Tag: Sexual addiction

Categories
Queer

Relapse 101

1. No, not me.  I’m still sober.  Sobriety date: October 1, 1996.

It’s true, I’ve not stayed sober in the romance and finance programs.  Very difficult.  Very, very difficult.   No masturbation.  No porn.  Writing money inventories… bloody nora.  It’s the objectification and the intriguing that’s so bloody hard.  No gawping or flirting.

So, we drove back from Provincetown.  After witnessing our friend (poor soul) experience a catastrophic breakdown.  A monumentally ugly relapse.  Part prescription drugs, part menopause, part work pressure.

She thinks she’s a washed up actress, she thinks there’s no future.  She never really got humble about her limited talent.  She left LA with her tail between her legs.  Some people say she was an LA hooker…. when things got tough.  I don’t know about that.  I don’t have an opinion about that.  It’s okay by me.

Watching a friend fall apart.   Blaming and resenting the world.  Unable to look at her part in anything.  Her responsibility.  It’s everyone’s fault but hers.  The sailor owes her money, the owner of the theatre will not speak to her, she’s lying to her parents so she can pay for a lifestyle beyond her means.  Her neighbors are assholes.  Her brother has no humanity, the woman who made a show with her last year is a ‘bitch’, the band she played with all last summer are insensitive assholes… they don’t know how to treat a real artist.

So much of what we learn in the rooms of AA, owning our part in any or all situations, keeping our side of the street clean, a quick apology when one is wrong.  None works for her.

When she doesn’t get her own way she starts screaming.  Now, she’s screaming at me.  She’s screaming at my friend.  Her rasping voice, her old lady petulance.  She starts on me.  Bad idea.  She screams what people scream when they are full of hate, she’s raking up my past and remaking it to her own recipe.

Screaming.   Screaming usually upsets me.  If someone hits me… I want to hit them back but I’ve learned to do something recently, something that has profoundly altered my behaviour.  I’ve learned to record everything.  Any potentially difficult situation… I press record.  I’m like Andy Warhol.

I find it so hard to keep my temper when my security is threatened… but I manage very well when I know I’m being watched.  Even if it’s my own phone watching me.  The tapes of her screaming are very sad.  I couldn’t watch them for long.  She’s screaming but she looks so fragile, washed up, isolated.

I stay out of her way.

Finally, she’s cruel to the dog, she didn’t know I was watching… I could see everything.   I saw her sweep his legs from under him when he was suffering with Lyme disease lameness.  He yelped as he slumped to the ground.

I say, “That’s not very sober… you have different choices here… you can do this differently... ” But she’s so consumed by righteousness indignation and I’m recording every word.

2.

The aftermath of the great marriage equality win.

Gay pride started as a demonstration.  A few brave people marching in the rain.  My friend Rose Collis marched in the violent 1980 London Pride.  The police arrested the drag queens and beat them up.  Then they harassed those who tried to help.  There were more police than demonstrators.  That’s how dangerous we were to the establishment.

Some of us have been in opposition to the establishment for many years.  Now we are not.  We say, “We are just like you.”  Some say,  “We let go of being the other.”  Some say, “We want what what you have but we are still unique.”  If gay people truly want equality then invisibility is a byproduct of being just like everyone else.

If we don’t have the issue of equality around which to coalesce, what’s next?

Now we are equal do we need gay culture?  Gay film festivals?  Gay and lesbian bookshelves?  Gay pride?  Gay resorts? Gay AA? All of these conceits which used to be safe places for gay people to get together… surely we need none of them?  Our aim, obviously, is invisibility.  But for the affirming Pride Parade.  No longer a demonstration.  Always a celebration.

Only people in opposition to the status quo need demonstrate, need to ‘be seen’ as evidence that they exist, that they are no longer frightened or cowed by the establishment. We are the establishment, some would say we are the new elite.

Personally, I find the Irish Parade in New York very annoying.  Why does it happen?  Okay, so there are Irish people… and they drink a lot… and they wear green. Is that it for us? Is this what Pride becomes?  We are gay people and we drink a lot and we wear rainbows… if we wear anything at all? Is that it? Just a rainbow side-show? For the entertainment of all.  A flimsy excuse to get drunk, take drugs and get laid?

The bars and clubs fill with straight people because there are many more of them than us.  The resorts are sold to rich straight people because there are many more of them than us.  Soon everything we created to be safe, enjoy own special gay lives… will be gone.  Is this equality?  Is this integration?

The parade is just a parade of clowning gay men showing off their various pick up app related labels.  The twink float, the daddy float, the bear float, the leather float.  Maybe soon we will be represented by huge gay themed balloons… dancing merrily up 6th Avenue.  Balloons that cannot upset the children or insult one or another young person whose ‘safety’ is threatened by the wrong word, the wrong intonation, the wrong idea of the past.

Categories
Gay

Sheriff Pat Sullivan

So, yesterday, I’m on HLN‘s Jane Velez Mitchell show courtesy of CNN ostensibly to put the boot into a 67-year-old Colorado Sheriff called Pat Sullivan who paid young boys for sex with meth.

I started the show by acknowledging Pat’s sex addiction but then, halfway through, listening to the comments of the other ‘outraged’ guests I suddenly felt an overwhelming pity for Pat Sullivan.

Before being caught in an undercover sting he had been described as a hero…as a crusader against drug use.

During his 18 years as elected Arapahoe County Sheriff he had inspired the local population to trust him with their safety.

They re-elected him time after time.

The local jail was named after him.

What became of this man and his reputation? Arrested by young deputies, in the most desperate of situations.

67 years old, a walking stick, taking meth, living a double life, having sex with degenerate addicts and homeless people. Described as a ‘dirty old man’.

The closet can be a terrible place. A terrible dark place.

As Jake found out. The people you meet, the lies you tell. A double life can take a toll on you and those around you.

Unlike Jake, who stayed in the closet because he was a coward, Pat…50 years ago in rural Colorado had no choice.

He didn’t want to move to the big city and follow his sexual condition, he didn’t want to go be a criminal in another city (homosexuality was outlawed 50 years ago) so, he married, had kids and became the town hero.

Having a career as a hero in rural Colorado for a gay man in the 1960’s was not an option.

Pat looked after the people of Arapahoe but didn’t look after himself.

Now, revealed for all to see. As sick as his secrets.

I’m sorry Pat didn’t, couldn’t get help.

Perhaps he will now.

Categories
Rant

Shame

Everybody seems very excited by Steve McQueen‘s new movie Shame.  Apparently about sex addiction.  Let’s hope that he got it right.  Strangely this was the theme and title of my sex addiction memoir.

The one that JB and I were working on.

It got me to thinking about shame and how most people (some people) have done things that they are ashamed of, unwilling to admit to, unwilling to own.   Even my Christian aunt admitted an unspeakable horror (to her mind) from which she still reels.

That’s how organizations like the Scientologists enslave their members…by getting them to admit their darkest secrets then threatening them with unsightly revelations unless the game is played their way.

I know a sex addiction ‘therapist’ like that.  He knows a little bit too much about powerful people…and lives a good life on the back of their venal sin.

As I have mentioned before…gay people tend, once out, to jettison or rather speak more freely about subjects others may find taboo.  We must have always been like this…hence shame based organizations like the church…out lawed us.  If they can’t shame you into submission…well, what’s the point of your existence?

Gay people in the christian warrior church, the republican party and signing up for the super chic nazis.   I am being ironic.

I never really understood the appeal.

Anyhow, lets hope that the film Shame is good…and not sensational or stupid.  I think Steve is the kind of guy who can get this right.  The trailer is very worthy….very serious.

Sex conduct is a touchy theme…as we found out.

Categories
Rant Rehab

Anthony Weiner Sex Addict?

Ugly Sisters

My name is Duncan and I am a sex addict.

The first time I qualified as a sex addict…I felt like shit.  Attended by my ugly sisters:  Shame and Fear, I sat miserably in my first SAA meeting waiting for the 60 minute nightmare to end.

Imagine what it must feel like to announce to the whole world that your sex conduct has gotten the better of you.

Today Anthony Weiner is shamefully headed for Lord knows where to get ‘treatment’.  Will that ‘treatment’ be for depression, intriguing, internet pornography or compulsive/chronic masturbation?

Is Anthony Weiner a sex addict?

My fellow sex addict friends think he is.  I am not so sure.  Not sure until he is sure.

It is not up to me or anyone else to diagnose his problem, it is up to him.   We live in prescriptive times.  It is certainly not up to my sex rehab therapist Drew Pinsky and ‘experts’ like him who will no doubt castigate poor Weiner dog for his unmanageable sexting/twittering if he hasn’t done so already.

If I were Anthony Weiner I would be feverishly trying to plug the broken sewer that is currently flushing away his political credibility, his relationship with his heavily pregnant wife and his healthy 61% majority.   I too would be heading for a spell in a ‘therapeutic facility’.  Treatment might just mean a little time away from the media incubus that presently seeks to impregnate Weiner with all the evil of the modern world.

What the fuck do we expect of our elected representatives?  That they are no longer entitled to the shortcomings we all share?

Why should congressmen have such unrealistic expectations heaped upon them?

Anthony Weiner has not broken any law.  Not yet.  He allegedly chatted innocently with a 17 year old girl.  What ever improper thoughts he may have had he did not act upon them.   This isn’t, as the media are describing, a ‘SEX SCANDAL!’ because there isn’t any sex.

This might be a Jerk-Off Scandal!  Ostensibly an Intrigue Scandal!  Allegedly a Bare Chest Scandal!  At the very worst a Picture of a Hard Penis on a Cell Phone Scandal!

Monday update: President Obama describes the Weiner sex scandal as a ‘distraction’.  Frankly, I am more distracted by the dodgy shenanigans of the laconic Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas.  The lies, ethical violations and conflicts of interest that, ironically, Weiner was hoping to expose.  

Weiner, unlike Thomas, is no crook.

Nancy Pelosi is demanding Weiner’s resignation when others in Congress have done far worse with real people rather than fantasy folk on the internet.

Internet addiction in all its very many forms is a world-wide epidemic, it affects millions upon millions of men.

Ordinary men, who at this very moment, are ensconced in private places away from their friends and family compulsively exploring the darker side of the internet: in ‘the zone’ as we say in Sex Addicts Anonymous.

There may be minor consequences for those who get caught…unless, of course, their internet use is deemed illegal or so sustained that they have scabs on their penises or they get violent if  taken away from the intensity of the screen.  Most relevantly…if their careers are compromised…jeapodised…lost.

Men take risks that seem entirely manageable until they bust their nut…then they can slink away from their screen to clean themselves up and rejoin humanity.  Real people versus the fantasy that takes them away from the stresses of an ordinary world.

A toxic, ritualized compulsion driving the hapless clicker further from wife and children to unimagined places that only the internet can reveal.

Let us not forget Voltaire’s observation that ‘Illusion is the first of all pleasures’.

I have a huge amount of compassion for Weiner.  He has been caught sending lewd pictures of himself to strangers.  His ‘perversion’ is undoubtedly a product of the modern age.  An age where I too, posting this very blog, live in a world of imaginary readers, little consequence and sexual hopelessness.

Sometime in the near future a contrite Weiner will stand before the press like Tiger Woods before him and admit his powerlessness.  He will, unwittingly, confess for us all.  For the shared sins of viral infidelity, cheating on his wife with the faceless, nameless internet that seems so benign just before ejaculation.

Categories
Gay Hollywood Rant

Elizabeth Hurley Sex Addict

If Elizabeth really had broken up with Arun a few months ago as she claims..why is she having clandestine meetings with Shane Warne in hotel rooms rather than in her Kensington house?

I wonder if Arun remembers my dire warning for him to run as fast as his little legs would carry him when Elizabeth introduced us.  Much to his chagrain I sat him down like a good brother and told him that no good would come of knowing Elizabeth…only public shame.

That was when we were filming The Method in Romania when she was publicly toying with him to the amusement of her snotty friends and family.

Dressing him up in Mao collars at Richard James.

Shagging him in her trailer…you know the story.

I wanted to write a bunch of stuff about Elizabeth being a sex addict but I wrote a thousand words and then the computer crashed and it all vanished.  I can’t be bothered to write it again.

I was reminiscing about the first time I met Elizabeth and she was laying on the floor of her sitting room…her legs apart, her lips pink and swollen.

I wonder if she remembers telling me about her whipping club in LA?  How she loves to ‘take a man in hand’.  I wonder if she dominates Shane?  He looks like the sort of man who needs to be dominated, coerced, his power stripped from him by a woman, a good..strong woman like Elizabeth.  And..of course, we never mention the lesbian interlude.  Know about that?  I do.

I hear that she was in San Lorenzo last week looking a bit worse for wear.  Drunk.

I wonder who is looking after the kid?

The problem with Elizabeth is that she is a mere actress/celebrity when in fact she was born to be a high priestess or warrior princess, acolytes tugging at her skirt.  Gladiators hand-picked from the forum to pleasure her.

Poor Elizabeth!  She’s the straight equivalent of a gay ‘power bottom’.

Elizabeth!   Go and sort yourself out at Sex Rehab.  You are one of us!  You control every straight man within sniffing distance with your pussy perfume, the intoxicating scent of your vagina.

Oh, I have seen it with my own eyes warrior princess!

Until you get yourself a kingdom I’m afraid it might be rehab for you dear.

On an entirely different note…do you like my new socks?

Categories
Gay

Decide Now

I shaved my beard.  I am watching TV.  I am going to bed early tonight.  Clean white linen sheets.

A Beautiful Moment in Europe

It was a lovely day.  Nice people came to see the house.  Really nice.  This afternoon I worked with JA on the film which just goes from strength to strength.  It’s very reassuring to get ones writing mojo back.  As I mentioned before, it just FLOWED.  I have something to say and I know how to say it.  During the past few years I have written a couple of  scripts but I wasn’t motivated to direct or produce them.   They were bad scripts.  Today I am writing from my heart.

We mapped out all three acts and it works on so many different levels.  I will really enjoy producing this new film.

It’s not usual for me to write  two blogs in one day but as so many of my blogs recently have been hideously miserable I wanted you to know that I feel great this evening.  Very peaceful.

JA is not only my friend and producing partner he is also a fellow addict who really gets me.   So, after we had finished cooking lunch and writing he asked me why I was still so angry with Jake and I was forced to admit that even my anger is running out of fuel.

I cannot really remember all the resentments I constructed into my hateful narrative.

Yet, having said that, my anger has to be addressed.  What I have not talked about is perhaps the most sensitive reason for why it all became so nasty.

As some of you know if you saw me on the TV show Sex Rehab my sex issues have always been a problem.  For as long as I can remember I have never really enjoyed or felt connected sexually with anyone.

From erectile disfunction to an inability to be held Jake and I managed to overcome many of my problems.

Even though Jake and I had ‘issues’ what bound us when we were together was our physical connection.  Well, for me it was pretty amazing.  For him it was probably just routine.  He once said that he was only good at skiing and sex and he really was very good in the bedroom.   I never saw him on the piste.

He, like most of you, had no problem expressing himself sexually but I have never had the kind of wonderful sex that I had with him.  So, when I finally understood that it was over I felt (and still feel) without self-pity that I will never ever again have the connection that I had with him.   Now, you may say, Oh don’t be silly..you will.  But, I know deep down in my soul that this gorgeous time with Jake may have been my last chance at connecting with someone I loved and had a stab at fulfilling sex.

Once  you understand this missing part of the puzzle you may very well see the root of my frustration and sadness.  I tried to do everything I could to keep hold of a man who was patently wrong for me but with whom I had a profound sexual connection.

I really do want my money back but ultimately does it really matter?  What matters is that I must grieve for a life devoid of sexual connection.  It just made me so angry that I go on paying the price for my childhood abuse.  My distrust of men, my fear of expressing myself sexually.

My fury with him stems, almost certainly, from his understandable but insensitive desire to share stories of his sex life with others whilst we were together.   It was horrific listening to someone I loved describe something I knew I could never give him.  For me he was the only man I have ever made love to.  Ever.

It was unthinkable to have sex with anyone else.  It still is.

You may think me pathetic for trying to love him but I tried so hard to separate myself from him on many, many occasions as I documented in this blog.

He knew how addicted to him I was and he would play mercilessly with my emotions.  Knowing that I would always pick up the phone.  Knowing that I would always respond to his text because I knew that he was deeply sad after he left his girl friend.  That he was lonely and despondent but I also knew that if I felt similarly I could not rely on him to be there for me.

As was proved that fateful day in August.

Every morning I pray that this obsession, this anger, this grief these resentments will end.

As I was reading part of the new script to JA I started, finally to cry and the pressure cooker of emotions began to express themselves. I began to express myself.

I tell you again for those of you who might not believe it:  He made me very happy and I was prepared to overlook his flaws.  There were moments of pure joy for me whilst we were away in Europe although nowadays I really have to work hard to sift those moments from the crushing disappointments.

Lastly, I don’t really want to write this blog.  It had become, like most things I do, yet another symptom of my addiction.    As I read the earlier entries, before he bust into my life and I let him in…I let him in…well I remembered what it was like to be happy and I have been so very far from happy these past few months.

Even though he has been cruel and insensitive  he was also very vulnerable and turned to me for help when he needed it most.   You know, I tried to help but I am not a therapist nor am I the most stable person in the world.

Addiction for me is a daily emergency.

What have I concluded?  I need to be on my own.  I cannot begin to have relationships.

He never gave me the opportunity to say a kind goodbye…ironically, the very thing he wanted from his ex-girlfriend, even though that seems unlikely.  I really tried to say goodbye to him with dignity.  To end it in a civil and kind way.  To let him go.  I really did.   I was exhausted.  To end with kindness was my plan.  A plan he did not share.

So, JA unlocked the pain and by doing what I do best I can let go of my heavy heart.  I don’t have anywhere else to go with this other than forgive and forget.

I hope I can.  I really want to.  This is making me really ill.

Categories
Hollywood Rant

Goodbye Hollywood

So, all packed and moved out.  I left the apartment empty and covered in dust. I have to go back tomorrow to collect deposit and hand over the wi-fi thingy.  I am pleased not to be going back there.

When Jennie and I moved into The Chateau de Fleur we did so to escape the lives we had and wanted to change when we went into rehab.  For Jennie it was the beginning of a life away from being a porn performer.  For me it was to escape the exquisite monotony of Malibu, the pornography, the internet hook up sites and the gruelling symptoms of sex addiction.

Amazingly, for the longest time, I steered clear of the worst of my sex addict tendencies.   Until, of course, I met Jake and collapsed..once again..into active addiction.  As much as I try..I cannot forgive him.  I was doing so well.

I tell you, I hate him now more than anyone I have ever been wronged by.  More than the vile people who ran over The Darling Big Dog and more than I ever harboured for my step-father.

Masquerading as an innocent, timid boy JB knows exactly what he is doing.  I would urge anyone that gets involved with him never, ever believe a word that comes out of that mouth.  His lies are not even very amusing.  An amusing liar, like Leigh Bowery or Diana Vreeland can enhance a dull world but a tepid, self-serving liar like Jake can only make the mediocre a paler shade of taupe.

The only good thing that came out of his mouth was my cock.

I though I might write about the day my dog was killed in front of that building, in front of me and the little dog..but I can’t, not least because the memory of her written on the same page I write his name would sully the memory of her.

To think, he left his gf and flew to me.  I tended him, looked after him, cooked for him, dabbed at his tears.  I reassured him again and again that things would work out fine..and I am sure they will for the conniving little cunt.

Goodbye Hollywood.   Hello New York City.

Letter from Susan:

I drove my father to the Stiperstones last Saturday  – creamy golden late afternoon sunshine lighting all that hilly beauty – he was so happy. But all I could think of was the time we drove up there in his little Mini – I rammed the car off the road at a funny angle and we then draped ourselves around the seats and dashboard. Do you remember how much we laughed when people came to help and we woke up ? I still find it quite funny.

I do remember..and it was really funny.

Categories
Health

Blank Cheque

Reading over this entry I am reminded that perhaps a more pious life might suit me better that a life devoted to intensity.  Piety, we tend to use the word pejoratively,  saying more about our Godless world than the idea behind the action.

Today I crave piety, humility, silence..

Tres Triste urged me to go into one on one therapy.  I will have nothing to do with that.  I am bloated on my experience of one on one therapy.

I am, however, recommitted to the rooms of AA.  I know that they understand because I am just like them.  One on one therapy obviously suits many people but I don’t trust doctors, I don’t trust therapists who profit from the misery of others.  I resent paying them.  That I become their blank cheque.  In fact, I resent paying all doctors because I come from a country where visiting a doctor is free.

AA is free.  For fun and for free.

The simple fact is: I chose to abandon the principles of AA during the last few months.  Not taking a drink is just a small part of what we do in those rooms.  The rest of the time we help and guide each other toward sanity.  During the past months I deliberately abandoned my principles and let my alcoholic head run the show.

Many people ask why I moved to LA.  It really had nothing to do with film making.  I came to LA to be closer to the rooms of AA where I found comfort, solace and peace.  I made friends and found an extended family of people who understood me, who were always willing to forgive…no matter what.   I felt as if I needed, as if I NEED a great deal of forgiveness.

After a few years I became disgruntled and disillusioned with AA and went to fewer and fewer meetings.  As I did so my mind became more and more confused.  If I do not do the work to keep me sane I very quickly unravel.

I believe in the power of AA.  It is a church. It is my church.  For all to see during these past months I threw away my sanity because I wanted to use..so I did.  I used HIM.  He is not even real.  He is a bag of coke, a bump of crystal, my works, my baggy, my bottle, my paraphernalia.   He is not real.  Do I miss him?  I miss him like a glass of Montepulciano.  Full bodied red wine that I secretly want to drink when that day comes…and it very well might.  Never take your sobriety for granted.

You think that I have been cruel but I needed him out of my life and sometimes keeping your dealers number is the way back to active addiction.  If I had not jettisoned him that day I KNOW what would have happened.  We would have remained friends, we would have hooked up, my head just could not take it.

I napalmed the poppy fields.

This morning I chatted with Tim about the past.  A place one tends to reinvent as one gets older. It is invigorating having him there at the other end of the phone/skype.  He is in Worcester waiting for his triple bypass.  We are both waiting to have our skin cut open and our insides messed with by experts.

We talked about the power of prayer.  Our spiritual lives.  I needn’t tell you how important a loving God is in ones life but even though I know that prayer really works I am loathed to pray just in case is doesn’t.

That even God might let me down.

There is no doubt what so ever that for the past few months I used another man as my drug.  Intensity, fixation, obsession etc. etc.  Remember when you spent your last cent on drugs? When the getting and using was your main focus?  Remember the risks you took?  I am a crazy addict.  Yet, it is somehow easier for us to understand a man who cannot say no to drugs than a man who cannot say no to his addiction to people.  It is a far more complex and ultimately destructive addiction.

I think you have all been my witness to that.

I crave a healthy relationship with people who ever they might be, lover, family member, friend, shop assistant, telephone banker etc.    I am powerless and my life becomes unmanageable.  I am powerless over people, places and things.  This powerlessness causes me such misery. Powerlessness, vulnerability, weakness of any kind cannot be tolerated and as you have seen…I will bring you down if you challenge who I am, get to the heart of me.

I don’t think I am so different from most of you?

Yet, I most definitely am.  I do not think like normal people.

The idea that somehow, someday I will control and enjoy my thinking is the obsession of every abnormal thinker.

That was a quote from Bill Wilson with the word drink switched out for think.

Wether you believe it or not the rooms of AA are filled with men and women just like me.  When we sit together sharing our similarities and not our differences then I become aware of the presence of God.

I have struggled with SAA.

There is a big difference between being an alcoholic and a sex/love addict.  Alcoholics share the experience of abstinence.  Sex addicts do not.  The differences between sex addicts, when we share our stories, are all too apparent.  The similarities..scant.  Where there are few similarities I find myself divorced from God.

As I have reported in earlier posts, as the years pass and ones last drunk become a distant memory I am forced to deal with other more pressing, more destructive addictions.

The consequences of my actions are all too apparent.  I have rampaged like a spoiled child through another mans life.  Regardless of his part in it..I have only myself to blame.  As I have said before, it is none of my business assigning blame or becoming an interventionist for others.

We all learn by our mistakes, by the lies we tell, by the havoc we wreak.

So, today’s prayer:  God, relieve me from the bondage of self.  Help me be kind.  Let me be present.  Let me tell the truth.

Bind me so my arms do not flail,  gag me so I cannot speak, shackle me so I cannot walk, lay me down in some quiet place so I do not think.

Categories
Rant

Compulsive

I am compulsive and it gets me into trouble.

I used to compulsively look at porn.  I have not done that for nearly two years.

I have looked at porn but I have not looked at porn compulsively.

I compulsively write this blog.  I used to really enjoy it.  The blog used to be lively and light-hearted.  Of late it has become a tool for me to compulsively work out my problems, my resentments and my fears.

I get up in the morning and compulsively check the numbers of people who read these pages.  My breath is shallow and I become pensive, my fingers ache and my mind races.  The modern opera that plays almost constantly in my head is, as I check the blog, full volume.

That’s not all I do.  I compulsively look at Huffington Post and the BBC then check the MLS and other regular sites.  I use the internet as a distraction from living life.  Instead of wasting my time I could be writing other stuff or doing more constructive things.

At therapy this morning I talked about being authentic as a way of dealing with my compulsivity but its going to take more than that.  What is it to be authentic?  For me it’s neither about being bigger or smaller than I am.  I need to be the right size.

I ruthlessly seek authenticity in others as well as strive for it in myself.  As a result of these unrealistic expectations I am disappointed by those I love then tend to isolate.  Risking being seen is just too overwhelming.  This accounts for why I felt so let down by him.  When you reveal yourself absolutely to another and they have little or no respect or appreciation..well..out comes the great protector who forces me to sweat in the armour of distrust.

It’s bloody difficult when one has acted a convincing role all of ones adult life to be authentic.  The role that was assigned to me by my family of origin.

For the time being I have to do the right thing.  Be that right guy, avoid difficult or challenging people, strive for a peaceful head.

Peace of mind.

Of course the last few months acting out my love and sex addiction with him may one day be looked back upon as some of the most destructive time that I have ever spent with another being.  It may not.  I am tied in knots about it.

My part in everything, every situation I am in, it all has to be owned.  Owned by me.

If I refuse to take action and stop this destructive behavior then the peace of mind that I crave, that when I first got sober used to be mine…will never, ever be achieved.

Picked four small peaches from the tree.  Had date last night.  Spent time packing art.

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.