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
Dogs Hollywood Love Rant

World of Wonder

Anna and Melanie beneath a mermaid pinata.

It is a world of wonder.  The day opens thus:  the clouds have cleared over Los Angeles.  The sun is bright and the air is clean.  The birds are singing.  The squirrels are playing in the palm trees within feet of my window.

Everyday I wake up is a new day to think about what life has to offer and I am all at once terrified and enchanted.

I frantically tidied the house, put all the clothes that were stacked in my room in their correct places.  I remembered to fold my teeshirts and not put things in draws that were inside out.

I have to move the car at 9am so I don’t get a parking ticket.  The little dog is looking at me expectantly.  We need to walk, we need to take the trash to the building dumpster.  We need to go to yet another 12-step meeting and rip my heart open again and again.

I want to smoke cigarettes.  I want to lay in bed and not feel.  Please.

Right here, right now.  That’s what John A says.  Reminding me to stay right here right now.   Not yesterday or tomorrow.   Right here, right now.

Everything happens for a reason.  Collating the artwork made me take an essential inventory.  It seems that there is more value in what I own than I first suspected.  The choices I made for 20 years have been good ones.

Everything happens for a reason.  That’s what they say.  That’s what they tell me.  That’s what I have come to believe.  The plan is set, the dye is cast.

I felt sickly last night, too sickly to leave the house then spontaneously decided to visit my friends Anna and Melanie.  Driving through the heavy rain the little dog and I arrived in Silverlake and ate slow roasted pork, black beans, plantains and lemon sorbet.   Chatted to my arty filmmaker friends and loved every minute.  Drove home, lay in bed waiting for the anticipated thunder but none came.

Silverlake, Los Felis, Arcadia, La Canada, Flitridge, Brentwood, Malibu, Santa Monica, Pasadena, the map of LA unfolding like an old linen backed map in my head.  The freeways, the concrete LA river, the Pacific Ocean all wrote in Indian ink.

I once owned a 17th century map of Venice that I found in a library in Dorset when I was a boy.   It was folded into a marbled envelope and each painstakingly hand drawn section of that map remains engraved in my memory.

Venice stretches across 117 small islands in the marshy Venetian Lagoon along the Adriatic Sea in northeast Italy.

For a moment this morning I remembered that map and wished to be magically transported to the saltwater lagoons that stretch lazily along the shoreline between the mouths of the Po and the Piave Rivers.

When I die the various maps of many cities will be lost.  I think often of that.  The many and various maps of  all the cities I explored that will be lost along with the smell of fresh snow, the taste of my lovers mouth, the unmistakable sound of my own childish footsteps running down warm unusual, sunlit corridors.