Tag: whitstable

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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
Auto Biography

Kuros Khazaei

My friend Sebastian’s father was my father’s very best friend.  When Sebastian first met me he knew exactly who I was.

My father was his hero.  His description of Kuros almost perfectly matches how I have heard myself described.  He cut quite a dash, he was impeccably dressed and when he entered a room people took notice, he could also be very, very bad-tempered.

Not many people have very nice things to say about my father.  My mother, his business colleagues, some of my brothers and sisters and their mothers all of them seem a little too ready to condemn him yet, strangely, I am not.   Even though he wanted nothing to do with me and treated my Mother very badly I am still willing to forgive him.  It is touching that he had such a profoundly positive effect on Sebastian.

We are without doubt very similar in temperament but unlike when I die…when he died he died very, very rich.

He was without doubt a colourful/controversial figure.

Sebastian’s father owned a restaurant in London where my father met all of his wives.  I still don’t know a great deal about him but I know for sure that his second wife disappeared one night with her children never to see him again.  I know that his third wife had a terrible time with his temper and cavorting.  I know that he loved backgammon and opium.  I have been told, although these might be myths, that he was thrown out of a second floor window by the notorious gangster Kray twins causing him to have a life long limp?  That he wrapped a sports car around a lamp-post severely damaging his eye?  That he was implicated in a massive robbery but never formally charged?

He certainly owned a restaurant and an antique shop and his big break came when he met a profligate Saudi Prince who bought everything my father could lay his hands on and sold to the Prince at exorbitant prices.

Isn’t it odd that whilst he owned an antique shop in London (only feet away from where I would one day live with JBC)  I was trawling through the antique/junk shops in Whitstable and Canterbury.   That his restaurant was only a block away from where I would settle with Phil.  That we may very well have passed each other in the street and never known who one another was.

I met a man on the train to Shrewsbury I was convinced was my father.

He was not my father.

I felt as if I were not allowed to ask Sebastian questions about my father, as if the topic were still off-limits, disallowed, forbidden.  There is still a huge amount of shame surrounding his name.  As if even the barest mention of him a terrible catastrophe would somehow happen.

Yet, there is nothing more I need to know about him.  I know that I am his son, that we are cut from the same cloth and that it scares me to hear about him because in some way I am forced to accept my own flaws/defects/shortcomings.

That, my friends, is incredibly uncomfortable.

My father died in 1998 of pancreatic cancer.  I never met him although I feel as I have.  A protracted and messy financial battle ensued after his death.   There are all sorts of stories about who stole what from whom but my four younger siblings seemed to do OK.   He left at least 8 children behind, two ex-wives (did he ever bother getting a divorce from any of them?) and a widow.

It was a pleasure discussing him with Sebastian because Sebastian has fond memories and…I believe him.

Categories
prison Rant Travel

Stealing Virginity

We are in Marseilles.   Bad hotel in the port but very welcome after our long journey from Calais.

Our trip?  A spontaneous event.  Bought a ticket and jumped on a train.  The train was packed and we were moved around a lot.  The dog was in good spirits. The coffee was delicious.  In Lille I ran to Monoprix and bought ham and cheese forgetting that Jake doesn’t eat cheese.

We sat next to very good looking man and his gf who I befriended.

The last part of my stay in London was irritatingly dramatic.  A largely drama free vacation morphed into the worst kind of melodrama.

Firstly, the iPod turned up.   Whether it was in fact stolen or not is another matter.  It was not my iPod.    Yes, you heard me.  It wasn’t even my iPod.  Yet, I felt incredibly responsible.  It was Jake’s iPod – and critically, if not found, would jeopardize my relationship with whomever the fucking iPod belonged to…Jake.   Pride before a fall.   My pride before my fall.

I have only myself to blame.

A little more information about the incident:

The cast of characters I mentioned yesterday included a tall spotty boy who was recently expelled from school for stealing a girl’s virginity in the school toilets.  Ruby, a small, fat girl with bright red hair with a nasty mouth and attitude – until she wants something of course, like a fag then she sweetens up pretty damned fast.  The ugly gay friend and his pretty Greek ‘best friend’ were perhaps the worst of the lot.

Paul, Phil’s long-term man friend explained to us how rude and impossible he found them all.   He told me that Ruby was a thief.  Actually he really fanned the flames once the iPod went missing.   It seemed like there was no other reasonable explanation.

Sure I over reacted but nobody tried to help.   Yet, it was none of my damned business.  The moment it went missing I offered to pay for it as if I were somehow responsible.  Why?

I had no reason to feel responsible for somebody else’s stuff.  Especially as they were drunk and had lost the damned thing.  I was sober and didn’t lose anything.    When I left my sunglasses in Whitstable I didn’t expect anyone to pay for them yet for some extraordinary reason the moment someone else loses something I feel as if it were my fault.

As I was sitting in the cell I had a series of catastrophic thoughts.  The dog was dead, my friend was dead, my stuff had been ransacked.  I sat on the edge of the bed blaming myself for introducing someone essentially blameless into a den of thieves.

As it turned out the kids had not stolen the fucking iPod and it was LOST.   I was angry with myself that I had brought a sweet, kind, good person into a den of thieves but as it turned out I brought a forgetful person and my temper into a largely innocent adolescent smoking den.

As much as I loathed them for their promiscuity, their smoking and rudeness I had no reason to jump to conclusions.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

There is an Indian woman taking very loud telephone calls on her very large phone with a very loud alarm that goes off with appalling regularity.   I think every train should have a mobile/cell free zone where other travelers can escape.

Delightful dinner with Charlie Parsons at Dean Street Town House.  Just me Jake, Charlie and delicious food.  Calves liver.  Bumped into at least twenty old friends on the streets of Soho including Tania who was in Clancy’s Kitchen.  Ended up at Soho House with Richard and his friend.

Today we are going to rent a car and aim toward Monte Carlo.  The streets at night around the port are transformed this morning.  I am wearing a brightly patterned Etro shirt and my black sandals.   I am tired but eager to get on the road.

Categories
Dogs Travel

Police Cell

Decided to stay an extra week in London.

Woke up at 11.30 this morning.  That is LATE for me.  Me!  Me who is usually up so early.  Anyway, we were going back to Whitstable today but I ended up spending the better part of my day at Chelsea Police Station.

Why?

You may well ask.

A drama unfolded at the house that included a cast of unruly, drunk children a lost iPod touch and me trying to enforce an adolescent exit strategy.  I mean, getting 5 unwelcome 15-year-old kids out of the house whilst Phil was at her Dad’s.  Anyway, it all ended up with me being arrested and taken to the police station and then being let go.

The short story is this:  I accused them of stealing an iPod touch.  They accused me of spitting at them, which is a total lie, but it had to be investigated.  So, I got cuffed and dragged to the police station.

Of course, our accusations were ignored.  Impossible to substantiate.

Firstly, can I tell you how utterly charming the policemen were in the station.  The  Desk Sergeant, the constables, the detective..all utterly considerate and thoughtful and even though I had to spend an hour in a cell it really did not matter.  Even the cell was clean, the toilet flushed and someone had stenciled a note for a drug ‘help line’ on the ceiling.

Much has changed since I was arrested 30 years ago.

Fingerprints are scanned, mug shots digital and every time I had to sign my name it was on a pad like you would find in a bank.  Of course there were the usual host of nutter types being held there but sadly, since the mental hospitals were closed down the police and prison service are used to hold the insane until they can be reclaimed by the broken mental health system.

The detective who interviewed me was really good looking.  Big blue eyes.

Now I just feel ghastly.  I felt like crying in the station.  How could this have happened?  That kind of sad moment.   In fact..I did shed a tear when the nice detective was interviewing me.  Had odd feeling of shame telling him that I was gay.

I felt like I was defending our honor against those kids.   They were HORRIBLE.

I am going to Victoria Station to help Jake and the Little dog who went off to Whitstable for the day.

More about this tomorrow.

Categories
Rant Travel

No Teeth

Things change between some people and some things never change.

Back at home in Chelsea after two glorious days in Whitstable.   The train to London was filled with fat women with no teeth from Ramsgate.   The Little Dog sat on his lap all the way here.   They are my strange family of travelling souls.

The house in Chelsea is neat and cool.  We are sleeping in a huge room painted a dirty rose color.  Phil bought us new toothbrushes. The cupboards are filled with boxes marked BOOKS AND PLATES.  Knowing that I love them Phil found two gilded (ormolu I think) stork shaped candlesticks for the dining room table.  In our room she filled a vase of my favorite pink peonies.  I moved them into the kitchen so I can look at them whilst I write.  Phil has a lanky, 11 month old, wolf-like lurcher called William who irritates both of us by leaping all over our bed.  Her 15-year-old daughter Moffy is going to be a model and this morning there are other very elegant girls sleeping on the drawing room sofas, their handbags overflowing with cigarettes, condoms and tampons.

The companion is in bed moaning at Phil’s dog that wants to be his friend.  “Out, out!”  William skulks away, unwanted.

We arrived in London yesterday, the hottest day here so far this year.  It was still 88 degrees at midnight when we sat on the steps in front of the house, drinking tea, explaining to the travelling companion what coal holes were and how they worked.

The house is much bigger than I remembered it.

After a lovely lunch at La Famiglia (I ate ham and figs) we walked up the Kings Road to the Designer’s Guild summer sale and hankered after a beautiful chair and a bulbous teapot.

Last night we drove to Battersea Park and walked for two hours.  The Little Dog is happier in London than anywhere else we visit.  He is free to run and leap and now he has a new friend to play with-even though their new friendship started off with growls and snapping.

Nobody knows how to access the wifi so neither of us automatically reaches for our phones or laptops as soon as our eyes open.  It is very therapeutic not having the Internet so freely available.

Less eager to check my emails, more of an event to do so.  We have to walk to the Starbucks on the Kings Road and drink warm iced coffee.

I really shouldn’t be so eager to placate myself with the soothing, addictive page after page of regular web sites I open every morning.

Even though we are only half way through our adventure I am already dreading having to deal with LA and the eventual closing down of my life in the USA.

I didn’t mention that the travelling companion bumped into (of all people) Cary Fukunaga in Wheelers the Oyster Bar in Whitststable.  He is here directing Jane Eyre. He was with the actress playing Jane Eyre – Mia Wasikowska who was Tim Burton‘s Alice.   Even before I knew who he was he had an air about him that reeked of unbridled entitlement.   It came as no surprise to hear that he directs-we are all the same.  All directors have that air about them that may indicate that he is indeed the real deal.  Time will tell.  He wanted a table in the back room but Anita refused to give him one.  If only he had been a little softer, more charming, he would have gotten what he wanted.

Seeing Gary tonight in North London.  We are going to a Diana Krall event at Kenwood House.

Travelling companion and I are having a lovely time.   Not without consternation but actually and mostly we laugh and try to make sense of our odd friendship.

There was something inevitable about this I suppose. Though there is an emotional imbalance and sexual disparity that is more revealed as we spend time together.  I understand – who wouldn’t?   It’s just the way things are.

We may know each other a little too well.

I have never, ever thought of love as anything other than fleeting.  Being here in London has filled the hole, the gaping, yearning hole that rots my life from the inside out.  London! Look around you!  The art, the architecture, the color and movement inspire and nourish.

Phil is off to a woman’s Buddhist retreat for the day.

Is this Sunday?  I think so.   We are thinking about extending our trip.  Staying in London longer, maybe going to Berlin.

Anyway, another day has passed since I wrote the above and even though we are in the very heart of London there is something oddly bucolic about this house.

Saturday morning we walked up the Kings Road toward Sloane Square.  Where the Duke of York’s Barracks used to be, there is now a food market that sells delicious looking food from all over the world, Caribbean, Mediterranean, British (of course), Indian etc. etc.  We ate curried goat and rice.  Delicious.

(We were going to have lunch at the Blue Bird restaurant but who ever now owns it is not taking much care.  The staff were rude and unhelpful.  The tables dirty, the food uninspiring.  It used to be so elegant.)

Bought ourselves Oyster cards and after a long walk through Eton Square and the back of Belgravia we caught a bus to Piccadilly Circus and hung out in Soho House.  He drank champagne and I coffee and fizzy water.  The staff brought the little dog a plastic box of water and a chicken breast.

After ‘lunch’ we walked back toward Bond St stopping in at Richard James which used to be so glorious but now looks a bit sad, the staff all puffed up and arrogant.

Popped into the new Louis Vuitton store, which is, I am very sad to say, TOTALLY VILE!  Packed with retail-obsessed tourists this monstrous, badly conceived, gaudily decorated ‘shop’ was also swarming with London’s boys in blue.  Policemen and women who I assume had been called to deal with a shoplifting incident.    It was almost Dickensian, the rich and the poor come to the emporium to either buy or steal.

We popped into APC and he bought a jacket that he is desperate to wear because he looks incredibly chic in it.   We are teaching him how to buy beautiful things.   Every gay man needs a style mentor.  He is so lucky to be a small to medium.  The summer sales here are stuffed with small to medium bargains.  50%/70% off everything with plenty of room for negotiation..one can easily get a further 10% off of everything.

I bought a teapot and six cups and a milk jug for my new life in London.

Anyway, we wended our way home.  It was incredibly hot.  We lay down and slept for a little while.

At 8ish Phil stuffed us in her car and drove to Hampstead where we saw Diana Krall then after..believe it or not..we went to Cary Fukunaga’s birthday party.  My opinion of him did not alter much.  We are both quite awkward but he gets to drink.  We are both quite competitive but he is 32.  We are both talented but John Lyons wants to suck his cock and not mine.

Is Cary Fukunaga gay?  Probably.

We met a delightful lesbian and an odd gay boy who started craving shots and drugs and became so very dull.  We sat in the most beautiful garden and smoked cigarettes.  The gay boy told us about all the thrilling gay club/bar opportunities that we could have in East London.

On the way home he sleepily laid his head on my shoulder and drunkenly told me all manner of charming things but I am acutely aware that I am still on guard.  I know that if just one person says just one cruel word about these two men together I would kill them.   Too many men in big cities are killed by homophobes and I am not going to be one of them.  Consequently, whenever it may be apparent that we are gay in public my fist is clenched just in case some fool wants to try killing us.

We were home by 3.30am.

Jake Bauman by Adam King

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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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art Dogs Gay Love Money

A Message from Kristian

I found a book of photography called Chaos by Josef Koudelka at my house in Malibu that Kristian gave me for my birthday some years ago.  In it he wrote:

“I thought this book was very apt.  Life is never black and white yet always flowing with chaos.  I feel this book goes some small way to prove that even in chaos there is beauty.”

It was lovely to find his note.   A message from Kristian, from the past.  The past, where we must leave him.

I had to make some huge and grown up decisions today.   Decisions and about romance and finance.  The two are unconnected yet have been hideously intertwined as I grappled with one or the other for the past few months.

As my fear of financial ruin overwhelmed me I turned to him to deliver me from the truth.   Today, I just had to face my unfortunate situation head on.

My financial insecurity is undoubtedly connected to uncomfortable feelings of self-worth, prestige and power.  The romance I want but cannot have.   Some things are just not meant to be.  It is challenging to come to terms with these sorts of truths but as I have written here in this blog on many occasions when I do make decisions they are swift and sure.  Something, actually, Drew Pinsky taught me whilst I was on the sex rehab show.

I have deliberately avoided talking about either the romance or the finance on this blog but more importantly I have kept it secret to those who love me best.  Fuck, it is exhausting keeping secrets.  I really hate it.  I have no intention of going into any specific detail about the romance or the finance right now.  All you need to know is that I sat with John after the cake was cut and the presents were opened and told him everything I had been hiding for the past few months.  Phew.

As we all know: the truth will set you free.

I let go of a secret I was determined to keep.  Everything I have ever let go of has been relinquished unwillingly.  With claw marks all over what ever was finally gone.

Deep down I am as sure as I ever was that everything will turn out just the way it was meant to be.   I believe in my fate.

My relationships burn like super novae in the cosmos then shrink and die.  I have an opportunity right now to make a different set of choices: taking contrary action, living in acceptance and handing over what ever gives me pain to my higher power.

Just a few days away from my trip to Europe where I will celebrate a hefty milestone.   I have chosen to travel with a close friend.  Someone I love but not a lover.   We (and The Little Dog) will explore London and Paris.  For the sake of The Little Dog we will once again visit the wallabies in the Jardin des Plantes that my darling, loyal pet found utterly spell binding when we visited Paris last Autumn.   I am sure he must have thought that they were the biggest squirrels he had ever seen.

Am I prepared to walk away with dignity?  From people, places and things?

What I own is not who I am.  Who I love cannot define me.  Of course I would love to be in love with a man who loved me as much as I loved him.

I have come a very long way this past year.  The road to serenity, self-love, sexual sobriety is littered with the corpses of those who could not.

I must have buried 30 people during the last 12 years, killed by addiction.  Overdose, suicide, etc.  Every one my hero for keeping me sober.   Each and every one.

This evening I celebrated my friend’s daughter’s 5th birthday.  I sat with his family and watched his happy little girl blow out the candles on her cake.   After supper I wandered into Soho House on my own and found people I knew to take my mind off of the grueling aloneness.  I am not lonely, I just can’t be bothered to make the effort to accept the invitation nor get in the car and drive to people who genuinely love me.

On my way home, as if by magic, friends called me.  Emails arrived, text messages appeared on the screen of the iPhone and I was wrenched away from the promise of a night of self-pity.  I can be such a pig at that particular trough.

I said to him the other night that what I found so hard to let go of was the promise of enduring love.  The door had been opened then slammed shut.  I am the wise uncle, asexual, decrepit yet ultimately willing to be of service to those who need me.

Without the crutches of objectification, intrigue and seduction I can some times flounder.  I can sometimes fall.  Late at night, when all hope is gone I wonder who will catch me?  Who will catch me when I fall?

For a moment back then, I thought it might be you. I thought, foolishly, that it might be YOU.  I thought it was you when I was 20, 30, 40 and now.   Being in love with Richard in my twenties.  I was heartbroken when he would flirt with girls.  At my birthday party on Island Wall, Whitstable my Mother saw the pain I was in and tried to reach out to me but shame got in the way.

The legacy of shame.

Love has always been my goal.  To be loved.  I crave love the way most men crave sex.

I told him:  I’m really scared that I will never love again.   That I will never be loved.  How could I have got this so wrong?    To believe that love was possible, enduring and could be one day mine?

From out of the chaos comes beauty.  It will give me succour when all else fails.  I am going to Europe to fill my heart and soul with art and architecture.  To walk the streets and parks of two great cities.  To explore what it might have been like to be loved.   I know that when I get back he will be gone.  It is our swan song, our last hurrah.  But before I write the end I must enjoy the journey.  I must not fear the future nor have unrealistic expectations, I must set aside my shame and feel the sun on my face, in my heart.

Categories
Auto Biography Death Hollywood

Bastard

50 years ago this month my Mother, eight months pregnant, was scrubbing floors for nuns at a catholic ‘Mother and Baby’ home in the depths of rural Kent.    For 6 months, this teenage girl, had undergone an emotionally  disfiguring baptism of shame.

The young girls in this Catholic facility were persuaded that for their acts of fornication and subsequent pregnancies they should be punished before God and their unborn, bastard children maligned.

This penance would not edify my Mother.  She would not repent.  She had already glimpsed the burgeoning freedoms of post-war Britain.  She had met a rich, well-dressed, exotic, Persian boy who drove a sports car and had given herself to him.  She was aspirational, a teenage girl with an appetite for the modern world.   She wanted what he had, the freedom he had but he wanted less from her than she from him and after moments of unbridled passion she was pregnant and abandoned.  One can only imagine how dreadful she felt telling her Edwardian parents that she was carrying me, knowing that her life would never be the same again.

My grandmother, disgusted by her willful daughter’s precocious ambition, spoke to a priest who organized seven long months of incarceration at the Mother and Baby home where she would be forced to abandon her dreams in exchange for shame, resentment and fear.

My grandparents abandoned her to her fate.  During the 7 months she was sent away they did not visit her once.  After I was born they accepted her home begrudgingly.

Most of the girls would give up their babies.  Some of them willingly some, like my mother, unwillingly.

She could not breastfeed me.  I refused to suckle.   Perhaps I already knew that life was not worth living?  The nuns insisted and forced me onto her nipple.   My mother left me behind at the Mother and Baby home to be adopted but fate or circumstance or racism intervened.  I could not be adopted.  My skin was olive toned, my hair curly, my eyes jet black.  It was obvious to all the prospective parents who viewed me during the time I was offered up for adoption that I would not fit invisibly into any nice, white family.

By July the 8th 1960 the day of my birth the door had well and truly shut on the promises of the age.

Remember, during the first few months of the 1960’s my mother was unaware that this decade in the United Kingdom would be described variously as ‘swinging’, ‘progressive’ and ‘free’.

What of these nuns now?  These Brides of Christ?  Where was Jesus when all of this was going on?  Where was the love of God?

My Mother was neither free to keep me even though she begged to do so and the home I would eventually end up in, although loving, was certainly not progressive nor swinging.

My Grandmother, in a rare moment of charity, decided to go fetch me and I ended up, once again, with my teenage mother and her mother and her mother in a small, semi-detached house in a genteel seaside town.   Besides these three women I lived with my two aunts and my sickly grandfather.   Victorian Herne Bay was, was at that time, still enjoying the benefit of the second longest pier in England, a bandstand and the cavernous Kings Hall where polite tea dances were held.

mother

There are photographs of me ensconced in the bosom of this dysfunctional family.   I was the son my grandfather never let my grandmother have.  She doted on me, walked me through the streets come rain or shine.  Then, she let me go.

During the darkest days of my childhood I would try to get back to that house.  A house I knew and loved but when I got there it was never the house I remembered.  She sent me back again and again.

I lived there for two years until my mother married a local lad and we moved to Whitstable.   My Grandmother was thrilled to have her sullied daughter married.  It was, in fact, against all the odds.   She was ‘taken off my hands’ my Grandmother later told me.

50 years ago.  50 years. I have lied about my age for so long that I am in shock when I type those words.  The number has come too soon.  I am not prepared to be this old nor was I ever expecting it.  Shocking!  Why did I never expect to live?   On many occasions during my childhood I expected to die at the hands of my angry step-father.

When I finally escaped that man I sought out equally destructive situations.

I have been hankering after the long sleep since I was born.

As I sit at my desk in Los Angeles my greatest triumph, if at all my only triumph, has been to survive.  To avoid the catastrophic blow that I expected every day.    I may not have fulfilled my potential but I have certainly achieved more than I ever expected, more than I was told to expect.    In spite of my temper, my addictions, my desire to take up where my murderous step-father left off I am alive!

It is only recently that I tentatively acknowledged that life must be lived.

For as long as I can remember I have imagined and reimagined my death. For long as I have flown in aeroplanes I have reveled in turbulence.   As often as I have picked up strange, beautiful and dangerous men I have wished death come to me.

Shame has cast such a deep shadow over me that all I ever managed to do is struggle blindly down life’s treacherous path.  Stumbling into people along the way who could see.  Many of those people realizing that I was blind did not help without benefit to themselves. Many of those people, when I understood what monsters they were, were shocked when I ferociously bit their hand off up to the elbow.

Perhaps this is why I stayed close to my family home, a family that did not want me.  Even to this day I hanker after Whitstable.  There are still elderly parents of friends my age who remember the small boy who escaped his home whenever he could and seek refuge in theirs.

My Father 1960

During the next month I am going to write an abridged memoir.   We know the beginning and most of you know where I am right now.  So, as I make my way East through New York and Paris back to my old hometown of Whitstable I will let you know what I remember, what I care to remember from the last 50 years.

Today, the little dog is on my bed waiting to walk through the Californian sun to our local coffee shop.  There are people there who know me from the television.  People who might wave a tentative hello.   Tonight I may hear from the man I love and tell him so without shame or expectation.   It’s not much to ask is it?  To be loved, to love.  To be loved..to love?

Categories
Hollywood Love Rant

Drug of Choice

Dream:  weirdly compelling dream, I am in a beautiful country house in South America, there is an anaconda, I am guarding the little dog, then we are on a train to a small village, lots of people..then on my own.

I am on a high protein diet so I can lose a few pounds before I get to England rather than work it off whilst I am there.      The upshot is I am feeling aggressively horny.   Need..want..love.

Taming the beast.    Look, I have to confide in you:  I have never been interested in second best, making do, half measures not only availed me nothing but I am turned OFF by the avowedly second rate.  I am interested in first class everything and why shouldn’t I be?  I don’t mean huge houses or fancy cars, I don’t want ravishing beauty or perfect bodies all I have ever wanted was something or someone who could tell me the truth.

Again, let me state as boldly and confidently as I know how: AUTHENTICITY.  I am only interested, I have only ever been interested and will always only ever be interested in that that is authentic and true.

This may account for the kind of pornography with which I used to be obsessed.

If I look around my home I can tell you that there is not one fork, spoon, chair or rug that I don’t LOVE.

Selling my art recently has given me the freedom to let everything go.  I may have no option.  Yet, as fast as I let things go I acquire more.   It is an addiction as grave as pornography or drugs.  I used to look around my home in Whitstable and I could tell you to the day how badly I felt by the amount of money I spent on the possessions I owned.

Last night I met some actor from a show called Dollhouse.  I don’t remember his name.  Fran someone or other.   He was/is attractive but because I no longer objectify or intrigue I really didn’t know how to engage with strangers.  The conversation lingered and died.    Is this how things will be from now on?

Fuck.

Before my sexual maturity work in therapy when ever I went out I would flit from table to table intriguing and flirting and having a gay old-time.  Yesterday night I was compelled to chat with people I knew rather than making brand new friends.

Fuck!

I really do not want to lose that motivation.  I love people but how do I love people without them becoming my drug of choice?

Categories
Malibu Rant

Paris!!

8am Malibu.  Cleaning the house.  This is my true vocation.  House cleaner and rent collector.

I rearranged the downstairs apartment so it now looks rather chic.   Loved it.  Love it.  I wish I lived downstairs and out of this huge loft.  The greatest thing and the worst thing about living here is the view.  It is magnificent, consuming and exhausting.  There is no escape from the view.

The days pass uneventfully.  A humming-bird flew into the sitting room yesterday so I gently caught it and let it free.  Lunch with Andrew and the Little Dog in Santa Monica on the beach.   Long conversation with Jake which began as I pulled onto the 10 going west and ended a few meters from Las Flores.  30 miles of conversation.  We are going to have friendly fun in Europe.    Dinner with heavily pregnant Jen and Trevor at café Habana.  I ate a pork chop.  Am cutting out all white flour from my diet this month as a ways and means to look good for my arrival in Paris.  Trevor told me that he lost his temper at some lesbians and their three off leash dogs.

Spoke with Georgina in Whitstable whose daughter Sophie was having a good old laugh in the background.   This time next month I will see them all.  Get to join in on the joke.

I felt vulnerable after speaking with Georgina.

It is hard for me to show how vulnerable I can be to anyone.

I remember eves’ dropping on a conversation my stepfather was having with my mother when I was a small boy.  He was explaining to her that he was finding the written component of some work related conference he was attending very challenging.  It was the first and only time I acknowledged that he was capable of vulnerability.   His slight, whiney voice proof that this monster of a man was anything other than granite tough.

This day next month I will be in NYC.  The following day we will be in Paris.  July in Paris.   Perfect.

What a fucking disaster LA has been for me.  A total waste of time and money.  Against nature in every way possible.  Intellectually bereft.  Creatively barren.  No hope of happiness in this monstrous place.  The only thing going for it:  the weather.  The fucking weather.  Another beautiful fucking day in paradise.

I suppose it would help if I went out more.  Like I used to? Hang out at the Chateau, Soho House etc. or simply called people I know would want to hear from me but I am winding down, getting ready to leave.    Everything is in order.  Bills paid.  Off I go.  Time to leave.  Time to pack my bag and dog.