Tag: sydney

Categories
Malibu

Robby!

Robby, the twin that hung around in the womb a full twenty minutes longer than Miles is urging me to go to breakfast at the bottom of the hill.  It is 9am and it is already very hot here in Malibu.

The dog is sprawled on his bed in the sun.

Miles is on set somewhere nearby.

Last night Armand popped in and we took Robby’s car and had dinner at Dukes.  Dukes, the restaurant of little culinary interest at the bottom of the hill.  Why?  Mainly because I found one of the waiters attractive.  I met him in Starbucks last week and he told me that he would ‘hook us up’.  I didn’t eat anything because the food looked so rancid.  They had burgers and Caesar Salad and calamari and beer.

We were not hooked up.

Yesterday afternoon, after my long walk with Miles down Rambla Pacifico, my Australian friend Daniel turned up with a bottle of white wine.  I poured him a glass and looked at it longingly.  Crisp white wine on a warm Californian afternoon.

We have many friends in common in Sydney and it was so nice to hear all the news.  I am sure if I just looked on Facebook I could have found out for myself but it was lovely listening to him tell me all about everything and everybody…the weather and the burgeoning Australian economy.   The drought has ended, the reservoirs are full.

We headed into Malibu where we ate lunch at the Deli.  The once very fat man who runs the Deli has lost 130lbs just by NOT eating white bread.  He looks so much happier.

After lunch, as we were wandering around the absurdly priced shopping Mall, a beautiful man with a bleeding dog begged me to tell him where the vet was.  His beautiful labrador had been bitten in her face by a Rattle Snake. My worst nightmare.

I pointed him in the right direction.

He had been sucking the poison out of her face.  I hope she survived.

Armand stayed long after I went to bed.  Teaching Robby how to use his synthesiser.

This morning I squeezed fresh grapefruit from my tree.  Ruby red.  Delicious.

Categories
Gay

This is Nearly at an End

Dear Readers,

So, many of you have followed this blog since the beginning.  I don’t mean this time around but when I was writing in 2005/2006 before I shut it down.

I shut it down last time for the same reasons I am going to shut it down this time: because it suits me.  There is no pressure, no threat, no coercion from anyone in particular.  Not from slime ball or his slime ball family.  Not from anyone.

Even though my friend Sharon Marshall thinks I will never get another boyfriend when they read this..the truth is, I wouldn’t/couldn’t get another boy friend with or without this blog.

There are a host of other reasons not to be my boy friend other than what I have written here about Jake or others.  There are plenty of published reasons not to have anything to do with me what so ever.

I will list some of them:

ex con

Celebrity gossip

appalling reputation

don’t drink or take drugs

elitist

bad temper

Well, the list just goes on and on.  The blog merely let people know how shameless I am about all the above.

Those same people refuse to acknowledge any triumph I might have had.  It is as if I were only ever bad…well, my dears, you get what you pay for.

Nope, the blog is going private because I decided that on the 21st December 2010 I would cease to publicly blog.  It was on this day last year that Jake contacted me (see below) and my world was blown apart.

It was on that day that a man with shady intentions hijacked my life and for all the love I felt and all the hate I endured I wouldn’t have it any other way.   I am grateful to have been able to share with you what he and men like him try to get away with.

It is QUITE RIGHT that he is shamed publicly for doing what he did.  What he did to me and his girl friend of seven and half years is far worse than any crime I may have committed.

Ask any woman who has been lied to.

He will never face a court for what he did but he deserves to.

I am moved that so many of you shared your own stories of being cheated on and lied to.  He described you as sycophants.  I describe every one of you as my friends.  I want you to know that you have helped me tremendously.   I don’t know what I would have done without every single one of you.

Each anonymous message of support.

As of the 21st December I will set this blog to private and if you want to read what I have been up to you will have to subscribe.  This will please the 1000 of you who routinely log in every day.

Jake, only a few more days until your name, as you wished it, will be divorced from mine.  Your picture, as your Father wanted, unaligned to me.  How dare they ask me to remove pictures of him from my blog?  As if he deserved anonymity?  For all the world your ‘silly mistakes’ will be erased.  Your head resting gently on my shoulder.  How you must hate that picture!

I might remind you that this time last year I was really happy, enjoying my after sex rehab life.  Enjoying watching the show with Jennie at our new apartment in Hollywood.

But all of that came to an abrupt end.

The day before you wrote to me you were reading my blog assuming that my life as an out gay man could be yours.  That the people with whom I consorted, the locations I inhabited you might have.   You didn’t want me Jake.  You wanted my life.

Your pathetic half Persian therapist will never get the measure of you Jake because she is being paid by your parents to make it all better.  You need moral guidance.

So, this time last year I am in NYC interviewing agents, David Vigliano etc. and little Jake B the virtual Literary Agent in Arlo and Esme on 1st Street wondering why he is so damned shy and awkward.  Thinking it had more to do with me being on TV than what was actually going on..that he wanted me to fuck him behind his girlfriend’s back.

He told me later that he wanted me to take him downstairs and fuck him in the bathroom.   Now I know, of course, that the sweet little pussy I came to love had been shagged senseless a million times by Pal (amongst others) and his HIV cock.   His dear pussy that I loved, was just another New York City whore hole.

Without doubt my relationship with Jake prolonged a long-held misery that I had worked very hard in rehab to overcome.

I am an artist (try taking that away from me) and, though many will not agree, this last year or so of blogging has been my art, my catharsis, a continuation of the greater conceptual art of being in a reality TV show.

In no time at all every mean thing I have written here will be forgotten.

In earlier posts, where I have been vile about people, those gripes and recriminations vanished.  Time is a great healer.

Time will hush the screaming, resentful voice that propels us.

Resentment sucks the life out of a memory until it cannot be remembered.

Sorry Sharon, frankly my dear I don’t give a shit who reads about me or my life or what they think of it or, more importantly, how it might alienate me.  The damage is already done. It was done years ago.  When you came to Sydney to interview me about Hurley.  When I was sent to prison for over spending on my credit card…

This is what he wrote:

Hi Duncan,

I’m a literary agent with xxxx, based in NYC. Introduced to you courtesy of VH1. Read your article in The Daily Beast, which I savored for the honest details behind the show–none of which come as a surprise. Anyway, your article led me to your blog. I love the honesty in your writing (plus it’s also refreshing to see someone from a reality tv show who can form a coherent sentence), and I get the impression that you’ve been through a lot in your life. At the risk of sounding just like the opportunistic reality tv producers you’ve worked with, I will admit that a reality program is often a good platform for a book–but more importantly, you have an interesting story, voice, and you know how to write. I figured it was worth a shot reaching out. Perhaps you are already sufficiently represented on the publishing side, but either way I am wondering if you have thought realistically about writing a book.

Warm Regards,

Jake B

Dear Jake,

I am presently meeting agents with a view to representation. I have met with three so far and have not yet made any decision.

I and flattered that you contacted me and do feel free to call me at your convenience.

Hi Duncan,

Nice to hear back from you and sounds good…I’ll be in touch very soon.

Best,

Jake

Categories
Malibu

Shrinking/Shirking

Andrew

Had to take a couple of days away from my blog.  Firstly, my reason for writing it has become skewed. Secondly, when all one has to write about is the blog itself… hmmm. You understand.

Malibu.  The garden has been totally cleaned up by the new gardeners.  This annual sweep gives me so much pleasure.  The most rewarding $800 a man could ever spend.

Exciting news:  friends are seriously thinking about buying the house.  When they contacted me I was relieved then I began to wonder why I was selling it? Where else in the world would I be able to live like this?  The view, the land, the house… it’s all so beautiful.

The repaired road will make it so much better living here (I can walk to the local shops) but rather than thinking it would make it better for me… my fucked up head thinks it would make it better for someone else.  That’s insane!  I deserve it too.

I had to get away from the blog because I was indeed writing about Jake far too much and whilst I needed to I also have to stop.  This is the problem with obsessive thinking and who ever wrote I should get off the Jake thang is right… I really have to start thinking beyond the object of my obsession.

Just when you run out of good ideas God throws you a life line.  My friend Anna is moving into the house with me.  She is having a blast with her new film (traveling all over the world) but needs a place to live. We are very similar in as much as we both daily invent our lives.  So, next Tuesday I have a room-mate.

My friend Ashley needs a place too so we are all going to live here together.  The only remaining booking is for October so we are going to vacate for that.

I achieve so much more when I am with other like-minded people. Whenever Anna is here I get important things done that would otherwise remain undone.  I can be mother hen, make breakfast, organize walks, sit down and write.  All I have to overcome is the obsessive urge to clean the house and keep order.  I have to let that go.

Because I know that he reads this I often think of him when I am writing.   It’s horrible.  Trying to keep the flame burning.  Fragile, timid beautiful Jake.  I want to remember him kindly.  I really do.  I don’t want to believe that he came into my life to take whatever he needed.

Manhunt?  I want to be on Manhunt because he was on Manhunt.  I want to meet men because he met men.  I want to in spite of my own healthy needs.

The Manhunt thing is interesting.  It has taken no time at all to be totally disinterested in that site.  It cannot serve me.  Why do I go there?   Real people can serve me.  Living in fantasy around what could be only leads to disaster… as we have witnessed these past few months.

I have been attending gay AA meetings, connecting with my sober comrades.  Trying not to be negative, understanding I still sit in a great deal of fear around gay men… I begin to relax.  There is a community of men and women at my disposal who are more than willing to open their arms to me.

I am, after all, a rather well-known gay man in recovery.  So I should lead by example.

Coming up to my sober birthday on October 1st.  Traditionally this has always been a time of great reflection.   A time to remember what I gave up to become the man I am now.  If I had continued along the path of least resistance… I may very well be dead.  I will write about that last day of using on October 1st.

Fly East tomorrow for a few days.  Have to take art to NYC.  I really dread being in the city just in case I bump into him.  I don’t know what I would do.  It’s like when I got sober… those first few months I could be around people drinking but I could not be around anyone taking drugs,  it was too triggering.   As I have said before, he is not real… he is a cypher.

As he shrinks away I attempt to own the possibilities.  I am left with so much!   I am left with all of this… the view, the hope, the love and of course the very human fight to survive.  The fight to live.  The fight to make art.  The fight to breath in the new day.

I may very well have thrown away this past year obsessing over him.  I pray that I learned something useful from knowing him.  Please don’t let it have been a total waste?

My Australian friend Andrew visited yesterday.  I met him in Sydney ten years ago.  What a delicious man he is.  I think you would all agree?

My AA sponsor told me in no uncertain terms that I was shirking from the very real health issue I have.  He told me that I have to get it seen to as soon as possible.

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
Dogs Hollywood

Sharon Osbourne

Coffee.  6am.  We didn’t get into bed until 3am.  Still, it’s impossible to sleep.   Perhaps coffee after midnight just doesn’t work.   Spent early part of day in Malibu swapping out locks, preparing for visitors.  Trimming the over grown canopy of Bougainvillea leading to the top apartment.    After a week of intensive organization I am making headway with downstairs and this autumn Louis will come and paint everything cream and clean.

It was good to have Andrew help me clean both apartments.  He is incredibly thorough and dependable.   It’s fun hanging out with him.  Yet, saying this I also miss you-know-who who may never call enough for my liking.  It’s odd to have your heart so evenly split between two so very different men.   He is on the East coast making sense of his new him and I am here with Andrew on the West making sense of mine.

The closer we get to going to Europe the more peaceful I become.  I am going home.

So, I had this invitation for the Warhol opening at Jared’s gallery on Sunset.  I really had no intention of leaving the house but Ryan called and insisted that I come join him so I dragged myself into my new Nantucket reds and set sail for the social high seas.

Prism is a huge cave of a gallery that only the son of a billionaire could possible own.   There were very poorly guarded yet beautifully hung Warhol’s and several hundred frantic club kids drinking free wine and beer, not paying the slightest attention to the art.  Very skinny girls and very pretty boys, I am glad I was with Andrew as he was, by far, the prettiest of them all.   He was wearing a pair of lively patterned Comme des Garcons pants and a simple black tee-shirt and looked divine.   The little dog was wearing a wagwear collar.   We chatted with Sharon Osbourne for a little while but when she realized I was British-or perhaps realized who I was-she affected this weird accent and became decidedly odd, testy.

We ate dinner at the Chateau with other friends and ended up at Soho House where I spotted Bryan Singer with a gaggle of frat boys.  Robert Downey Jr and I had the briefest of chats and by midnight I was fully engaged with my old and abandoned social life.   I sat with my Australian friend Peter S for a good hour remembering Sydney leaving Ryan and Andrew at the bar drinking stout.

You know I spent a rainy week on Fire Island with Bryan Singer years ago when I was with Jamie.  I have nothing to report about that week other than to say it was before I got sober.  A blur of interminable drinking.

Duncan. Unknown, Brandon Boyce, Bryan Singer Fire Island

 

Ryan and I discussed just how distracting LA can be.  How one can achieve absolutely nothing yet feel as if one has had a full and accomplished day.

Poor Soho House are having a terrible time placating their near neighbors and the beautiful restaurant has to be cleared at midnight for noise pollution reasons.  I really can’t imagine that you can hear much of Soho House from the street over the traffic or the other noisy clubs/restaurants but people seem compelled to complain and bitch and moan about almost everything and anything all the time.

It was fun going out although I felt incredibly tired by 2.30am and eager for my bed.   I used to live this sort of life every night in LA and I could once again if I could be bothered.  It’s just so tiresome being ‘on’ or being me and since making the show there is the added element that people know rather too much about my life ahead of meeting me.  Too much for comfort.

This morning I have to meet John for breakfast, our Saturday morning pre-therapy ritual.

I heard a great deal of damning gossip about Kay and Amanda but may have to hold off reporting this until another time.

Categories
Rant

Balls

The pictures published this morning are part of my photographic essay commissioned by The Sydney Morning Herald in 2004 celebrating the Condoblin Batchelors and Spinsters Ball held annually in the depths of New South Wales.

B & S Balls are thrown to introduce the youth of rural Australia who live many hours from each other in the arid outback.

The Ball is actually a huge drunken brawl and as a sober man I was amazed by two things:  firstly how much alcohol was consumed and secondly how little violence there was.

I publish it to remind myself just how many things I have achieved.

The darkest part of the day is ironically the morning when I seem to forget just how damned capable I am.  Need to calm down.  Still experiencing waves of depression.  Still at the mercy of my mad head.  Mad head, thankfully not bed head-my hair is now cropped once again.  However, when buzzed my head get recognized more than when I have long hair.

The dog is waiting to go to Runyon, waiting patiently at my feet whilst I type this.   I am nearly out of the doldrums.  I can feel myself emerging.  Why did I get sober?  Why did  I go into therapy?  Peace of mind.  Not piece of mind-one of my mothers favorite expressions.  ‘I’ll give him a piece of my mind.’ she would say.

The mantra for this week is BE PRESENT.

I remember getting up each day and feeling like there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do.

Added to all the other problems I am utterly home sick.  Desperate to get back to my Island Jewel.  Held here by all sorts of stuff that needs dealing with.  The house, the garden, the book, the app, the art sale, what the fuck?

All I need to do is book an Air France flight to Paris and vanish but I am trying to be a good man.  Trying to be the sort of guy who can wrestle from his life some sort of sobriety and ultimately some honor.

Where in the world could I go if I wanted to start again?  I still love Memphis.  I loved it.  Who would I be when I got there?

What demons would I bring along with me?

Instead of running away I need to remember what I am capable of and invest time and energy in my work.   Recently Obama opined that ‘change is hard.’ and I was appalled by his admission because I rarely admit that it’s the goddamned fucking truth don’t ya think?.