Tag: Wheelers

Categories
Alcoholics Anonymous Gay

Yikes

I love this picture.  Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud in Wheelers.

1.

Waking up at Robby’s apartment.  West Hollywood.  Feeling like I have a hangover.  I haven’t.  I’m still not drinking.  Waiting for the right moment…but it never comes.  The sanctity of sobriety.

It’s hard after nearly 16 years to think about the right time to start drinking.

A woman I know from the programme called yesterday.  I told her that I had renounced AA.  “How’s that working out for you?”  She pried condescendingly.

I faked a dropped call.

2.

Saturday pre pride party.  Good fun.  The über gays.  The fake NYC producer I mentioned in an earlier post sitting at his table wondering how I manage to surround myself with such beauty.  He looked exasperated.  Staring over at us.

Pride was a great deal of fun.  On the streets.  The floats have not changed for 30 years: muscle boys and drag queens.  Not very inventive.

I stayed at the London Hotel courtesy of my Kuwaiti friends. They pitched up at 8am.  We ate smoked fish and Quiche for breakfast.

3.

Nothing is obvious.  Just when you thought you’d never kiss anyone meaningfully ever again.

I saw you in the bar and knew you were the one.  A brief conversation.  Kisses, glances, then you pissed on me.  That was new to both of us but so damned exciting.  A mouth full of piss.  Then we spent the afternoon talking.  Eating.  Each other.

You left an impression.   Creases in the bed sheets.

4.

Without me even noticing it LA is full of gay men with beards.

Does this mean that they/we are growing up? That men are trumping boys? The aesthetic is not only very pleasing but means I get looked at all over again. I have some currency…if you know what I mean.

5.

I don’t have time to write this very often.  There’s a great deal to do.

I’m helping those boys in the jail, even though they don’t know it.  Meeting lawyers down town who are investigating conditions in the jail.  They seem shocked.  Young lawyers.  Fresh faced.  Idealists.

I try balancing my complaints with a broader understanding of the jail dynamic.  The deputies are not just cruel…they are frightened.  They do not treat the trans population with contempt because they hate gays, they are confused by the feelings the girls bring up in them.

Ernest lawyers ask how I would change things in the jail.  I am always prepared for those questions.

Last week I sat with Senator Ron S.Calderon who is co-sponsoring a bill in the State of California that would basically abolish the situation in which I found myself.  Protocols would have to be adhered to.  States right to decide trumping the draconian Immigration Department.

I drive for hours to get to the meeting and speak clearly and concisely.  I know that I am speaking on behalf of thousands of wrongly incarcerated immigrants.

I go to cities I would never usually visit.  I am introduced to people I would never usually meet.  Immigrant rights advocates, Methodist ministers.  I am familiar with Secure Communities.  I hear terrible stories.  They tell me that ICE operate like the Gestapo.  They spread fear in the immigrant communities, wrecking homes, lives, marriages, separating families, sending children into foster care.

6.

Then, there is the other work.  Kevin, my incredible new assistant, and I…running all over town.  Putting this show together.  Holding things together.

Today I see the doctor.  No good news all over again. I’m sure.

Wish me luck.

Categories
Rant

Waiting To Be Dead

LIly

The day passed slowly and uneventfully.

I watered the garden. “Why don’t you have an automated system for that?” I hear you say. Well, I do. But…a bit like our mad bad Prince of Wales I like watering the plants individually and chatting with each of them. The citrus trees especially respond to gentle coaxing.

There is something charming and rather annoying about the ‘we’ pathology of twins. We are with each other a little too much. Consequently, when we left for Lake Malibou, I wasn’t in the best of moods.

We all helped Jennifer with her Out of The Box Wednesday pack then Miles set off with the delivery.

Robby and I drove into Hollywood. I wanted to stop in at Fresh and Easy where I buy English staples. Tea, bacon, marmalade etc. I can’t do with out them. We, me and the Little Dog, sat in the ugly court-yard outside the supermarket drinking coffee waiting for Robby watching lithe men heading for 24 hour fitness.

A woman from Chicago, who had arrived in Hollywood two nights previously, looked down at the dog and said, “There’s a little person trapped in there.” She fed him chicken breast. “This has got to last me two days.” She told the Little Dog. She was plump, dyed black hair and red lips. She told me that she was here in Hollywood to pitch reality TV ideas to…God know who. She was going to pay to pitch her ‘concepts’.

I was overcome with pity for her. She told me a couple of ‘ideas’ she had thought of pitching.

It occurred to me that for forty years not one original thought had been formed in that sappy brain.

I went for a walk.

Hollywood is grimy. There is nothing of any beauty to look at…to be inspired by. I yearn for my garden.

Robby picked me up after an hour in the gym. We had planned on going to an art/film/glamour party in Beverly Hills but I was tired and irritable so we drove home.

Well, we drove back to Malibou Lake and I helped Jason cook dinner for the children. After dinner, as the children were going to bed, I sat at their Steinway and tried playing the piano. I had not played for thirty years. I was shocked by how clumsy my fingers were. No longer able to slide effortlessly over the keys. I began to sweat. Evidence of my old age. Evidence of my own mortality. It was so frustrating! My left hand refused to even practice the scales in unison with the right.

I lay in bed last night thinking too much. Waiting to be dead.

Not so fast Batman!

Next week I set off on my ‘great adventure’ culminating in the birthday hootenanny. There are people flying from all sorts of wonderful places to help me celebrate my 50th Birthday…before I am not. I am stunned that so many old friends even exist for me let alone want to jump on a plane and be with me. You know, this is what I should have done last year…but last year I was with him in the back parlor of Wheelers.

Last year there was no room for anyone else. WTF?

Categories
art Dogs

Bugger That

Hospital day yesterday.  It was quick and efficient.

Nicola arrived from London on Tuesday and bought delicious, French macaroons.

We ate dinner at Wheelers (4 courses 65 GBP including a dozen native oysters) and she stayed in Georgina’s B&B in the same room/bed I stayed this July.

The following morning we bought her Wellington boots from the ancient shoe shop Wooley’s on the High Street and went for a long walk on the snowy beach.  Met other very jovial dog owners and the little dog ran like a mad thing through the melting snow, his little pink paws skidding over the ice.

The woman in Wooley’s, incidentally, remembered fitting my school shoes when I was a boy.   Wooley’s has been on Whitstable High Street for a hundred years next year.  They asked if they could put my photograph in the window when they celebrate their centenary.  I was honoured!

We walked to The Battery, Marilyn’s place on the beach..I described it in my blog the other day.  On the way there, however, we peered through Janet Street-Porter‘s cottage window at her austere modern kitchen and her Gary Hume prints.   I wouldn’t want to live there.  It was so impersonal and the yellow walls were painted the wrong yellow.

The Battery looks a bit worse for wear.  I may nip up there later today and take a picture of it for you so you can see what I am talking about.

If you hadn’t noticed I feel leagues better.

I decided to let myself off the hook.  Become quite tearful when I write it down like that.  It’s time to stop beating myself up.  Give myself a break like they say in the Narcotics Anon literature.

I was chatting with a friend yesterday and I realized that I was finally out of the woods.   It’s a decision.  I have been waiting for a storm to pass rather than wash something down the drain.

My friend was telling me that he would find it hard to love again after his last failed romance, that he had been tossed aside…and I thought to myself, “Bugger that, life is far too short not to fall in love!”  I come from a long line of men who can say proudly that they love another man.  I love you is possibly the hardest thing one man can say to another.  I am doubly proud that I have said it and I meant it.

Saying I love you is much harder than saying I want to fuck you.

All I have to do is find a man who can hear those words and value them.

So, today I tried not to engage with bad thoughts and old resentments.   I thought out loud, come on LOVE you can show this old man that life is worth loving again.  So, I’ve been feisty all day but not angry.  I have been creative all day and not asleep.

I pulled out a couple of scripts.  I made a couple of calls.  I thought about finding a producer.  I had a meeting with a woman I might do a property deal with.

It was good day.  It is good to be home.

Categories
Christmas

Snowed In


Totally trapped in Whitstable!  So many old friends to be trapped in the town with.  Lovely seeing everyone.  Had tea in Wheelers with Anita and Michael.  Adam and I drank more tea and ate mince pies by the fire at Carol’s house.  Saw Tim at Tea and Times where Ronnie came a’visiting and I caught up on all the local gossip.

Ronnie showed us pictures on his phone of a dead polar bear.

Meant to be in London today dealing with Jake’s iPod fiasco but God dumped a trillion tons of snow on Kent so we are all stranded.  Hurrah!

The Little Dog just LOVES the snow as you can see from these pictures.

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I am rather hoping that I get stranded here for Christmas!

By the way, did I ever mention to you that whilst I was in the police cell that miserable day in July Jake met a man from Manhunt and sex with him.    That was supportive wasn’t it?