Tag: United States

Categories
Dogs Travel Whitstable

New York/Paris/London

I left LA last week (July 2nd) though it actually feels like months ago, so much has happened.   I flew into JFK with bags and dog and chaos.  He was waiting for me and whisked me off to a beautiful house set in perfect woodland and rolling lawns.

We ate and walked and talked.  I never tire of listening to him.   We have done our fair share of soul-searching these past few months and now it is time to have a few laughs.   I know that at the back of his mind he worries, that he is not truly free.

I loved the countryside and delightful clapboard houses on the border of New York and Connecticut.

In distant, very white upstate town Katonah there were two very black gay men from the Caribbean eating a light lunch.   They were the only black people for miles around.

 

Two days later we were in a taxi back to JFK and onto one of Air France’s spectacular Airbus A380.   The huge plane was almost empty!  Deciding to fly on July 4th was a great idea.  Taking off over a million 4th July firework parties.  Fireworks exploding all around us.

The first part of the journey was not without drama as we managed to get delayed for 3 hours by a bomb scare at JFK.  The entire airport emptied out just minutes before we were about to fly.    We were herded outside and sat around smoking cigarettes and drinking water.   After a couple of hours in the sun we stampeded back into the building directly onto our planes and landed in France 6 hours later.

It is delicious to be back in Europe.  Away from the tangled life I have left behind in the USA.   Once in Paris we checked into Mama Shelter in the 20th, seconds from the cemetery Pere Lachaise.  We loved it!

 

Although I smuggled the dog into the hotel-actually we had no need as dogs, we later found out, are allowed.   The food and service were excellent.  The only vaguely irritating thing was the Internet wi-fi connection which was linked to their rather modern but baffling Apple TV.  Apart from finding it impossible to get on-line their sophisticated interconnected system meant that the TV remote would also remotely control our lap tops..hmmm.

It is so easy to concentrate on what is wrong in life or in others without noticing how beautiful things are.  The staff at the hotel were gorgeous and we drooled over them everyday.

First day of Couture shows in Paris.  We had lunch with William Stoddart at Hotel d’Amour near Pigalle.  Gosh that area has changed so much!   When I lived there with Claire Sant it was ghastly.  Last week it was wonderful.   The weather has been gorgeous everywhere we have been.

The beautiful Edouard joined us afterwards for coffee.  We had dinner with him the night before and 6 others at Italian restaurant.   Very pretty German model who was obviously rooting for Germany in the World Cup..she was tall and womanly and intelligent.  We talked France’s ignominious exit from the competition and sneered at the British teams pathetic attempt to get into the last 8.

 

Three days in Paris followed by a train ride to Calais and a ferry to Dover after a short taxi ride home to Whitstable we were sitting on the beach eating venison burgers and the travelling companion couldn’t believe how beautiful it all was and complained that I had underplayed how Whitstable really is.

 

Today there are warnings that old people may overheat.  We are going to take a train to London.

I am sitting writing this from my room overlooking the sea in Georgina’s home in Whitstable.   It was my birthday yesterday.   The day started well enough with coffee at Dave’s deli catching up on gossip and drinking his perfect latte.   I left the companion in bed.  He is not really a morning person.  We met my mother for lunch at Wheelers where Mark Stubbs the chef there continues to surpass himself-this time with delicately spiced soft shell crab.

I really had no desire to see anyone other than who was at that table.  I am certainly not interested in tangoing in front of 500 people like an eastern European gypsy.    My mum and Georgina bonded over their hatred of Asylum Seekers.  My mother pointed out that some asylum seekers were pretending to be gay so that they could stay in the country.  If it’s not the Mexican’s it’s the Eastern Europeans..there always someone to blame for never having enough.

I thought that the fear of others getting something for nothing was an American phenomena but no!  It’s British too.

After lunch Adam took my picture as part of his photographic Whitstable project and his lovely mum cut my hair.  We sat in their lush garden drinking lemonade and lusting after his gorgeous, recently tattooed, diver brother.   After the pictures were taken we walked the couple of miles home up the beach.   I have never been so happy.

When we got home the companion had a drama unfold which he needed to deal with.  When he finally tore himself away from the Internet we sat in the garden and ate dinner with Georgina.  We ate huge organic pork chops that I managed to burn on the bbq.   After dinner we sat outside the Neptune pub with Barry and other drunksters.   The dog was tired and lay on the beach and fell asleep.  The night was balmy and the sea lapped lazily over the shingle.

This morning I woke at 6am and walked the dog up to the harbor.  He loves it here.   The Greens who own the Oyster Company scrawl unfortunate notes on black boards all over their property.  Don’t do this and don’t do that. Those black boards used to be charming now they just look vicious.

Some people like to get their own way..I am one of them.  When you finally meet your match, as I seem to, it can be less than comfortable.  I am trying to be sensitive to the needs of others but I am a stubborn old fool.

As for him..the traveling companion..he’s finding his feet and I am finding mine.

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Categories
Fashion

Sebastian Horsley RIP (though unlikely)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am so happy she called.  So happy.

Categories
Gay Hollywood Rant

Gay Pride?

Today the sea in the Gulf of Mexico is burning. Added to the slick of heavy crude oil toxic, jet-black smoke polluting the air we breathe.   The azure, pristine water marred with acrid plumes of shit colored oil.  The marshlands and beaches painted brown, the life there dying because we refuse to doubt our dependence on oil.  It is officially one of the worst man-made environmental disasters ever.

Yet, the massed people of the United States, indeed the world, politely ignored it.  Until now.  Blame is being apportioned, asses are being kicked yet today I will fill my truck with gas and think nothing of it.  I am complicit; I am responsible yet I do nothing.   Nothing.

It is maybe just the analogy I need to explain the human disaster caused by religious based homophobia that causes pain and suffering to those who live in it’s shadow.

Frankly, I don’t give daily thought to the fact that I am part of a community that is routinely demonized just as I choose to forget that hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil spew into the sea.  I have learned to live side by side a huge number of people encouraged to hate me and people just like me because of the way we were born and the sexual preferences we have.

Politically I have sat motionless on the sidelines whilst living in the USA.  I have not demonstrated like I did in London, I have not written to my representative in Congress expressing my outrage at how my rights are diminished or devalued.   I put up with things just the way they are because I feel powerless, that I am just one man with one lone voice against the angry mob.

Nowadays I am resigned, whenever I am with men who do not know that I am gay and say things that are blatantly offensive, to keep my mouth shut.    I do not blame myself for their views but as I grow older I am less likely to defend my community or myself.  It simply isn’t worth it.  I am tired of being the uppity gay.

I am exhausted by confronting inequity and hate in my life and I am scared.  Scared that I will not be able to fully defend myself against their physical abuse.

My entire career as an artist has been to serve the gay community.  My plays and films aimed at men like me.  I have been hugely admired (and reviled) as a filmmaker but even my gay friends do not respect that I describe myself as a ‘gay filmmaker’ a gay man who makes films for and about our community.  They muse that I could have done so much better for myself if I had abandoned my principles.  If I had gone ‘mainstream’.

All I ever wanted to be was a gay artist who uses the language and locations of our gay lives.  I am proud to have done so.  I am proud to have served my community thus.

I wonder how much damage we do ourselves in the way that we choose to be seen?  How can we expect those who loathe us to accept us when we do so little to let them know who we are?

What is my part in the public relation disaster that still prevents fellow citizens from owning and celebrating my existence?  What am I doing in my community to help those angry people understand who I am?   How can I expect the mainstream to accept my demands for equality when I essentially live in a hermetically sealed ghetto?

How can I expect my gay fellow travelers to start reaching into their pockets and paying for a PR campaign that somehow celebrates our diversity when all we are seen to want is the right to fuck?

Call me old-fashioned but the love I have for another man always felt far more subversive than the act of fucking.

How do you say ‘I love you’ to another man?  What does it mean when two men say that they love each other?  Having sex with a man is easy-isn’t it?   That’s why we all do it as often as we do..don’t we?  But to say ‘I love you’ to another man is perhaps the most shameful phrase I ever uttered.   My tongue, swelling in my mouth, choking me..rather than say those three tiny words to another man.

I love you.  I love you.  I love you.

What I know for sure about love between men is that others condemn the sanctity of that love.  That I still feel a vague embarrassment when I am seen to hold another man’s hand in the street.

We, as a community, do not promote ourselves as hopeless romantics but as half-naked sex maniacs.  By doing so we have become unwitting witnesses for the prosecution.   By publicly sexualizing everything we do we devalue what we have.  On Facebook the majority of my gay friends are shirtless in their profile pictures.  When questioned why he was bearing his chest in his Facebook profile picture one erudite gay friend said that he was ‘proud’ of his body and wanted to show it off.  It seems like a simple enough answer but is this what gay pride has boiled down to, our very own hard-fought perestroika reduced to this?

It seems so..undignified.

In West Hollywood there is a large poster on Santa Monica Blvd for a gay removal company; two half-naked men carry a small box grinning broadly.  At the premiere LA gay bar The Abbey there is another huge poster celebrating it’s twentieth year.  Three massively built and tattooed men, one of them mixing a martini on the rock hard abs of another; their naked truncated bodies engaged in what may be fellatio.

It was past this very poster out walking one evening last week when I had a full beer can thrown at me that very narrowly missed my head and landed squarely on my chest.  The accompanying homophobic insults are not worth repeating.

I hated the smell of beer on my clothes and the pain in my heart but I hated that poster far more.  It’s as useful as a picture of happy, smiling Jews counting dollar bills outside the Jewish Community Center.

The way we choose to be seen is the way we will be perceived.  I am told constantly that there are thousands of gay men who do not go to gay bars, who live happy lives in monogamous relationships who work quietly and steadfastly beyond the glitz of the gay ghetto but, amazingly, I have never met those men.  I don’t know what they look like.  I have never seen them, been introduced to them.  If I have never met those men then those who misunderstand us certainly never have.

The acrid smoke and crude oil are coming ashore; it destroys almost everything in its path.   If we do nothing perhaps nature will deal with it, break it up over thousands of years so I don’t have to think about it.  But, irritatingly, I am not that kind of man.   I worry about the herons and the oysters and the dolphins.   I am outraged by the incompetence and greed, just like I am every time my community is attacked because we do so little to let them know who we are, what we are, how we are.

Categories
Gay Hollywood Malibu Rant

Renters From Hell

The day started out badly and after getting a great deal better ended with a bang…quite literally.

A friend called me a ‘drama queen’ after reading this morning’s blog.  Thanks friend.  The fact is:  I was sick with a migraine, the first real one I had ever had.  Nausea, blinding headache and dizziness.  Silly me, I decided the best way to solve that particular problem (after writing my blog) was to drive 30 miles to Gold’s Gym and work out with my friend David.  Bad idea.  Hillary met me after the gym to eat lunch at the French Market in Venice.  Bad idea.  My reasoning was that if I could just behave as normal everything would get better.

I am sure that my migraine was actually a combination of stress, high blood pressure and depression.  It followed soon after some particularly loaded conversations.  After I posted my blog the comments came thick and fast.  You guys were all so sweet to support and love me.  The reason I write this blog?   Because you are all there to read it.  To understand, to reach out, to condone and condemn in equal measures.

After lunch I went back to bed and slept deeply.   The phone woke me three hours later… my friends from England  arrived in LA but decided to stay elsewhere.  I can’t say I wasn’t happy.  I wasn’t in any mood for 10 days sharing my life with English people.  Laying in bed feeling so sick, the bathroom floor unwashed.

Woke up to an email from a disgruntled Malibu renter and his blousey girlfriend/fuck buddy.   I knew that we would have some sort of disagreement about the return of the damage deposit.  When he left the house he left it in a terrible state: broken coffee pot and coffee cups, 5 huge red wine stains on the carpet.   Thankfully Jerome was with me when I checked over the house and the moron was forced to admit what he had done.

They were the sorts of tenants who couldn’t do anything for themselves and were constantly summoning me to look at things they could have fixed… like the stove top they locked by accident.   As usual it is the cheap skate tenants who nickel and dime that seem to cause the most problems.   On the first occasion I was asked to go to the house the tenant was so drunk he couldn’t stand up.  I should have chucked him and his lady friend out there and then.   I was embarrassed for him.

When they, rather amazingly, asked to come back to the house I made it so prohibitively expensive… I knew they wouldn’t be able to afford it.   The letter I received from them was littered with quotes from this blog.  Well, blog on this bitch!  I was in no mood to deal with bullshit, no mood to be lied to or manipulated and certainly no mood to deal with a woman (not on the contract) the renter had confided in me he couldn’t wait to see the back of.

My anger toward these nasty, cheap people had the affect of shaking my headache and forcing me out of the house.

I walked briskly down Sunset.  I had my hair buzzed and beard trimmed at a barbers on Ivar and began looking for appropriate BEAR WEAR as I now intend, whilst I am in NYC, to attend the Urban Bear Weekend which will be fun-exploiting my tiny celebrity for a bunch of hairy bears and their bear cub boy toys.   A friend of mine suggested the Urban Bear idea as a kind of joke but it looks like a great deal of fun.  This may be my future!

Now all I need is a cub to drag around by the belt loop.

Anyway, by the time I got home it was time to get dressed and head to WeHo for dinner with Spencer my very intelligent British friend.  Over beef burgers and fries trying to understand the cultural DNA of the average citizen of the USA.   My new theory?  That the ‘puritan chromosome’ is not nearly as dominant or as influential in the American genome than the ‘wild-frontier chromosome’.  That the majority of people who live in the USA came from simple European ancestors who, for their freedom, had to combat rattle snakes, bears, hostile climate, native Americans as well as their brutal own.  The threat, real or imagined was always there.

Suspicious and mistrusting by nature these people believe that government is good for only two things PRISONS and THE MILITARY.  White settlers distrust Obama, discrediting his empathy.

After dinner Spencer and I wandered around WeHo and met a couple of handsome cops.  Handsome but dull.  We wandered aimlessly back to the car and outside the Abbey some young man threw a can of vile smelling alcohol at me from a yellow school bus yelling homophobic rhetoric.   The full can hit me squarely in the chest.   I can still feel where it hit me on the sternum.  At first in shock, I grew increasingly angry, then I buried the  anger under a seething fury, quietly determined that ‘they’ can’t hurt me, that they can’t hurt me any more.

‘Drama Queen’ that I am I sank into a pit of man hating quick sand.  I hated the entire crew of my Wednesday morning therapy meeting with their frat house homophobia, their cheating ways co-signed by a dodgy ‘therapist’.   These men miserably attempt to patch up their sham marriages to avoid alimony and see their kids whilst yearning after mistresses, transexuals and sophomoric freedoms.

Categories
Death Gay Love

Gaping Hole

Nothing.  Nothing to say, write or comment on.  In my own head.   Do you know that feeling?  When life is so overwhelming?   I could not sleep last night.  Perhaps it was the cheese again.  Must stop eating cheese before bedtime.

It is easy to look over ones life and just remember the things one has lost rather than what one has found.

I am going to New York this weekend.  Staying on 10th street again.   Comfortable.

It seems like for the past few months I have made one bad decision after another.   If only I could tear myself away from the self-loathing.  To love myself enough to give the man I see occasionally in the mirror..a break.  Do you think that is possible?

I just made a huge pot of black coffee and drank it all.  Friends arriving from London today.   Dinner with Toby last night.  Saw Please Give with Katherine Keener.   It was a lovely film.  Very New York, very sad.   I shed a tear at the end.

Did I ever tell you that for a short time I was friendly with Katherine Keener?   She has a lovely house in Santa Monica, beautifully decorated with really well-chosen furniture.  She has the most amazing taste.

I tell you what is happening in my head.  I feel as if I am in some terrible competition.  A competition that I can never win because it’s not my game.   I am not like ‘them’ so I can’t win.    I feel very unsafe.  Not like I was going to die because that would be easy.  To know for sure the time and place of ones own death.

Unsafe, because I want something so badly knowing that it can never ever happen.    That something is not a person or a thing or a place but the peace of mind that has eluded me for so long.   I have learned that nothing can fix me.  Nothing can make it better.  Maybe a more complete relationship with God but to have that relationship with God I must remove the lead cap I am wearing that keeps me in the dark.

I sat in a room yesterday morning with 70 men who all looked so fucking miserable.  Every man in there just trying to make sense of what and who he was.   today, I have no idea what the answer is.

To wake up with no answers is a terrible thing.

The little dog is sleeping.   He is waiting for me to pull on my pants and take him for a long walk.  I used to think that if I could just keep on going, keep the momentum then everything would be ok but I have nothing to look forward to right now.

Just a gaping hole where a life should be.

Categories
Gay Hollywood

Date Night

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rabbit good.  Bratwurst bad.  Cakes divine.

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

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

Categories
Gay Rant

Spinster of This Parish? Not Today Thanks

I need something from you.   I need closure.  Don’t take this the wrong way.  Moving at the wrong pace.  I love you but…

You told me that you could not give me what I wanted-but I think you misjudged what I wanted.   What I wanted more than anything was that we could do all the things we said we wanted to do when we weren’t in a position to do them.  We had some really great ideas about what it meant to be together, time together, excitement together, exploration together.

You said you would fly to see me if only you could, then when you could..you couldn’t.

You may have become less free rather than more free, less brave rather than more brave and complain all the time about your lot without ever taking action to improve it.  Darling Lamb Head:  get a  job you love and a place to live and make yourself available.  Stop wallowing in self-pity and false promises.    How long is this charade going to last where you pretend not to be having a life because you don’t want to be found out?

I am afraid of the huge difference between us.   You see, I am not scared of all that life has to offer!  When I was your age, at the merest hint of an invitation I would have been on that plane, that boat, that train, I would have been in Paris and London and Rome!  You put all the reasons why NOT to before the reasons why you should.

If it had been me I would have come home triumphant!  Armed with stories I would have told my grandchildren.

Darling, I need you to not call me when you are lonely and make cooing noises that just makes me love you all over again.  I need you to set me free from the hope that we could ever be anything other than friends.  If that!

It simply isn’t fair or considerate-in fact it is down right cruel because I cannot call you when I am feeling lonely not least because you are not very good at being compassionate.  I don’t think we should see each other at all until we have got ourselves settled with other people.

I am going to meet this guy tomorrow and I am going to take him to dinner and then I am going to ask him if he will come to Paris with me.  You had your chance and all you could say like a willful, petulant child is NO!

I think we really did exhaust things this time.  We really may have pushed the right button.  Please, please lets hope we did.

So, as a delicious post script to the man I loved:

You know, the days we spent in NYC together were some of the best I ever spent with anyone..ever.  Lamb Head, you never let me write about that.  You kept me silent.   I wasn’t allowed to describe the joy, the love and the kindness.  Never allowed to describe our tender kisses just in case it hurt other people.  Our perfect moments sullied by your fear of what others might think.   Like holding hands in the street.   I can’t hold your hand in the street because I can’t bear the thought of the disapproving glances.   No wonder your mother thinks so badly of me because I never get to write the beautiful things..because you told me not to.   So, I want you to know that we had beautiful time.  I had a beautiful time with your son.  That he is capable of great love.  He knows how to love a man.  He knows how to make a man happy.

Just as it is meant to be.

The last thing he said this evening was that he didn’t make the huge changes in his life to be with me but that, I’m afraid, is the lie he tells himself.  He left the other for a relationship with men, not this man, not me, but with men and we must honour him for that, for it was his bravest hour.

We are tired of the conflict, tired of the unresolved feelings that causes so much distress on this roiling sea of emotion.  We must say goodbye now-help me. Help me say goodbye.

Categories
Hollywood Money Rant

Rub Belly, Pat Head

Taking a Shit

British class shame is nothing a regular gun-toting American would or should know anything about.   Whether or not one has an understanding of manners, social hierarchy or top hats is neither here nor there.

I have spent blog time bashing America but really, the Brits are just as bad-if not worse.  My friend Pierre in New York, upon moving here at the behest of his company, missed London terribly but after a short while, much less time than I, understood why we come here and why we want to stay.   Pierre began to notice a change in himself and those around him.  He felt valued, pumped up, fearless.  In America he could feel like a man.

Like me, when he meets Brits who stay at home he marvels at their naivety.

It takes a huge amount of self-loathing to ‘know your place’.

In the USA there is no shame about bettering and reinventing ones self.  There are rules, of course, but every one of the rules (guiding principles) is designed to be broken.

You may have to pay a disgruntled employee a ton of money for a spurious sexual harassment claim but that’s how the dispossessed get their share of the pie.

Everyone is on the make, everyone!  It’s an on the make, nickle and dime affair that I am having with the USA.  It’s better than pecan pie and nuclear waste!  It’s more thrilling than Guantanamo Bay.

As a Brit I still hanker after public art and healthcare but the rampant small mindedness of my countrymen, their embittered jokes masquerading as irony, their post imperialist arrogance and their total inability to allow anyone to grow beyond the class they were born into keeps me from going back home.

I suppose for all my anti-American sentiment I love the hurly-burly, the hegemony, the extremes, the greed, the excess, the stupidity.  I love their terror of art and history.  I applaud their dogma and their denial.  I love that they think that they are the very best at everything they do when they are patently not.  I love that they behave like willful children.  I love that they think knowing about nature or food is elitist.  I love that an engaging presidential candidate can emerge from nowhere and take the world stage-where as the British produce a bunch of familiar, threadbare politicians like so many provincial repertory actors delivering lackluster performances in what passes for political theatre.   Imagine British MP’s sitting in their shared dressing-room waiting for lurid makeup to be applied before performing their ‘great scene’ during Prime Ministers Question Time.  Smoking, sinking rummers of whiskey, discussing their expense claims, squabbling over cabinet positions and who’ll wear what at the state opening of parliament.

We don’t cast our parliament terribly well.  Here they cast the Whitehouse like a huge movie.  No wonder Rahm and Ari Emmanuelle are behind Barrack.  They recognized his star potential and like a baby starlet hanging out in the Chateau Marmont plucked him from obscurity and handed him the best role ever in their box office blockbuster political thriller-so whilst the Emmanuells steal the money they got themselves the bestest alibi ever..a black president.  They got themselves a well-dressed first lady descended from slaves.  They got tears of joy at the inauguration and a divided, blind sided America whilst the spoils of the middle class were being divided up by unscrupulous hedge fund managers and Ponzi schemers betting on the downfall of their own and other nations.

So, there’s Barrack blustering over the war and the economy in his professorial tweeds, his sweet and sexy demeanor softening the hearts of the liberal elite and providing drama and focus for the next lot-the emboldened white Christian right.  There he is dithering over healthcare and everything continues just the way it was.

Am I the only one who can’t imagine Tim Geitner having sex with anyone other than himself?   He is such a WEED.

If China wasn’t running the world-this could look dangerous!

When British politicians get caught with their hand in the till-what paltry amounts of money they steal!  Awarding their friends dodgy $150,000 construction contracts and creaming a few quid and a meat pie for themselves…subsequently getting caught and fired.   An American politician wouldn’t waste his time or his position stealing so little.  Tony Blair is the only politician to get away with stealing real money.  He got away with the money and murder.  He understood what few in the UK do-that American politicians are not elected to represent their constituents but to steal as much money as they can within their 4 years in office.

And, you might ask, why shouldn’t he?  The Blair’s are just doing what the Royal family and the landed gentry have done for hundreds of years. He just took what he thought he was owed for getting to the top of the pile.  It must piss our lowly politicians off to go through all the pain of getting elected to public office and then once there, look around…bleak…lonely…underpaid.  Servants of the democracy that we hold dear and never really getting what they deserve-compared with the politicians in the USA who are on the fucking gravy train!

Drill baby drill, bailouts, healthcare, there’s money in them there policies..money for every politician in Washington, TONS OF IT!  Politicians accepting donations from whomever and where ever.

Poor old Dennis Kucinich-he’s the congressman President Obama lassoed into helping change the mind of the bold progressives who were holding out for a radical public option during the last few moments before the Healthcare Bill was forced into law.

Well, dear Dennis lives in a one room apartment in Washington…never accepts a dime from anyone..but he lives in a one-bedroom apartment with his wife Elizabeth.   If he had played his cards right, abandoned his principles and cut himself free from the people he was sent to represent then he could be living in a huge house in Georgetown-which is what the people expect by the way.  To the average American there is something vaguely retarded about a man who is able to steal the money but doesn’t.

That’s why we elected you into office!  To steal the money but, mind you, not so much that you piss the other thieves off who have seniority or think you are stealing too much.  Of course, once in a while an odd politician needs to be thrown to the lions so that the public think that the other politicians have some sort of morality.

This is America and once you get a handle on it it’s not that bad.  As long as you understand that to survive here you have to learn how to steal.  You have to learn how to lose.  Learn how to pick yourself up.  Not get trampled in the stampede.

You must definitely learn to rub belly..pat head..

Categories
Hollywood Rant

Wreckage of My Past

There are occasions in life when no really means no.   I am not really the kind of guy who accepts no for an answer but occasionally I hear the word No and I can’t possibly ignore the implications.

When I first got sober I had to make endless amends to many people.  I had to address the wreckage of my past.  It is not always easy to hear an apology so I rarely use the word sorry.  When I had to make amends to people I had hurt whilst using drugs and alcohol I started any apology with these words:  “I was wrong.”  I was wrong to have stolen from you, I was wrong to have lied to you, I was wrong to have deceived you etc. etc.

Some people were simply no longer around to make amends to or some I had made so angry that they could never hear even one word from me let alone an apology so I made, what we call, a living amends, which meant that whatever I had done to the aggrieved I would never do again to another person.  That if I had cheated I would not cheat.  If I had stolen I would not steal.

Obviously they, the other, would not care either way if I cheated or stole ever again but my commitment to the living amends meant that I never need bring more people to the same sad conclusion about me.  This may seem obvious to you but to a selfish, self obsessed addict this is not obvious at all.

I am in an odd mood today.  I am happy but I am expecting the worst.  I am sure about my path but too lazy to take the next step.

Insanely busy day yesterday.  Climbed Runyon.  Popped over to see Amanda and Kay.  Saw Sean over in Malibu at his farm.  Had lunch with Mel.  Drove home, CRAWLED home on the congested 10 Freeway and then couldn’t, for the life of me, find parking so parked illegally.  I was just desperate to get under a hot shower.  Thankfully, I did not get another parking ticket.

Had delicious dinner last night at Osteria Mozza.  Actually, it was an OK dinner but the company was great.   The food was expensive and poorly executed.  I sent the first course back because it was literally inedible.  Bad food made better with inspiring conversation.   I left my phone in the car so when I got back there were lovely text messages to read.

I slept long and hard.

This morning had very long, shitty conversation with HSBC in the UK.  Really bad.  Then, on the way to Runyon, my friend JP called me to make a reservation for him at a restaurant he couldn’t get into but apparently I can.    Made me feel like a glorified personal assistant.  Had long, very long (but delightful) conversation with Philippa about my June trip back home to the UK.  I really can’t wait to get home for a little while.

The NO came after that.  It was so definite and clear but rather than it rattling me I simply asked to get my own needs met and handed the whole caboose and caboodle over to God.

Amen.

Categories
Gay Love Malibu

Limerence

Malibu Spring

Woke up this morning in a wonderful mood after a lovely evening with Anna.  True friends are too few in this life.   I woke up in my own body.  Does that sound familiar to anyone?  Doesn’t everyone?  I woke up in the moment, not in some delirious fantasy about what could be.  I smiled to myself.  Gently.   I imagined myself walking the pavements of Notting Hill Gate.  I imagined looking into the beautiful homes there.   I thought about London-because I am happy.

A beautiful spring morning in Los Angeles.

The fact is I don’t live in New York.  I live here and for the foreseeable future I will continue to live here.  I have to make this work as best I can.   Any other plans to move will have to be made because it suits my sensible self.

My great friend John has gone travelling and I miss him being around.  He reminds me to be awake, to no longer sleep walk through life.

I loved seeing Jennie this week.  It was after all this week last year that I entered Sex Rehab and the adventure began.  The journey of self discovery, the great revelation, the great insight, the life of many choices, the decision to love myself, the strange and wonderful experience with reality TV and of course my relationship with the inspirational Jennie Ketcham.  The love affair, the language of recovery.  The list goes on and on.

To love someone selflessly is hard.  To live without hope is very hard.  To put a lid on my feelings for another seems almost impossible.  If I think back to the end of my most beautiful relationships there are weeks of debilitating sadness, sad songs then emerging from the pall with my head held high.

Today is Saturday 3rd of April.  I pay my rent today.  I go to my Saturday morning meeting and see my friends.   Do you have a group of men or women around you who can hold you when everything seems desperately bleak, when things are going so well that your feet scarcely touch the ground?

Several of my readers really helped me yesterday with their comments.  I read about limerence and it was painfully, embarrassingly familiar.  I particularly liked Leslie’s comment.

“What are the three most dangerous words? ‘I love you.’ By saying these words to another, we give them power. But the power is two-fold: the Other then has the power to destroy us, to kill our heart. The Other then also has the power to create us, to give our heart life. So what is the love we give when we say those dangerous words? It is peace, patience, mercy, trust, fidelity and forgiveness.”

It is hard to explain to those who are close to me how important this blog is.  It is a relationship with the world.  Reaching out daily to those of you who read what I write and honour me with your comments and opinions-good and bad.

So, Anna and I sang sad songs and laughed out loud and when I went to bed I no longer had any yearning in my heart.  After all, what have we got to look forward to?  I’ll tell you what-today, this moment..right NOW.   Like so many people I have lived so much of my life regretting the past and hoping for a brighter future without really paying attention to what was happening to me right now.

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