Tag: United States

Categories
Health Whitstable

Bucolic

It certainly is.

Balls not withstanding.   The heavy snow and cold conditions don’t stop me from getting in my little car and driving to Canterbury.

We are only seven miles from one of the most beautiful Cathedrals cities in the world.

Meandering through the snowy Kent countryside listening to BBC Radio 4 I arrived, parked inside the Roman city walls and walked down Palace Street looking for a man to unlock my iPhone.  The ancient and the modern.

I love Canterbury, I love the tiny medieval streets, the busy shops.  I ended up buying a cell phone…as it looks as if I maybe here for longer than I anticipated and I have to keep in contact with the hospital.  I bought the correct adaptors and leads etc for my lap top so I no longer need to pop into Georgina’s and use hers.

The economy seems really good.  Really good.  The shops are packed with paying customers.  We are well out of recession.  It’s like the British are embarrassed to let the American’s know that our economy is just fine.

The average British person really doesn’t have a clue just how bad things are in the USA.  No idea at all.  They don’t know about the unemployment, the foreclosures, the corruption or the burgeoning right-wing tea party movement.  They are oblivious to Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck.

One day very soon they will wake up to a very different America and a very different world run by ignorant, xenophobic thugs.

Even on a wet, cold, miserable Tuesday in Canterbury people look quite unlike those you see not shopping in sunny Santa Monica.

All of the little restaurants and gift shops are packed with customers in Whitstable too.  The Whitstable shopping equivalent: Venice CA the shops on the main drag Abbot Kinney are still boarded up.

If things are fine why is the government hell-bent of dealing so aggressively with what is evidently a self solving problem like the deficit?  THE DEFICIT!

This British government is forcing austerity upon the nation because?  Because the people have had things so good for so long?

This country is not falling apart, seems very stable and prosperous from what I can see..but under the guise of the DEFICIT reduction plan this new government stealthily returns to Thatcher type fiscal/social conservatism.  The class havoc deliberately caused with unnecessary job reduction ends up merely furthering their class war aims.

Governments like drama.

British Governments, like Hollywood studio execs, cause problems so that they can be seen to fix them.  The people, our British people, unlike the sleepy time/weed brained/prozaced citizens of my adopted home the USA…we will get off our angry asses and break some windows.  Make our voices heard.  No, you bloody can’t start charging our children for a university education…something you had for free.  NO.

Thanks to the bankers to whom we are already indebted in so many, many ways we can give extra thanks that we can now officially add the innocuous word deficit to the list of things we are encouraged to fear.  Along with Asylum Seeker, ASBO, global warming, that millennium bug thing (remember that?) and, of course…terrorist.

DEFICIT=TERRORIST.  Something abstract and confusing to be frightened of.

In the UK everybody complains about their gas bill and it’s true that utility bills here are out of control…a recent price hike of 40%.  Where the people have no option the corporation steps in and gouges whatever it can.  Same as the Insurance industry.  The law states that you must buy car insurance so the insurance industry just demands what ever it likes from whom ever it likes.

You want to know about the hospital?   The German oncologist was very nice.   Do you need to know more?  We wait for further test results.  Who could have foreseen that a jolly German oncologist would make his way center stage into my life.

I actually feel a great deal better already.  I just trust European doctors more than American doctors and they agreed that me coming here was the best possible thing to do.  Not having to worry about paying a huge amount of money to anyone anytime soon for what should be a human right sure takes the pressure off.

After it was all over at the surgery I came home and lay down under a pile of blankets and fell asleep.  What with the Jake stuff this has not been a great year.  Not one of my best.  Not a great vintage.

The little dog just hates the snow and who can blame him?  His little paws are soaked in cold water up to the ankles.  He tags along after me very bravely.

last night Carol cooked a delicious dinner here at the house and we greedily scoffed baked potatoes, ham and a delicious salad made of crunchy endive and baby tomatoes and watercress.

Seeing Charlie tomorrow and others in London.  Going to risk the roads in my little car.

Oh yes…I read yesterday that somebody somewhere in the US press demanded that Obama get some ‘backbone’.  How dare anyone ask President Obama to have ‘backbone’ when his constituents lack any kind of skeleton what so ever.

In Obama the liberals chose a limp shield made of skin (albeit black) and gristle behind which to gripe about their own inertia.

Categories
Gay Malibu

Paid in Full

It rained steadily all night.  This morning the sun is shining.

Yesterday stayed in almost all day.

Dinner at Frank’s Whitley Heights apartment.   Very little traffic on the 10.  There were ghastly British people who Frank had met randomly at another party.  I left early.   Food was good though.  He made some sort of Brazilian coconut chicken with rice.

Parking in Hollywood is shit.

I like Frank..even though his slimy British friends just wouldn’t stop talking about how much they had drunk the night before.  “So Duncan, why did you come to LA?”  I told them that Los Angeles had more AA meetings than any other city in the USA.  They looked baffled.  After a difficult moment of silent processing the Brit said, “Each to his own old chap.”   He really did call me old chap.

Before dinner this black kid from the deep south sang/warbled/yodeled a prayer.  I looked at my feet in HORROR.

Met JA at Soho House.  Drank espresso.   Miles arrived looking very dashing.  Saw Eugenio Lopez and told him about Steve Martin‘s book.  He was DELIGHTED and reported this to his friends.  “Steve Martin has written pages in his book about meee…tell them Duncan..tell them.”  I told them the Getty story.  Eugenio was with an older gentleman and a slobby boy whore who he scolded for putting his feet on the furniture.  Eugenio was wearing a black sequined jacket.  Seemed delighted that Martin had written about him.  Who wouldn’t?

I was going to hook up with some random dude from Grindr but he didn’t turn up on time so I left and we all (dogs) curled up alone in my big white bed.

Oh yeah, I forgot, Jerome (my next door neighbor) rented his house this weekend to a young couple who threw a huge, ornate wedding…could almost be described as baroque.   The ceremony took place in the garden.   You could hear the dreary, clichéd classical music…a good third of a mile away.  All the obvious shit mixed in with random film scores.  They probably couldn’t tell the difference between Ennio Morricone and Pergolesi.   Idiots.  A disparate group of badly dressed men and women gazing admiringly at this bride and this groom about to be locked in matrimony.

The dogs started barking during their vows.  I didn’t do much to stop them.  I didn’t want to hear their fucking vows broadcast over my quiet valley.  Obnoxious white, straight people.  A coalition of the entitled.

The party continues there today.  A simpering European party/events planner slimed around to the house like a huge slug..apologizing in advance for the noise.  Thank God this is a random event.  Events planners btw are always the worst kind of gay and always the dullest human beings on earth.  Who the fuck would ever find an events planner interesting?  Oh yeah, I remember.

JB sent the money he owed me.  Deal done.  Goodbye JB.

A fit black guy contacted me on Manhunt.  He wanted to fuck.  He asked if I was good.  I replied..does it matter?  Do I care if you think I am good at fucking?  I cum you leave.  I won’t be reading the reviews.

Categories
art

Yo Yo Yo HIV and Other Tales

Woke up in a panic.  The thing growing in me.  That thing.  Must get it removed.  Have to get it removed but can’t move until everything is sorted.

Too much to sort out before I get there.

Manhunt Date number 9.  A 28-year-old Kuwaiti doing a PhD in architecture at UCLA.  He drove from Brentwood in the thick fog arrived at 10.30 was gone by midnight.  What do people think they are when they describe themselves as masculine?   What in heaven’s name does it mean?  Needless to say this was a huge queen under the thinnest veneer of ‘straight acting’.

The last ten minutes of the ‘date’ he was looking at his kindle and I was staring into the fire willing him to leave.

He left.

Poor lamb, driving up my foggy wet mountain in the pitch black only to be sent home because he didn’t meet my exacting standards.  He asked me about my past relationships.  Of course I told him the Jake saga but as I told him I thought..why am I telling you this?  Not even I am convinced by this story.

One interesting note, when JB was kicked out of his apartment by his long-term gf for being a lying, sociopathic, cheater Jake’s ex-gf  told him he had to pay his part of the rent until the lease expired..I think it expires this November from what I can remember…anyway.  When I told the Kuwaiti that he had been thrown out and had to live with his parents in Westchester the Kuwaiti was outraged that the gf had demanded half the rent.

The gays never get that bit of the story..why he couldn’t just walk away without paying her anything.  They never get the commitment/contract part of a relationship.  They squeal, as did the Kuwaiti, “Why should he continue paying his part of the rent in an apartment that he didn’t live in?”

When Jake complained to Pal the artist he was fucking with (allegedly) HIV behind the gf’s back about the rent issue…(Jake told me that he only found out after they stopped fucking that Pal was HIV positive..but I doubt it.  Pal doesn’t look like the kind of man who would keep quiet about his HIV positive status knowing that Jake was in a sexual relationship with a woman?  No, he looks like a responsible kind of guy.)

Well…

Pal, allegedly, told Jake to stop paying the rent and cut JA out…like a cancer.  This was a woman who had cancer scares ALL THE TIME!

Thankfully Jake did the right thing…he continued paying his part of the rent and the electricity bill despite casting himself as the victim to me and his gay friends.  He was so pissed when he got kicked out of the house…because it meant that he had to live with his parents.

He might have to behave responsibly.  Of course the moment he moved in he just did what he always did, acting out with drugs, alcohol and online hook ups.  But with the added advantage of having parents who would now co-sign his bullshit.

What a fucking moaner!  Unable to see his part in anything.  Complaining about his sister Emily’s wedding and the part he had to play in it.  Complaining about going to Cape Cod.  Complaining that he didn’t live in the East Village anymore.

You should have told the fucking truth!  How about that as a radical idea?

Weinstein pay him $7k to rewrite/line edit scripts for them.  He did three of them the fortnight before we left for Paris and he was still loathed to put his hand in his pocket to buy anything.  The day we drove all day to Cannes he bought me a Mars Bar.    I drove all day and he bought me a lousy MARS BAR?  And you are wondering why I am taking him to small claims court?  The day we drove from Sanary Sur Mer I packed the car with inexpensive and delicious food.

The first time I told him definitively that we should break off our relationship was when I realised that he was drinking and driving.  He would get totally DRUNK in NYC then take the train all the way to Katonah then drive to his parents house..drunk as a skunk…then call me moaning or crying about how TERRIBLE his life was…or text me from the train because he was lonely and I would (foolish me) always be there for him..because as he mocked in one of his last emails…”you find me irresistable…admit it.”

I did.  I found him irresistible.

Jake lived on the filthy underbelly of life because he chose to.

BTW art lovers!  Do look at Pal’s fantastic paintings…they are fucking GORGEOUS…if you are decorating a hospital.  He’s a handsome man.  Pity that he fell into Jake’s ‘straight boy honey pot’.  I wonder if he really did lie about his HIV status as Jake claimed.  Jake lied about everything.

If I were her I would sue that piece of lying shit.

My producer comes today to shape the treatment.   My friend RF tried to visit yesterday but blew a tire on the way up here.  I drove down the hill to find him forlornly at the edge of the road.  I had a long chat with Sharon about film funding.  Things seem to be picking up.   I worked more on the script and loved it.

I ate two bowls of corn flakes and felt tired in my bones.

My heart has been broken and rather than cry gently to myself I am so fucking angry.

That entitled prick has got away with murder and I am daily incensed by how he treated me and others.   Even 6 months after he came out he was still regretting his decision.  He would have been perfectly happy to stay in his vampiric relationship with her whilst he fucked men on the side.  That was a choice!  He knew exactly what he was doing and used her.  Don’t you dare lecture me about collateral damage!  I didn’t cause this mess.

JB is a reptile.

Categories
Dogs Malibu Rant

For Sale

I showed the house for the first time yesterday.  A Persian man who lives not far from here.

He was looking for a cheap house as an investment.  I really don’t care who buys it.

I spent the morning rearranging.

I rearranged the furniture so the dining area is set above the sitting room on the terrazzo plinth.   It looks great.  I used the black leather chairs that I bought for ElCerrito Place.  I tried using the Morrison chairs but they looked too complicated.  Compromised the aesthetic.

I am going to sell my Jasper Morrison dining room chairs.  They are now stacked outside looking really forlorn, they need to go else where..where they can be loved.

Had tea with JA in West H’wood yesterday.  Everybody is in such a funk.  Things have ground to a halt.  Is this just on the West Coast?   Nobody knows how to crawl out of this hole?  Maybe we don’t crawl out of anywhere but learn to live with new parameters.

Popped in on Trevor at the bottom of the canyon to see the young doe that the coyote had savaged in his garden.  It was all gnawed at.  Its tongue sticking out.  Trevor’s wife was a bit pissed that I had made the effort to see the dead deer but not their new baby.  Sorry Jen.

Meg Whitman the ex Ebay CEO is running in the Gubernatorial race here in California against Jerry Brown.  She has spent over $119, 000, 000 of her own money on her campaign.  She becomes the largest self-funded political candidate in history.

Yet all of this might come to naught if her ex-maid and nanny of nine years Nicky Diaz Santillan swings the vote.   Nicky’s story is a familiar one in California.  An illegal immigrant (undocumented) who worked hard for Meg and her husband is cruelly let go when she asks for help to become legal.

“Thown away like trash.” she sobbed on TV.

The latino population in SoCal will take notice.  They know what that feels like.  To be part of a family, whether Witman’s or family USA only to be thrown away when things get tough.

The economy in this part of America has relied heavily on the cheap labour that these illegal immigrants offer.  Making the rich richer, they are hard-working, uncomplaining people.  I have employed Spanish-speaking men at the local labor exchange and they work tirelessly in scorching heat, lugging great hessian bags of garden waste up and down the mountains like donkeys.  I don’t ask any questions.  Nor do my neighbors.

These latino workers have no expectations, except to be treated poorly by white folk like me.  They don’t have much choice.

When they do not get treated poorly they are grateful and go the extra mile.

The truth is, frustrated white people in the USA very begrudgingly gave up their slaves so having illegal Mexican immigrants who do as they are told for very little somehow placates their desire to be slave owners.

White people may say they are pissed off by illegal immigrants yet I don’t know any one of them who would be prepared to do what these people do.  Washing up, gardening, busing, etc.  Menial tasks.  White people wouldn’t know how.  They don’t know how.

We tried to import a bunch of colourful faces into the UK to do the same during the 1950’s but they opened corner shops and restaurants and got richer than the people who imported them.  Anyway, we had colonial apologists who refused to see these people used like American white people use Latinos.

Thank GOD for bouts of socialism.

I could bang on about the racism that exists here but I can’t be bothered.

White people are hurting.  They have lost their jobs and their homes. There is no industry.  They can’t seem to relearn working skills and get humble and wash dishes for other white folk.  The dream is dead.  Arianna Huffington is on TV telling people that America is a Third World Country, that the middle class is over and that the American Dream has been compromised.

Similar circumstances existed in Germany before the second world war.  Crippling debt (war reparations) unemployment, hunger, desperation, hopelessness.  Do not underestimate the gruelling effect of hopelessness..regardless of how comfortable you are if you feel hopeless your view on the world changes.  It gets easy to blame the immigrant, the jew, the gay…the innefectual black President.

I pray that I am wrong but given the current state of the USA, these extreme economic circumstances I am guessing that the people of America will, come the next election, elect a far right, socially conservative Palin type President who will irrevocably damage the entire world.  We are desperate for strong, innovative, modern leadership yet it seems that only the far right have the balls to serve what the people hanker.

We are witnessing the cynical destruction of the USA as we, and millions before us, dreamed it.  It is a crying shame.

By the way.  Rich Sanchez the latino CNN host fired this week for saying that Jon Stewart was pompous and that the media was controlled by the Jews.  Well, that’s how it was reported.  Not quite the way he said it.  Actually he said he felt bullied by Stewart, looked down upon.  That people like Stewart look down on latinos..and he’d be right.  I am sure what he felt about Jon Stewart may very well be right.

I rather like Rick Sanchez.  Isn’t it amazing that Sanchez can get fired for saying two rather obvious things (one an opinion and one true) and that Glenn Beck gets to say terrible shit everyday but nobody lifts a finger?

Willie just took a huge dump on the carpet…nice.  Thankfully I know how to clean a rug without resorting to calling a maid service.

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
Rant

Glenn Beck/Barack Obama

My irritation with Glenn Beck is balanced almost perfectly with my frustration for Barack Obama.  It is easier to listen to Glenn’s simplistic message (as it has always been when the right open their stinking mouths) than Obama the intellectual buffoon.

The problem, yet again, when the left of center are swept into power by the cheering crowds (when the pendulum swings) is that they are woefully unprepared to deliver what the people want.  When the right get into power they let off bombs and create armies and the fearful are made safe, the patriotic are assuaged, the rich rub their hands in glee.

When the left of center are elected they ‘negotiate’ with their enemies, they want to be ‘bipartisan’ and have absurd ’round table get togethers’ with their opponents to ‘sort everything out’.

Of course I am disillusioned by Obama just like you are.  I cried when he was elected.  I was so happy.  He promised so much and has delivered so little.  He and his administration cow tows to the likes of Glenn Beck.  Obama moans and whines, he says pathetically that “change is hard”.

Was the only ‘change we could believe in’ the black faces of the first family?  Was that it?

For those faces to then be called liars out loud by pasty white-faced congress men?  For those same black faces to doff their caps to people like Glen Beck?   To be called racists? Obama has not adequately taken the reigns because deep down he fears the consequences, he may be president but he does not behave like a president.  His rhetoric is merely that..rhetoric.  Hollow promises, empty gestures.  He looks haunted, like those negro men and women in the black and white photographs taken in the deep south, covering their heads as the police hit them with batons.

He looks beaten.  He sounds washed up.

Yet, all it would take is just one moment of clarity, one moment to take back his power, a moment of shock and awe.  It is unlikely to happen.  He is just too busy having his photo taken like JFK in the oval office with his little daughters.

Last week a friend of mine confided in me she had heard from reliable sources that Obama would not run a second term and that Hillary would be elected and everything would be just the way we want it.  Bullshit. Of course a second term for Obama is unlikely but not because Hilary is waiting in the wings to take the crown that was promised her. The people will choose a simpler message, a familiar message.  One that they can understand.  Change maybe what they want but they have washed their hands of change.  It’s too complicated.

The nation is crippled, the people are meek and fat and stupid and unable to change anything.  The nation is crippled by inactivity, inertia, fear.

The banks and their paid friends in government have deliberately crippled the USA.  They will do nothing to heal this country until they have an elected government who sees things exactly their way.

When the dependable right get back into power..everything will change.  Lending practices, house prices, small business..all will suddenly change and the people will breathe a sigh of relief.  The banking reforms will vanish, the Obama health care system will too.

My friends tell me that President Obama has achieved much but they forget that I come from a country where real socialists have changed the fabric of society for the good and the bad.  Where the pendulum really swung, where the people were represented and the legacy of that extreme governance is health care, education, infra structure.  That’s all I want for you.  So I do not have to endlessly put my hand in my pocket for the steady stream of homeless beggars now on every street in America.  Millions of desperate unemployed.

Obama has achieved nothing of any consequence, no real and immediate healthcare, no real financial reform.  How could he?  He surrounded himself with banking insiders.  Rahm Emanuel and Tim Geithner are complicit in the devaluation of your house, the loss of your job and as one government melded seamlessly into another oversaw a massive banking Ponzi scheme: the banks took your TARP money tripled the value of it and with huge grins on their bloated faces returned chump change to you the people.

Nowhere else in the world did this happen so effectively than here in the USA.  The Americans tried exercising monetary hegemony in Europe but the European Union is too disperate.  There are simply too many politicians from too many fractured political parties to bully and bribe and most of them have more integrity in one member’s little finger than the entire American congress and senate put together.

The European Union cannot be bought.  This explains the British ruling elites fear of the Euro, the European Union and everything east of the Channel.  Yet, look at what is happening in Europe.  The economies are growing, the people did not lose their homes, communities were not compromised.

We have had revolution in Europe.  Revolution is essential to destroy the status quo for the status quo is not good for the people.  It is good for the few.

The media and Obama hating pundits, as well they might, evoke the ghosts of the French Royal family but Michelle Obama is no Marie Antoinette.

It is easier for us to discuss Michelle’s vacations and high-waisted fashion faux pas than the dead and the maimed and the wounded in our fruitless wars.  Fruitless, unless you are the owner of a munitions factory or a service industry dedicated to war.  We will never be able to stop profligate war funding because we are coerced by the rich to believe it is our patriotic duty to support our troops by giving them more and more money as our schools rot and our teachers become beggars.

I am eager for revolution in whatever form it may take.  The people voted for Obama not to be meek or timid or careful of his enemies but to take back what had been stolen from us during the Bush years.  To restore what Glen Beck is now touting..some American honor.

Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have chipped away at the truth of Barack Obama so that today more and more Americans believe that Obama is a Muslim, that he bailed out the banks, initiated the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

They believe that Obama is not and has never been..is not and has never been a bone fide American.  They believe that he is not like them, that he has become president by suspect means.  That the good people of America could never have deliberately elected a black man and his descended from slaves wife.  How could that have happened?

Their racist outrage has never been stamped upon, outlawed, mocked.  Why?   Because we were too busy, like bullied kids in the playground, crying and running away after trying to befriend and engage those who are simply incapable of listening.

Categories
Dogs Rant

Malibu

The house by day is magical.

Jason and Hillary, quite separately, popped by and both brought lunch.  Hillary arrived with a friend’s dog called Willy who decided to pee on everything the moment he came indoors.

Hillary made a delicious gazpacho and Jason brough chevre and smoked salmon.  Three mad brits eating an Enid Blyton lunch in our tree house over looking the ocean.

I ate bread which I bitterly regret having eaten today.  I am bloated and my tummy aches.

The house after dark can be a little noisy.  I lay in the dark listening to the raccoons squabble, the coyote’s howl and the owls hoot.   The little dog had a restless night, so, of course did I.   He was up and down the stairs shouting at anything that disturbed him.  After an hour of this nonsense I closed the windows and he slept peacefully.

It was meant to be in the 100’s all week but by last night in Malibu it was colder than Whitstable.  I am sure the firemen are very happy as there have been so few wild-fire warnings.  Everything is very damp in the morning from the thick mist that rolls off the sea.

Jason left and Hillary and I decided to take the dogs for a long walk along the length of the new road (Rambla Pacifico) that leads to the PCH.  The house is now walkable from the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) and since they started building the Rambla Pacifico extension empty lots are now for sale, lot owners who abandoned their lots 26 years ago are on the mountain with contractors discussing driveways and bedrooms with ocean views.  There is a certain excitement up here which cannot be ignored.

I applaud myself for paying so little for this house.  I just KNEW that one day the road would be built..who knew that it would be so soon?

Apparently I am not the only resident who regularly walks the muddy track which will one day be our new road/life line.  We saw a man armed with shopping bags marching over the hillocks.  Everyone is so impatient to feel less isolated.

It is only a few weeks until the rainy season starts so they must get a move on and finish this project.  The worst that could happen is that heavy rains come before it is finished and all their hard work is washed away.

If only Malibu would buy the road so it can be used by everyone rather than a select few.

Watched TV until midnight…yes there is a TV here and fell into bed.  I watch home improvement shows and laugh gently at how cheap and ill-conceived the ‘improvements’ are.

The Lil Dog was exhausted from running after Willy all day and his long walk but not, apparently,  exhausted enough.

P.S.  The despicable Glenn Beck is holding his reclaim America from anyone who isn’t white rally today in Washington.  For those of you who underestimate the ambition of people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin I urge you to take notice of their message.  They are determined to undermine the goodwill and inclusive character of this great country and, my friends, they will succeed just like their right-wing predecessors.  They will use all the usual tactics:  fear mongering, false patriotism and the invocation of their malevolent God.  These men and women are not clowns, we cannot afford to grandly sneer at their absurd antics.  For as the liberal elite laugh in their grotesque faces they are gathering speed.  If we are not very careful it will be soon too late for those of us who believe in freedom to stop them for we were too busy laughing.

Categories
art Fashion Hollywood Rant

Balls

Smearing jelly all over my balls the radiologist made small talk about her daily commute from Marina Del Ray.

I lay on my back in a darkened room wearing a green hospital robe.  The moment I relinquish my control to a doctor I regress into the womb.  I feel safe and looked after.  I want to suck my thumb.

She must have taken 100’s of pictures of my testicles.  The offending lump is black and solid.  She reassured me that the blood was still pumping through my testicles so thankfully they were not dead.

She said that the ultra sound wouldn’t really tell us anything, that a biopsy would.  I wondered why I was laying there.  Spending unnessesary dollars when all I would eventually have was a biopsy.   I will do as I am told and wait for the doctor’s opinion but in my head I am already at the Whitstable health center.

Dinner last night was delicious, the conversation lively.  We talked Michael’s upcoming film projects and Sharon’s book ideas.   I sat stonily quiet about what I want to do next..I really have no idea.  Michael lives in the Baron De Meyer’s house..De Meyer died in it in 1949.  Isn’t that cool?  Adolph de Meyer, the great fashion and portrait photographer, famed for his dreamily elegant portraits of Mary Pickford, John Barrymore, Lillian Gish, George V and Queen Mary.   In 1913 he was made the first official fashion photographer for American Vogue.

The producers called from CNN again.  They asked me to appear on the same HLN show as yesterday, giving me only a couple of hours notice.  This time I had to have an opinion about the season three winner of American Idol Fantasia and her ‘overdose’.  As I pointed out..if you are serious about killing yourself you throw yourself under a train.

I am sitting eating a full English breakfast at SHLA.  One of the waiters is particularly beautiful.   The tragedy is: I don’t want to sleep with strangers, look at pornography, flirt or intrigue because I know what it feels like to be with just one man..and whether it is THAT man or someone completely different I want to know who I am with.

Categories
Gay Rant Rehab

Doc Day Afternoon

Cooking for eight this evening.  I’ve not cooked properly for months.  I have cooked like an American..thrown things together but not cooked properly..like I am want to do.

I am going to find a huge shoulder of lamb somewhere and stuff it with rosemary and garlic.  It has been so chilly here that a good gigot and roasted root vegetables makes perfect sense.   Perhaps a summer pudding?  I wish I could find gooseberries for a summer crumble.  I am going to make custard.

Lunch with Joel at SHLA.  I paid.  Why?  Bumped into Drew Pinsky and Tom Arnold.  Lovely to see Drew.  I mentioned the CNN thing, Tom said that Montana Fishburne has no money from her father and Drew concluded that her decision to do porn was probably based on her giving her father the finger.  Montana on the next rehab show?  Perhaps.

After lunch I had a lump on my testicle checked out by a very nice doctor in Beverly Hills.  I must have an ultrasound tomorrow.  I could be castrated by the weekend if things don’t work out.  Hmmm…then I could become a transsexual.  My secret desire for so many years.

This morning was, of course, Wednesday therapy at 7.30.   I shared that the companion had referred to us as we yesterday in relation to my doctor’s appointment..as in, ‘we’ll get through it’ rather than, ‘you’ll get through it’.   I felt a tear welling up in my wizened eye.  When I mentioned that to Jon he said, ” A smidgen of compassion?  Is that all it takes?”

Strangely it was the companion who mentioned just how cynical, bitter and washed up most of the gay men he met were.    He should try hanging out with addicts.

I read a Newsweek article by Howard Fineman that made me so sad.  Sad because I agreed with his miserable assessment of America’s standing in the rest of the world.  I’m not an idiot, I can see the rich tearing down anything they can lay their hands on, plundering this country while the poor cling to their huge cars and wars and patriotism.  Clinging to their tatty bill of rights, their eviscerated constitution.

I was sad because I have never felt more like an American as I do now and wish it wasn’t so that the roads are fucked, that the Christians are in charge, that the gays get infected with HIV because they think it’s like living with diabetes.

I was sad because my miserable and oft mocked USA is a Third World Country prophecy is coming true.  That my pessimistic assessment of the American Economy coming back from the brink is even worst than I expected.   Please say it ain’t true.

Even my rich middle class manufacturing friends are limping from one foreign order to another, limping but believing (as they have always believed) that the unregulated free market and not government will make everything better.

Categories
Love Rehab

Are You OK?

Are you OK?

We say that to each other in the UK all the time.  It doesn’t really mean anything, it’s just the way we check in with each other.  I check in with you and you check in with me.  Even if I am not OK I thank you for asking.

When I taught him, the companion, what it meant he played at asking me if I was OK but the effect was still the same.  I felt good, checked in with, placated.

Americans, when you ask them if they are OK, worry that something looks wrong with them.  It worries them, disrupts their day.

So, don’t ask an American if he/she is OK unless you think that there is something wrong.  You’ll do more harm than good.

It’s Monday morning.  I have just been to therapy.

The weekend was a delicious blend of fun, laughter and me feeling better than I have for 8 months.  I am just so happy.  Happy doesn’t necessarily mean well-behaved. I have been delightfully rude.

Ivan Massow is in town, such an unpleasant man who was the ‘source’ in the Caroline Roux article about me for the Guardian.  The source who was too scared to be openly vicious about me.  Anyway, there he was yesterday having lunch, slimeing all over my straight friend Ben.  Who in their right mind gave that man the ICA to run?  WHO in their right mind thought he should stand as Mayor of London? Crazy!

Anyway, supposedly he is sober so I am trying not to hate him too much.

Thankfully he is losing his looks.

Saturday spent nearly all day in Malibu.  Lunch in the Lumber Yard with Jon Aubry.  I went to bed early Saturday night.

Breakfast on Sunday with Will and his dog Rocco.  Stephen popped by at about 11 and then lunch with Sharon Swart.  Delightful.  She attended a flower arranging class and brought to lunch a huge bouquet of roses and hydrangea.

Sunday night Michael and I went to a party in Silverlake.  There was a performance piece for us to watch.  Three 10 minute sections of a larger work about a man accused of burning down his house and killing his daughters.  The first part was indecipherable.  The second and third part, although messy, were much better and had good, strong ideas.  The director asked what I thought..so I told him.  Bad idea.  Nobody wants to hear the truth.

We were meant to meet Jamie Lee Curtis after that party but we did not.

Taka came by late on Sunday.   He is a funny one.   Editor, Japanese..chatty.

Oh, before I forget..the new Malibu renters arrived on Saturday and are very happy in the house.  They are the SWEETEST people from the UK who loved the house the moment they stepped through the door and from whom I have not heard since..no news is GREAT news as far as renters are concerned.

I made a ‘to do’ list for Monday that includes all the boring stuff I have been putting off for weeks but essential if I am going to stay on top of things.

I went to therapy on Saturday morning and shared my good news.  My only worry about therapy is that I am surrounded by so many miserable, desperate men.

It’s now Monday morning and I am positioned at my ‘desk’ at SHLA.  Papers and briefcase open and ready for action.  My list of things ‘to do’ is already half eaten.  THICK lines scored through the things already done.

Listen, I have no idea why I am so happy but one thing is for sure..it has nothing to do with anyone else.  In fact, I was briefly annoyed by the actions of the other last night but after a few seconds ceased to be.  There was a time in the very recent past when the other could ruin my entire evening by being snippy.  Not anymore.

Whenever one has a meaningful relationship one tends to ignore when things don’t add up.  Denial gluing disparate parts of one story into something believable.

I am not annoyed with him..a little disappointed in me.

Disappointed that I have been so desperate to make our relationship work.  Just writing that down makes me feel sick.  That I would have done anything to make another man love, want and care for me.  For the past 8 months I have devoted my time, energy, love and money to a stranger who bust his way into my life after seeing me on TV.  It is a testament to my own low self-esteem just how much I was prepared to ignore in order to feel loved.

I am grateful that I fell in love and really got to know a man, be seen by another man. You may think that I have been foolish but in fact the last few months have been some of the best of my whole life.   I miss him.  I do.  But what I miss doesn’t really exist.  I miss being cared about, thought about, fantasized about, included and lastly, but most importantly, I miss being loved.

Every decision I made these past few months has been inspired by my love for him. Consequently I now have to make decisions based on my needs, my desires and my career.

I have vowed not to work out our stuff here in my blog so I won’t.

All you, my readers, need to know is that I am ok..are you ok?

WP Twitter Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com