true path and that, I suppose, is something to do with me.  A helping hand out of the darkness and into the light.  An irrevocable change.

How many people fall in love with the person who helps save their life?  Not many.  Who is falling in love with the firemen or the nurse or the doctor?

Very sleepy now.  I need to sink under the sheets and tomorrow-well perhaps I will be able to write the other stuff I write.   Maybe.